He said, ‘You hit the deck, but you can always get up. Life’s all about getting up. For me, you rate life not by how successful you are, but by how you handle your problems. I’m alive, and I’m respected in my community.’
Was there a lot of stress in his final term in parliament? ‘Of course there was. Three months of it. October 14 was when I got the old ambush.’
Hang on, was that the date in 2004 when the issue of Investigate was published? ‘Oh, I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the impropriety and all that shit. Mate, I don’t resile from one thing I said in Investigate. I just didn’t know the fucking tape recorder was on! But no, no, Investigate magazine, that was nothing. Getting through the allegations and the Serious Fraud Office, that was tough.
‘But the point is that while I was there I made a major contribution to a number of things. More so than perhaps people who’ve been there a lot longer. There are a hundred and twenty of us down there. If you can’t work your way into the top twenty, there’s something wrong, you’re not a player. I thought for a little half-breed Maori boy out of West Auckland I did all right. Some people say I didn’t. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I could be a very wealthy drug-runner in Australia now if I stuck to form …’
Did he ever seriously entertain the chatter about becoming New Zealand’s first Maori prime minister? ‘No, never. Unlike some guys who … Like, there’s a little tug-muscle who stands for Otaki. Darren Hughes. And Clayton Cosgrove, too – from the time they’re fourteen they’re destined. They know what they’re going to do. They’re fully focussed. But me, I’d done my whack out on the street and politics was another challenge, so I had a go at it. Being prime minister was never an issue. What it was, was go like hell with what you have in front of you to achieve.
‘They gave me the Statistics portfolio! But I enjoyed that. That was fun. Youth Affairs was fun. Small Business was absolutely just a dream. Hugely energising. And so was being associate minister of Maori Affairs.’
Famously, Tamihere had said during his mea culpa on Close Up that he ‘idolised’ Michael Cullen: ‘I’d give the guy my toothbrush if he asked for it.’ And now? ‘I have the highest regard for Michael Cullen. Always will, regardless of what goes on. One, because he fascinates me with his intellectual rigour; secondly, his work acumen I found legendary; and thirdly, his door was always open to anyone in that caucus, and he would give you quality time. It wasn’t just – you know, my meetings with Maharey were just pointless!’
How was Helen Clark at that level? ‘I never got to that level,’ he said. I remarked that perhaps Clark’s adviser Heather Simpson made sure he didn’t get that close. He got the giggles and said, ‘One time I met with her and her glasses clouded up! And she wasn’t good-looking to start with!’
Mitch Harris, his station manager at Radio Live, had told me that the great thing about Tamihere was that he wasn’t afraid of anyone. I asked Tamihere if he was afraid of himself. ‘Well,’ he said. His eyes started blinking rapidly. The handsome man dressed in a nice cotton shirt and a beautiful black overcoat can sometimes seem like an animated cartoon. And then he said, ‘We’re all dying.’
[June 24]
4 Paul Toohey
A Very Perfunctory Act
Bradley John Murdoch did shoot and kill Peter Falconio on a cold moonless night on the side of the road on Australia’s Stuart Highway, then held Joanna Lees hostage at gunpoint until she escaped. It was nothing more than that, something brutal and random, a violent appointment that lasted maybe five minutes – about the same time it took the High Court in Brisbane to consider Murdoch’s final available bid to overthrow his conviction and declare there had been no miscarriage of justice, signing and sealing the forms for Murdoch, who was the cliché of a lone crazed gunman, to serve out his life sentence.
The infamous killing was July 14, 2001. An anniversary of sorts is marked this month by the publication of The Killer Within by Australian journalist Paul Toohey. Toohey’s brilliant new book on the Outback murder slams the door on the persistent myth that what happened to Falconio was any kind of mystery – other than where Murdoch dumped the body.
I called the author at his home in Darwin, where he works as a senior writer for The Bulletin. He had been assigned to the Falconio trial, held at Darwin’s Supreme Court; I covered the final week in December 2005, and remember Toohey as tall, quiet, contained, an almost disinterested observer. Other Australian journalists spoke of him with an admiration that closely resembled awe. He may be the best feature writer in Australia.
Most journalists enjoy or at least endure collegial banter. In an email to Toohey, I reminded him that he’d given me a lift one day during the trial. No response. During the interview, I pointed out we had a mutual friend, and remarked that I had once briefly worked at a notorious Sydney magazine, The Picture, which later employed him. ‘Uh-huh,’ he said, and left a silence that closely resembled boredom.
Oh well. It had been good of him to offer me a lift that day in December – you couldn’t walk for more than five minutes without collapsing in Darwin’s narcotic heat. It was the wet season; a two-metre saltwater crocodile was found prowling the streets, an illegal snake-dealer had been caught with two black-headed pythons in a sack. In the cool of the courtroom (a Christmas tree carved out of corrugated iron stood in the foyer), the trial played out a narrative of two colliding cultures. There
