July 6, 2024 • 45 mins
WARNING: This episode discusses mental health, depression and suicide.
In May, Brody Cameron, the son of Act MP Mark Cameron, died as the result of a suspected suicide.
Mark has not spoken publicly about this tragedy since it happened, but joins Thomas for his first in-depth interview on Brody's death and his own mental health struggles.
Suicide and depression help services:
If it is an emergency and you or someone else is at risk, call 111.
For counselling and support:
- Lifeline: http://www.lifeline.co.nz, call 0800 543 354 or text 4357 (HELP)
- Suicide Crisis Helpline: www.lifeline.org.nz/services/suicide-crisis-helpline, or call 0508 828 865 (0508 TAUTOKO)
Youth services:
- Youthline: Call 0800 376 633 or text 234
- What's Up: Call 0800 942 8787 (11am to 11pm) or webchat (11am to 10.30pm)
- Depression helpline: Call 0800 111 757 or text 4202 (available 24/7)
- Helpline: Need to talk? Call or text 1737
- Aoake te Rā (Bereaved by Suicide Service): Call 0800 000 053
For more information and support, talk to your local doctor, hauora, community mental health team, or counselling service.
The Mental Health Foundation has more helplines and service contacts - click here for information
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello, and welcome to on the titles The Herald's Politics podcast.
I'm your host, Deputy political Editor Thomas Coughlin. This is
a special episode today. Back in May, Brody Cameron, the
son of ACTMP Mark Cameron, died as the result of
a suspected suicide. Mark hasn't spoken publicly about the tragedy
since it happened, but he has given us his first
in depth interview on it, which was what we're going
(00:28):
to give to you now.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
This is a warning that the.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Episode does deal with some heavy topics around suicide and
mental health. There are some help services in the show
notes for this episode if you need them. Of course,
if you don't want to listen to it, just leave
it in your feed and we'll be back next week
with ordinary on the tiles.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Apologies for their clicking sounds in the background.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
That is our photographer, Mark Mitchell, the confusingly named Martin Mitchell,
not the MP.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
So that's what that is. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
So I when you wanted to just start about talking
about that, about your journey to this place and about
your son's role than in that journey.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
Yeah, Look, it's a funny business farming. I mean, I immensely
love it. I don't profess to be brilliant catter, but
I think most farmers look, my friend, I'm just how
humble COWCOCKI is. We'd say one we left alone a
little bit more than perhaps I was, and so did
my neighbor, And by virtue you get a lot or
(01:33):
as farmers, a sense that their people aren't playing fair
cricket right. And I stood up, and the motivations Thomas,
I don't know where on earth they came from, but
I just knew that I could no longer be a
passenger in this. I'd fairly recently found out I had
end stage d renal failure, so I had kidney disease,
(01:54):
which it subsequently made the media aware of. But I
felt like my world was collapsing, and I wanted to
make bloody sure that the reasons that I was farming
and the things that were due to me that I
kept on doing.
Speaker 4 (02:11):
But by having myself, I was helping someone else.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
So after over thirty years in the dairy industry there'd
been some changes in the idean government, I said, I
just I can't reconcile these anymore. I know my neighbors can't,
and people were naval gazing the whole time. They were miserable,
and I don't know where I got the compunction or
compulsion from that.
Speaker 4 (02:36):
I wanted to stop it.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
Change it, be part of a narrative that actually puts
some I don't know some Kiwi farming authenticity in this
plus because I think it was bereft of it.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
It's been a while since there was a large representation
of farmers in parliament.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
Well, some would argue we were a bit different. I
don't think we are. I think that's something of a
bloody nonsense. I think we're just Kiwi blokes, men and
women that want to be recognized for what we do
do well and have some of the commentary of this
place support that, And I don't think it did. And
(03:12):
there was a widening gap between and so may argue
this is not true, But there was a widening gap
between my world, you know, any given weekend when I
would be farming, and the perception of an urban New
Zealander that that that they shall not do these things.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
Well, come to my world. That's a nonsense.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Tell me about your world. What's what like?
Speaker 1 (03:37):
You know, we we have a larger urban audience. What
tell me about the parts of your of your of
your world that well I can give you.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
I'll give you an anecdote, Thomas, I was standing in
about three years ago. It was standing we had a
down account down a cow as a cow that's got
milk fever.
Speaker 4 (03:54):
I think it was early August.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
It's now the poor animals now, lots of creatures tipped
over and falling into a canal. So I'm now up
to my stomach with a chain trying to grab this
animal out before it drowns with a tractor. It said
before I atm the frigid cold and you know, your
chest deep.
Speaker 4 (04:11):
From water on a Sunday morning.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
And at no point did I not love what I'm doing.
But those are the days where you go, this is
really really hard, And after thirty years on the hot,
at that stage you're still you're still saying it's worth it.
Speaker 4 (04:29):
I believe in what I'm doing. I love being.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
On the land, I love being with the animals. I
love the tactile nature of it. But that's pretty hard, right.
You know, on Sunday morning, everyone's enjoying tea and toast.
Speaker 4 (04:42):
At eight I'm you know, up to my neck quite
in the proverbial. You might say, well, that's the.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Kind of thing I'm fighting for and was fighting for.
Then that wasn't an unusual reality. And I think that
the easiest way to frame it is me personally, as.
Speaker 4 (05:05):
A four year old, knew what I wanted to do.
And that sounds a bit corny. Forgive me.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
I absolutely love being outside tractors and you can see
my office is adorned with plastic tractors and and you
know anything farming, gun boots, et cetera. It's home. It's
the providence of all things rural life. I knew what
I wanted to.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
Do as a four year old, and as a forty
four year old it was no different.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
And God willing, I'll be in my seventies and make
old bones on a farm, arguably being left alone.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
My grandm there's a farmer is eighty four.
Speaker 4 (05:47):
You see.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
That's that's very much downside. It's small as days, you know.
Speaker 4 (05:51):
But that's you're outside.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Yeah, IVE got some good memories of him. I mean,
I've never been up to my neck.
Speaker 4 (05:58):
But I mean, forgive me.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
That was just one anacdote where I'm going, you know,
that was that was that was.
Speaker 4 (06:04):
Quite a topical day.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
It's certainly not an easy life. You know.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
We remember being on his farm in the winter. Early
morning was cold down in south And.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Because of all of this, in my thirties I suffered
terrible depression. Now I spoke of it in the last
Parliament and there said archillers hell about being ambition, ambitious,
bigger pardon where you're fighting this ever ever increasing desire.
Speaker 4 (06:38):
To be success? And what does does success look like?
Speaker 3 (06:42):
And for me it was the ultimate goal, owning a farm,
being my own task master, a simple life. But to
a degree that was that was indicative. All that was
that resonated so well with so many Kiwi farms they.
Speaker 4 (06:55):
Felt the same.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
And this depression, in the said of it was a
corrosive vealment. I just didn't how to reconcile. You know,
farmers are pregnancy that's broken Barnes. Oh, well six weeks
and I've had company dozen of those on a farm.
Speaker 4 (07:12):
I'll be right and back to normal.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
The depression came in like a thief in the night,
and I couldn't be rid of it. And I knew
the harder I thought, the worse it got because I
gave it credence. I value almost being miserable, which makes
no sense, I know, But years later, having been out
the now, out the other side of it, I actually
(07:36):
learned that a lot of it was my own doing
the nature of being isolated. Farmers are not good at
talking to each other, and God forbid that you concede
that you might be broken, but you know, a metaphor
for mental illness. At that point I realized on that
(07:58):
journey that I was, I think for something bigger than myself.
Speaker 4 (08:01):
It was was.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
The providence of what kywe blokes do, especially blokes, because
we as far as rural people, we're really good at
not telling our story, you know, really good to say
when when things go bad, you know what a ship
day it was, but we're hopeless it actually standing up
for ourselves, you know, we're really good at what we do.
Speaker 4 (08:23):
And you know, out of all of.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
That came the man you see today, which is I
actually believe.
Speaker 4 (08:29):
In farmers, probably more than may believing themselves.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
M hmm. And when did your own when did you
When did you realize in your thirties that that that
you were battling depression as well? When did you when
did you realize that?
Speaker 3 (08:43):
And can you yeah, I can remember almost to the
day I had bought a hew to cows, quite a
large hut of counts as five hundred cows at the time,
which is quite a substantial leap. And the fiscal void
that a farmer has in front of him, trying to
make ends meet, fighting to wear, the fighting animal well being, health, etc.
(09:09):
All the norms that farms have, and being new to ownership.
And now I've got the responsibility of getting these things
in carf and if I don't get them in CARF,
I don't generate an income. And you know, for the
town could because I wasn't raised on a farm, the
belief that I could actually do it came.
Speaker 4 (09:26):
To question, and there was the self doubt and.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
You know, sniping remarks not intended, I took them so
and the element of doubt became.
Speaker 4 (09:43):
A metaphorical hitchhiker that I couldn't be rid of.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
You'd like this blistered creature in your car and you say, well,
this person, now I've taken you, You're along the journey.
Speaker 4 (09:52):
Can you can you be gone?
Speaker 3 (09:54):
And I couldn't get rid of it, and it had
stayed with me for about four years when there was
this all this perpetual doubt no matter how hard I tried.
And I know, Thomas, there was a time where I
felt like it didn't matter how hard I worked, I
couldn't achieve the day's toil like I'd intended when I
(10:17):
started the day, and I got up at two in
the morning and there'd been a disagreement over a boundary fence.
Speaker 4 (10:26):
And this is the stupidity of one's mind at the time.
I started fencing in the dead of night.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
Because I knew that I had a short window the
coming week to get it all done. And that was
two thirty in the morning, and I knew I was
a man. I will use the words that my words
broken at that point and shaer exhaustion share exhaustion was
(10:53):
ironically and I mean were a relief because if I
was so exhausted, stopped thinking of the personal faise.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
So it's two thirty in the morning, you're on a farm.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
On a farm with a spade, with a tractor and
lights under lights, digging post.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Holes, and that's when a twig.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
Then I knew something was awry, something was skew, and
I had to I had to make good with making
right with myself, because all the wants and the desires
would never come to fruition.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
And did you reach out for help or how did you?
Speaker 3 (11:27):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (11:28):
I for where and how why?
Speaker 3 (11:32):
People say I probably spoke a little bit more than some.
Most will aren't well sort of bury that head and
draw the curtains at night and pretend it's not an issue.
I remember going to a GP and said, I'm just
I'm broken. I don't know what the hell is going on.
I can't make sense of the world, and things that
would otherwise not wory some worry me immensely. And from
(11:56):
there I had a very accommodating general practitioner and he
sent me off to a psychologist.
Speaker 4 (12:03):
I was there for probably six weeks on and off.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
I think I was thirty two or thirty fifty two now,
and it was absolutely one of the hardest things I've
ever had to do, because you don't in that journey,
you don't recognize yourself anymore, and coming all the way forward.
That's why I don't bear any judgment on my son.
Speaker 4 (12:31):
It will be it. I didn't even know he was
suffering at the time, if he was at.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
All, And just to finish your own, your own journey,
you managed to go through that process.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
And yeah, and manage your own.
Speaker 4 (12:44):
Yeah, absolutely, yes, absolutely.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
I was medicated for about three and a half years,
and then it felt at the time it became something
of an archillsia that I constantly had to.
Speaker 4 (12:59):
Be medicating be happy, and.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
I found myself putting false timelines on things. I'm not
a psychologist, I'm far from it, but I'm something of
a practical person, and I think, especially for farmers, there's
this inherent risk that you put a timeline on something.
You put a timeline on something. It's like a broken bone.
(13:23):
And I was that guy. Right while in six weeks
the broken bone will be fixed, the cast will come off,
and I'll be back to normal life. Well, mental illness
doesn't work like that, and it doesn't work like that.
That's my personal belief. And I found at that time
that the more I spoke about it, the more I
learned that other people had some degree sometimes.
Speaker 4 (13:46):
Of suffering thoughts of ill will.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
Self harm, They were inherently unhappy more often than they
were happy, and there was a pattern to it. And
the more or I actually just said it's okay, and
I think that was the bit, and then I made
make good with And this is the important point for me,
We've been bloody busy and the old adage and out
(14:12):
of mind is a dangerous one. And people would say
to me, gruscious me, mate, you're working on a You're
working on a Sunday, so I don't see his work.
Speaker 4 (14:20):
This is I love what I do to the point
that I get in tears about I love it. Translation
leave me alone, you know.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Yeah, and so and you feel you feel within yourself
now that you've able to.
Speaker 4 (14:35):
Ah years ago. Yeah, yeah, this is a long time
gone now.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
And the transition from being someone who was unwell now
twenty years on to being someone that advocates to help
other people. I mean, there are a lot of people
that have had a similar journey, and they will have their.
Speaker 4 (14:56):
Own thoughts and ideas on.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
How you've fix those things, and everyone's journey is quite
unique to them. But I just made it a point
of saying, well, I'm a Polly, but more importantly, I'm
just a Kawa cocky.
Speaker 4 (15:09):
And I'll make a point.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
Those two worlds are miles apart, and yet I'm still
the same person that suffered from oppression.
Speaker 4 (15:21):
And you know, I was pretty miserable when it happened.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Now I'm telling you about your.
Speaker 4 (15:40):
Son, good kid.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
Devastated that I'm now in this position having to talk
about the loss of a child as a father. I mean,
I desperately wanted to go fishing, spend time with my
kid as an old man, when he was.
Speaker 4 (15:56):
An adult with children of his own.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
I always used to tell them when he was a
little guy, and I desperately loved this child when he
was a young man, make your tackles count.
Speaker 4 (16:09):
And he was.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
A very quiet aged boy. But he was also one
of these kids that was not self assured when he
was young, so he had to prop them up. And
the irony of it was earlier on. I never thought
he'd be much of a rugby player, but he became
quite stoud in fact, and the self determination that he
had was something that parents quite often miss in their
(16:33):
own children's, the tenacity and drive and she determination that
he had. I think any parent, I'm not sure if
you've got children, but any parent will always say that
there's no children like their own. And I don't regret
to parents that feel the love of their children and
say such things.
Speaker 4 (16:51):
I'm certainly one of those.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
But Chet, he was a good kid, bloody, good kid,
hard worker, is I'd never lived vicariously through my children.
I didn't want to, you're I think as a parent
it was in come upon me to set them up
for life because life is bloody difficult, and give them
(17:14):
all the skills. I mean, my depression is an example
of that, struggling to make financially ends meet all of
the above with the things and discussions and ideas and
thoughts that we had for young people in an ever
challenging world, right And I think I was quite good
(17:35):
at sharing my journeys and stories with him. He was
a receptive audience at some of the time. But a
lot of teenagers, of them, they're not all it's good,
and you know when it's. When it's not, you just
don't talk about it, I imagine. But a lovely young man,
and as any any good parent will be incredibly proud
(17:56):
of who he was and sadly thomas who he could
have been, and personally, and this is the heart wrenching thing.
It feels like something of a fool's errant.
Speaker 4 (18:11):
My job here and I'll explain myself. I came here
to stop that.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
This boy had worked, This young man was working long
hours to be a success in his mind. His journey
was quite unique, and so much that so many young
people are disillusioned. He was he had a future. I
know he did, He'd spoken of it. He was contracting,
(18:39):
he was living with a group of friends. They were
all in the same industry, huge hours. But the driver,
the ambition, all the things that I pride myself.
Speaker 4 (18:49):
And then as a father, I then on reflection, going
should I drive this g too hot? Well, you tell your.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
Children you love them all the time, and if you're
shy about parents of doing such thing, I'm certainly not
going to be accused of that.
Speaker 4 (19:07):
I love all my children.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
Perhaps I, you know, on reflection, wished I hadn't been
so ambitious myself, so they might not have said a
standard for themselves that it was high as Maybe hap
hats they did.
Speaker 4 (19:21):
I don't know. But I came back to this place.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
After Brady took us life, and I'm if I could
be frank, I'm thinking.
Speaker 4 (19:31):
What the fucking hell did I miss?
Speaker 3 (19:34):
You know, I'm a human being and i'd be a
politician a brief time.
Speaker 4 (19:40):
I'm a dad for.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
A long time, and you're just going, this is the
madness of all of it. I can't reconcile, but to
speak to the boy himself, the young man, the old man,
he could have.
Speaker 4 (19:53):
Become, you just got I don't understand it.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
But in going back to all my journey, all those
years before, I saw the rock that was metastasizing in me.
Just sadly, I'd had to warwithal to go out and
get help.
Speaker 4 (20:13):
Unbeknst to me, he was suffering and he didn't.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
It must be incredibly hard to see, to see that though,
that connection between you and your sons, but be unable
to help him from ween immensely.
Speaker 4 (20:30):
And I used the wording.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
I'm embarrassed, like it's falls errands, like I came here
and I couldn't even save my own bloody child, you know.
But I don't want to well up and start crying.
But how was I doing? I know I came here
for this reason, but I couldn't stop it. The rot
(20:54):
comes in my own home. But in all of that, Thomas,
how was I to know if the boy wasn't willing
to speak about it. He was working hard, he was
out doing what he was passionate about.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
What was he what was he doing?
Speaker 4 (21:07):
He was an agricultural contract so.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
He was in heavy machinery, doing big hours, working immensely.
I was incredibly proud of it, and you know, creating
a world for himself that hopefully was a little bit
betters to my event today and his own biological mument.
We've been separated for about twelve years. She was unaware
(21:30):
that he was suffering. I was unaware that he was suffering.
Chris Smith whole family wasn't privy to the darkest recesses
of this young man's mind. And there is the stark
contrast between me and him. I was a little bit
more vocal twenty years earlier, saying, you know, lord, shit,
(21:51):
this ross has got to stop.
Speaker 4 (21:52):
I'm going to I'm not going to be able to
function anymore.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
And for him, sadly, the people, very, the very people
closest to them couldn't stop it.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
Is that is that how you see? You know, you
use the metaphor of eruption like an unlaunched hitchhiker. Is
that is that how you see what.
Speaker 4 (22:11):
It was for me? What it absolutely was for me?
It was?
Speaker 3 (22:16):
And I use that metaphor because in my own instance
of suffering, the more I concentrated on something like I
why am I depressed, the more perpetuated, and then when
there were moments when you felt good in yourself. You're
(22:38):
at a rapier game and you're playing and you're enjoying it,
and gracious to me, you hadn't thought about feeling unhappy,
or you know, how you're going to make the bells,
make you know financial ends meet? Or are you going
to have enough food on the farm to feed all
these you know, that's ever increasing the safety appetite of
(22:59):
the animals, you might say.
Speaker 4 (23:01):
Which is ever in always grust me?
Speaker 3 (23:05):
And I'm not depressed at the moment, and then the
cycle begins again. And for me personally, that was the
reason I used or reasoning I used the word rot
because it became this perpetual convey about the more I
thought about it, the more it cycles background. And it
was a four year cycle of well, I haven't thought
(23:26):
anything negative.
Speaker 4 (23:27):
Now there something must be wrong with me.
Speaker 3 (23:29):
Isn't it great that I'm actually happy like a normal person?
And then I would reinvest in the yelks of feeling
inward rather than outward.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
So it's a funny business farming.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
You've got to look after, you know, your family, You've
got to look after one hundreds of thousands of animals.
You've got to look after your finances. You know, you're
one person running a view.
Speaker 4 (23:56):
It's a multimillion dollars. It's a multi million.
Speaker 3 (23:59):
Dollar business with so many moving parts and quite tepal
cash flow. Absolutely, if I could only convey to the
average and look, this is not in any ways, I
can form a diggered.
Speaker 4 (24:13):
Our urban cousins they have huge prices as well.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
But we're fighting, and just to contextualize this and farming
sense can we're struggling with the eels of the weather.
And the four seasons are quite literally four seasons that
we plan for and you can never get them right.
You get one in five, which is hey, grace to me.
Speaker 4 (24:35):
We got all our ducks in a row.
Speaker 3 (24:38):
And we're productive again, and the other four won't be
and you're playing catch up. You struggled with the finances
and all of that, which is the known part to
a degree, and then you have the animal welfare issues.
Speaker 4 (24:52):
Now you know, I went from being a veterinarian to
an engineer.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
So I learned to weld, taught myself to well for
no other reason that I couldn't for the engineering accounts,
and then I become a mechanic, so I would do
not only my own oil changes, but I would re
sleave an engine bore in a machine, because to have
someone else do the job was four or five or
(25:17):
ten grant and I can't quantify the cast. And I
learned all those things purely by putting either pressure on myself,
but the world was putting pressure on us to be
economically viable. In a constrained world, you become very adaptable. Now,
going back to the farming providence story of good old
(25:37):
Kiwi Blokes, that's that number eight wire stuff. I think
talking about urban cousins that often they overlook, you know,
and that's hard work.
Speaker 4 (25:49):
A lot of the time.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
Becoming that person man or woman is a significant journey.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
Are you able to talk to me about what you
know coming from this place, working here, and when you
found out about your son taking its own life, and
then coming back to work after that, what that experience
was like?
Speaker 3 (26:14):
Yeah, no, look, I I'm glad you're here. I want
you to tell the story my way, and I know
you'll report it in fear and kind way, just way.
I had a huge torment in my mind, one embarrassment.
Am I coming back to the very institution that I
(26:34):
campaigned to say, I'll right the ship. I'm not a
great Missium's a silly farmer that got elected, but I
believe in what I'm doing and that hasn't changed. I
was not so worried about the people in the building.
There's a one that I'll saying that, and it goes back.
(26:57):
You know a couple of hundred years that you know
the power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, which you
would know I think was Baron ass and that said
it a few hundred years ago. I knew that there
will be political rivalry or chivalry in this place that
won't leave. But in my situation, the wonderful human threats
(27:25):
that go through this organization. I had flowers from Chloe Smallbrook,
I had hugs from the Prime Minister Chris Sipkins, and
I had a heart to heart.
Speaker 4 (27:33):
He's got young kids. All of the nonsense.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
Disappeared, and I'm immensely proud of the politics not being
the poison that corrupted that story. People are inherently good
and they showed it. And I was very very grateful
because I was incredibly tormented to be we'd come back,
(28:01):
how I'd be received now to the wider point, I
was actually worried about how I would be perceived by
the public.
Speaker 4 (28:11):
And the reason I say that I.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
Was the one that critiqued the politicians for thirty five years.
You bloody people don't know what I do for that thing.
Come to the real world, not that, not from Ivory
Towers and Wellington, and what I meant by that if
I came back too soon, I wasn't an impath. I
wasn't sympathetic to my son. Didn't I was a father
(28:35):
removed from his emotions. Conversely, if I did what any
normal human being would do when a child commits suicide
and stays away for a lengthy period of time, I'm
a troffer. You've got your nose in the trough of
the policy says, it just rescrewing the system. You know,
you get paid one hundred and fifty grand a year
(28:57):
and you're not doing your work. Yeah, I know you're suffering,
but come back to work and make good with taxpayer.
Speaker 4 (29:02):
Good.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
So I had this huge liberal scales and my bloody
You're going round around in circles, and I couldn't reconcile
what the right thing to do was in my heart,
not the logical part of me. I said, I know
why I come here. I'm not a politician. Something of
(29:25):
the diametrically opposite statement. There's the guy wears a suit
in front of you. I'm not a politician by trade.
I'm a farmer who cares about rural people. And that
hasn't changed, if anything, when I could refocus, and I'm
still refocusing now. If I can't save my own bloody son,
(29:50):
I can save someone else's.
Speaker 4 (29:54):
And I genuinely mean it.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
And I don't know whether that's another term.
Speaker 4 (29:59):
I don't know if it's the end of this term,
but I say this candidly.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
The world can be buggered that I'll quit because there
are good people out there, way beyond my boy, and
he deserves and they deserve some help.
Speaker 4 (30:17):
I'm here to do it.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
So you're sort of thinking about that every day. People
can think it must be immensely hard.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
It's very hard, especially when you've got kidney diseased to boot.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Yeah, No, it's it's that is. It must be.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Quite the battle walking through the door every day and
summoning that, and you have to do it.
Speaker 3 (30:42):
I mean, I've spent thirty five years fighting the system.
Speaker 4 (30:47):
No I'm not a war maker. I think the thing
is I believed in my.
Speaker 3 (30:54):
Boy, because I believed in myself the farm and extor
who wants a few run at the wrecker and it's
the best way to frame it, he and she and
their kids. I want to enjoy their journey, and I
(31:15):
think I've got some of the skills that perhaps they
don't in terms of making this the story real in
this place.
Speaker 5 (31:26):
And that has not changed, do you think?
Speaker 1 (31:43):
Do you thinks for a while people haven't been able
to tell that story in an authentic way yet, because absolutely,
for a long time there have been people. You know,
there was a time when actually there were a large
number of pharmacy, greenpeace, and then that I.
Speaker 4 (32:00):
Can't understand it. I mean, you chaps may disagree or agree, but.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
I think there's been a we're part of society that's
no longer celebrated like we were. I mean it sounds
kind of corny, so forgive me, But farmers had the
same people had louded farmers like they used to lord
the police or the town postmaster. Now we're the bane
of you know, the environmentalists saying, well, you don't get
(32:31):
care about outcomes. I invest in my outcome every day,
and so does my neighbor. And the laggards they'll be
there and we'll chase those lights away in time.
Speaker 4 (32:42):
But that's a nonsense.
Speaker 3 (32:45):
And I go back to the start of the journey
when key, we farmers, men and women.
Speaker 4 (32:51):
Waste on their guts out. You know, they don't.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
Enjoy the weekends that so many are afford it because
lives don't afford them that. And there's something in that,
in that pride journey. And maybe I'm something of a
patriot to forgive the.
Speaker 6 (33:11):
American sort of tone to it that I look at
that flag when I come into this building and shit
or proud. There's a good country. Now, bugger them, and
I'll make sure the key the key. With urbanites, they
hear that story. You know, there's a whole lot of
good people out there.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
You're very well, you're quite kind to urbanites, urban cousins
and stuff.
Speaker 4 (33:37):
Well, they can be ignorant to my world. That's all right.
Speaker 3 (33:40):
They don't have to know what I do, but I
think they deserve to know.
Speaker 4 (33:44):
I mean, we feed them.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
Do you see do you see yourself as a bit
of a peacemaker just sort of coming to a place
Wellington as as as urban liberal.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
It's green electrics as far as I can see.
Speaker 5 (33:57):
Do you do you do coming?
Speaker 1 (34:00):
Sorry, you're not that emotional, if you're all good? Do
you see yourself as sort of like you've forgotten about us?
We used to be your heroes and you've forgotten about us.
Let me tell you our story?
Speaker 4 (34:10):
Ye yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
There has to be a compromise, right this place is
it's fraught with the difficulty of people that don't agree,
and the only way to actually proceed is to find
a comparable solution out the other side. It's not my
job to convince people that they're wrong. No, all right,
it's so for a whole lot of ideas that perhaps
they are not otherwise not thought of. Now, I go
(34:34):
out the front door of my farm.
Speaker 4 (34:39):
And I put the suit on when I'm at home,
and it's it's a metaphorical spade nor tall.
Speaker 3 (34:47):
It's the journey that I have to go through to
come to this place, to actually celebrate rural in New
Zealand and join the docks for the people that otherwise
don't know what my world looks like.
Speaker 4 (34:59):
And sometimes that's inherently.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
Difficult because when I first came here, I would say,
good morning, how are you guys going, And I'd get
a blank steer, and I.
Speaker 4 (35:12):
Thought, you guys lost the power of speech.
Speaker 3 (35:16):
But that's the farmer in me, right, I think to
going back to my previous remarks.
Speaker 7 (35:24):
New Zealander's are inherently good people, and I genuinely mean
that the mums and dads of society want a fair crab.
Speaker 4 (35:35):
I think it's in all of us.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
It's something that I think selfishly is and I'm quite
protective of it. It's something quite key we right, the
white packet fence I run at the work at that's
genuine and let's make tomorrow a bit better than today.
Speaker 4 (35:50):
And I think farmers emulate that every day.
Speaker 3 (35:54):
But I think there was a grind disconnection between the
providence of the country and my life and some of
my urban cousins. Now Chloe Swaarbert classic example, and I
are so divergent in our thinking, so inherently divergent.
Speaker 4 (36:13):
And that's fine. She's got her audience and I've got mine.
Speaker 3 (36:17):
But there's moments of brilliance that happens once in a
while where you can sit with someone who's the polor
opposite to you politically forget all the ideological crap and
actually sit down and talk about people and say, you
know what, if you get this wrong, Chloe, you harm
my people anymore.
Speaker 4 (36:35):
That if I get it wrong, I am yours.
Speaker 3 (36:38):
So let's let's find ay an offer where we all agree,
and if we have to agree to disagree some of the.
Speaker 4 (36:45):
Time, that's okay too.
Speaker 3 (36:47):
But it's having the conversation, which I think, for it's
certainly twelve years I would argue have been missing.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
Do you think coming here, You know, when you meet
people like Chloe Swawbreck, who represents the most too of
an electorate of the country, you can't face to face
with people who are your opposite more, you know, and
that encourages you to find compromise because you said absolutely
Actually these people that that good people, the nice people,
(37:16):
are well meaning people. They just represent a different audience
to mine.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
I mean, I actually people are quite unkind towards her.
I actually kind of find it quite lovely. Her and
I get on personally. Although I don't often talk to her.
I think she's been very kind to me about briding
my son passing away. It's a kind of human being
that does that or any decent human beingness, it's she's
a lovely human being. I've got no issue with her personally.
(37:43):
Ideologically I'm totally opposite, right. But then to your point,
her audience is very different from mine. She's talking to young,
liberal thinking people, if that's the right word.
Speaker 4 (37:55):
In the largest city in New Zealand. She's not talking to.
Speaker 3 (38:01):
Country Buncan people that tend to be a bit more conservative,
that don't like big crowds.
Speaker 4 (38:08):
You know that those stories are very, very different.
Speaker 3 (38:12):
I think the wider point is if she's got an
appetite for a conversation, I'm up for it.
Speaker 4 (38:20):
And I think that so.
Speaker 3 (38:22):
Many of the rural based MPs, now that there's more
of us, are because you know, there's only one way
forward in this world, and that's the forward, right.
Speaker 4 (38:31):
You know, at least that way, you know what you're.
Speaker 3 (38:32):
Going, you hat, rather than falling back into the problem,
you challenge yourself.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
Can I ask about the poster, the met so at
these places you visit advice you've put an MP?
Speaker 7 (38:42):
Yeah, over the last.
Speaker 3 (38:43):
Four years, I've only ever.
Speaker 4 (38:47):
Been overseas once.
Speaker 3 (38:49):
And if I could be so candid, please forgive me,
Please forgive me for saying out this loud, and I
apologize before the fact.
Speaker 4 (38:58):
I'm shit scared of eerplane. So it was a miracle
to get me in a lot of time.
Speaker 3 (39:03):
It was a miracle to get me in an airplane.
And now I spend a lot of time campaigning talking
to rural folk, and then I've met some cool people.
Speaker 4 (39:15):
Really really cool people, and.
Speaker 3 (39:18):
Some of them mean, have been very kind to me
just and at this you know, at the slightest moment,
they've offered one or two pleasant remarks and it sticks
with you.
Speaker 2 (39:27):
Right, people came to be very kind. Oh it's funny.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
People are horrible to him peace a lot of the time,
but they can also be very kind as well.
Speaker 3 (39:34):
I've had some incredibly kind remarks where people have missed
a public event and then driven for two hours just
to thank me. I think that's incredibly kind. And I
don't do it this job for those accolades or for
those rewards, but for every bad day that you have,
(39:57):
and there are those, there's lovely remarks and kindness out
there side too.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
We can I ask you about, you know, your son's
passion from rugby. So it was a lot of the
tributes were based on his performance on the field, can
you tell me about And you mentioned, you mentioned when
he was young, you were quite sure he would he would.
Speaker 3 (40:19):
He was such a soft natured young man, right, And
I remember when he played rapper rugby. All the kids
are going that way, My son's going to the opposite.
Speaker 4 (40:30):
No son, this way.
Speaker 3 (40:32):
And it's one of those parents where you go, oh lord,
you know, like, because I'm embarrassed, right like that, you'll
come right, so here we go. But because he was
naturally an empathetic, quiet, kit very you know, he was
more social person than that rough and ready rugby player.
(40:52):
But man did he become it. And we both played
open side flanka And there was a moment where and
I remember it well that I said, the most covenative
title you might have is the rich and the cause
of the world. That you don't get a lot of
(41:14):
accolades for all the tackles you make, but by God's son,
remember that all those tackles would never have eventuated and
trice had they not happened. And I remember saying that
at his funeral, and I sat there and thinking.
Speaker 4 (41:31):
About what I was going to say about this young man.
Speaker 3 (41:34):
And that's why you heard me say tackle the bastard
to make it count. And it was a metaphor for life,
because you've got one shot at it.
Speaker 4 (41:43):
Make it real.
Speaker 3 (41:45):
And those remarks still haunt me now because I worried
that he got head injuries out of it.
Speaker 4 (41:53):
I don't know. Perhaps he did.
Speaker 3 (41:56):
We all get knocked around as flankas because you know,
straight off the side of the scrumin into the verse
five is Rober's dog.
Speaker 4 (42:04):
Is Queen as quick as you can.
Speaker 3 (42:07):
And man, he became a hell of a fierce rugby player.
For a light guy, because we're both quite lean, he
had electric speed and he put big guys down.
Speaker 4 (42:19):
I was mutually proud of.
Speaker 2 (42:20):
Them, for them and for yourself.
Speaker 1 (42:22):
Now you're you must naturally, and you mentioned it before,
you must naturally think.
Speaker 2 (42:28):
Can I make it to the end of the parliament?
Don't want to? Don't want to?
Speaker 3 (42:31):
I will make it to the end of the parliament
unless my kidneys failed before it.
Speaker 2 (42:34):
And when have you thought about the next one?
Speaker 4 (42:38):
I have? I have, Thomas m. The conviction for being
here is not changed. People will decide whether I've had
enough failure or not.
Speaker 3 (42:50):
And in the world where you're judged by your peers,
I think in the court of public opinion.
Speaker 4 (42:56):
If they think I'm good enough, I'll stay.
Speaker 3 (42:58):
If I find not, then then it's my time and
then someone else can come here. I don't have a
monopoly on power. I don't even believe in power. People
talk about power and politics. There will be those that
believe that they're more than what they are, but they're
just people. I don't see the power in the position
(43:20):
that other people might caught in their mind that it
grasses me that you know you're all powerful because you're
a politician. Bugger off, that's a nonsense. You just happen
to be lucky enough to be here, or why you're here.
If you if you're a genuine punter, you'll do your
job and that's helped some Keywis. You know, hopefully a
(43:40):
few Keywis have a good life out of it.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
Is there anything that's probably my last question, Is there
anything that I that I haven't asked to you, that
that there's something you feel like you need to say?
Speaker 4 (43:53):
No, check, I think you've been wonderfully kind. I would
just stress the point I think.
Speaker 3 (44:02):
I'm immensely lucky to be here, and if I could
by adding that, if I had no other story to
share at the end of my time, if we've been here,
I can't more genuinely say I'm bloody lucky.
Speaker 4 (44:17):
To be here.
Speaker 3 (44:18):
And if I can do a little bit of good
while I am here, then I've done what I intended
to do. And if that means making it a little
bit easier for a farmer to enjoy the simple things
to celebrate rural New Zealand for all it's good, challenge
(44:40):
the bad, then I have done what I set out
to do, because at some point I'm going to go
home and be a farmer, and that's what I was always.
Speaker 4 (44:52):
Ever made to do.
Speaker 1 (44:53):
Can afford to that every day.
Speaker 3 (44:57):
Every day I will like old bones and hopefully die
on an old man, having done what I see it
out to do as a four year old.
Speaker 2 (45:08):
Well, thank you very much for sharing your story.
Speaker 1 (45:10):
That's really great moving It's I'm pretty hard to open
up my data.
Speaker 2 (45:14):
Thank you for doing. I think knowing you most work.
Speaker 1 (45:17):
People will people will really value hearing about your experience system.
Speaker 2 (45:22):
That was on the titles for another week. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1 (45:24):
Ethan Sills is our producer and I was Thomas Conland.
Speaker 2 (45:28):
Come beat me next week for more on the titles. Thanks
for listening,
Hello, and welcome to on the titles The Herald's Politics podcast.
I'm your host, Deputy political Editor Thomas Coughlin. This is
a special episode today. Back in May, Brody Cameron, the
son of ACTMP Mark Cameron, died as the result of
a suspected suicide. Mark hasn't spoken publicly about the tragedy
since it happened, but he has given us his first
in depth interview on it, which was what we're going
(00:28):
to give to you now.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
This is a warning that the.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Episode does deal with some heavy topics around suicide and
mental health. There are some help services in the show
notes for this episode if you need them. Of course,
if you don't want to listen to it, just leave
it in your feed and we'll be back next week
with ordinary on the tiles.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Apologies for their clicking sounds in the background.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
That is our photographer, Mark Mitchell, the confusingly named Martin Mitchell,
not the MP.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
So that's what that is. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
So I when you wanted to just start about talking
about that, about your journey to this place and about
your son's role than in that journey.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
Yeah, Look, it's a funny business farming. I mean, I immensely
love it. I don't profess to be brilliant catter, but
I think most farmers look, my friend, I'm just how
humble COWCOCKI is. We'd say one we left alone a
little bit more than perhaps I was, and so did
my neighbor, And by virtue you get a lot or
(01:33):
as farmers, a sense that their people aren't playing fair
cricket right. And I stood up, and the motivations Thomas,
I don't know where on earth they came from, but
I just knew that I could no longer be a
passenger in this. I'd fairly recently found out I had
end stage d renal failure, so I had kidney disease,
(01:54):
which it subsequently made the media aware of. But I
felt like my world was collapsing, and I wanted to
make bloody sure that the reasons that I was farming
and the things that were due to me that I
kept on doing.
Speaker 4 (02:11):
But by having myself, I was helping someone else.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
So after over thirty years in the dairy industry there'd
been some changes in the idean government, I said, I
just I can't reconcile these anymore. I know my neighbors can't,
and people were naval gazing the whole time. They were miserable,
and I don't know where I got the compunction or
compulsion from that.
Speaker 4 (02:36):
I wanted to stop it.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
Change it, be part of a narrative that actually puts
some I don't know some Kiwi farming authenticity in this
plus because I think it was bereft of it.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
It's been a while since there was a large representation
of farmers in parliament.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
Well, some would argue we were a bit different. I
don't think we are. I think that's something of a
bloody nonsense. I think we're just Kiwi blokes, men and
women that want to be recognized for what we do
do well and have some of the commentary of this
place support that, And I don't think it did. And
(03:12):
there was a widening gap between and so may argue
this is not true, But there was a widening gap
between my world, you know, any given weekend when I
would be farming, and the perception of an urban New
Zealander that that that they shall not do these things.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
Well, come to my world. That's a nonsense.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Tell me about your world. What's what like?
Speaker 1 (03:37):
You know, we we have a larger urban audience. What
tell me about the parts of your of your of
your world that well I can give you.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
I'll give you an anecdote, Thomas, I was standing in
about three years ago. It was standing we had a
down account down a cow as a cow that's got
milk fever.
Speaker 4 (03:54):
I think it was early August.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
It's now the poor animals now, lots of creatures tipped
over and falling into a canal. So I'm now up
to my stomach with a chain trying to grab this
animal out before it drowns with a tractor. It said
before I atm the frigid cold and you know, your
chest deep.
Speaker 4 (04:11):
From water on a Sunday morning.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
And at no point did I not love what I'm doing.
But those are the days where you go, this is
really really hard, And after thirty years on the hot,
at that stage you're still you're still saying it's worth it.
Speaker 4 (04:29):
I believe in what I'm doing. I love being.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
On the land, I love being with the animals. I
love the tactile nature of it. But that's pretty hard, right.
You know, on Sunday morning, everyone's enjoying tea and toast.
Speaker 4 (04:42):
At eight I'm you know, up to my neck quite
in the proverbial. You might say, well, that's the.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Kind of thing I'm fighting for and was fighting for.
Then that wasn't an unusual reality. And I think that
the easiest way to frame it is me personally, as.
Speaker 4 (05:05):
A four year old, knew what I wanted to do.
And that sounds a bit corny. Forgive me.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
I absolutely love being outside tractors and you can see
my office is adorned with plastic tractors and and you
know anything farming, gun boots, et cetera. It's home. It's
the providence of all things rural life. I knew what
I wanted to.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
Do as a four year old, and as a forty
four year old it was no different.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
And God willing, I'll be in my seventies and make
old bones on a farm, arguably being left alone.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
My grandm there's a farmer is eighty four.
Speaker 4 (05:47):
You see.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
That's that's very much downside. It's small as days, you know.
Speaker 4 (05:51):
But that's you're outside.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Yeah, IVE got some good memories of him. I mean,
I've never been up to my neck.
Speaker 4 (05:58):
But I mean, forgive me.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
That was just one anacdote where I'm going, you know,
that was that was that was.
Speaker 4 (06:04):
Quite a topical day.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
It's certainly not an easy life. You know.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
We remember being on his farm in the winter. Early
morning was cold down in south And.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Because of all of this, in my thirties I suffered
terrible depression. Now I spoke of it in the last
Parliament and there said archillers hell about being ambition, ambitious,
bigger pardon where you're fighting this ever ever increasing desire.
Speaker 4 (06:38):
To be success? And what does does success look like?
Speaker 3 (06:42):
And for me it was the ultimate goal, owning a farm,
being my own task master, a simple life. But to
a degree that was that was indicative. All that was
that resonated so well with so many Kiwi farms they.
Speaker 4 (06:55):
Felt the same.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
And this depression, in the said of it was a
corrosive vealment. I just didn't how to reconcile. You know,
farmers are pregnancy that's broken Barnes. Oh, well six weeks
and I've had company dozen of those on a farm.
Speaker 4 (07:12):
I'll be right and back to normal.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
The depression came in like a thief in the night,
and I couldn't be rid of it. And I knew
the harder I thought, the worse it got because I
gave it credence. I value almost being miserable, which makes
no sense, I know, But years later, having been out
the now, out the other side of it, I actually
(07:36):
learned that a lot of it was my own doing
the nature of being isolated. Farmers are not good at
talking to each other, and God forbid that you concede
that you might be broken, but you know, a metaphor
for mental illness. At that point I realized on that
(07:58):
journey that I was, I think for something bigger than myself.
Speaker 4 (08:01):
It was was.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
The providence of what kywe blokes do, especially blokes, because
we as far as rural people, we're really good at
not telling our story, you know, really good to say
when when things go bad, you know what a ship
day it was, but we're hopeless it actually standing up
for ourselves, you know, we're really good at what we do.
Speaker 4 (08:23):
And you know, out of all of.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
That came the man you see today, which is I
actually believe.
Speaker 4 (08:29):
In farmers, probably more than may believing themselves.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
M hmm. And when did your own when did you
When did you realize in your thirties that that that
you were battling depression as well? When did you when
did you realize that?
Speaker 3 (08:43):
And can you yeah, I can remember almost to the
day I had bought a hew to cows, quite a
large hut of counts as five hundred cows at the time,
which is quite a substantial leap. And the fiscal void
that a farmer has in front of him, trying to
make ends meet, fighting to wear, the fighting animal well being, health, etc.
(09:09):
All the norms that farms have, and being new to ownership.
And now I've got the responsibility of getting these things
in carf and if I don't get them in CARF,
I don't generate an income. And you know, for the
town could because I wasn't raised on a farm, the
belief that I could actually do it came.
Speaker 4 (09:26):
To question, and there was the self doubt and.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
You know, sniping remarks not intended, I took them so
and the element of doubt became.
Speaker 4 (09:43):
A metaphorical hitchhiker that I couldn't be rid of.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
You'd like this blistered creature in your car and you say, well,
this person, now I've taken you, You're along the journey.
Speaker 4 (09:52):
Can you can you be gone?
Speaker 3 (09:54):
And I couldn't get rid of it, and it had
stayed with me for about four years when there was
this all this perpetual doubt no matter how hard I tried.
And I know, Thomas, there was a time where I
felt like it didn't matter how hard I worked, I
couldn't achieve the day's toil like I'd intended when I
(10:17):
started the day, and I got up at two in
the morning and there'd been a disagreement over a boundary fence.
Speaker 4 (10:26):
And this is the stupidity of one's mind at the time.
I started fencing in the dead of night.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
Because I knew that I had a short window the
coming week to get it all done. And that was
two thirty in the morning, and I knew I was
a man. I will use the words that my words
broken at that point and shaer exhaustion share exhaustion was
(10:53):
ironically and I mean were a relief because if I
was so exhausted, stopped thinking of the personal faise.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
So it's two thirty in the morning, you're on a farm.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
On a farm with a spade, with a tractor and
lights under lights, digging post.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Holes, and that's when a twig.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
Then I knew something was awry, something was skew, and
I had to I had to make good with making
right with myself, because all the wants and the desires
would never come to fruition.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
And did you reach out for help or how did you?
Speaker 3 (11:27):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (11:28):
I for where and how why?
Speaker 3 (11:32):
People say I probably spoke a little bit more than some.
Most will aren't well sort of bury that head and
draw the curtains at night and pretend it's not an issue.
I remember going to a GP and said, I'm just
I'm broken. I don't know what the hell is going on.
I can't make sense of the world, and things that
would otherwise not wory some worry me immensely. And from
(11:56):
there I had a very accommodating general practitioner and he
sent me off to a psychologist.
Speaker 4 (12:03):
I was there for probably six weeks on and off.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
I think I was thirty two or thirty fifty two now,
and it was absolutely one of the hardest things I've
ever had to do, because you don't in that journey,
you don't recognize yourself anymore, and coming all the way forward.
That's why I don't bear any judgment on my son.
Speaker 4 (12:31):
It will be it. I didn't even know he was
suffering at the time, if he was at.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
All, And just to finish your own, your own journey,
you managed to go through that process.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
And yeah, and manage your own.
Speaker 4 (12:44):
Yeah, absolutely, yes, absolutely.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
I was medicated for about three and a half years,
and then it felt at the time it became something
of an archillsia that I constantly had to.
Speaker 4 (12:59):
Be medicating be happy, and.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
I found myself putting false timelines on things. I'm not
a psychologist, I'm far from it, but I'm something of
a practical person, and I think, especially for farmers, there's
this inherent risk that you put a timeline on something.
You put a timeline on something. It's like a broken bone.
(13:23):
And I was that guy. Right while in six weeks
the broken bone will be fixed, the cast will come off,
and I'll be back to normal life. Well, mental illness
doesn't work like that, and it doesn't work like that.
That's my personal belief. And I found at that time
that the more I spoke about it, the more I
learned that other people had some degree sometimes.
Speaker 4 (13:46):
Of suffering thoughts of ill will.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
Self harm, They were inherently unhappy more often than they
were happy, and there was a pattern to it. And
the more or I actually just said it's okay, and
I think that was the bit, and then I made
make good with And this is the important point for me,
We've been bloody busy and the old adage and out
(14:12):
of mind is a dangerous one. And people would say
to me, gruscious me, mate, you're working on a You're
working on a Sunday, so I don't see his work.
Speaker 4 (14:20):
This is I love what I do to the point
that I get in tears about I love it. Translation
leave me alone, you know.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Yeah, and so and you feel you feel within yourself
now that you've able to.
Speaker 4 (14:35):
Ah years ago. Yeah, yeah, this is a long time
gone now.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
And the transition from being someone who was unwell now
twenty years on to being someone that advocates to help
other people. I mean, there are a lot of people
that have had a similar journey, and they will have their.
Speaker 4 (14:56):
Own thoughts and ideas on.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
How you've fix those things, and everyone's journey is quite
unique to them. But I just made it a point
of saying, well, I'm a Polly, but more importantly, I'm
just a Kawa cocky.
Speaker 4 (15:09):
And I'll make a point.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
Those two worlds are miles apart, and yet I'm still
the same person that suffered from oppression.
Speaker 4 (15:21):
And you know, I was pretty miserable when it happened.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Now I'm telling you about your.
Speaker 4 (15:40):
Son, good kid.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
Devastated that I'm now in this position having to talk
about the loss of a child as a father. I mean,
I desperately wanted to go fishing, spend time with my
kid as an old man, when he was.
Speaker 4 (15:56):
An adult with children of his own.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
I always used to tell them when he was a
little guy, and I desperately loved this child when he
was a young man, make your tackles count.
Speaker 4 (16:09):
And he was.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
A very quiet aged boy. But he was also one
of these kids that was not self assured when he
was young, so he had to prop them up. And
the irony of it was earlier on. I never thought
he'd be much of a rugby player, but he became
quite stoud in fact, and the self determination that he
had was something that parents quite often miss in their
(16:33):
own children's, the tenacity and drive and she determination that
he had. I think any parent, I'm not sure if
you've got children, but any parent will always say that
there's no children like their own. And I don't regret
to parents that feel the love of their children and
say such things.
Speaker 4 (16:51):
I'm certainly one of those.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
But Chet, he was a good kid, bloody, good kid,
hard worker, is I'd never lived vicariously through my children.
I didn't want to, you're I think as a parent
it was in come upon me to set them up
for life because life is bloody difficult, and give them
(17:14):
all the skills. I mean, my depression is an example
of that, struggling to make financially ends meet all of
the above with the things and discussions and ideas and
thoughts that we had for young people in an ever
challenging world, right And I think I was quite good
(17:35):
at sharing my journeys and stories with him. He was
a receptive audience at some of the time. But a
lot of teenagers, of them, they're not all it's good,
and you know when it's. When it's not, you just
don't talk about it, I imagine. But a lovely young man,
and as any any good parent will be incredibly proud
(17:56):
of who he was and sadly thomas who he could
have been, and personally, and this is the heart wrenching thing.
It feels like something of a fool's errant.
Speaker 4 (18:11):
My job here and I'll explain myself. I came here
to stop that.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
This boy had worked, This young man was working long
hours to be a success in his mind. His journey
was quite unique, and so much that so many young
people are disillusioned. He was he had a future. I
know he did, He'd spoken of it. He was contracting,
(18:39):
he was living with a group of friends. They were
all in the same industry, huge hours. But the driver,
the ambition, all the things that I pride myself.
Speaker 4 (18:49):
And then as a father, I then on reflection, going
should I drive this g too hot? Well, you tell your.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
Children you love them all the time, and if you're
shy about parents of doing such thing, I'm certainly not
going to be accused of that.
Speaker 4 (19:07):
I love all my children.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
Perhaps I, you know, on reflection, wished I hadn't been
so ambitious myself, so they might not have said a
standard for themselves that it was high as Maybe hap
hats they did.
Speaker 4 (19:21):
I don't know. But I came back to this place.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
After Brady took us life, and I'm if I could
be frank, I'm thinking.
Speaker 4 (19:31):
What the fucking hell did I miss?
Speaker 3 (19:34):
You know, I'm a human being and i'd be a
politician a brief time.
Speaker 4 (19:40):
I'm a dad for.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
A long time, and you're just going, this is the
madness of all of it. I can't reconcile, but to
speak to the boy himself, the young man, the old man,
he could have.
Speaker 4 (19:53):
Become, you just got I don't understand it.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
But in going back to all my journey, all those
years before, I saw the rock that was metastasizing in me.
Just sadly, I'd had to warwithal to go out and
get help.
Speaker 4 (20:13):
Unbeknst to me, he was suffering and he didn't.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
It must be incredibly hard to see, to see that though,
that connection between you and your sons, but be unable
to help him from ween immensely.
Speaker 4 (20:30):
And I used the wording.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
I'm embarrassed, like it's falls errands, like I came here
and I couldn't even save my own bloody child, you know.
But I don't want to well up and start crying.
But how was I doing? I know I came here
for this reason, but I couldn't stop it. The rot
(20:54):
comes in my own home. But in all of that, Thomas,
how was I to know if the boy wasn't willing
to speak about it. He was working hard, he was
out doing what he was passionate about.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
What was he what was he doing?
Speaker 4 (21:07):
He was an agricultural contract so.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
He was in heavy machinery, doing big hours, working immensely.
I was incredibly proud of it, and you know, creating
a world for himself that hopefully was a little bit
betters to my event today and his own biological mument.
We've been separated for about twelve years. She was unaware
(21:30):
that he was suffering. I was unaware that he was suffering.
Chris Smith whole family wasn't privy to the darkest recesses
of this young man's mind. And there is the stark
contrast between me and him. I was a little bit
more vocal twenty years earlier, saying, you know, lord, shit,
(21:51):
this ross has got to stop.
Speaker 4 (21:52):
I'm going to I'm not going to be able to
function anymore.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
And for him, sadly, the people, very, the very people
closest to them couldn't stop it.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
Is that is that how you see? You know, you
use the metaphor of eruption like an unlaunched hitchhiker. Is
that is that how you see what.
Speaker 4 (22:11):
It was for me? What it absolutely was for me?
It was?
Speaker 3 (22:16):
And I use that metaphor because in my own instance
of suffering, the more I concentrated on something like I
why am I depressed, the more perpetuated, and then when
there were moments when you felt good in yourself. You're
(22:38):
at a rapier game and you're playing and you're enjoying it,
and gracious to me, you hadn't thought about feeling unhappy,
or you know, how you're going to make the bells,
make you know financial ends meet? Or are you going
to have enough food on the farm to feed all
these you know, that's ever increasing the safety appetite of
(22:59):
the animals, you might say.
Speaker 4 (23:01):
Which is ever in always grust me?
Speaker 3 (23:05):
And I'm not depressed at the moment, and then the
cycle begins again. And for me personally, that was the
reason I used or reasoning I used the word rot
because it became this perpetual convey about the more I
thought about it, the more it cycles background. And it
was a four year cycle of well, I haven't thought
(23:26):
anything negative.
Speaker 4 (23:27):
Now there something must be wrong with me.
Speaker 3 (23:29):
Isn't it great that I'm actually happy like a normal person?
And then I would reinvest in the yelks of feeling
inward rather than outward.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
So it's a funny business farming.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
You've got to look after, you know, your family, You've
got to look after one hundreds of thousands of animals.
You've got to look after your finances. You know, you're
one person running a view.
Speaker 4 (23:56):
It's a multimillion dollars. It's a multi million.
Speaker 3 (23:59):
Dollar business with so many moving parts and quite tepal
cash flow. Absolutely, if I could only convey to the
average and look, this is not in any ways, I
can form a diggered.
Speaker 4 (24:13):
Our urban cousins they have huge prices as well.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
But we're fighting, and just to contextualize this and farming
sense can we're struggling with the eels of the weather.
And the four seasons are quite literally four seasons that
we plan for and you can never get them right.
You get one in five, which is hey, grace to me.
Speaker 4 (24:35):
We got all our ducks in a row.
Speaker 3 (24:38):
And we're productive again, and the other four won't be
and you're playing catch up. You struggled with the finances
and all of that, which is the known part to
a degree, and then you have the animal welfare issues.
Speaker 4 (24:52):
Now you know, I went from being a veterinarian to
an engineer.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
So I learned to weld, taught myself to well for
no other reason that I couldn't for the engineering accounts,
and then I become a mechanic, so I would do
not only my own oil changes, but I would re
sleave an engine bore in a machine, because to have
someone else do the job was four or five or
(25:17):
ten grant and I can't quantify the cast. And I
learned all those things purely by putting either pressure on myself,
but the world was putting pressure on us to be
economically viable. In a constrained world, you become very adaptable. Now,
going back to the farming providence story of good old
(25:37):
Kiwi Blokes, that's that number eight wire stuff. I think
talking about urban cousins that often they overlook, you know,
and that's hard work.
Speaker 4 (25:49):
A lot of the time.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
Becoming that person man or woman is a significant journey.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
Are you able to talk to me about what you
know coming from this place, working here, and when you
found out about your son taking its own life, and
then coming back to work after that, what that experience
was like?
Speaker 3 (26:14):
Yeah, no, look, I I'm glad you're here. I want
you to tell the story my way, and I know
you'll report it in fear and kind way, just way.
I had a huge torment in my mind, one embarrassment.
Am I coming back to the very institution that I
(26:34):
campaigned to say, I'll right the ship. I'm not a
great Missium's a silly farmer that got elected, but I
believe in what I'm doing and that hasn't changed. I
was not so worried about the people in the building.
There's a one that I'll saying that, and it goes back.
(26:57):
You know a couple of hundred years that you know
the power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, which you
would know I think was Baron ass and that said
it a few hundred years ago. I knew that there
will be political rivalry or chivalry in this place that
won't leave. But in my situation, the wonderful human threats
(27:25):
that go through this organization. I had flowers from Chloe Smallbrook,
I had hugs from the Prime Minister Chris Sipkins, and
I had a heart to heart.
Speaker 4 (27:33):
He's got young kids. All of the nonsense.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
Disappeared, and I'm immensely proud of the politics not being
the poison that corrupted that story. People are inherently good
and they showed it. And I was very very grateful
because I was incredibly tormented to be we'd come back,
(28:01):
how I'd be received now to the wider point, I
was actually worried about how I would be perceived by
the public.
Speaker 4 (28:11):
And the reason I say that I.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
Was the one that critiqued the politicians for thirty five years.
You bloody people don't know what I do for that thing.
Come to the real world, not that, not from Ivory
Towers and Wellington, and what I meant by that if
I came back too soon, I wasn't an impath. I
wasn't sympathetic to my son. Didn't I was a father
(28:35):
removed from his emotions. Conversely, if I did what any
normal human being would do when a child commits suicide
and stays away for a lengthy period of time, I'm
a troffer. You've got your nose in the trough of
the policy says, it just rescrewing the system. You know,
you get paid one hundred and fifty grand a year
(28:57):
and you're not doing your work. Yeah, I know you're suffering,
but come back to work and make good with taxpayer.
Speaker 4 (29:02):
Good.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
So I had this huge liberal scales and my bloody
You're going round around in circles, and I couldn't reconcile
what the right thing to do was in my heart,
not the logical part of me. I said, I know
why I come here. I'm not a politician. Something of
(29:25):
the diametrically opposite statement. There's the guy wears a suit
in front of you. I'm not a politician by trade.
I'm a farmer who cares about rural people. And that
hasn't changed, if anything, when I could refocus, and I'm
still refocusing now. If I can't save my own bloody son,
(29:50):
I can save someone else's.
Speaker 4 (29:54):
And I genuinely mean it.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
And I don't know whether that's another term.
Speaker 4 (29:59):
I don't know if it's the end of this term,
but I say this candidly.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
The world can be buggered that I'll quit because there
are good people out there, way beyond my boy, and
he deserves and they deserve some help.
Speaker 4 (30:17):
I'm here to do it.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
So you're sort of thinking about that every day. People
can think it must be immensely hard.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
It's very hard, especially when you've got kidney diseased to boot.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Yeah, No, it's it's that is. It must be.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Quite the battle walking through the door every day and
summoning that, and you have to do it.
Speaker 3 (30:42):
I mean, I've spent thirty five years fighting the system.
Speaker 4 (30:47):
No I'm not a war maker. I think the thing
is I believed in my.
Speaker 3 (30:54):
Boy, because I believed in myself the farm and extor
who wants a few run at the wrecker and it's
the best way to frame it, he and she and
their kids. I want to enjoy their journey, and I
(31:15):
think I've got some of the skills that perhaps they
don't in terms of making this the story real in
this place.
Speaker 5 (31:26):
And that has not changed, do you think?
Speaker 1 (31:43):
Do you thinks for a while people haven't been able
to tell that story in an authentic way yet, because absolutely,
for a long time there have been people. You know,
there was a time when actually there were a large
number of pharmacy, greenpeace, and then that I.
Speaker 4 (32:00):
Can't understand it. I mean, you chaps may disagree or agree, but.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
I think there's been a we're part of society that's
no longer celebrated like we were. I mean it sounds
kind of corny, so forgive me, But farmers had the
same people had louded farmers like they used to lord
the police or the town postmaster. Now we're the bane
of you know, the environmentalists saying, well, you don't get
(32:31):
care about outcomes. I invest in my outcome every day,
and so does my neighbor. And the laggards they'll be
there and we'll chase those lights away in time.
Speaker 4 (32:42):
But that's a nonsense.
Speaker 3 (32:45):
And I go back to the start of the journey
when key, we farmers, men and women.
Speaker 4 (32:51):
Waste on their guts out. You know, they don't.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
Enjoy the weekends that so many are afford it because
lives don't afford them that. And there's something in that,
in that pride journey. And maybe I'm something of a
patriot to forgive the.
Speaker 6 (33:11):
American sort of tone to it that I look at
that flag when I come into this building and shit
or proud. There's a good country. Now, bugger them, and
I'll make sure the key the key. With urbanites, they
hear that story. You know, there's a whole lot of
good people out there.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
You're very well, you're quite kind to urbanites, urban cousins
and stuff.
Speaker 4 (33:37):
Well, they can be ignorant to my world. That's all right.
Speaker 3 (33:40):
They don't have to know what I do, but I
think they deserve to know.
Speaker 4 (33:44):
I mean, we feed them.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
Do you see do you see yourself as a bit
of a peacemaker just sort of coming to a place
Wellington as as as urban liberal.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
It's green electrics as far as I can see.
Speaker 5 (33:57):
Do you do you do coming?
Speaker 1 (34:00):
Sorry, you're not that emotional, if you're all good? Do
you see yourself as sort of like you've forgotten about us?
We used to be your heroes and you've forgotten about us.
Let me tell you our story?
Speaker 4 (34:10):
Ye yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
There has to be a compromise, right this place is
it's fraught with the difficulty of people that don't agree,
and the only way to actually proceed is to find
a comparable solution out the other side. It's not my
job to convince people that they're wrong. No, all right,
it's so for a whole lot of ideas that perhaps
they are not otherwise not thought of. Now, I go
(34:34):
out the front door of my farm.
Speaker 4 (34:39):
And I put the suit on when I'm at home,
and it's it's a metaphorical spade nor tall.
Speaker 3 (34:47):
It's the journey that I have to go through to
come to this place, to actually celebrate rural in New
Zealand and join the docks for the people that otherwise
don't know what my world looks like.
Speaker 4 (34:59):
And sometimes that's inherently.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
Difficult because when I first came here, I would say,
good morning, how are you guys going, And I'd get
a blank steer, and I.
Speaker 4 (35:12):
Thought, you guys lost the power of speech.
Speaker 3 (35:16):
But that's the farmer in me, right, I think to
going back to my previous remarks.
Speaker 7 (35:24):
New Zealander's are inherently good people, and I genuinely mean
that the mums and dads of society want a fair crab.
Speaker 4 (35:35):
I think it's in all of us.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
It's something that I think selfishly is and I'm quite
protective of it. It's something quite key we right, the
white packet fence I run at the work at that's
genuine and let's make tomorrow a bit better than today.
Speaker 4 (35:50):
And I think farmers emulate that every day.
Speaker 3 (35:54):
But I think there was a grind disconnection between the
providence of the country and my life and some of
my urban cousins. Now Chloe Swaarbert classic example, and I
are so divergent in our thinking, so inherently divergent.
Speaker 4 (36:13):
And that's fine. She's got her audience and I've got mine.
Speaker 3 (36:17):
But there's moments of brilliance that happens once in a
while where you can sit with someone who's the polor
opposite to you politically forget all the ideological crap and
actually sit down and talk about people and say, you
know what, if you get this wrong, Chloe, you harm
my people anymore.
Speaker 4 (36:35):
That if I get it wrong, I am yours.
Speaker 3 (36:38):
So let's let's find ay an offer where we all agree,
and if we have to agree to disagree some of the.
Speaker 4 (36:45):
Time, that's okay too.
Speaker 3 (36:47):
But it's having the conversation, which I think, for it's
certainly twelve years I would argue have been missing.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
Do you think coming here, You know, when you meet
people like Chloe Swawbreck, who represents the most too of
an electorate of the country, you can't face to face
with people who are your opposite more, you know, and
that encourages you to find compromise because you said absolutely
Actually these people that that good people, the nice people,
(37:16):
are well meaning people. They just represent a different audience
to mine.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
I mean, I actually people are quite unkind towards her.
I actually kind of find it quite lovely. Her and
I get on personally. Although I don't often talk to her.
I think she's been very kind to me about briding
my son passing away. It's a kind of human being
that does that or any decent human beingness, it's she's
a lovely human being. I've got no issue with her personally.
(37:43):
Ideologically I'm totally opposite, right. But then to your point,
her audience is very different from mine. She's talking to young,
liberal thinking people, if that's the right word.
Speaker 4 (37:55):
In the largest city in New Zealand. She's not talking to.
Speaker 3 (38:01):
Country Buncan people that tend to be a bit more conservative,
that don't like big crowds.
Speaker 4 (38:08):
You know that those stories are very, very different.
Speaker 3 (38:12):
I think the wider point is if she's got an
appetite for a conversation, I'm up for it.
Speaker 4 (38:20):
And I think that so.
Speaker 3 (38:22):
Many of the rural based MPs, now that there's more
of us, are because you know, there's only one way
forward in this world, and that's the forward, right.
Speaker 4 (38:31):
You know, at least that way, you know what you're.
Speaker 3 (38:32):
Going, you hat, rather than falling back into the problem,
you challenge yourself.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
Can I ask about the poster, the met so at
these places you visit advice you've put an MP?
Speaker 7 (38:42):
Yeah, over the last.
Speaker 3 (38:43):
Four years, I've only ever.
Speaker 4 (38:47):
Been overseas once.
Speaker 3 (38:49):
And if I could be so candid, please forgive me,
Please forgive me for saying out this loud, and I
apologize before the fact.
Speaker 4 (38:58):
I'm shit scared of eerplane. So it was a miracle
to get me in a lot of time.
Speaker 3 (39:03):
It was a miracle to get me in an airplane.
And now I spend a lot of time campaigning talking
to rural folk, and then I've met some cool people.
Speaker 4 (39:15):
Really really cool people, and.
Speaker 3 (39:18):
Some of them mean, have been very kind to me
just and at this you know, at the slightest moment,
they've offered one or two pleasant remarks and it sticks
with you.
Speaker 2 (39:27):
Right, people came to be very kind. Oh it's funny.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
People are horrible to him peace a lot of the time,
but they can also be very kind as well.
Speaker 3 (39:34):
I've had some incredibly kind remarks where people have missed
a public event and then driven for two hours just
to thank me. I think that's incredibly kind. And I
don't do it this job for those accolades or for
those rewards, but for every bad day that you have,
(39:57):
and there are those, there's lovely remarks and kindness out
there side too.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
We can I ask you about, you know, your son's
passion from rugby. So it was a lot of the
tributes were based on his performance on the field, can
you tell me about And you mentioned, you mentioned when
he was young, you were quite sure he would he would.
Speaker 3 (40:19):
He was such a soft natured young man, right, And
I remember when he played rapper rugby. All the kids
are going that way, My son's going to the opposite.
Speaker 4 (40:30):
No son, this way.
Speaker 3 (40:32):
And it's one of those parents where you go, oh lord,
you know, like, because I'm embarrassed, right like that, you'll
come right, so here we go. But because he was
naturally an empathetic, quiet, kit very you know, he was
more social person than that rough and ready rugby player.
(40:52):
But man did he become it. And we both played
open side flanka And there was a moment where and
I remember it well that I said, the most covenative
title you might have is the rich and the cause
of the world. That you don't get a lot of
(41:14):
accolades for all the tackles you make, but by God's son,
remember that all those tackles would never have eventuated and
trice had they not happened. And I remember saying that
at his funeral, and I sat there and thinking.
Speaker 4 (41:31):
About what I was going to say about this young man.
Speaker 3 (41:34):
And that's why you heard me say tackle the bastard
to make it count. And it was a metaphor for life,
because you've got one shot at it.
Speaker 4 (41:43):
Make it real.
Speaker 3 (41:45):
And those remarks still haunt me now because I worried
that he got head injuries out of it.
Speaker 4 (41:53):
I don't know. Perhaps he did.
Speaker 3 (41:56):
We all get knocked around as flankas because you know,
straight off the side of the scrumin into the verse
five is Rober's dog.
Speaker 4 (42:04):
Is Queen as quick as you can.
Speaker 3 (42:07):
And man, he became a hell of a fierce rugby player.
For a light guy, because we're both quite lean, he
had electric speed and he put big guys down.
Speaker 4 (42:19):
I was mutually proud of.
Speaker 2 (42:20):
Them, for them and for yourself.
Speaker 1 (42:22):
Now you're you must naturally, and you mentioned it before,
you must naturally think.
Speaker 2 (42:28):
Can I make it to the end of the parliament?
Don't want to? Don't want to?
Speaker 3 (42:31):
I will make it to the end of the parliament
unless my kidneys failed before it.
Speaker 2 (42:34):
And when have you thought about the next one?
Speaker 4 (42:38):
I have? I have, Thomas m. The conviction for being
here is not changed. People will decide whether I've had
enough failure or not.
Speaker 3 (42:50):
And in the world where you're judged by your peers,
I think in the court of public opinion.
Speaker 4 (42:56):
If they think I'm good enough, I'll stay.
Speaker 3 (42:58):
If I find not, then then it's my time and
then someone else can come here. I don't have a
monopoly on power. I don't even believe in power. People
talk about power and politics. There will be those that
believe that they're more than what they are, but they're
just people. I don't see the power in the position
(43:20):
that other people might caught in their mind that it
grasses me that you know you're all powerful because you're
a politician. Bugger off, that's a nonsense. You just happen
to be lucky enough to be here, or why you're here.
If you if you're a genuine punter, you'll do your
job and that's helped some Keywis. You know, hopefully a
(43:40):
few Keywis have a good life out of it.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
Is there anything that's probably my last question, Is there
anything that I that I haven't asked to you, that
that there's something you feel like you need to say?
Speaker 4 (43:53):
No, check, I think you've been wonderfully kind. I would
just stress the point I think.
Speaker 3 (44:02):
I'm immensely lucky to be here, and if I could
by adding that, if I had no other story to
share at the end of my time, if we've been here,
I can't more genuinely say I'm bloody lucky.
Speaker 4 (44:17):
To be here.
Speaker 3 (44:18):
And if I can do a little bit of good
while I am here, then I've done what I intended
to do. And if that means making it a little
bit easier for a farmer to enjoy the simple things
to celebrate rural New Zealand for all it's good, challenge
(44:40):
the bad, then I have done what I set out
to do, because at some point I'm going to go
home and be a farmer, and that's what I was always.
Speaker 4 (44:52):
Ever made to do.
Speaker 1 (44:53):
Can afford to that every day.
Speaker 3 (44:57):
Every day I will like old bones and hopefully die
on an old man, having done what I see it
out to do as a four year old.
Speaker 2 (45:08):
Well, thank you very much for sharing your story.
Speaker 1 (45:10):
That's really great moving It's I'm pretty hard to open
up my data.
Speaker 2 (45:14):
Thank you for doing. I think knowing you most work.
Speaker 1 (45:17):
People will people will really value hearing about your experience system.
Speaker 2 (45:22):
That was on the titles for another week. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1 (45:24):
Ethan Sills is our producer and I was Thomas Conland.
Speaker 2 (45:28):
Come beat me next week for more on the titles. Thanks
for listening,
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