 Coming up next, The Crunch with Cam Slater, conversations with a side of controversy. Every Thursday from 4pm, right here on RCR, reality check radio. People are struggling to have conversations and connect with others that they don't completely agree with on every topic and I think that's probably the biggest problem that we need to try and solve is how after all this division and after all this separation, how do we end up bringing people together again and what does unity really look like? New Zealand faces some pretty big issues. First one is COVID in the aftermath. There's no getting away from that. Second is racial division. It's been ginned up and it's dangerous. Another issue that maybe people haven't got their head around yet is digital currency. What form does that take? Is it programmable? Will it be used to manipulate behaviour and patterns of behaviour? Those questions need to be asked and answered. How can you have fair, open, democratic government by people who are appointed? It's a ridiculous idea and if that idea is taken to zenith, then this country is in real trouble because democracy, one person, one vote, where every vote is of equal value has got to be the foundation of a modern New Zealand. What's true, what's not true, how our kids are to be educated and I have a great fear for the future. I think we know from history where this could end up. This is The Crunch with Cam Slater. Conversations with a side of controversy, right here on RCR. Welcome to The Crunch on Reality Check Radio. I'm your host Cam Slater and this is the place where we crunch the political issues and catch through the politicians spin. There's something different for you again this week. First, it's catch up time with Shane Jones. He's a minister these days so it'll be short and sweet but as usual I expect Shane to deliver some zingers. And then I'll chat with Annie O'Brien about free speech and the turf wars and anything else that takes our fancy. And of course we'll have the mailbag to get your feedback and then we'll close out the show with Cam's buddies and see what they think about the government moving to outlaw gang patches. Don't forget to send your comments to inbox at realitycheck.radio or text to 2057. Today we're delving into a topic that seems to be echoing the American political landscape making its presence known right here in New Zealand. I'm talking about the influx of what mainly the media and left-wing commentators call dark money into our election campaigns. Now we all know that elections in the United States are often characterised by big money but what may surprise you is that the bulk of these funds doesn't come from political parties or candidates themselves instead it's special interest groups running their own campaigns to influence the outcome of the election. Now they call these political action committees or PACs for short and it appears that this trend is seeping into our own political arena as outlined in a recent article by Bryce Edwards. Unfortunately Bryce is prone to left-wing slants on things and so he calls this dark money. Edwards highlights how as rules have tightened around political donations to candidates and parties the money is finding its way to less regulated and less transparent special interest groups. He and other critics label this as dark money because it operates outside the traditional party system making it harder for officials in the public to scrutinise. But here's the rub, it's perfectly legal and this is in reality a bunch of sour grapes from folks who lost the election and are seeking to blame everyone else rather than have a moment of self-reflection and discover that maybe, just maybe, they lost a contest of ideas because their ideas sucked. In the 2023 general election we saw a significant surge in third-party spending while some of it must be declared that the majority maintains managers to maintain below the reporting threshold. The top spenders include groups like Vote for Better Ltd, New Zealand Taxpayers Union and surprisingly even the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions. Yes, you heard that right. Even the unions traditionally seen as champions of workers' rights are now involved in significant third-party spending. You hear that being called dark money though? Oh no, just those who campaigned against the last government. The article does shed light on the top spenders revealing a mix of socially and fiscally conservative lobby groups and there's nothing wrong with that. And we know about these people because it is declared as required by law. It's not dark money, it's just money. Just like there is no such thing as dirty politics, it's just politics. Those calling this dark money are seeking to stop people engaging. It's a way of silencing people, it's censorship. Bryce Edwards even uses labels like mysterious to describe people who we actually know. Take the so-called mysterious Vote for Better group. It's led by businessman Tim Barrie from the horse racing industry and they were the biggest spenders. Following closely with the New Zealand Taxpayers Union known for its anti-government campaigns and of course the CTU which ran an attack campaign against Christopher Luxon. As we navigate through this landscape of increased third-party spending questions arise about the sources of funding and potential hidden influences. Farah Hancock's investigation for Radio New Zealand delves into the possibility of some groups engaging in astroturfing essentially passing off well-funded campaigns as grassroots movement. But so what? It's their own money or the money of their members. The commentators see this as concerning. But why? Think about that for a minute. They use this language because they don't like it and so it's mysterious. It's dark money, it's concerning and none of that is actually true. They say that it's only pushing big money into these more obscure groups allowing to operate without disclosing their funding sources. Well I ask you, why on earth would you want to donate to a candidate or a party? Have that disclosed and then have the media disparage you for spending your own money and smear you for doing so. Bryce Edwards article quotes Greg Bresland of the Labour Party drawing attention to the lack of obligation for these groups to disclose who is funding them. The concerns extend to the possibility of overseas entities influencing our elections without actually producing any evidence that there are any overseas entities influencing our elections. And of course they neglect to mention that overseas individuals and organisations are not allowed to donate to political parties or candidates. But Greg Bresland who's a lawyer from West Auckland knows that. So it's just a smear because his team lost. And it doesn't end there. So-called investigative reports by Jonathan Milne at newsroom apparently shed light on how big corporations like a mining company influenced election races. I say so-called because Jonathan Milne, all he has done is look up publicly available information as required by law. Donations, returns and then ascribed nefarious implications against the donors. People like Bryce Edwards, Greg Bresland and Jonathan Milne and Farah Hancock claim we need more transparency without even realising that if it wasn't for transparency of donation laws that never have the names and the donors to moan about in the first place. This is all legal. There's nothing untoward about this. It is just catawalling from a bunch of losers. Thanks for joining me on looking into this world of political spending and so-called dark money. Stay informed, stay engaged and as always, keep questioning. Shane Jones is back on the crunch. A lot has happened since his last appearance including Ratana, Waitangi and of course stuff attacking ministers like Shane for daring to engage with reality check radio. Shane will undoubtedly deliver some good zingers which will keep all our social media team busy making shareables. Shane's on the line from the beehive now. Welcome back to the crunch Shane Jones. Good to have you back here again. I think the last time we spoke was just before Christmas, wasn't it? Yes, no, you've got me here in Wellington. Today the house will be sitting and it's a pleasure to engage here yet again. Well, it's interesting because Tuesday morning Glenn McConnell, the Stuff reporter, wrote an article about this shock horror and the protesters of the government are engaging and being interviewed by reality check radio. It's got some sort of grand conspiracy. What are your thoughts on his little episode and rant? Well, look, my attention was directed towards it. It must be a slow news day. It ought not to be a matter of newsworthiness when a politician talks to a whole host of media orientated athletes. I mean, people are consuming their information in such different ways today. But there's a narrative that's alive and well and kicking and it's driven in many respects by wokeism. And I'll give you one small example. The notion that my colleague Casey Costello should hold back on prosecuting the legislation through the house to overturn those awkward and totally unnecessary and quite destructive changes to smoking law driven by the Labour Party over the last couple of years. And that should be put on the tie-hole until such time the Waitangi Tribunal feasts at the trough of judicial activism. Now, I was really disappointed that that narrative has been perpetuated by the media. The Waitangi Tribunal is a recommendatory body. And we had a mandate given to us by the electorate to change smoking laws. Laws, I might say, have never, ever actually been implemented. So that's a tiny example where we feel that there are no shortage of people trying to lecture what we conceive to be our democratic mandate to get certain things changed and underway. It's like the mainstream media. I mean, they were bleeding to the politicians a couple of weeks ago about how dreadful it is that they've got competition and it's awful. And please, can you regulate the space and tilt the playing field in their favour? Again, that's another piece of Labour legislation that Willie Jackson, who should know better about media matters, has been pushing through. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I saw that they were at the select committee. Well, look, in terms of the overarching approach to New Zealand first, no one has articulated it more lucidly than Winston Peters in terms of the ups and downs and the disappointments and the frustrations that we've had during the three-year period that we were banished from Parliament and the scant coverage that our party received from so-called Fourth Estate. Particularly Stuff and Glen McConnell. He seems to have a running battle with Winston. I'm not sure he's ever going to win that battle with Winston. Winston's far too cunning to do that. Yeah, over the years, I've watched heaps of journals square up against Winston. And obviously, my loyalty is with my leader and he knows how to deal with the different verbal sword plays that emerge from time to time when he's dealing with the media. The thrust, though, seems to be from Glen McConnell's article is how dare ministers speak to other media other than us. Which is rather arrogant of a moment. Reality Check Radio is grateful to Stuff for promoting the station and that ministers come on like yourself and talk to us. I thought David Seymour's comment about he talks to anybody, even niche players like Stuff was hilarious. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Look, I've lent to my cost, mate. To hang up on the personality of the journal, then that becomes somewhat obsessive. I just, I've just shrugged my shoulders. It is what it is. And as you know, I've come off second best in various blows with people in the fourth estate. But the market and the landscape is inordinately different than when I first washed up in politics in 2005. But then as you know, mate, I was already active as the chairman of the Māori Fisheries Commission. The point was to tip in here really and have our big blows way back then. So no, no, I'll leave the young fella to his own peregrinations. And I know that Angatira Winston Peters is more than capable of looking after himself. Exactly. That is touching on that smoking legislation. They seem to be saying that it's harmful to Māori that you've changed the legislation. The logical extension of that, the absurd logical extension is that of that. Because I understand a couple of them are thinking of taking the case to the Waitangi Tribunal about it, about the detrimental effects of smoking on Māori, is that they're almost wanting you to say, well, if you're Māori, no cigarettes for you. Yeah, look, this thing gathered a lot of steam and momentum in the days of Tātianatūdia. And I think you'll find that there probably already is an action that's been advanced to the Waitangi Tribunal. But we can't overlook the fact that Māori smoking rates have dropped markedly in the more recent period of our history. And there are some good things that did flow from helping people beat the habit. But at the end of the day, there's a thing called human agency as well. And I just don't think that you can ever strip Māori, Pākehā, Asian, black, blue, brindle, whatever group you want to focus on, mate. There's a thing called free will. And that goes right back to the stories about humanity in the Bible. And there's no way our party is ever going to agree with some sort of blanket regulation where you make, if you have Māori deceit, you make smoking illegal. Anyway, these rules that we're changing, it would have led for the gangs being in control of the cigarette industry anyhow. Well, totally. We've got a situation now, you know, laughably where tobacco is actually more expensive than cannabis. Oh, right. OK. You know, and so you're always saying to the gangs, hey guys, transition out of cannabis and into tobacco. And, you know, I remember giving a presentation to a select committee back in Hone Harawira's day. He actually threatened to thump me at the select committee meeting. It was held at Alexandra Park. And I was talking about back then the numbers of smokers that we had. And we'd had 10 years of, you know, a huge amount of money spent on smoking cessation programs. And I asked the committee how many smokers were there 10 years ago and how many were there now. And the answer was almost exactly the same within, you know, rounding figures. And I said, well, why have we spent all that money? What is it achieved, right? And I said, you're running the risk of heading down the path of Bhutan, which increased taxation on cigarettes to such an extent that it became very, very lucrative to import black market tobacco and it leapt out of control. And, you know, we're seeing that now in New Zealand where the taxes are so extreme on tobacco products that it's worth your while to try and slip a few containers through some of the lesser known ports in New Zealand and import, you know, duty free, essentially, tax evasion of cigarettes. And then they sell them to the poorest people in New Zealand. You know, on the question of the gangs, obviously our colleague, the Minister of Police is bringing forward a bill to make it illegal for the public exposure of gang patches. And part of it, I presume, is based on the West Australian experience. It's going to take a while for that type of regime to bed in. And there were some predictable combustible responses from Opotiki where one bloke about my age threatened it would lead to war, which is an absolute overreaction and nonsense. But in areas where we hail from, not very far from Kaikohe, my mum lives in Awa Nui, not far from Kaitaia, the real problem we're dealing with is that there is a subculture in each of the generations and it's getting harder and more transient to break into. That is at one level very anti-community, anti-social, but it's doing no end of harm to both the children and the wives of that gang subculture group. So that's the reason why New Zealand First has always been an enthusiast for policies of this nature. Now we know that the majority of the people can come into the world of light and we need some disruptiveness and I just wonder if too many of the gang related people got let out of prison or given an option to serve their sentence in the community and they've continued to I don't know, mobilize, recruit because gang membership has gone up it's not exclusively in my area in the Ngāpuhi Ngāpuhi Ngāpuhi area it's amongst the PI community and other elements and I'm sure that within the ethnic communities there's gang formation as well but we're solidly behind what the Minister of Police is rolling out and trying to do there mate. You're going to try and do something the previous government seemed to have a policy of cuddling up to particularly the mongrel mob but you can see the impact of this crime in society because even at Waitangi Day amongst members of the various Haka parties that were performing there was a plethora of ankle bracelets and it's a tragedy you know that there's all these people that are out there with ankle bracelets on for committing crimes okay they're participating in cultural activities and those sorts of things but they've still got this bracelet on their ankle that everyone can see it's also an embarrassment really that we've got this situation Yeah, I mean it's just proportionately prevalent in the pockets of the community that I'm in regular contact with I would say what does a community do you really want get people to accept the consequences for your actions but come back into the world of light That's an agency discussion that we were having earlier isn't it There's no way of getting away from that and at the end of the day it's not only by the sweat of thy brow but it's free will as well so look the parties had a hard line in that regard Derek Ball currently the manager of the leader's office he was previously an MP he drove that rode that horse really hard and in an earlier time Winston and I came up with various policies to get these men with their coming out of prison straight into work and in vast majority of the cases it worked but there's always going to be a small element that are backsliders and we need to ensure that the consequence of those actions visited upon them which is not pleasant for their kids or wives but it's very corrosive for the broader community unless we draw the line and say sorry bro you go over that line you're off to the Hinaki and Hinaki by the way is the Maori word for jail but it's also the word for the eel pot the eel goes in but the eel never gets out until the door is open see that's the thing is that most people in society actually believe that you commit a crime you should go to prison and it's not about rehabilitation it's about removing them from society particularly violent criminals but petty crime leads to other crimes over and over and the evidence is clear there I'll tell you a challenge that we've got going up north it's the State Highway is how long it takes in New Zealand to damn well get things done it's terrible it's an indictment and we're meant to what we are first world nation and long may that prevail but in order for that status to continue to be bequeathed generation to another generation or our generation to future generations we need to be raising our economic surplus at each and every step of the journey and I'm horrified how the people that are dominating the climate change agenda seem to have disconnected their demands for reform from the capacity of the economy to bear the costs of reform now I don't want to sound too pointy headed continue to gut the $85 billion worth of export revenue that comes from predominantly our commodities and our primary industry where's the income going to come from and how come we don't even see in many cases or hear in many cases the business leadership themselves pointing out that there's a cost to imbibe the green climate change won't collade if you haven't got an economic plan as to how you're going to meet the costs of this transition so I tend to be pretty dismissive of a lot of our business leaders who start to wobble on in that regard when they themselves privately know that a business and a firm in an economy can only change at a certain pace or you're going to destroy the capacity of the economy to yield and generate the revenue that the society needs to afford first world accoutrements and then there's the allegations that are most frequently hurled at people like yourself in New Zealand first and I see Bryce Edwards is on a bandwagon again as are most of the media talking about what they call dark money in politics so third party advertising during elections and things like that the words they use make it sound like it's subversive and awful and then all the examples that they use tend to be business related lobbying that's going on but forget that the CTU for example was the third largest third party lobbyist or advertiser in the last election it's again I think you never hear these discussions when there's a Labour government in but as soon as you get a centre right government in that's challenging wokeism and all these things they all of a sudden say oh it's the dark money of the cigarette big tobacco the dark money of big food and they go on and on and on about dark money it's not really an issue is it? Yeah well I mean I attracted about $95,000 in donations which all of which were disclosed and much of which the vast majority of which got used in order to meet the costs associated with our party because an individual candidate can only spend somewhere between $27,000 and $30,000 something like that but that type of coverage causes people to lose courage and want to donate to campaigns or donate to individuals and if you don't come from stupendous wealth it doesn't make it very difficult to run and sustain the costs of a campaign so I mean I'm incredibly respectful of the people who have shown generosity to have met the costs associated with us coming back into power our party will never agree with the green approach which is to get the taxpayers to pay for the costs of political parties running campaigns that will cause our party and other parties to fall under the predatory gaze of the bureaucracy and that's something we just knew we were going to do so we are reduced to being innovative and identifying people or interests who are willing to back the narrative of our party all of which is legal and that needs to be constantly reinforced and that's the thing it is legal the systems have been set up and passed by MPs and the system is behaving as it was intended to we've got political disclosure we've got donations that are disclosed we've got all of these sorts of things happening I remember having a discussion with Mike Williams the former president of the Labor Party the man who spent a whole lot of money going over to Australia to dig dirt on John Key with the HV telling me that he was lobbying as hard and as loud as he could for taxpayer funding of political parties because then he didn't have to go and do fundraising so well that says it all yeah well more recently I think it's James but I mean the Green Party suffered a few blows obviously it's a tragic event with official columns official himself however never really made his mark in parliament he made his mark up in the community on the sidewalks and in the hard to places in South Auckland and all power to his arm but that aside there have been some big changes in the Green Party and Labor's got a hell of a challenge in front of us because it will bleed some boat as Chloe weaves her magic amongst a younger generation but more importantly Labor and it's not my it's not my wish that they succeed but they've got to redefine why they exist what's the purpose of their political movement and they've long since departed from the interests of blue collar working families and much of the support that Winston attracted in our recent campaign it wasn't just from my generation up and I'm born in 1959 to do the math yourself but it was also from working families who feel that they no longer have a voice because their voices are not refined by work politics identity politics they just don't live like that and they don't have that level of it's a type of political sophistication if you work in that if you live in that sort of glitterati world they're just bulk standard Kiwis getting on with life and want to make sure that someone's going to address the day-to-day burdens that they grind away with trying to live with it's the problem isn't it with the Labor Party in particular but also the Green Party is they've become a liberal elite driven by this ESG you know everyone every little microcosm of society has to be looked after we've got rainbow techs we've got all this sort of nonsense I always go back to when I was running a bit of a roading crew in the old Manukau city and we had a new guy came in he was a Pakia the other three guys that were working and the roading crew were Maori and he was being a little bit you know untoward and the boss of the of the roading gang came up to me and said mate this is getting untenable what should we do about it and I said well how do you want to sort it out he says I want to give him the end of the pick handle I said well maybe the pick handle is probably not appropriate but how about you sort it out out on the job today and then give me a report back well it was sorted out at the back of the truck in time-honoured fashion between blokes and that was the end of the problem these days you know you'd have all sorts of reports that had to be filled in and health and safety stuff would just be ridiculous and we've kind of got moved away from all of that robust Kiwi way of dealing with things and gone to this woke as you say wokeism method of dealing with things which doesn't actually solve any problems yep well on the question of moving on and retaining my earthy qualities I've got to check out buddy no that's right it was always going to be a short they head into my office and said Matua Shane you're running late so we'll have a court or again in the near future and kia kaha to all your listeners and great to engage thank you for your time Shane kaki de told you there'd be some zingers Shane Jones sure isn't backing down and neither is Winston Peters in their war on woke and dodgy media Shane's promised to check in regularly if only to annoy Glenn McConnell at stuff tell me your thoughts on what Shane had to say by emailing inbox at realitycheck.radio or text to 2057 this is the crunch with cam slater conversations with a side of controversy right here on rcr Annie O'Brien comes from a digital marketing background and recently spent a year working in parliament for the leader of the opposition as the director of digital she's been heavily involved in women's rights advocacy and is a founding council member of the free speech union she joins me on the line now Annie O'Brien welcome to the crunch it's good to have you on reality check radio I think this is your first reality check radio appearance it is thank you it's been to be chatting with you now you're involved with the free speech union and a couple of other activities around the place but I wanted to touch on the importance of free speech particularly in some of the key issues that we're seeing arise in New Zealand now and some of the ones in the past where we've seen almost a sensorious application about free speech by politicians by the mainstream media and others and why it's so very important to have people like you with voices out there that are saying no hang on you need to hear us and I guess I guess the biggest one is at the moment you know that this was a turf wars that I call in the turf wars I've had Rachel Stewart on the program and I'm on your side there's men and there's women that's it there's no men masquerading as women they're just men in a frock that's the way I look at it we've got this we see it in the media we see it in many of the political parties this uni thought that it's okay for men to pretend to be women and we can call them women and we can change all our language and everything all around that and actually use the patriarchy this is what I always say using the patriarchy to subject women even further because it's men tell women what they can say and think right it is the ultimate kind of epic move by the patriarchy to find a way to get cuckoo birds and get in the nest and say no we're the right kind of woman we're the most woman kind of woman there are and you are the you know biological ones you listen to us and and we can tell you how it's got to be and so it's incredible to me that you know for about 10 years now I've been saying no you don't tell me what I can do with my spaces my sport and you certainly don't put women in more danger in places like prison or domestic violence shelters and I'm saying no and then I look around and there was all these women saying oh no we're fine with that and I was just aren't they traitors? I think there is a mixture there are some who are what I would call the cool girl I'm not sure if you've read or seen the movie The Gone Girl there's a monologue in it about the cool girl who says pick me I'm different I'm so cool I'll do exactly what I want basically so I think there's an element of that where especially on the left you see these women who will sign away every right that we've ever won in order to get a pat on the back and fought hard for those rights too I mean you know New Zealanders was the first country that gave women the vote men already had the vote so there's a lot of that cool girl stuff but then I also think that fear has been the massive weapon used here women tend to be more agreeable because of how it's socialized I missed that lesson I think you and Rachel Stewart both missed that lesson they were wagging school that day exactly but on the whole we're socialized to be more agreeable and to want to be more nurturing and loving and those kind of things and so you find that women are like oh you know they're very depressed men who think that they're women and we should do whatever we can to make them happy and safe and they really buy into that narrative of you know these are the most vulnerable people around because that's what's pushed and then they're afraid to not acquiesce not go along with it because they'll be called names they'll be told they're bad and they mean that they want them to die and all that kind of thing and so it's really being all the disagreeable women like myself who have said no you're not a woman I'm sorry this is the thing that fascinates me if you get a nine year old come up to you and says look Dad I want to share a bottle of whiskey with you and you're hammered you give them a clip around the ear and send them to their room and said don't be stupid if they came to you and said look Dad I'm nine years old I'm really interested in finding out about sex can you take me to the local brothel and you know just supervise and everything you'd say go to your room you're grounded but a nine year old comes up says Dad look I think I'm a girl I'm going to start wearing dresses and can I take all these puberty blockers I'm not sure no problem we're okay with that it's incredible it's incredibly regressive again though because the nine year old says to you I think I'm a girl the reason for that is because he probably really likes feminine stereotypical toys and presentation so he probably likes to play in the same ways that some of the girls in his class play in and when you when we say society toys you have to be a girl we're telling this little boy that the only way that he can you know play with those toys or like glitter or whatever it is as if he becomes a girl when really I think kids are kids just let them play with what they want to play with and generally they can play you can't learn to ride a bicycle first time you come off you get scabbed knees stub your toes you get everything wrong and in the boys case you managed to land on the crossbar it hurts like hell but you learn don't do that my dad bribed me if I taught myself how to ride my bike I'd get the Britney Spears CD right I taught myself how to ride my bike you really wanted that CD didn't you it's insane what society does and contorts itself I'm still gobsmacked by the scenes that we saw when Posey Parker came to New Zealand where a bunch of angry men largely were physically intimidating a smaller group of women who just wanted to hear somebody speak yeah you were involved in that weren't you yeah I was right in the thick of it it was frightening I felt so bad because I had a conversation with Posey the night before and she said well like it's really heating up down there and she said will the police be okay and I said what do you mean will the police be okay and she said are they gonna do you think that they'll protect us and I said yes because in all my experiences in New Zealand I was naïve enough to think the police show up and protect those who are being attacked or like I just assumed that even if they disagreed with what she had to say they would protect her against physical attack I said that and then the next day as this group of men they dismantled a fence and ran at us and I looked around and there were police nowhere I just had this dread of like oh my god I've given her this false sense of security here and the reality is that we've been left completely on our own that they're not here I ended up ringing 111 from the middle of the melee and got a really shitty responder on the phone and I was saying they're a woman trapped in the rotunda and I think these men are gonna hurt them and they're being pulled and pushed and the guy on the phone was just like yeah we know about it but there's no cops here and they're like we've had lots of calls about it I was like well is anyone coming because yeah and it was just the private security who were holding the crowd back from posey she was getting pulled and pushed and it was like it was really primal some of it like it really scared me because it was the type of thing where you know you hear about people kind of or like mass hysteria or something where it gets worked up into a frenzy and it kind of felt like that because they look wild like and so I kind of thought what is the end point of this if they get to her are they just they're gonna rip her apart yeah I know someone who was in that melee with you and she said she was frightened for her life but the news media and the police all took the side of of them it was astonishing I was actually quite interested on the weekend I think it was Nicola Willis and Lipson were ushered out of the gay out because of the mob there that was the same people same people who did that to us because there's only a small community of these psychopathic bloody activists and they were the same ones and the same ones who do all the very aggressive Palestine stuff and what was interesting to me was they were being nowhere near as aggressive as they were towards us they would seem to be shouting nasty things but they weren't being physical like they were with us and Lipson and Willis's police contingent got them out of there they saw the risk they saw it was dangerous and it just made me a bit cross because I was like every politician from all the different parties said you're mostly peaceful protest it wasn't it was hugely violent and aggressive and a fraction of that happened at the gay out and they were swept out by police I find it astonishing that politicians are one of these groups I mean they do the Green Party especially but the vast majority of people who would have been at the big gay out or any of these sort of events they're not national voters they're not active voters either so I don't know why David Seymour and Nicola Willis and Chris Bishop and Lipson all go prancing around in their colourful shirts like they care because they don't because I think it is fair again the media is hugely plugged into this community I hate using that because I'm supposedly it's not a community though is it it's not a community yeah so my partner and I usually go to big gay out because it's usually the one that's more chilled it's usually the one not like the parades and stuff where it's you know all the telcos and stuff drista and drinking and it's quite fun we didn't go this year and I'm glad we didn't because of the protests and stuff that kind of ruined the whole thing but it is like last year when we went it was there was a lot of political stuff everyone who went on the stage was making political statements about Wayne Brown so there was I think he just kind of floated that he was going to cut funding to arts or something and so they were all making a big deal out of it and what I noticed was these were the people going on the stage these were the performers and the people who organized it you look around at those sitting on the lawn with us we were all rolling our eyes every time a political statement was made because even though most of them would have been leaf voters people are just sick of it being politicized they just want to get a bit drunk and have a dance you know like everything has become this absolute political mess and I almost think we should tell all the politicians to fuck off and not come to these things because why do we want them there? I don't get it it's like did you see News Hub the other night doing this big story about how NZTA or Waka Kotahi had specially bought these vests with no branding and it cost 304 dollars where are they buying from? it cost 304 dollars for 17 of them they cost a big mac chips and a coke but here's News Hub that this is exactly what we're talking about it's a different topic but it's exactly what we're talking about we've got News Hub making this big song and dance about 304 dollars of course they never made a song and a dance when various different ministers turn up and get given a jacket from civil defence or whatever they call themselves Jacinda Ardern there's a million photos of her wearing orange vests and all these day glow things same with Christopher Hickins but I'm sitting there thinking why do the politicians play dress up there's no safety issues here the roads being opened or it's completely devoid of any machinery or anything like that it's about to have cars roll down it and they have them all tip up wearing a hard hat safety glasses and a fluoro vest isn't it kind of the same as attending Big Gay Out it's just so they can tick a box to say look at me I did this I think mostly to do with the media and I'll use an example of when I worked for Judith Collins when she was the leader so I was travelling with Judith we were down in Queenstown and we went after dinner me her Shane Reti was there and Joseph Mooney we went to get an ice cream after dinner and it was there was still some COVID restriction so we were wearing masks and whatnot literally we were wearing the masks Judith stepped forward to collect her ice cream took her mask off to eat it and someone obviously not friendly to her politics filmed that few second without the wider context I then spent that evening on the phone getting all the questions from the journalists like it was Judith had committed the most massive crime I'm not sure if you remember but it was I never wore a mask so I don't know what the fuss is about it was all over the news it was a main story for the next few days it was that she knocked on her mask on and so sometimes these politicians and their staffers are literally just trying to avoid a shit storm in the media they're just like okay if we do this thing then it's one thing the media can't blow up to be honest that it's more centri-riot parties I doubt that would have happened to Jacinda you're never going to see Winston Peters having a thought about that, what if this ends up in the media he'll be thinking awesome it's going to be in the media that's what I want no such thing as bad news that is true but I think it is symptomatic of national to a different extent those centre parties are so reliant or they feel they are on the legitimacy from the media that they tie themselves and not to try and play hate now the problem is I think that we need to reassess the I guess equation there because we're now in a situation where the six o'clock news is not the be all and end all it used to be you needed to hit you know have your press releases out and time to the six o'clock news you wanted to get those tops those days are done now yeah it's done and so now you've got a whole different set of media but also you've got the ability to bypass the media which is you guys are doing with your own new media type but also social but also by list building and direct emailing yes which is what the Free Speech Union does builds those list emails direct bypasses the media and gets the message that you want out there not this homogenised cut down 30 second soundbite that the media like to to use yeah and I think we're seeing like you used Winston as an example and he is showing that it is possible to not play the media again and use your alternative channels to get your message across I think it could be done better but for what he's trying to achieve it's working now Luxon is never going to do that because he is down the centre national safe if you will but it's not safe is it because you've got you've got this is always hard this is a free speech issue if you've got a media that are hostile they are stifling your views or whoever you're representing in your case the Free Speech Union and the media are deciding we're not going to carry this this isn't news and so they are acting as censors against the message that you're putting out whether it's in terms of free speech or dissenting views and I like all views you could be completely opposed to my politics and I'll still defend your right to say whatever you want no matter how silly it is the amount of times where we've fronted stuff that we don't agree with but you have to for example and sometimes we deliberately speak on issues that account with the Bethlehem College stuff because I'm gay and actually I don't disagree with them on everything anyway but I wanted to show I can come out here and defend Bethlehem College's rights to speech and to what they teach and it shouldn't matter if that is in alignment with my own views my own life likewise we've got members on our council who have defended the Palestinian protesters pro-Palestine rallies and that kind of thing so I think it's actually really important to demonstrate a willingness to stand by the principle rather than picking and choosing the issue and then saying free speech is an absolute isn't it there's no but after I believe in free speech you can't now say but and then add something that says that you don't believe in free speech you either do or you don't it's quite funny a lot of people can't grasp the concept like often I'll criticise someone on twitter say I'll say you know that was an appalling thing to say I've said it about Chloe Swarbricks behavior at the pro-Palestine rallies I've been very critical of it and people will say well what about free speech I'm not impacting free speech I'm using my own she's allowed to say it but we're also allowed to say that that's shit it's like I'm not coming for it all I'm just saying well that's appalling and it has these consequences you know challenging her in which case I've had my free speech to criticise her she's had her free speech to say shitty slogans and that's all good but people just struggle with the concept and I just find myself having to explain it over and over and over we've had it here at reality check radio I interviewed somebody and they had strong views and they were very polite in the way that interviews with me are convivial they're never a hostile I'm not trying to bash anybody up trying to prove a point I just want to have a conversation and having that conversation we can find out where people think or what direction they're going in and if you don't have those conversations you don't find out but the vitriol that came from that saying well you should be saying it from this perspective you should be doing it from that perspective you know we had on the treaty principles issue we had a number of different views from David Seymour to Margaret Mutu to a couple of others and there were people saying we don't want that woman on our show we don't want her saying those things that's appalling you shouldn't have her on the show but reality check radio was founded because there literally is no other media out there that lets people have their say that lets the guests have their say and that we can impart knowledge and information and then people can decide for themselves whether they like that or don't like that or are ambivalent towards it and even our major competitor is hostile to particular points of view and I don't believe that we are and certainly on my show I try not to be hostile to particular points of view I might not agree with somebody but I want to hear what they've got to say and that's how it should be I mean taking that example of the treaties principle bill the polarization and toxicity that we've seen before the bill is even written is so concerning and I lay a lot of the blame at the feet of the media perhaps even all the politicians because of their framing has created a real fear on one side and anger on the other these are not good combinations and so it is completely responsible to platform people with various views on the subject and allow people to make up their own minds but also it would have been amazing if it had been made clear that this bill hasn't been written and everyone's kind of talking about these concepts but we don't know what we're arguing over yet and so that's the huge thing I saw all these people at Waitangi talking about how David Seymour was going to abolish the treaty and rewrite the treaty both of those things are lies what he's saying is there's no principles in the treaty but we've got laws that say that we have to honour the principles of the treaty how can we make that happen if we don't know what the principles are let's have a debate and all hell has broken loose and they're trying to silence him and silence anybody else who has a differing opinion that of this wonderful woke view that the head of the British Empire Queen Victoria and all of her magnificent glory as the Empress of India and everything else signed a very unique document that was different from every other thing that the British Empire had ever done and said you disparate groups of various different tribes represented by these senior people are all on the same level as me well that's just a heroic assumption to understand that's just not true you can look at what I struggle with I'm undecided to be honest on the principles bill achieved but I'll make that decision once I've seen the double and you know however I do struggle with the ahistorical narrative that's being woven here not that I've really used it I have a degree in history and so I guess I've spent a lot more time than maybe the average person on these issues because I did a bit of New Zealand history and it is ahistorical to say that Maori did not give up sovereignty now I can understand why people now would want to share that for you but you just have to go and read the speeches that were given at Waishangi which are available online do a little google you just have to go to read there was a conference in 1860 at Kohi Marama a gathering of chiefs and they were basically reflecting on you know it's been 20 years since the treaties been signed and they were reflecting on how things were and the relationship with the crown that kind of thing now those speeches are very telling you have a very clear difference to the queen and and the idea of sovereignty is discussed explicitly now another way to look at it is if you look at the speeches at Waishangi and you look at the chiefs who didn't want to sign and weren't happy with it they expressed that they don't want to give up their sovereignty so they know that's what's at stake so if they're rejecting that then the ones that did sign it were we know that was what but we all have to forget this and if we ever raise the historicity of this we get held down with cries of racism and that's what bullies do to silence people they give them a label that's abhorrent that you don't want to have that label put on you so then you modify your speech so that you don't get accused of that and then you're silenced and they do it like labels they give to people like you and you know where they say you're a turf that's a derogatory that's a result designed to shut you up it's incredible I mean I've been lucky here that the consequences haven't been as bad as it has for women overseas so I've been called a Nazi a turf, a racist, a trans all the things you can think of if you look at what's happened to some of the women in Australia when they were called Nazis like I was they've had huge consequences so now you've got several women taking legal action against I think it's the leader of the opposition in Victoria I believe I can't remember his name but he basically defamed Posey Parker and Moira Deming who was in his party and a couple of other women who were organised as one of Posey's rallies John Posito is his name that's his name, that's the one and so the consequences for those women have been huge the utilisation of the name Nazi of the slur Nazi to say to these women Moira Deming has she was attacked and now she's only able to take legal action and it's probably going to take 11 years to go through the courts and they do this because they know they have the power to harm us in this way when we're told that the most vulnerable group of people are this trans community and we have to bow to everyone because they're so vulnerable it is extraordinary then that these same people can shut down our events can destroy our careers they're supposed to be the vulnerable ones and yet they have the power to make governments, media just absolutely cartel to their wishes even the most outrageous things, I'm not sure if you've seen it's come out yesterday I believe about the breast milk situation where the NHS one of the trusts of the NHS released research apparently or a statement that the artificially induced discharge from trans women's nipples is just as good for babies as mothers breast milk that has required very senior people medical professionals and hospital administrators at tight levels to sign off on that and it doesn't take a genius to know that men don't breastfeed and that anything that is artificially generated is not breast milk that's coming out and yet something as apparent as this it is the women calling it out who get told off and not the fetishists who are promoting men breastfeeding who are completely protected and even celebrated in some cases yeah it's this is what I don't understand because if I was a woman and I guess I can just tell me you are and that's how it works yeah I mean it's a funny anecdote you know when I had my stroke I couldn't walk properly and I couldn't use my right arm and I said about doing rehabilitation and some of that involved picking up a shotgun and competing in shotgun events and things like that and made them I said can why don't you why don't you apply to go to the Paralympics but even better why don't you apply to go to the Paralympics as a woman and he says you'd look great and I said well I wear a kilt and I have my hairy legs hanging out at the bottom and I have my beard and I'll say I'm a woman I'll go into the Paralympics in the shooting in the shotgun sports and I seriously thought about doing that just to take the piss well a guy that I got to know through online years ago Zubi he's a kind of rapper businessman he's half American half British and he became famous because he briefly identified as a woman, beat all of the dead lifting records and then unidentified as a woman who was seeing that he did it specifically because the record I think it was the record in Canada wasn't it was held by a man pretending to be a woman as the woman's dead lifting record so he went in there and blitzed him but that's the thing there's all these men that are declaring themselves women and competing in women's sports and I view their actions as similar if not worse because of the deception involved to people who wear medals that they never earned and they're saying that they're a woman they're entering the sports they're swimming and beating everybody in the race and then saying look at me I want a gold medal but what I can't understand is the silver medal and bronze medalist just refusing to get if that was me I'd refuse to get on the on the podium with it I would speak out and yes you're probably going to get demonised by your sport and band but principles are principles aren't they well that's like what I was talking about before about the motivation of fear and I think I've seen many more women and girls speak out and refuse and that kind of thing which is fantastic but if you look at the example of I'm not sure if you've seen Riley Gaines in America so she's the swimmer that spoke out against Leah Thomas the trans woman who was bloody useless in the bloke sport and then suddenly was winning all the women's sport that's the thing isn't it they're all hopeless as men in order to make themselves feel better and compete with women and what's the remain is that what was incredible about like when Riley talks about what she meant through is that it's not just the foot for swimming in this case it's not just what happened in the pool which is bad enough the unfairness of it but these young women were utterly gaslit and that they were not told that Leah was going to appear in the changing room with his dick out and they turned around and they were really alarmed as a group laid complaint and said look we don't want males in the changing room they were lectured and told they needed to change their thinking they needed to not be so horrible blah blah blah there was nothing they could do in the end they would take turns getting changed in cupboards because they felt so intimidated and also because Leah's behaviour was often sexualised and that is a motivation here that we're not allowed to talk about the creepiness same with the breast milk thing what reason would a man have regardless of whether he thinks he's a woman to need to breastfeed a child every bloke wants boobs to play with some of them don't even have one they're still trying to they haven't even had any surgery the sexual element is something that we're not supposed to talk about but if you visit the trans forums online or read it on anything like that the motivation is sexual and it harms our ability to talk about this honestly and about the impact on women and children if we can't have honest conversations about that and that is that we don't want to partake in the sexual fetish of a man well that's what it is really isn't it a bloke wants to dress up like a woman and like he can do that all he wants but he doesn't have to come into my space this is the thing that I don't get right is that I'm heterosexual I'm not out there parading my sexuality everywhere I go I'm not out there demanding other people recognise my sexuality people call me by certain things I mean if people wanted to call me something I mean I could insist my pronouns are handsome and clever but that's the ridiculousness of it all isn't it because it goes right down to this pronoun thing where people are dictating what other people can call you when they're talking about you and you're not in the conversation because pronouns only occur in a third party when you're talking about somebody else it's about power because I have to say at different times I previously thought okay well if I want to be polite I can use the pronouns they want whatever and I've got to the point now where I don't because it's the slippery slope thing right it's the the politeness of a pronoun becomes the demand to access the space that oh well if you call me she then you must be a woman so I must be a woman so I have to then be allowed into the space and the sport and it kind of like goes from there and it's about control like you know I wrote a piece for a mainstream publication recently and I got it back edited with the pronouns changed and I was like do you know me I am not going to have anything published that is playing these games so I said fine I'll take it out and I'll just repeat their name over and over again because I'm not going to have that's the thing isn't it if you're talking to somebody in person like I'm talking to you I'm not going to call you whatever your pronouns are I don't know what they are frankly I don't care to me you're Annie I'm going to use your name and if I'm talking about you to somebody else I'm not going to say she this and I say Annie said this and Annie said that it's an aggression that's actually expanded to full on aggression to control people on what they say and it's exactly as you say it's a power play to get you to conform I mean I previously worked in the public service before I was in parliament I feel sorry for you it really was and what I was so amazed by is the amount of time we spent before every meeting basically ticking these virtue signal kind of things off but actually it wasn't about virtue signaling it was about power and control it was the HR department was running the shop and so we had to you know say our pronouns we had to do either a way out or a kind of care and I asked once because I said look I've got no problem with us doing you know if we do some today stuff that's okay but I'm not religious so why are we doing a care care like this is public service and there are a whole lot of you know folks among the hens what do we say because they know how to push back on we're doing this because it's really important that we honour Maori culture when you're suddenly like I'm not Christian so why are we doing a Christian prayer they're actually not Christian anyway because they're talking about the sky God and the tree God and the water God and all that's not Christian is it it's animism because the ones we did were but I totally take that there would be a lot of that's the thing right if I was running a public organisation and I'm a Christian and I decided right we're going to start every meeting with a prayer call it a prayer and it's going to be a Christian prayer there would be howls of outrage the PSA would be mobilising people to march in the streets about this the news media would run it incessantly until I caved and changed the organisation but somebody says are we going to have a care care that's all right it's not all right it's a waste of time there is so much of that stuff that there is nothing wrong with if you want to do your kareke before you eat or before you you know when you're at home if that's your thing that's great for you likewise if you're into the pronoun thing and you and your friends want to talk about your pronouns all the time absolutely fine but if you're working in the public service why are we dedicating so much time to these performances it's worse than that though and I know somebody worked for the call centre business during the Covid thing and phoning up and every Wednesday they'd have YR to Wednesdays and up to 11 o'clock in the morning it was 15 renditions of 10 guitars and that was accepted now if you said are we going to have a heavy metal Tuesday he will be outraged you know but because call it YR to Wednesday it's all good I did um I did think of I wonder if I could OAA how much time was spent on YR but there's no it's insane the other thing is but this is controlling speech this is silence like I was in court for Christmas and I hadn't been in court for four or five years and that's the time frame that it changed and the previous time I was in court you know the judge comes in everybody stands up there's a few mumble Maori words as they come in which is read off a card and then the judge sits down and then peers at everybody you know and says who's first and then somebody stands up and says oh yes it's Henry for the plaintiff or such and such for the defendant and it's all done very quickly in about three seconds now they stand up yes and it's all in Maori and they start listing their whakapapa to multiple levels for ten minutes and then finally at the end of it say their name and who they're representing it's insane I mean I can understand if the case is involving people who all kind of have that worldview this case had nothing to do with that and the thing that you know it sounds trivial but how long does that take our court system how long it took it took 20 minutes we should be motoring through cases because there are people waiting I know of one murder trial that's waiting to go to court and it's like taking three years we should not be taking three years to hear homicide cases and I think we should be finding ways to speed these processes up we set up these kind of authorities at the Employment Relations Authority we're to divert things out of the courts to hopefully speed things up those are now clogged now because there's been so much time passing around so it's like why are we this all comes down to free speech everything comes down to free speech and I always point out to people when they're talking about the United States and they say it's terrible the Second Amendment in the United States is appalling and I said well you need to understand something you can't have the First Amendment which is the right to free speech without having the right to defend that free speech which is what the Second Amendment's about we don't have that in New Zealand and so we we have this bully pulpit that's largely infested with the media that is shutting people down silencing people, bullying people I mean, Nicky Harger stated that the reason why he wrote dirty politics was to take me out of the political discourse because I was too effective of what I was doing and he wanted to silence the other journalists that were talking to me now I was at that stage I'd already had a high court judge determine that I was a journalist so we had a journalist, Nicky Harger, attacking another journalist for the political ideas that person had that were opposed to Nicky Harger was opposed to with the desired aim to silence that person me from talking to other journalists to share ideas and nobody said a thing it was a mammoth job but that's the thing there's always people are scared of Nicky because he's like this because he's like this recluse who hides and then pops up with a book and doesn't give opportunity for right of reply he breaks all the rules of journalism but everyone goes oh he's a great journalist no he's not he's a lying scumbag who does hit jobs for money the exact things he accused me of doing yeah I mean maybe it was actually titled dirty politics because it was all dirty and they missed out all the interactions I had with Labour and green politicians for some strange reason they weren't in the book I had Chris Trotter he says I don't know why Nicky is complaining about dirty politics politics is dirty exactly Chris you like it is thrilling to work in politics and I enjoyed almost every minute of it but it is like swimming with sharks all the time and it's the world over it's like that there is no like nice parliament where everyone's holding hands and stuff because that's not how things get down we've got an adversarial system because that works because of a challenge of debate of ideas one versus the other right it could be worse we could be like I think it's the Greeks or the Italians have punch up all the time in the house you know Taiwan has regular punch ups Taiwan, Thailand, Fisticuffs in the parliament we should bring that back along with smoke Trevor didn't give it a go didn't he but you know I think politics has been diminished since we got rid of smoke filled rooms but that's a whole other argument Winston would definitely agree there I think that the whiskey drinking smoked smoke filled rooms yeah it was a different way of doing politics and I have people ask me actually how do you think Luxon's gonna cope because he doesn't drink it seems like a really silly question but there is like history the world over through many different systems of the late night drink the discussion the kind of relationship building and yeah people can argue that that shouldn't be over alcohol but it is I mean I've got multitude of stories from the 90s when I was in the smoke filled rooms watching deals get done both internal party stuff and cross party stuff deals were done over fags and whiskey and you mentioned earlier on in the interview about polarization and that's the thing that I find most frightening about how politics or how society has become we are so polarized now you're either right or wrong happy medium hang on a second and I used to laugh about that Stephen Crowder he'd sit down at a university with some topic and say trans women trans women aren't real women convince me something like that and have a discussion he can't do that now because he just gets torn apart we've lost the ability to debate because he's causing a disturbance a disturbance do you think about Helen Clark and Phil Goff all of that era of politicians that's all they ever did is cause disturbances nowadays they wouldn't be allowed to it's quite amazing there's a lot of hypocrisy in it like the sanitization of politics, the sanitization of protest it irritates me to no end because usually the people involved in that process from Labour's side they did protest was it Grant Robertson or Chris Hipkins that got arrested for a protest Chris Hipkins and it's a point of pride for him but then wanting to sanitize stuff now same as with of course you don't want bullying in parliament but it's also a very unique environment where you can't have staffers holding shit over ministers heads or MPs heads because it just doesn't work and yet Trevor Millard who is well known as perhaps the naughtiest MP to ever be in parliament in terms of drinking and punching and not getting on with people or bullying he brought in this investigation trying to share the innocent person he called a man who wasn't a rapist a rapist I mean that's one of the worst things you know most of the media didn't touch him it was the bravery of Barry Soper that brought that to attention and Millard attacked Soper for that just incredible and I think you know I'd known nothing about the person who he accused and he might well have done other stuff but he wasn't a rapist and so he was utterly wrong to call him that and you know and I see before I think Paul did retting under the sun and I actually you know as a female I haven't been called that and I think that would be possibly one of the most awful things you could be called and then the tax payer had to pay a lot of money to rectify that through after he's courted as long as he could so we've got hundreds of thousands of dollars and I mean rightly so that that guy was entitled to it but because of Trevor's lack of self control that happened and you know and he changed the rules on alcohol so like staff is we couldn't drink in our in the offices unless there was like an MP Crescent and like all the stuff back in his day. Is it more responsible than other people? Half of the time it's the staff that are saying to the MP or the minister perhaps you better not have another one minister. That was the case I know like we'd been pickwicks the bar and the beehive and there would be a certain minister who just Cinder Ardern had put on a no alcohol ban because of his behaviour and he would show up in pickwicks and we'd be tell him that the labour staff is hey you might want to come and get your guy he's here on the booze and it's like actually it's the staffers who are kind of making sure The staffers in my experience of seeing staff and ministers and MPs interaction I've always found the staff to be very protective of their minister or their MP to the point where they say you know actually you've had too much to drink or I'd better put you in a taxi and actually take them home and do those sorts of things That was one of the scandals last year with from Tokitoki what was her name the MP Broca Lady Anna Law wasn't she one of her staffers was a secretary they were having to serve a driver all the time I have to say I didn't have to do that Judith was always good it was always good I sit here and watch our society falling apart around our ears and like you I lay a lot of the blame with our very liberal media that have decided they're going to pick sides it used to be that they reported the news now they try and make the news it was a time that if you wanted to make the news and if you wanted to change laws you became an MP you actually stood for parliament got yourself elected and then went and said about doing it but the media think that they've abrogated their responsibility as the fourth estate and as a result of doing that they've brought about an assault an unprecedented assault on free speech and all of these arguments all of these things that we talk about treaty principles the turf wars Posey Parker all of these things come back to one thing and that's the right under our Bill of Rights the right to impart and receive information freely and it seems that we're being censored and Arden was the worst of that you know the podium of truth the one source of truth all of that sort of it was nonsense but the media went along with it and there is supposed to be yet the fourth estate holding the powerful to account but all too often they're holding hands with the powerful and merrily dancing all over our rights it's interesting now to see a bit of a shift in them though because I have this conversation with people a lot where there are people who have very strong views about funding of the media and stuff and I definitely think the public interest journalism fund was not a good idea however I don't think scandals if you will are what has driven this what has driven this is purely that the type of person who is a journalist now is a university educated totally liberally kind of indoctrinated through the same universities tend to be from a middle to upper class background tend to be white most of them but have a complex about being white and so you end up with no matter which mainstream media platform you're looking at they're all the same because they come with the same set of views they've had the same education they've got the same social background they believe the same things whereas back in the day you could go from one publication to another and get very different views so you had some variety you also had working class people who didn't go to university but were switched on people going straight into journalism and providing that perspective and so we're not being served because it's like this club of people homogenised you isn't it everything's become homogenised but if you look at reality check radio look I don't agree with Paul Brennan on a large number of things but he's a good blog he's got a cigar and a drink with right I'm never going to agree 100% with what Peter Williams says or Natalie or any of the other brilliant hosts that we've got everybody's got their own interests and their own points of view but the great thing in reality check radio is that we can all coexist green voters and wambles and all sorts of people with different views we all can join together because we've got this core belief that we are exactly what our name says that we're a reality check we are allowing people with differing views to ear their views in a long format it's not a 15 minute let's see if we can get some hits on somebody and it's better listening it's better radio and that's why our audience is growing and that's why we're actually taking a stick to the mainstream media that all once over lightly and they would be very derisive of you guys they have been you know this idea that what you're doing is less than because it's not it's not done as they do which is hand in hand with the public service with the elements of the government they're less so now you guys are more prone to misinformation because they don't agree with you I guess we've even got people who are in the same space as us who are calling us you know derisive names clicker radio or rabbit hole radio and stuff like that you know that says more about him than it does about us we don't actually care because we're talking about this course and the conversation and that's why we've got people like yourself talking to us on the show about politics about freedom of speech about the challenging issues that are out there calling things as they are yeah and I think I'm always quite happy to you know talk to people in good faith because I think the more of these conversations that we have about tricky issues the more we can find all things called middle ground pragmatism and all these kind of things to find a way through challenges because the way I see it right now the way the legacy media and the kind of discourses there is no middle ground to be found on these issues there should be it's okay to not agree it's perfectly okay to not agree the challenge that I worry about is these issues to do with governance and policy like the Treaty Principles Bill where this polarization is being weaponized and at the end of it one side is going to be pleased and one is going to be really angry instead of trying to have a conversation that bridges some of those issues. The media that were amping the pressure up you could almost think that they were hoping for violence they were talking about like the day before I was full of dread I thought oh god this is going to be horrendous because I felt like the media were hoping something really bad would happen and you know on the whole even though there was some hostility I think it was you know everyone showed up said they bit I think it was reported pretty shoddily especially in terms of acts involvement I mean Nicole McKee her speech and the way she was tickled was pretty awful and she was trying to give that's because Nicole and David and Winston and Shane they're the wrong sort of Maori that's the prevailing attitude it's like you're the wrong sort of woman I'm the wrong sort of lesbian as well that's what I always get and it's extraordinary to me like I wrote a piece recently about the Green Party because they tried to get me nuts I used to vote for the Winnells youngest so I think it's why but you know the fact that they are front and centre at Pride screaming the place down waving flags and acting like they're our baby citizens or something when they have spent the entire of this term of parliament supporting terrorist organisation one of which has just sentenced 30 13 sorry went to death plus about 60 are getting corporal punishment you know this is the where Marama Davidson is on record in the House of Parliament defending their right to attack civilian and freight ships because they're upset about what's happening in Gaza and she's this was during the ministerial state that'll be Gaza where they tow homosexuals behind motorcycles and throw them off buildings that yeah mean that Gaza exactly and so I've kind of gone actually the green shouldn't be welcome at Pride until they stop supporting groups that kill homosexuals like that's how they would be if the shoe was on the other foot you know but they've got a quote they've got a shield of sanctimony and a cloak of visibility that shields them from all of the hypocrisy knows no bounds with the greens no I mean I think to be honest they're in for a rapid tumble with the exit of James Shaw whatever your opinions on James and I know some people have issues with his university transcripts or something but I don't care I never went to university you know I did but I some I think I must have been in the last batch before indoctrination but like what do you kind of think of James Shaw I tell a lie I did go to university for one year but the politics lectures I found incredibly boring because I'd spent a lifetime in politics and he was this professor who'd spent you know a lifetime lecturing about politics and the two things were completely different I had lived experience and he had book learning I was never going to work yeah yeah I think that James Shaw's his sensibleness will be severely missed in the greens because even though he is a bit long because on some stuff he was the kind of he was reasonable he was reasonable you could talk to him the times that I've met him I've found him to be a very nice man who was capable of discussing views that he didn't agree we had a good chat you know but I think without him you're left with co-leaders Marama presuming Chloe who don't like each other and will be in a Marama's very competitive and I can see Chloe getting a fist of fives in the rooms of Parliament from Marama at some point I can just see that we can all look forward to but I agree with you I think the greens are deluded they think that they had a brilliant campaign that their arguments had merit and they failed the drop off from Labour that's exactly right they lacked the humility to recognise that they picked up people off Labour because they couldn't bring themselves to vote Labour so they voted green and at the next election they're going to go back yeah exactly it's what happens you know and it's actually amazing on the right side of politics that David has grown I say David I should say act now but act has grown again because they should have seen a swing back but that's something that National has brought as to why when they grew they didn't pick up those act voters again and I think we can all probably quite easily see why but it's the patterns always there when the main parties are not serving their base they go to the next best thing which is those ones on the periphery that's why Greens are so big this time and I think that we're in for a term of pay us from them because Marama and Chloe will be trying to out do each other rather than work together and whereas James would make concessions Chloe will not make concessions and so I think we'll be in for a bit of a ride with them Chloe has righteous indignation on her side all the time she's adamant she's 100% right and will not count on anybody saying anything different the only thing I can't work out is whether it was Marama or Chloe or both that were involved in stabbing Golrez because I reckon that's an inside job Do you reckon it's an inside job because I know obviously the thing that disturbs me most about the Golrez situation is that that story was shocked around a little bit before it made its way to ZB and other media didn't want to publish it think about what a massive thing it's become now she's lost too much It's been a national MP that was shoplifting we would never have heard the end of it but it was all oh no she's a woman of colour you know it's understandable it's stressful her job blah blah excuse excuse excuse yeah nah yeah you're a thief yeah well that's I mean that was one of my pieces that has had the most anger directed at it that isn't about trans stuff because that usually gets the most anger no because you're attacking a woman of colour but it was because I said that actually we can say sympathy for your mental health that's really awful that's just a crutch that politicians use isn't it to get out of the hard stuff I was a bit sad I'm feeling depressed you know everybody has New Zealand's one of the highest medicated countries in the world almost everybody you meet is on some sort of antidepressant right so we don't use it as a crutch I've been very outspoken over the years I have bipolar disorder and I have had to spend a lot of time with doctors and therapists learning how to live with it take medication if I shoplifted I myself would take responsibility for it but you can bet my dad and my partner and my sisters would all be like that's on you they wouldn't be saying oh you've got bipolar how sad they'd be saying were you doing shoplifting exactly yeah luckily you didn't do it when you were at my house I would have taken you to the police by myself well they wouldn't my dad would totally be the parent who would drive us there and say right I've been shoplifting but that's the thing we've got the society now where there are almost no consequences for outrageous behaviour and you can explain it away can't you understand I'm an oppressed trans person I'm a vulnerable person I know Maori it's understandable why they do that because they're vulnerable we saw this all the time in the COVID rubbish these are vulnerable communities they're vulnerable old people vulnerable Maori, vulnerable Pacific Islanders if you tell someone they're vulnerable long enough and loud enough guess what they'll believe it and on the other hand you've got Rairi Waititi who says that Maori have got superior DNA and all that but then he's got his hand out for the vulnerable payments so which is it mate yeah I just think it's the bigotry of low expectations is significant in this country and that what people forget is when they say this group of people needs help because they're not capable of doing it themselves you're saying that you are capable and you're able to it's condescending isn't it it's paternalistic and it's old fashioned but politicians keep doing it well it's another thing that if they don't hit those buzzwords they get the bad headline I watch post cap most weeks because I don't know and you look at the questions it doesn't matter what the Prime Minister is talking about he could be talking about the price of bread or he could be talking about the Olympics or something they will always stick to the formula questions of you'll hear about what does this mean for Māori don't you think that the poor and everything is squeezed into that narrative instead of it being it's like the response to Louise Upton's comments they go and get a whole lot of vulnerable beneficiaries who are unfrightened about what's going to happen and that's what the news the favourite thing to do is when those people that they put on the morning shows or in the news the vulnerable people Google them they're all activists all members of the Labour Party always without fail David Farah used to write he used to put posts on his blog he said that's a terrible story of course what the news media forgot to mention this person is a branch a branch chairman of the Labour Party they've got this list of aggrieved people for almost any perceived trouble that have got a handy little spout sound bite about how worse off they're going to be and the flip side of that is if we just kept on spending money that all be okay I just watched Question Time again, tragic but I did and Louise Upton she fielded I think three questions maybe because of the welfare announcement essentially what she is saying is that life is harder for people on the benefit so let's try to help them off the benefit and that is what she's saying she's not saying they're bad people she's not saying let's take everything off them right away and make it better Ricardo Menendez March's question I was like are you seriously saying that the government shouldn't have obligations on beneficiaries who are on job seeker to attend meetings and to try and get a job because that's what he was saying he's basically saying you can't prove that this helps them to get a job so you should just leave them alone just give them the money and leave them alone it's incredible because that's why I call him El Woco Loco oh my god I don't know if they've made him like the little shadow leader of the house or something but he's doing all these points of order now and they're always really bad Jerry Brownlee will just laugh at him isn't Jerry a better speaker than Trevor I don't know Adrian was good I thought he was a good speaker but Jerry's getting into his own I think one of his biggest challenges is going to be breathing God bless our deputy prime minister but he has to reign him in because Winston is just jumping up at the drop of a hat for points of order that are probably not points of order they're just him making a point and so he has to then Winston will keep doing that if he's got free reign to do it because that's Winston but isn't it wonderful to watch it is it's hilarious I keep sharing some of the clips he gave James Shor a good smack last week when he made some comments he says oh you should just be thankful I'm not talking about academic credentials this is sit down anyway anyway we've run out of time really it's been a real pleasure chatting to you including the speakers and what they do we'll have to have you on again it's been a real pleasure it was lovely to meet you finally as well likewise likewise Annie's at the forefront of what I termed the turf wars but the core thrust of that debate is actually a free speech debate these are important debates that need to be had and we need to avoid cancel culture and all that means with de-platforming and the silencing of people with differing views and that's why we here at RCR always will explore both sides of any issue let me know your thoughts on this topic good or bad by emailing inbox at realitycheck.radio or text to 2057 right here on RCR right now it's time for an audience favourite Cam's Buddies this week we'll find out what they think about the government moving to ban gang patches can they do it, will it work and what about civil liberties and free expression my producer has them all lined up and ready to go let's go now to Cam's Buddies Hi Linnley welcome to Cam's Buddies Hello Cam, how's things? Fantastic Hey we got lots of good feedback from your letter last week to Grant Robertson lots of messages so that was very well received Yeah it was a bit sad to have to say it but I need to speak on behalf of all the people that have suffered the same fate Yeah and that was the message that we got from the listeners and it was heartfelt and it certainly had my tears rolling down my face so anyway we've got a happier note this week I want to put to you a question about the government making moves this week to ban gang patches do you think it will work what about civil liberties issues with freedom of expression and those sorts of things I'm keen to get your thoughts on these gang patches and these rat bags who wear them Right well the freedom of expression and all that that's actually sort of under the Bill of Rights isn't it and it did fail with Michael Laws ultimately and I guess these gang people backed by heaps of money will go through the courts and I expect that to happen I don't think it will work for a lot of reasons but I do credit the coalition government for having a go that's good but in my opinion this is all about money and there are many ways to make money and crime is one of them it's a magnificent racket I mean you don't have to have education you don't have to abide by regulations or anything at all not even rent you know nothing you just get in there and throw your weight around and where you go and the gangs are crime organisations in a big way and the incentive is millions of tax and regulation free dollars millions and millions and millions and they've got no education but they are rat cunning yeah they are well yeah I agree with you and it raises an interesting question that if they're not participating in civil society because they're criminals because they're visiting their drugs upon various different people and they're committing crimes against their neighbours and everybody else do they actually get to have civil liberties or do we have to wait till we catch them, convict them stick them in jail and then take away their civil liberties and so it seems that we're trying to say well we can't take away their gang patches because they've got a right to wear them for freedom of expression but the general population has a right to live without crime surely that trumps their little jackets with their little embroidered patches on them that is correct and of course the problem is it's not the gang itself it's the crime that sort of spreads out from it and goes right through the community absolutely terrible you know the methamphetamine racket is huge and it affects so many people and they lure in these stupid young youth and run them clean off the rails as well although a lot of them to be fair are sort of going to go that way anyway but one or two of them actually have reasonable sort of parents and tea up with other kids and they're in their lives are wasted but it's civil liberties well what about your home being safe and not worrying about it being burgled because somebody wants to pinch some things that can go back to the gang and be cashed in for methamphetamine you know that's what's happening that's the thing maybe we need to this is just a small thing gang patches there needs to be a more systemic approach to dealing with crime there's a breakdown in families there's the inability of Kiwi citizens to adequately defend themselves we get told oh that's alright call 111 but let's say you live in the country you know out on a remote rural area some guy rocks up starting to steal your sheep or your four wheel drive or your motorbike or whatever you ring the police they could be over an hour away and so you leave you can't even get them on the phone half the time and you know I wanted to report something there was a car left out on the beach early one morning and I thought well I'll just pop through Amberley and I wrote the number down of the car it was very odd to have a car way out on the beach and I'll drop it into the police station well when I got there 9 o'clock and nobody there at all it's all shut up locked cobwebs on the door police car outside making us believe that there's police there but there's not that must be the case right around New Zealand but I've just got one really interesting figure here somewhere here we are 33 gangs in New Zealand and now over 9,000 members there's 10,500 police now if they all united you know if they had the brains to do that if they all united they could actually and go to one venue they could actually mow the police over now the trouble is is if brains were dynamite they wouldn't have enough to blow their nose probably not probably not but my word they're cunning they're cunning alright but they're not bright because they keep getting caught the way I'm looking at it the gang patches is just one thing we need to stop this woke crime hugging there there it's because you're a breast fed not bottle fed or some other malarkey that they come up with we actually need to address crime at the lowest level and bubble that up so that we take an interest in absolutely every level of crime I mean you take all these ram raids that was all gang related you know the gangs were organizing that that's right but they got away with it people weren't allowed to intervene if people intervened the police said oh we could arrest you you know they got it excuse my language but the police have it asked backwards they're victimizing citizens who are trying to do the job they refuse to do yeah well that's easy meet you know I mean actually going after the criminals and catching them can be a bit scary these days because I mean they've nearly all got knives and oh well they did away with guns didn't they but the guns are all in the wrong hands and you know a friend of mine said that's a joke you can go down to the Wharf at Littleton in the middle of the night and depending what country the ship came from you just go there and get your guns and away you go yeah that's the thing the government passed all these gun laws and all they did is take guns off law abiding citizens and then they've constructed this entire massive white elephant of an organization that makes people like me who's a collector they make our life a living misery you know their presumption when we have any interaction with them is that we're guilty and yet there's criminals out there with unregistered guns doing whatever they want and a gun register is not going to stop them having gang members handed any guns in no and they've got heaps of guns absolutely heaps of them but I think just from a different perspective because I know the guys will come up you know with a lot of other stuff I think until the authorities realize that this is actually the most fantastic business model in the world and get into cracking that they're not actually going to make any progress because there's such huge money to be made and as I said they don't have to honor any regulations or taxes or anything at all they've got free labor because they just recruit the you know the young ones that they're bringing in they get them to do all the stealing they don't have to pay anybody and you compare that with trying to set up a decent business yourself you know there's no comparison whatsoever and safety you've got compliance costs you've got you know employment issues it's a nightmare gangs don't have any of that do they they just if they've got a troublesome employee they just shoot them in the back of their head oh well you know it's just easy and life is cheap you know but it goes on all over the world in different forms from the mafia to the drug cabals and all the rest of it they're all sort of the same they do do one or two useful things I must say for fraught people they collect debts for them don't they they set up insurance jobs and burn hay sheds down and intimidate witnesses for people they do all sorts of things they do do that it seems to me we just need politicians sorry we just need politicians with a will to actually not cave into all the wambles that think that it's all because they had a hard you know being brought up in a solo parent family or some other excuse that they always trot out I mean you know we've got gol rez garrum and he says I was feeling stressed so I felt the need to go around stealing you know not half as stressed as somebody who actually can't afford to buy a cardigan well that's right very expensive cardigan no she's a criminal and sometimes I think maybe parliament in a long distant future is headed for instead of trying to build a new prison they should just put a big security fence around parliament and take the ones out that are honest they could sort of entertain them down at the local cafe and lock all the others in parliament and you'd have a new prison because I've I've never known so many criminals to be in parliament yeah that's right so that's kind of another issue but no I think that with this thing until they get into how you can stop these people from making such a fortune with no effort whatsoever they're not going to make any progress at all you can take patches off or the the jacket isn't it really pull their jackets off and I'll tell you what I won't be putting my name forward to go up and take one off them no maybe one way to reduce crime is for the government to introduce the castle doctrine have you heard of that no there's some laws in Florida has got the castle doctrine and Texas has got it I think and that is that your home is your castle and you can defend it any way you see fit and if somebody's inside your house you can shoot them because you're defending your castle well I think that's a good idea that's how it should be and I can't even put an electric fence at the gate because I might sting somebody yeah well put a bull fence in there and really sting them a bear pit would be good I'd probably run into it myself I always thought sharp as stakes and and land mines was a good idea I don't know they're pretty cunning because the heads of these gangs they don't go out and do the things they sit there and bank all the money and you're right the police need to concentrate on the business model and taking the cash away so it's interesting to see Stuart Nash throwing some of his labour mates under the bus by saying well I wanted to make the limit instead of confiscations being for things that are over 30,000 they make it $0 so we took everything and Kerry Yellen who is the Justice Minister said oh we're not doing that because that would be racist she should know all about crime and everything she's certainly an expert in the field but Stuart Nash I like you are surprised that he actually almost snitched on his other Labour Party people and I thought well you can't expect much else because he had a professional snitcher you know in charge Jacinda Ardern she encouraged everybody to dog somebody in didn't she she was a snitch in chief what a great title she obviously never went to a school I mean when I was at school we had a saying snitches get stitches okay nobody dogged at my school there were no doggers at my school you dogged you got a hiding well I'll tell you what I've worked at the freezing works and if you dogged anybody in there you probably wouldn't live to see the next day there'd be a terrible accident there'd be a terrible accident but of course it never happened no it's all nothing because it's that sort of strength through power sort of thing or peace through strength peace through superior firepower yes well that would be good but I'm not allowed a gun so I can't do that one well you can get one you can go and get a license I'll help you get a license I've got a friend having to vouch for her daughter at the moment and what a performance 36 pages of palava oh and I mean why wouldn't you want to be a gang member you know they don't have to do any of this stuff at all no they just ask the gang boss for a gun and you go bro take that that's right easy for them but not for us no and you know as far as they're concerned it's easy money to be made and by how they're going to make it so I can't see how the patches will you know it makes us feel better but we're not the gangs are we no well I don't think I mean I'm not afraid of gang members they never have been used to tease them mercilessly when they turn up at the church with their patches on and stuff like that but you know that's just me there's plenty of people and I understand why they are afraid because they're intimidating but I just used to say to these guys at the church this guy said to me are you not afraid of me are you he said I'm in the tribesman gang and I said oh well you're not that tough and he said what do you mean I said well you let someone do this oh yes he just cracked up and laughed at me he said well are you not afraid I said no I'm not afraid of you mate and I had a good old chat with them but not everyone can do that they can no well I definitely would not like to chat with one I mean I've got a fright one day I was at BP and one of those guys came in from the man up movement and I put my leather jacket on with this great big circle thing on the back and you know I was looking for the exit I can tell you and then I read it and I thought well hang on that's not actually a bike you know that's something else and then later on they turned up at the gym and they had t-shirts and on the back it had teaching men to be fathers and I thought well that's a good idea I've spoken a lot to Brian Tamaki about that man up program and I've got a lot of respect for what he's able to do with those guys he's converting gang members into valuable members of society that treat their families properly it's absolutely outstanding and the first thing they teach them is take responsibility no matter what their culture report is no matter how bad that is they actually have to take responsibility for their life and that's where it starts but you know if I saw any sort of and they say you know it's targeting Maori's well if I saw a Maori bloke big and tough wearing leather and all that insignia on it and that I'll tell you what I've never had anything to do with gang members but I would run a mile I don't want to be near anybody like that but I'm really really lucky that you know there's just not that presence here or not that you can see they just get on with whatever they do yeah yeah well Lily thank you for that I'll get on with the boys and see what they've got to say and I would bet they've got a pretty similar perspective to you well that'd be interesting I'll be listening alright thanks for your call okay bye bye good evening Jack welcome to Cams Buddies so you might have seen news that the Government is moving to ban gang patches do you think it'll work yes yeah how well I think the average person who's sort of looking at this and saying oh yeah it's not going to work are probably looking at Otaki in places like that where these gangs hang out and there's only one or two elderly constables sitting there and of course it's not going to work with them they don't the police have a strike force against gangs I don't know whether it's still in existence well they'll have to bring that back in and what they'll do is they'll wait till there's some tangy or something like that and then they'll hit them in force and destroy their bikes and take off their patches and do whatever and they won't do it do you think the Government has got the wherewithal to do that the steel that's required to actually confront the gangs I'm pretty sure Minister Mark Mitchell does but I'm not sure the rest of the quivering ninies that sit there in Parliament will cope with such an activity well we'll just have to wait and see won't we they can't do any worse than the Labour Government I mean after the day's news about the other police minister who wanted to do this and then was vetoed by his fellow Labour ministers yeah he threw them under the bustin he wanted to make the threshold for confiscation of assets it was set at 30,000 he wanted to make it zero so we take everything off them if they're court committing a crime and the Wombles and the Labour Party said oh no that's racist we can't do that exactly what about civil liberties considerations you know the right to freedom of expression that you can wear a dopey hat or a nice little crocheted embroidered patch on the back of your leather jacket isn't there some civil liberties expectations there that everybody has the right to do those things speaking to the wrong person for an opinion on that that's why I'm asking you unfortunately you better ask someone else I'm not work no I don't believe I mean I put this to Linley I said to her if you're not a member a contributing member of society and being law abiding and all those other sorts of things that go with living in a civil society then haven't you abrogated your rights to be treated like an ordinary citizen and if you're a criminal and you're wearing a uniform of a criminal because that's basically what it is these gangs are just creating uniforms they're not like the Boy Scouts or Girl Guides or whatever they call them these days who are doing actually good things these people are criminals and they're doing bad things and haven't they abrogated their right to be able to wear what they please absolutely I'm a hundred percent with you on that but this is just treating a symptom though isn't it we need to have a more systemic approach to crime fighting rather than just taking off their patches no destroying their motorbikes is the best thing that sort of tracks all the youngsters all the bling and so forth get rid of it well they're systematically removed they're really pleased to be able to sell more yeah well I mean the thing is they ride Harley Davidson's and those things don't go around corners so they tend to remove themselves from the gene pool eventually yes but not quick enough maybe we need to put something in the petrol then like what diesel I don't know an explosive yeah that'd be good yeah I've got no time for any of them I'm sorry I've got no time for gang members at all yeah they don't add anything to society do they yep they do tell us yeah go ahead get Wally F.B.R. now he's retired and a couple of his mates and second them to the police they only need about three of them to deal with every gang member in the whole of New Zealand that all is gone there's nine thousand gang members but I reckon if you just said some of those boys or maybe get some you know Chechen mercenaries or something like that fly them in give them three names each and sort it out over a weekend yeah it wouldn't be a fair sort of match would it well I mean the gang members have all got guns but whether they can use them is another matter against the SIS that would be useless they'd be gone on a flash if they had the authority to do it yeah instead we sit there and go oh they were breastfed but they didn't get enough love and attention when they were children we need to understand that it's because of colonialism and then whatever the next excuses yeah well you and I both don't subscribe to that so there you are and neither does this government and that's what a lot of these screaming heritans out there who are catawalling about protecting the rights of the criminal they don't understand the vast majority of New Zealanders want to see criminals in prison and their assets taken and them smashed and we don't care be cheaper they should make them work you know actually bring back hard labour or even medium labour I don't want to see chain gangs chain gangs on the side of the motorway that would be a good sight as you're just calling past the 5Ks the average speed on the southern motorway and they can all wear pink jumpsuits or something suitably terrible with little arrows on them it would be a bit of view than the orange road cones wouldn't it it would be wonderful it's never going to happen we could use them as road cones maybe we could we'll get in trouble Jack if we keep on this track I'll get my producer giving me the cutthroat signal cut it off you can't say these things well anyway what people think I know that's great alright Jack thanks for your contribution this week and we'll talk again next week see you later welcome to Cam's Buddies Jimmy G'day Cameron how are you this week I'm giving you the same answer I give every week I'm fantastic even if I'm not I'm fantastic now what's the topic this week mate right so you might have seen the government has moved to ban gang patches and I'm just wondering whether you think that'll work whether it won't what are the civil liberties implications and do we care I think it's fantastic I certainly hope it works it seems to have worked in Australia because all the gangs have moved into the ACT where there's all the white liberals who won't implement that law and I just think it'll be a matter of the police implementing the law properly having the guns to do it well they need to get a new commissioner who's actually going to do some policing I mean I've heard that within the police ranks Costa is known as the Lenton is very bright but has to be carried I have heard the same thing but I think that the patch you know any criminal enterprise should be illegal to associate together these gangs aren't businesses they're dealing serious drugs you know we've got a serious meth problem and it's all fueled by the gangs whether they're the 501s or whether they're localised it doesn't matter they should be targeted and harassed they should be made really hard for them if you don't pay your tax bill your life gets made really hard for you by the IRD why should the gangs have any different in terms of they'd need to be harassed by the state how come lefties don't care about people getting harassed by IRD but they care so much about the police harassing people at deal met make it make sense Cameron yeah this is what about did you see what Nashie did throwing ministers under the bus and he wanted to toughen up the asset seizures instead of having a $30,000 limit on how much they could have he wanted it set at zero so you could take everything off them and Kerry Allen opposed that and said that it'd be racist we can't do that and his answer to them to her was well we're not actually specifying the race of people we're saying that if criminals do this we'll take their assets and then hipkins back to Kerry Allen yeah because he's woke she's a woke she's in front of the Jewin Court for the other stuff I mean good on Nashie for being brave enough to speak I mean what the hell's it got to do with race it's about being a criminal yeah doesn't matter what the race of the criminal is if you're dealing with particularly if it's Mary Gagnon was dealing with to marry kids I mean it's even more horrendous you know so good on Nashie and that's why he didn't really fit into the new labor because he was just a bit non-woke he's still confiscated our guns though so I don't have a lot of sympathy for Nashie to be fair because I mean he took guns off law abiding citizens didn't take any off the gang members no I agree with you on that that was just a massive reaction to a huge tragedy and that's just politicians earning points without actually thinking about the reality of things but we need to get hard on gangs I've been around Auckland for a long time and never used to see them and now I see them almost daily and they're at the cafe and they're mixing with the locals it just shouldn't be accepted that these people live off misery they do a little bit of you know I asked Lindy about whether she thought the castle doctrine having castle doctrine laws would be useful for combating crime and she didn't know what that was you know what castle doctrine is don't you yes I do it's very good law in Texas mate and it seems to work quite well there and in Florida so do we need to have that here do you think that we should have the right to defend our castle whatever means necessary if someone's on our property in our property that we have the right to defend ourselves anyway that we see fit I agree with it in principle but there is a lot of loose cannons out there what about people who are going to shoot some people who are lost it's a very complicated problem there but if someone's breaking into your property and being aggressive and your life's in danger then you should be able to defend yourself without fear of prosecution from the police who decided that all of a sudden the criminal who was trying to get at you is the innocent party and you're the bad guy because you stopped him yeah well that's just absolute madness I just don't know how that came about I mean that's just but you know we've you know we've seen horrendous breaking crimes you know particularly on farmers land and you know rural parts New Zealand, Taranaki and that and they should be able to defend themselves because the cops can't get there just should have quite, I guess have a clear criteria of how it gets prescribed but yeah so the game should apply to rural areas first and see how we go with that and if it works then we can start moving it inwards towards the centre of each city well you know all the woke suburbs would get burgled like there'd be no guns there well that's what happened in the US yeah that's right where they knew there wouldn't be guns yeah I mean that's why that's why people go and shoot up schools in the United States because all the woke school teachers said declared every school a gun free zone and the criminals went woohoo cool I can go and shoot up a school I'm not going to get anybody shooting back at me well I don't know it's pretty crazy to go and shoot up a school I think there's probably quite a few mental health issues to deal with in the US absolutely but they're everywhere but here's the thing right nobody has ever shot up a gun range why is that there's been a few shots coming off in the gun range man I've seen people get suspended before I've seen somebody shoot themselves at a gun range it was not pleasant for him no all the people watching probably so yeah anyway that's we've wandered off the topic camera well isn't it just a symptom of the frustration that people are experiencing in society that we seem to have a woke police force that's more concerned about whether they have a rainbow tick or their police cars have rainbow stripes on them rather than actually going around and using the end of a PR24 bat and to sort out a few gang members by cracking some skulls I thought John Mendoza got one on the head the other day I was quite impressed with that oh dear I said hey now while I'm going off topic mate I must say Lachlan's gone a little bit woke he's wobbly isn't he he looked really good at the start there but now he's trying to appease the vote they'll never vote for him so what's he up to I don't know but he stood up to the media the other day when that guy at Gleed McConnell was having a whinge about government ministers coming on reality check radio shows and he was having a big conniption about it and Lachlan said we'll speak to anybody and I thought that was pretty good I thought what I'll do is I'll give him a call and say when are you coming on my show now we'll put in a booking mate the I think the politicians sort of go through stages of being scared of the media and I guess these are the points where they just think it's just too pathetic and bite back I mean my view is that politicians should be scared of the media no matter who they are they should be scared of them because the media are going to hold them to account and make sure that their feet are held to the fire and they honour their promises that's if we had a decent media that would actually do that you're talking about the old media not the one that's going to twist the truth into some bullshit and then have a headline that's totally misleading and then end up calling them racist or something but it's clearly not that's what they're scared of they're scared that someone will be offended you and I aren't afraid of offending people we do it all the time on a daily occurrence hourly even it's just what we do I have been encouraging people around me to speak their mind I know people just hold their tongues that academic things and work events and they just go along because they just don't want to cause a bit they go along they go along to get along yeah but if everyone just sort of started speaking against it and then a few more people might join in we actually see that the input doesn't have any clothes on and we get back to a normal functioning society yeah exactly we need some more sensibilities happening out there we just need people to be more truthful and because most people don't agree with it look at the last election well the left hasn't seen the grass down yet have they the left hasn't grasped that they lost the election in a battle of ideas they had done one yeah they lost and they lost comprehensively and they're still losing more ground and they just aren't accepting it and they're just thinking everyone else is stupid it's it's good times we should have Cam's buddies in charge not the Wombles that are currently there oh the current who are currently in power I'm reasonably happy mate I hope that I was a year ago well at least we can speak our mind about it these days you know before when the Ardenists were in charge you're worried about the stars they're coming and kicking in your door because you said something about you know some rainbow person who's got some strange pronouns you weren't allowed to you know that was death by firing squads that assaulted them I've been watching a few videos on the X of Arden's little rants about keeping people in isolation longer if they don't take a test or just thinking how close we were to such an awful situation no we weren't close to it we were in an awful situation where rights were ignored and overridden and laws were broken by the people who should know better and the media are all toted along with it well she paid them I mean I used to use a term back in the day calling people lick spittles well that's what the media became like spittles of the Arden regime if she said I'd like you to jump over there and they'd say oh how far would you like me to jump oh thank goodness that time period's over mate that was terrible it's the worst well we shouldn't even let them forget it I think a lot of people are super angry and it's going to take a long time to forget and I think a lot of the current politicians who are in that government are going to do other jobs because people just won't forget them for a long time a good long time alright thanks for your call Jimmy thanks mate welcome to Cams Buddies Paul hi how are you today yeah pretty good actually you know boxing on that's a story what's today's topic today's topic you might have seen a couple of stories one is about the government moving to ban gang patches and whether that'll work or not and the other one is Stuart Nash coming out and throwing his former Labour Buddies under the bus saying well I tried to do all these things to stop crime and they didn't want to do it right well the gang patches is very interesting to me because I know that I was watching an article on the television that all truth comes from the television but they were talking about how the gangs would take them on and tell the police who too and some of the places down on the east coast there seem to have like five police officers and 500 gang members or 1200 gang members so it's very hard for these things to go but I think if the police were able to conscript the army to come in and then ceremonially take the number of these patches off these fellows I think that would be a really interesting thing I know from one of the gyms I used to attend one of the officials there said no patches in the gym and so anyone who came to the gym left their patches in the car outside somewhere else so everybody just looked like they were normal citizens not one group trying to intimidate another I mean you're not someone who can be intimidated too by gang members either just quietly well I don't like to I am scared of being scared so I really like to front up if anything's going wrong but I'm not to say that these things aren't a little troublesome but I've always thought well normally if you can face people down as individuals if they've got an issue it's quite amazing how all sorts of people that have all sorts of things that would actually think you'd be all these intimidation things to think they're tough one on one they're not that tough they often are just normal people like a normal person yeah one on one they're not that tough and you and I've got some good experience on those stories that will probably curl a few people's toes in here if they heard them but our experience is that they're actually not that tough when you're one on one with them when they're playing up a big in front of a group well it's a different story but again you can counter that a little bit and I had different people from the Black Power looking for me at one stage and unbeknownst to me they had reasonable ranking if such a thing occurs but they were a higher rank and so people would come into work and start threatening me and next thing you know one of my staff who I thought was just a just one of the former and one of the jobs because everyone has a word with them and the bloke looked terrified and moved on and he said he won't bother you again they were very interesting they were pretty good bloke those guys who were working on the tools then they were all hard working reasonable theories is what I thought and some of them had made a few mistakes in life and many of them had for some reason thought it was a good idea to tattoo themselves on the face it's pitiless closure and employment opportunities but they were looking when working one on one when talking to me or you know respectful good sort of citizens is what I thought but I think this idea if the government has the ability to pull it off they will need to raise the police force or have a lot of backing for them because I don't think people are going to go down and say oh yeah that's a non-event and I saw also that they were taking some of these motorcycles and crushing them I think that was quite a spectacle and I think many people cheered on thinking I wonder how people who don't work for a living can afford 50 to 100,000 for a motorcycle I always joke that Harley Davidson's are like the Remington rifles of the motorcycle world you get a standard one off the rack and it's of no use to man or beast and you have to spend quite a considerable amount of money making them work properly and you're not a fan of Harley Davidson's either are you I am not, there was a number of motorbikes that I had that I've owned from you that were a Japanese knockoff of a Harley except being a knockoff of a Harley they did everything correctly like they had an overhead cam motor as opposed to a pushrod they had fluid cooled they had drive shafts all these things they performed better they had if you were to lay it down you could lay it down like I scraped the pigs a number of times on on such a bike and it was and it stayed with you and if you tried to drive off with the stand down the engine would cut out so that whereas a lot of Harley's just keep driving and then as they turn the corner for whatever reason it throws the rider and causes them a mischief Oh dear, how sad, never mind so yes as far as I think Stuart Nash was one of the most ineffective ministers I think I've ever seen, I think he had high hopes but in the reality and the enacting of what he did he just proved that he was little or nothing here nothing to see here he thought he was all that in a bag of chips and turns out he wasn't I found it amusing at different times like he he didn't know when it was the right time to be a like his vitriol when he had some speech after the winning of a couple of elections back it just went down like a lead balloon I'm thinking talk about, can't read a room, the bloke was classic I thought he was pretty ineffectual and what he did to shooters and confiscation of firearms was pretty appalling because the gangs never handed back their guns, that's the one thing the government was set about was criminalising law-abiding licensed firearms owners while at the same time cuddling up to the criminals like the mongrel mob Yes, well it's interesting that there's some Tony Holmes that I'm involved with and people are saying take them up north and sell them to people on Maryland, they don't need a building permit and I'm thinking how is it possible that they don't need a building permit? No building inspectors can often have a look at what they're doing talk about a rule for law-abiding citizens and a rule for unlaw-abiding citizens, it's sort of a bit interesting and a number of police have been interviewed and said would you give a gang member a ticket for driving recklessly or doing this whatever on the road and they say no, when they get back to the station my understanding is they get mocked because if they were to give them a ticket first of all what's the guy's real address so you're going to spend a lot of time trying to find the actual person who did the offence then he's not going to pay his fine when he doesn't pay his fine you're going to spend more time chasing after him to get the money out of him and if you happen to go there and this is all assuming that when you stopped them in the first place you didn't get yourself a hiding and so if there's a group of lawless people who act in a manner however they like and then the police think it's no problem to ticket a 70 year old man or woman because they're not going to give them any trouble this is not the society that I grew up in this is not how I think it should work I think that it's one law for all and if someone offends then we get sufficient police to go and sort out whatever the problem is yeah and if we've got politicians that have got a bit of metal, a bit of spine, a bit of backbone that don't cave into the woke catawalling about whether or not it's racist or not then we might get somewhere maybe the gang patch ban is a good start but that's all it is is a good start I think it's a good start and to actually get offenders off the street I think there's a much better thing and if it causes them to offend when you're trying to take the patch off them then were they guilty of the offence or did you as the police cause the offence and so I think we'll end up with some quite interesting judicial cases if this does happen because who caused the crime was it the gang member or was it the police officer trying to take the gang member's property for whatever reason whether it's legal or illegal yeah I mean talking with Linley we came up with the conclusion that this was just a good start and we need to actually start addressing some issues around responsibility personal responsibility those sorts of things and she mentioned the man up program and I thought that's what the government should be doing they should actually go and sit down with Brian Tamaki and say right how can we get man up into the prison so we can break the cycle sure we can take the gang patches off them we can put them in prison when they commit a crime but what happens next and to my mind the only thing that has got any proven track record is the man up program well Brian if you talk to him and I have a couple of times seems like he's really got the best interest of the families at heart and the big thing about joining a gang is the breakdown of the family unit and so if mum and dad are together at home as a family unit they bring up mum at home and or dad at home and there's no male role models that are examples of how to behave then the young men look for something that is inclusive and a gang is and so by not addressing problem broken families or single parent families you're actually causing when the state is acting as your parent then this is a breeding ground for 80 social behaviour and so even a bad dad is better than no dad often and I'm not saying women should stay there and take beatings but I'm thinking that sometimes we don't try hard enough to keep the family together and the family breaks down that's when we have people running off the rails and then we have young people who get themselves into trouble then they get attracted to the gangs and then it's a cycle to downwards to prison yes and that's the sort of thing that just recently I think someone I know very closely was stood down from school and as such what occurred with his stand down is hero status and so when you see young people who are committing petty crimes of sorts and they get hero status amongst their peers then suddenly they want to escalate to get more of the same accolades possibly as young men and I'm thinking we need to work out a system whereby if you've done wrong in school and you're punished you don't come out of it being a hero you come out of it being somewhat contrite for your poor behaviour exactly I hear you having said that having said that I think some of the schools so woke that you get punished for things that in my day was a discussion and now it's considered a playground fight whereas if you would have put gloves and put a ring around it then we could have sorted out some differences with young men getting off a bit of steam and getting rid of a bit of their testosterone or using it productively but now anything like that because of the video phones and all that it goes online and suddenly the school is embarrassed and next thing you know you're being stood down or suspended or whatever because and suddenly you've got people who aren't learning the finer points of the male hierarchy no that's right when I was at school there was definitely a pecking order and if you fell foul of that excuse the joke but if you fell foul of that you certainly got out of your notions of above your actual status very quickly and nowadays they call that where they were going exactly I don't know if it's actually bullying because in life we learn the same things with our intellect and whoever makes the most money at the end kind of wins so he gets or she gets people working doing things for them for money we've sort of lost the competition we've lost entrepreneurial behaviour and we've lost the work ethic is it any wonder that folk are resorting to gangs and when they get there it's like a family it's like someone who will use a code you don't mess up against the code so you'll get dealt to in one manner or another all the things with the discipline that we're lacking in the home and normal discipline in the schools the gangs seem to have it and you sort of think this is a little bit topsy-turvy as I said to Linley it's asked backwards but maybe Christopher Lachlan should get Camus Buddies all together and we'll solve all these problems exactly Paul, thank you for your call and I'll talk to you next week take care, bye for now welcome to Camus Buddies miles good afternoon Cam, how are you? good, box of birds everything's fantastic I'm having a few chortles and laughs at the other buddies coming up with solutions for crime and things like that and that's what we want to talk about today the government's got this week that they're going to start passing legislation to start taking gang patches off gang members and at the same time we've had Stuart Nash throwing his fellow Labour ministers back when they were in government under the bus saying well I tried to do this sort of thing and they told me I was racist what are your thoughts on those two things? well you know I find myself laughing because if you look at what Goldsmith said we need to take action to reduce the gang's ability to engage in criminal behaviour and prevent them from endangering and intimidating Kiwis good lord they're going to do that by oh what oh you can't we gang patch in public gosh that'll stop them I can think that that'll just call a complete hole no I think they're the devil's going to be in the details but I think they're barking up the wrong tree sure it sounds good but just imagine if the detail meant that listeners wearing their RCR T-shirt that insignia was considered a gang because of some quirk in the law I mean that would just be horrific and you know this sort of thing where insignias can be banned is a sorry path that we're treating I feel well we had Jack earlier and Paul earlier who suggested that perhaps we should utilise another gang that we're green and tan and boots and things like that and carry sort of long black things and get them to sort them out and Jack suggested that we might deploy the SAS in a more effective manner to deal with these gang members and there's 9,000 gang members and he reckons that the squadron could probably go through them in about 10 minutes I think 9.3 minutes but yeah it's fine I think here we are debating gang insignia and I think it's a stupid law but I'll have to say one thing you look at what they're planning to do police issue dispersal notices which will require gang members to leave the area and not associate with each other for seven days I mean that's laughable these people are criminals the first thing they're going to do is go oh well we've been kicked out of here we'll get round at the Bros place they won't be listening to that they'll just saunter away and laugh in the police's face some there knows that the courts are going to issue non-consent consorting orders which will stop gang offenders from associating or communicating with one another for up to three years have these idiots not heard of the digital revolution I doubt very very much whether no one criminals will actually follow a court they don't did this is the thing it's the same with gun laws they pass all these laws and they say this is going to stop crime no it won't because criminals don't follow the law well it's interesting that Mr Goldsmith in his press release about the magical effect of banning an insignia I'm sorry banning an insignia says there's been a significant escalation of being related violence public intimidation and shootings how could there be an escalation of shootings we've got the firearm safety authority their mission is in their name firearm safety oh that's right it's only for the law abiding what I've found with firearms if you leave them alone they don't leap off the desk and run around and do terrible things they just don't there's people that are the problem I mean okay look I've had a bit of a laugh at the law the proposed law but actually there is one thing that I quite like about it the law will also be changed to give greater weight to gang membership as an aggravating factor that's a great idea I think that's a great idea I mean hallelujah shouldn't it be called the aggravated factor and shouldn't the courts say if you're a gang member you add three years to your sentence non-negotiable no matter what and very quickly we'd see the judges and really I don't have a hell of a lot of respect for judges I think the judges and the police have strayed down the woke road and we're seeing some very how should I say biased judges and biased policing and I'm not happy about that at all but if there was a law that said no matter what if you're a gang member you get an extra three years well yeah so be it but here's my solution hey we've got all these laws and they already exist why don't the police enforce them what's wrong with the police chance of being a fine thing look at it this way if the national wanted to get tough on gangs just to clear them a domestic terrorist organization that's what Winston said Winston said in the election campaign to clear gangs of domestic terrorists and we can use the full weight of the terrorism laws against them which would include using the SES and they'd be gone by Monday I mean but instead we get these ludicrous reports from the press of gang members I don't know queuing up at tattoo parlors to get their gang insignia tattooed on their head or whichever part of their anatomy they're going to display in public have these guys not heard of belt sanders and angle grinders nothing so serious but it gets laughable I mean and you know nature are quite interested in laws and who's to say that the new gang insignia for gang XYZ isn't a blue New York Yankees cat or woe betide some other American Chicago's football team cat yeah yeah so if you're yeah I don't know but you know they could switch from having I don't know a big they'll just change from insignia to colours that's what they'll do and you can't legislate against colours yeah imagine that otherwise Granny would be going down to the supermarket in the blue dress and that'd be it she'd be in the flammer because the police sure as hell wouldn't want to arrest that big dude over there dressed in blue but Granny she looks like she's a gang member she looks subversive anyway Miles I don't think we're going to solve this problem but thanks for calling and we'll talk next week indeed we'll see you next week cam bye gosh my buddies are awesome I'm so blessed to have such a great bunch of mates and new buddies to share anything with they're so wise and speak common sense except occasionally Jack loses the plot but hey that's what we love them time now for the mailbag we've got some long ones here but very informative some general feedback from Andrew great show cam I've never listened to it before but thoroughly entertaining and informative I've got an anonymous comment here about my monologue about the New Zealand Defense Force mandate debacle cam I was a civilian who was forced out of the defense force and would describe their attitude to be reflective of a deep seated problem that they have failed to address in op respect and institutionalized bullying now my Gary Moller interview has got a lot of comments cam if you don't already know about vitamin B3 you'll likely find it very interesting and that's from Graham and he adds a PS I'm sure you know that you did not have a stroke due to a deficiency of any drug actually I did I have a deficiency of potassium 95% of people who have strokes have a deficiency outside the normal range of potassium and I'm one of those people. Beth adds Gary provided so much invaluable information today cam another national treasure good job another anonymous comment is I love my greens especially kale sorry cam and Gary and Kauru says cam for me that was a God given message I just awoken and declared that I wish to attract to my day all that was needed for me to experience the good and that I could go into the day on the path to higher knowledge I turned on RCR radio and got your discussion not mind blown as being a background in natural ways of living I understood much of the discussion I know I was meant to hear of your path back to health and Gary will be hearing from you in the next video. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next video. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next video. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next video. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next video. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next video. Thank you for watching and I'll see you in the next video. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next video. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next video. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next video. Thank you for watching and I'll see you in the next video. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next video. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next video. Thank you. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next video. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next video. Thank you. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next video. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next video. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next video. Thank you. We'll be keeping a watching brief on US politics and this week Donald Trump trounced Nikki Haley in her own state. Trump won the South Carolina Republican primary by 20 points, grabbing 60% of the vote. Nikki Haley, as a result, has lost financial backers and at the moment, she's keeping her fingers crossed for Super Tuesday which is the first week of March. Shane Jones was on fire, I get the feel he's a change the man. He certainly seems to have a new fire in his belly and I've observed him over many years and he's a different person. And it was Annie O'Brien's first interview on RCR and what an engaging woman she is and yes, we're allowed to call her a woman because she is. We traversed a few topics there but you know me, I just like having a conversation with anyone. It's been a real pleasure having you all back again this week. I'm loving all your feedback, really enjoy talking to so many people sharing their thoughts on politics, life and everything in between. So a big shout out to all of you thank you for listening and having faith in me as we continue to explore this beautiful game of politics. Don't forget email suggestions to inbox at realitycheck.radio they can be suggestions for people to interview or some interesting topics but we'll continue to make this show the best political show in New Zealand. I look forward to having you join me again next week for The Crunch with Cam Slater. Marcia. Reality Check Radio