This story was, of course, headed for hubris. He recalled a TV review of one particular episode of This Is Your Life which slated him for crying crocodile tears. That comment really stung. He went to see Brian Edwards, who he knew would be sympathetic. ‘And I went away and thought about it, and I thought, why am I making this fuss? The reviewer wrote the truth. I know I was pretending at the end of that programme. I know I was faking it. It was a shallow piece of television.’
This was the man who won the 1980 Kensington Carpets Male Personality of the Year. ‘The only person who remembers! The last time I saw the trophy it was in the garage in Akaroa and bits were peeling off it. But no one’s ever mentioned it from the day I got it. Sometimes I got the feeling that there was something in TVNZ, something about me, that meant I would never get recognised for any of the things I did. I made a big, big contribution, and yet very rarely do I find there’s a mention of that at TVNZ. That kind of intrigues me. Did I step on somebody’s toes? Or was I just eminently forgettable?’
After The Today Show, Parker moved back to Christchurch and set up his own television production company. He also entered politics. He became mayor of Banks Peninsula, then merged the council with the Christchurch City Council. I asked him which was more ruthless – TV or politics?
‘There’s very little difference,’ he said. ‘The school committee in Akaroa can be just as dramatic, just as scary, just as ridden with politics, as can the UN or television … TV was ruthless, but in an appallingly shallow and amateur way … a little group of unsophisticated people with fairly large egos. I’ve found a far more sophisticated ego battle is fought in politics. In fact, I would have to say I’ve seen some of the most out-of-control egos in politics by a country mile.’
He gave a campaign speech. It was, of course, very long. Sample: ‘I’ve been in local government for sixteen years. I haven’t lost an election yet. I won the merger, I won the mayoralty against the sitting mayor, I was re-elected.’ And then he said, ‘The greatest asset I’ve had is that people always underestimate me. Politically, it’s been tremendously useful.’
[October 7]
19 Ross Meurant
Make Love Not War
Look what the cat dragged in. It was thought, and hoped, that Ross Meurant – one of the most loathsome figures in modern New Zealand history – had disappeared into whatever ether of his choosing. But he performed an unlikely return to public life last week. There he was on Morning Report, then on Campbell Live, then on John Tamihere’s Radio Live show, but not to talk the windy militant trash he used to spout as a cop who was voted into parliament as a right-wing National Party MP for three terms. Bizarrely, eloquently, he re-emerged to pour scorn on the arrests of suspected terrorists in the Ureweras, and to blame it on a self-serving, deluded police culture. He was concerned about the abuse of our civil liberties. He warned Helen Clark (‘a wonderful prime minister’) not to tread on our dreams. Dreams and civil liberties from Ross Meurant? He said: ‘I’ve changed my way of thinking.’
Interesting. I called him for an interview. He rambled for a long time, and said, ‘No.’ He phoned back approximately twenty minutes later, rambled for a long time, and said, ‘Yes.’ We arranged to meet on Wednesday morning. His chosen venue was vaguely clandestine: a café inside a garden centre in Remuera. The day’s specials were German pots and flowering clivias. Meurant, sixty, barrel-chested, narrow-eyed, dressed in black, slow and deliberate in his movements, was delivered to the door in a four-wheel drive driven by a pretty young blonde. Two hours later, when she picked him up, I remarked that he had a very attractive driver for a man his age. He said, ‘I run every morning, don’t drink grog, so …’ What, I asked, is she your girl friend? He smiled, and said, ‘That’s my personal life.’
Meurant: ‘I don’t want this to be about me. It’s not about me. It’s about the issues.’ As soon as we sat down in the café, he opened up his laptop and read from a prepared statement. This dictation, with asides, took nearly thirty minutes.
Highlights? He read out: ‘Behind every tree they see a bad guy.’ And: ‘As a detective in the mid ’70s I applied to go to university. I was asked: “Are you a communist?” … My lecturers included Helen Clark, Phil Goff and Michael Bassett … The first rays of lights began to appear. Slowly the mists began to abate and I saw things from a different perspective.’
An aside: ‘The things that some of these people were teaching, I just thought were a crock of shit. I’d probably share their views now.’ He continued his dictation: ‘I’m immensely grateful for how those institutions unwittingly helped me exorcise the demons of excessive exposure to police culture.’
Also: ‘I’ve had experience with the Police Complaints Authority and it’s just a farce, a laughable mockery. That only leaves one institution, and that’s the fourth estate.’ He took off his glasses and said, ‘I never used to think that. I just thought all media people were bastards. I thought like a policeman: they should all be shot.’
I began to miss that Meurant. You knew where you were with him – he was unequivocal, primitive, disgraceful. As second in command of the police Red Squad during the 1981 Springbok tour, he wrote a book about that experience, and cast himself as a heroic warrior who defended New Zealand against the anti-apartheid protest mob. Later, as an MP, he criticised
