As well as his involvement with Black Power, Nui was on the Wai-o-Turi Marae committee, helped manage its successful Kii Tahi plant nursery (‘You name it, we’ll grow it, apart from that plant that gets you into trouble,’ he said), and was working to find ways to hire out the primary school. Neither he nor Pullen wore their patches at the meeting. Borrows confirmed that Black Power in Patea hardly ever wear them in public; there’s no need to state membership – Patea is a Black Power town.
All of which made the bill seem an unnecessary harassment, an almost flippant kind of measure in Patea. Green MP Metiria Turei has jeered at the proposed law as ‘another foolish example of easy politicking for no real gain … it will turn our cops into fashion police’. Well, said Borrows, the bill would achieve a feeling of safety for people as they go about their business, and it would also create neutral territories – no patches, no conflict between rival gangs.
It was inevitable that Borrows would refer to the tragic death of Wanganui toddler Jhia Te Tua. The two-year-old daughter of a Black Power member was killed in May in a Mongrel Mob drive-by shooting.
Borrows said, ‘As I understand it, the day baby Jhia was killed, there was a scrap in a public park between Mongrel Mob and Black Power, because they were both watching a league game and they were all wearing their patches. Now, if they weren’t wearing their patches, would there have been a fight?
‘Well, actually, pretty good money would say no, there probably wouldn’t have been. So when you look at the … sort of accumulative tension, then actually not wearing the patches at that league game may well have meant that baby Jhia wasn’t killed.’
What sort of rooster was Borrows? ‘Bright and jovial,’ he said. Oddly, his photograph plastered all over his electorate car was a portrait of a melancholic. It made him look as though he’d just heard some bad news, and was in despair. That may be a familiar expression. As a lay preacher, Borrows is often called in to act as a funeral celebrant.
First-term National MP, fifty, a big fellow – ‘I wasn’t always this overly dimensional’ – the loudest voice in parliament speaking out against Green MP Sue Bradford’s child protection bill (Hansard: ‘The public of New Zealand are hanging on this debate!’), fond of strange metaphors (Hansard, from the same speech: ‘Sue Bradford knows there are at least eight of her troops swallowing rats over this bill’), a straight-up middle New Zealand guy.
I trooped along with Borrows to the Wai-o-Turi Marae, where he went to discuss a business deal with Nui and others managing the plant nursery. The sea looked cold as ice; the wind had no mercy. As we approached, Borrows said, ‘On a day like this, you can understand why the Maoris sold their land for blankets and matches. You know what’s important? Warmth. It was probably a good deal back then.’ And then he knocked on the door of an office, took off his shoes, and bowed his head during the karakia.
He grew up in Nelson: ‘It was a pretty sheltered lifestyle.’ He would have loved to farm, but his family had no land to pass on. He joined the police force straight out of the sixth form. The most money he ever made was in 1999, when he earned $64,000 as a detective sergeant. His parents were lifelong socialists, and he voted Labour too, until Richard Prebble axed government work schemes in 1987 – once again, Patea was closed down. Black Power members were suddenly out of work.
‘They were right into that bloody Carlsberg. Yeah, Elephant Beer. They used to get juiced up on that and have these enormous fights. I’d actually negotiated with the local bottle stores so they wouldn’t carry it. I asked them nicely. It’s called force of personality. So the gangs couldn’t buy it in Patea, they couldn’t buy it in Hawera, but the trouble was they’d all drive through to Wanganui and buy a couple of cases there. What the axing of the work schemes meant was that everyone had time on their hands, and criminals with time on their hands means trouble.’
Borrows lost out in his bids to win his way into parliament in the 1999 and 2002 elections. ‘I decided I wouldn’t stand again,’ he said. ‘It was too draining on my finances and energy.’ He quit the force, got his LLB, and worked as a defence lawyer in Hawera. ‘Funny thing, in the first six months after leaving the force and defending criminals, I got ticketed six times. I might add that I defended myself three times, each time successfully.’ When National’s popularity rocketed in the polls after Don Brash’s first Orewa speech, he was persuaded to stand against Labour’s Jill Pettis in 2005. He won with a majority of 2402.
Did he miss working as a cop? ‘Yeah, I do. You get an inquiry like baby Jhia’s murder in Wanganui, and you can have a real hunger to know what’s going on. There’s a great esprit de corps within the police. Working together as part of a big team, and kicking in doors, executing search warrants, finding evidence, interrogating people, solving cases – it gives you a huge degree of satisfaction.’
I had asked Black Power member Ngapari Nui what he thought of Borrows. ‘Honest guy,’ he said. Agreed.
[June 17]
3 John Tamihere
World’s Fastest Maori
The last time I saw John Tamihere was at the Otara markets, where he gave the impression of a man who seemed to be enjoying a nervous breakdown. It was April 2005, and he was dead man running – he couldn’t sit still, as
