What Was I Thinking: A Memoir (12 page)

I decided I had to leave. I had never dreamt of doing the job. As usual, I just wanted to get it. I kept pulling out the charter and reading it and thinking, ‘It’s all so easy. Why is it being made so hard?’

Many commercial radio stations are operating professional broadcasting units by any criteria you choose, including National Radio’s own. But they don’t have National’s sense of
self-importance
. Grandeur doesn’t increase the quality of your news.

In some ways my standards were even more conservative than theirs. I don’t believe that music should just fade out and the news should start. I think the music should stop and then the news should start. On the hour, if you’re going to have time signals they should be heard clearly, not over a piece of music that has run over because it wasn’t started at the right time. I think all those disciplines are important.

But I don’t think it’s important to have wall-to-wall pomposity. An interview isn’t good just because it’s long. And it isn’t good just because there are a lot of pauses when people are thinking hard before they answer questions.

‘We’re giving them time to breathe,’ I was told.

‘Tell them to breathe faster,’ I said. Actually, they had nothing to say and all we had done was bore people rigid.

Nearly every time I have resigned from a job I have been asked to stay, but I’ve never done that. I would never try to persuade anyone to stay. If they’ve decided to go and they’ve worked through the process, they’re going to go no matter what. The only thing a manager can do is offer the departing worker something they really want. But if you’re doing that, you’re a bad manager, because you should have seen this coming and done that earlier.

Sharon was genuinely surprised and very disappointed when I quit. She tried to persuade me to stay and when I wouldn’t stay she tried to persuade me to stay a bit longer, which I also wouldn’t do. That never works. I was offered considerably more money to stay but I knew we couldn’t afford to pay me that much.

Many people doubtless thought and think that I wasn’t the ‘right fit’ for National Radio and they are absolutely right. But I was what was needed because I was prepared for change. Someone who was the right fit would’ve been the wrong person for National Radio at the time.

The only right thing to do was leave.

There was definitely an element of copping out on my part. It had become too hard. Perhaps I should have stayed, pegged back my immediate expectations and gnawed away at it — but I’m not a gnawer. I hate the thought of going to work every day and just chipping away. There were people making decisions who were actually hurting public radio by wasting huge amounts of time and money. At the same time,
there were great broadcasters and people doing great work who could have done twice as much great work if they’d been allowed.

I started talking to Brent Impey at Radio Pacific to tee up the next job, as was my practice. In the back of my mind there was this idea forming about working as a foreign correspondent.

MY NEXT BIG OVERSEAS
assignment was covering the French testing at Mururoa in 1995. I think it was Derek Lowe’s idea. If not, I’m happy to give him the credit as he’s not getting any money from this book, even though he was responsible for so many of the things in it.

A lot of journalists were making the voyage to Mururoa to cover what would turn out to be the last French nuclear tests in the Pacific. Many were going with the New Zealand Navy on the
Kiwi
, others had hitched rides on miscellaneous craft. There would be the inevitable protest flotilla and Greenpeace representation. As well as the French Navy, French media
vessels would also be in the area, so it looked like it could get quite crowded.

It was decided that I would go with the flotilla on Peter Williams QC’s 53-foot yacht, the
Aquila d’Oro
. I was very happy to be part of the protest. I had always despised the French testing. I had never met Peter, though I was aware of his reputation as a lawyer and penal reformer. He would become a firm friend, although, like most of my friends, I hardly ever see him. I found him to be a strange mixture of socialist, capitalist, friend to all and enemy to all. It was also obvious he had an absolute belief in fairness, except when he was arguing with you.

He and I flew to Rarotonga while a small crew sailed the boat up. We were then going to take it to Tahiti before sailing to Mururoa and back again. That is a sea voyage and a half. Peter put a lot of money into this protest. A good sailor himself, he also employed a full crew.

As we were farewelled from Rarotonga, there was a huge hurrah and our hearts were full of pride. Within half an hour we were in a major swell. I was feeling queasy and the photographer was seriously seasick. We retired to our bunks but I ascertained very soon that your bunk was no place to get better. Instead, I went back on deck where I vomited the last of the sickness out. I think I had got competitive, too, and it helped that the photographer was nearly dead.

Peter and I passed the time with some intense philosophical debates. He is extraordinarily opinionated, which I admire very much. Better still, he can be opinionated because he’s very clever and extraordinarily well read. We had some phenomenal discussions which were very exciting but entirely unwinnable for me, because if things weren’t going his way Peter would turn into the courtroom performer, against whom a mere broadcaster had no chance at all. Mainly we argued about Jesus creating the world. One evening, we were becalmed, the 
skies were clear and you could see the galaxies and the rim of the earth in every direction. There was just water, sky and the most amazing starscape.

‘This is how you know that God created the universe,’ said Peter.

‘What?’ I said. ‘How?’

‘Look at it. Look at how vast it is. Do you know how many things had to come together perfectly at exactly the right time for this boat to be on this water, under this sky, surrounded by this air, with these people skippering it?’

‘Actually, Peter, I believe what we’re looking at now proves just how
likely
it is that all of those things would come together in one place at one time to create this environment.’ I based this on the fact that the universe is so big and contains so many possibilities that it’s impossible to imagine that somewhere this wasn’t going to happen.

‘But happening here, what are the odds that it would happen here so that we could be alive?’

‘Anyone could say that on any one of those stars, but for the fact that it didn’t happen there so they’re not alive to say it. Don’t you see?’

He couldn’t understand. In the end I was persecuted and made to feel like an idiot for holding the beliefs that I held. It was extremely enjoyable.

I love boats, but not yachts and I came to despise the
Aquila d’Oro
because the trip was so unpleasant physically. Peter’s description of yachting is ‘prison with an increased risk of dying’. When we finally got to Tahiti, the photographer was indeed on the point of death, and if we hadn’t arrived when we did we were going to have to tip him up and push things into his bottom to keep him alive. I was opposed to that. Obviously on some boats people are tipped up and have things pushed into their bottoms all the time. It’s a time-honoured way for crew and passengers
to get to know each other. So we were talking about it, but on balance I thought it was preferable to let him die.

There was a small group of locals gathered to meet us at Tahiti. These were the people most affected by the testing, and they were appalled that the French would again thumb their noses at the rest of the world and be doing this.

Peter became incensed that no one from Greenpeace was there to give us an official welcome, given we were there to support a cause they claimed to own. Malodorous as we were, he decided it was a priority to track down Greenpeace immediately to give them the opportunity to apologise for not fronting up. The photographer was improving before our eyes. Peter grabbed him and we headed off to the Greenpeace office, which was not far away.

‘You know, Peter,’ I said on the way there, ‘it is bad that they weren’t here to meet us, but maybe we should just hear their side first.’

The door was opened by a young German man, sipping, we couldn’t fail to notice, an imported beer.

‘Yes?’ he said, and at that point I had absolutely no interest in hearing his side. I stood back so as not to get in the way of the tirade I knew would be coming from Peter, who uttered words to the effect of: ‘I’m Peter Williams, this is my dying photographer, and this is Paul Henry, a journalist of extraordinary renown in New Zealand. We have just piloted a 53-foot boat in rugged seas from our country to be part of the anti-nuclear protest and we were greeted by a small bunch of local people. Why were you not down there to greet us?’

I’m paraphrasing.

By now he had forced his way with his words and his body into the centre of this room, which became his stage. It also contained a group of attractive, youngish women and, you’d have to say, attractive, youngish men. He proceeded to tear them to shreds. He
destroyed their work. He didn’t bother to find out anyone’s name.

‘You’re German, aren’t you?’ he snapped at one young man, who reluctantly admitted he was.

‘Typical,’ said Peter, but he never backed that up. He simply added that they might like to share some of their imported beer with us. He went on to tell them that we intended to go to Mururoa.

‘You better go quickly or you’ll be too late,’ said the first young man.

‘Too late for what?’

‘Oh, I can’t really tell you.’

‘What do you mean you can’t tell us?’ I said.

‘What do you fucking mean you can’t fucking tell us?’ said Peter. ‘I’ve just told you we’re sailors. We’ve been out there in the rugged ocean risking our fucking lives and you’ve got something planned?’

In the end the Greenpeace functionary, fearful, I think, for his life, told us that something was going to happen that he couldn’t tell us about but that would have international impact, so we should go very quickly. So our time on land was regrettably short as we made our way back out into the ocean straight away, leaving the photographer behind in Tahiti, for everyone’s sake.

Mururoa isn’t a destination, because you can’t get within 12 nautical miles of it. For us, it was a GPS point and the voyage to that point seemed to take a lifetime. The tropical heat and humidity meant we had condensation constantly dripping from the ceiling, so essentially you were permanently showering in other people’s distilled sweat. You’ve got spots all around your genitals because you haven’t been able to wash for days, and when you have it’s been with salt water and you’ve put damp clothes on over the top.

Some nights we went backwards. Several times after finishing a shift, having been lashed to the wheel to prevent the boat from
rolling because the weather was so bad, I looked at the GPS and saw we were a nautical mile further from our destination than when I started. We knew when we had arrived because the GPS eventually told us we had. A few other boats were there. The French had a couple of massive, heavily armed war frigates bobbing about.

We found the
Kiwi
and got some fresh water from them. They were observers, sanctioned by the government, so they weren’t allowed to have anything to do with anyone who might be going to break any international rules. We had to be very careful what we said to them because clearly we were there to cause trouble for the French. But we also wanted to stand on their boat because it was so much bigger than ours it felt almost like being on land.

All the boats were bigger than ours except that belonging to David McTaggart, the founder of Greenpeace, who was there. He was a very impressive man, a real adventurer with a lot of mana.

We got offside with the other protesters because our love of fine wine led Peter and me to gravitate towards the people from 2 France, the French television network covering the protests. Greenpeace instructed everybody not to talk to the French, but seriously they had an amazing cellar in their fish hold. They also let me use their satellite phone to file reports, which was a godsend as all the other equipment I had access to seemed to be cursed. Greenpeace were convinced the French TV people were spies and told everyone so. They may well have been. They seemed very interested in my reports and we spent a lot of time talking to them. They were curious about what the activists were planning, but they would have been whether they were spies or simply doing their jobs as journalists.

I did notice that their cameraman, who was using a Betacam to shoot interviews with us, had to interrupt the interview frequently to swap the camera from shoulder to shoulder
because his arm was getting tired. That was a hint that perhaps he wasn’t a full-time cameraman.

One thing Greenpeace did like about us was Peter’s legal knowledge, which came in very handy. The French boarded our boat to serve papers, and then Peter served his own papers on them, but they claimed they couldn’t understand English. Peter was in an awkward position, because he hadn’t been able to get any insurance for the boat. First of all, he wasn’t prepared to pay the outrageous premium but, moreover, if your boat was seized, even if you had insurance, you wouldn’t get a payout because technically you were involved in an illegal activity. It was obvious that if you made any attempt to cross the 12 nautical miles of the exclusion zone to Mururoa itself, it would be impossible to land and the likeliest option was death.