I reminded him of his risible press release headlined, ‘The welfare state killed the Kahui twins’. Did he still hold with that sentiment? McVicar said, ‘Absolutely. And it’s killed many others.’
This line of thinking led to: ‘Any dysfunctional parent, who’s either abused their child or raised a dysfunctional child who’s ended up in the court system, should have any further children removed. There’s no point in allowing her to have children in her care. I mean, you’ve got some women who have just basically become factories for producing children. Three, four, five, six children to different fathers. That burden on society is huge, and I don’t believe should be allowed to continue.’
But this wasn’t about being tough on crime. This was social engineering. And yet McVicar’s version of events is that New Zealand – ‘The country I love; I’m a patriot’ – has gone to the dogs because of social engineers. ‘It’s become too liberal. Someone has to draw a line in the sand. That’s our job.’ What line, what sand? He said, ‘We’ve sent a lot of people overseas to fight for freedom. I see the enemy now as within. The violent underbelly in New Zealand could destroy this country. That is alarming to me.’
He spreads that alarm, frightening the old with explicit true stories of rape and murder, although it’s true that the Sensible Sentencing Trust also offers what might be called palliative care. Their offices feature a private room for grieving families. It was simply furnished; it reminded you of a chapel, or a hospice. McVicar said, ‘The spin-off of our work is watching the revival of victims’ lives when they realise there’s someone out there who goes into bat for them and cares for them.’
Mostly, though, the trust’s function is to apply political pressure. McVicar demands strong leadership in the courts and in parliament. I asked him what he thought about National Party leader John Key. McVicar said, ‘Yeah, I, I, I mean I don’t want this to sort of turn into throwing my weight behind any political party, but I believe John Key has got a lot better vision for New Zealand than Helen Clark … She’s destroying the country I love, as far as family values go, the values I hold dear.’
What are family values? ‘The kitchen table,’ he said. ‘Mum and Dad never had money, but we always had three feeds a day and we always ate at the kitchen table. You didn’t slouch at the table. There were rules, boundaries …’ And there was something else, something that had a familiar ring to it. McVicar did correspondence school. ‘We’d be out in the paddock wherever Mum and Dad were working.’ In a paddock? ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We did our schoolwork in a tent.’
He liked Elvis, and you can blame his four daughters for his picking up on this strange musical choice: ‘Twisted Sister have come up with some pretty good songs.’ He wanted to outlaw hard-core rap, Marilyn Manson, that sort of thing: ‘We need a vision of where we want the country to be. And that doesn’t work in with my vision.’ And then he said, ‘Someone said to me at a meeting I was speaking at the other day that maybe we need another … what’s her name … the lady who used be a morals campaigner in the 1970s?’ Patricia Bartlett? ‘Patricia Bartlett. Well, maybe she was before her time. Maybe she was a visionary who picked where we were going.’
I asked his views on civil unions. ‘Totally opposed,’ he said. That was predictable. But then he said, ‘I’ve got a gay brother. And that’s fine. He’s totally opposed to civil union, too. He says you don’t need it. He doesn’t see the whole gay thing as being normal. It’s not part of the normal thing. I mean, man and woman are normal. I accept Alan for what he is, and love him no less for the fact he’s gay. But I think allowing people of his … leanings to go out and talk about that sort of thing in schools is wrong.’
He doesn’t think his brother is normal? ‘No.’ And his brother thinks that, too? ‘He’ll say he’s not normal. He’s gay.’
I didn’t know what the hell to make of that. I asked him if his brother was happy. He said, ‘He’s as happy as he can be. His partner’s a really nice guy. I work side by side with both of them. Fantastic workers. But outside of that …’
What about the company McVicar keeps? His representatives on the trust include former ACT MP Stephen Franks, former United First MP Marc Alexander (an advocate of chemical castration for paedophiles – ‘The side effects are minimal’), and Kelly Te Heuheu, whose semi-literate ravings include her support for John Howard’s policies in Aborigine settlements (‘Hone Harawira is not the kind of role model our young need to have in parliament.’)
There was all that kind of nonsense in his life, but he was a four-square, chummy sort of rooster (‘I’m just an average Kiwi’), and there was nothing especially radical in his long-held belief that if anyone had ever harmed his daughters, he would have killed them. Did he mean that? ‘I don’t make hollow threats. I wouldn’t have had an option.’
I said to him if anyone harmed my daughter, I would want that person burnt at a stake and his head chopped off and put on a stick. But that wouldn’t achieve anything, would it? He said, ‘I don’t really agree with that. I was speaking in Gisborne the other day, and a Maori guy took me out afterwards and showed me a couple of places where Maori warriors had raped a young woman and they did put their heads on a stick. Utu.’ And what had that achieved? ‘What that achieved is they didn’t re-offend. End of story.’
But he didn’t
