I'm in New Plymouth on the North Island of New Zealand
to meet someone who is equally loved and loathed.
He's been a shock jock, a TV host, an inmate and a drinker.
He's lived it large and been down to his very last cent.
He's now a member of the upper house of the Commonwealth of Australia.
It's the fascinating Derryn Hinch.
Well, what a delight. Hello, Derryn.
Mwah. Another one. Mwah! Superb.
Now, why are we meeting here? Where are we?
This is called Pukekura Park. Yes.
Pukekura Park and, uh, I used to come here as a kid
and we used to go rowboating here and stuff like that.
Rowboating, how fabulous! On the skiff.
When we could afford... We couldn't afford it very often
and, uh, this is one of the centrepieces of New Plymouth.
Now, you've been known as the 'Human Headline',
what do you think people will be reading tomorrow in the paper
after this goes to air?
Is anything gonna happen in this episode?
It'll say "I didn't know he was a Kiwi."
Yes, I think that's right. "I didn't know he was a New Zealie."
And do you like controversy?
I... I try to avoid it.
Yeah, it's not something, oh... (LAUGHS)
No, I don't...
It's not something he seeks! Not something I seek, no.
Does it find you? It finds me, yeah.
I have a habit of a thing called opening my mouth.
Is that right? I think that's what it is.
Well, we're gonna have a lovely day today,
visiting all sorts of places.
Shall we get into the car?
First gear change done.
That's alright. That's very good.
♪ Jump in my car
♪ I wanna take you home
♪ Yeah, jump in my car
♪ It's too far to walk on your own. ♪
I know what I'm doing.
I know why I'm doing it.
Derryn Hinch has been a cub reporter, foreign correspondent,
newspaper editor and host of his own current affairs radio and TV shows.
That's life. Good night.
He's had four wives, a liver transplant
and has been to jail several times.
Last year, at the tender age of 72, he made it to the Senate -
the oldest federal parliamentarian to ever be elected.
I've seen other people come here with high hopes and great dreams
and stumble and crumble.
Now what kind of car are we in, Derryn?
We're in a Morris Minor. My parents owned one.
And when did you learn to drive?
I learnt to drive my father's milk truck when I was about 11.
Wow.
He stuck a wooden block on the accelerator
so that I could reach it.
This is where I used to deliver the milk on both sides of the street
before school.
We had a suburban run as well but this is this one.
This is the old, old part of town, as you can see from the buildings.
And this is the new Len Lye, I've never seen this until yesterday.
Oh, my God, that's gorgeous. This is amazing.
Now, down here is the cenotaph... Ah.
..and I used to be in the school band, lead drummer,
I remember with pride, standing at the cenotaph there,
drumming the street beats as your dad walked past,
all these RSL guys, all walked... How interesting!
..all the returned soldiers
and he'd give you a big wink and a thumbs up as he went through.
Someone may walk in a march but to be able to see his son in the band...
Yeah, as he marched past, yes.
..is pretty great.
New Plymouth, you are full of surprises.
Now turning into Darling Street, just down here.
Uh, here we go.
And is the house here? Yep.
Great.
Yeah, well, here we are.
How long has it been since you've been here?
Oh, 50 years.
Really? Have to be. Good Lord.
Well, yeah.
This, um... Is it the same?
There used to be... there is a phone jack there.
Used to be our phone was on the table there
and when I got my first job,
I was standing here when they said, "You've got the job.
"At the newspaper." Oh, no way!
Yeah, right there. There's the phone jack.
That got me teared up then, isn't that weird? Yeah.
That was my mum and dad's... that was their bedroom there.
Uh, this room here...
was, um, my grandma, um, got dementia very early
and we didn't know what Alzheimer's was in those days
and, uh, she died, aged 62,
but she spent her last several years living with us.
She moved in with us and this was her room
so we gave up the sitting room.
You come down here, this was my sister Barbara's room.
Are we allowed to go into Barbara's room now?
That's Barbara's room. Yes we are. Barbara's not here!
This was Barbara and Sandra's room. This wasn't here.
That's Clem Clay, that's his house.
And on Saturday nights he'd be in there
with a guy who became the All Blacks rugby coach, John Stewart,
and they would get pissed and spout Shakespeare so loudly in there
and while they were doing that I would sneak downstairs,
see that little white door down there,
that's where he used to hide his home brew and we'd sneak in there
and while he was making noise upstairs,
we'd nick his bottles of home brew downstairs.
And my brother and I, this was our room here
but really it wasn't... My brother was mainly... He was hardly here.
He was... by then he'd gone off to university.
So this was really my room with two single beds in it.
And look how small this was, this was where we lived.
Does anyone hold court?
Was your dad...? Me.
You held court?! Yeah, I'd be the smart-arse.
My dad used to smoke a pipe.
I hated it and so as soon as he finished, and he ate quickly,
he would start to light his pipe,
I would leave the table even if my food was half done,
I'd walk away, and Mum would say, "You haven't finished,"
and I'd say, "Not while he's smoking"
and this tug of war went for about four days
until Dad finally... He left the table
and took his pipe somewhere else to smoke and we finished our dinner.
See, that's very interesting to me, like, there's this stand-off
and you stand your ground for four days,
I wonder if that's carried on into your adult life.
Yeah. It probably has.
Like, you'll stand your ground, in a way.
I was a smart-arse.
Oh, this brings back a very spooky memory.
I remember once in that lounge room,
and I said my grandma was losing her mind,
and she's sitting on the couch just swinging her feet, you know,
and you can tell she is boiling up for something.
Suddenly my mother said something about,
uh, you know, um, "My father wouldn't..." meaning her father,
"My father wouldn't like you saying that," or something
and my gr... my nana yelled, just said, "He was not your father!"
Mum did know that she was illegitimate,
so it wasn't the first time she'd heard it,
but it was the first time any of the family had heard it
so in front of her son, I would have been 11, I suppose, 12,
and, uh, "He was not your father, you know that!"
And Mum burst into tears and ran out into the kitchen,
to the sink, and she's standing here,
she had a big colander of peas she was shelling there,
she felt so belittled by it all, you know,
and I remember coming in and putting my arms around her
and saying, "Oh, we still love you, Mum, you know."
You knew something was awry but yeah...
I know something was bad and something awful had happened
that I wasn't meant to know about
and in those days, of course, illegitimacy,
being a bastard was, uh, was just so bad.
It's a beautiful image of a child holding his mum.
Going, "Oh, we still love you." Yeah, yeah.
"We still love you, Mum.
"Whatever it is you've done," you know?
What traits do you think you get from your dad?
My grandad was a drunk, my father was a drunk, I was a drunk.
But my dad was a very placid man.
Believe it or not, you won't believe this,
I don't like, uh, I don't like confrontations.
I don't like... Uh, no, I don't believe that. At all.
And I think I share his placidness in a lot of things.
Do you mean person-to-person? Yeah, person-to-person.
Because when you're on the radio...
I can take on a fight on an issue, oh, sure I can.
Um, I can there. Professionally I wouldn't back off ever.
You were molested as a child. Mmm.
So, what actually happened? My parents were having a party.
Um, it was... I can remember when it was,
it had to be 1953 because I would have been nine
because that I think is when the Queen took the throne.
In New Zealand they put out, um, a coronation crown.
There was a silver coated crown. A commemorative coin.
A commemorative thing and, um, I... I was given one
and this night, this brother of one of my father's friends
he showed, as you suddenly realise of molesters,
he showed inordinate interest in my crown
and he offered to buy it from me, for a pound.
My mother lectured me
and said, "Well, if you do, you know, you can't get it back.
"It's your decision."
And I, being avaricious, said, "I'll do this," and we did it.
Uh, and he bought it.
Then he'd made a connection
and then he came into the room where my brother and I were sharing,
so I'm in my pyjamas, standing there alongside my bed,
my brother is feigning sleep
and this man started to fondle me
and then, uh, put my penis in his mouth and I just froze.
I knew this was dirty, I knew this was wrong and I just froze
and I don't recall how long it went for
but then my brother started to move as if he was waking up
and the guy ran out of the room.
I climbed back in to bed, petrified
and, uh, my brother said, "What's going on?"
I said, "Nothing!"
A couple of minutes later, I just said, "I want my mummy."
Right?
And Mum came in and I said, "I want my crown back."
That was going back.
I didn't want this man to have my Queen Elizabeth crown
and Mum started giving me a lecture saying, "No, you made a contract,
"you made a decision, you have got to understand and grow up..."
and halfway through her lecture
Desmond said, "Mum...
"something... That man did something to Derryn."
And then all hell broke loose.
It wasn't for years and years later,
when I had been working overseas for some years
I said to my parents, we never mentioned it again sort of thing,
and I said, "Why didn't you have him charged?"
And they said, "Well, we didn't want you to have to go through it,
"we didn't want you to go to court,
"we didn't want all this and we thought it was the best for you"
I said, "Yeah, but Mum he probably went off to some other town
"and did it to some other kids you know."
I mean, you have become a real champion against paedophiles,
do you think that experience affected it?
Well, everybody says yes and I say no.
If anything I had sort of a... a twisted idea in my head
that I didn't feel affected by it and it didn't do me harm.
I thought if I come out and say that,
it will almost be sounding encouraging to uh, to molesters
and it's only when I was on the radio on 3AW in Melbourne,
years, decades later,
and a woman from Geelong called me up on talkback
and just said she'd been molested as a child and she couldn't get over it
and she was 42 and it was affecting her marriage and everything,
and just out of the blue, I sort of just said
"Look, you can get over it and you can have a life.
"I was molested when I was a child."
And shortly after that, uh, I did the campaign on Glen and the priest
and went to jail over it
and that then made me the lightning rod and start the cause celebre
and having gone back into jail again and then the Jail to Justice walk,
so if... To be really honest, I'm not trying to hide it,
I... It didn't affect me.
It didn't cause me to become this sort of crusader.
Mmm. Is there a prison close by?
There is a prison close by. If you just look out our window.
Yes. Yes. Look out this lounge room window,
right there is the front door of the New Plymouth Prison.
Can we go and look at the jail? Let's go look at the jail.
Oh, look at that, the beautiful Mount Taranaki behind.
Isn't that... (GASPS) Amazing!
Who would have thunk it?
You know, here I am, New Plymouth jail there,
right across the road from where I was actually living
and, uh, I have not approached this door...
..since 1961.
In 1961, why do you come to this jail?
I was a young journo, we bodgied up something like...
So you had to pretend that you had done something?
Yeah, I had to pretend... I pretended I'd stolen a car.
So we said I was in for car theft
and, uh, I spent a couple of nights in here and dined with the locals
and they thought I was a prisoner.
Look, you make it sound like it's all very simple and easy
but, I mean, really, I understand that you're writing an article
but as far as they're concerned, you're the real deal.
A real crim. You must have been frightened?
It was a bit spooky when they slam the door behind you
'cause the cells in here are hardly much wider than the door
and not much longer than that is high.
In fact, the smallest...
..the cell here would be about the same size as the one I had
in the metropolitan... The Melbourne Assessment Prison,
down in Melbourne. That was...
I did two weeks of, uh, solitary confinement there two years ago.
How many times have you been to jail?
Well, if you count this one... one, two, three
and, uh, five months of house arrest.
You were in there for causes that you believed in.
Yeah. For things you believe in.
But when you're in there, I mean, how tough is it?
What's the hardest thing about it? What do you notice about our system?
It's the... Deprivation of freedom is the biggest punishment.
You know, you can't do... You can't do anything.
You stand up, like, 12 times a day, say, "Present, sir."
And also, um, you know, you have to do as you are told.
Believe it or not, you are in prison and guards run the show.
Did it change you, staying in these prisons?
No. No, nothing changes me. (CHUCKLES)
Oh, you must... you must have had more sympathy for...
or do you reflect on how we house, how we house...
I think they should be incarcerated.
I think, yeah, I think...
If people like Adrian Bayley had uh...
If the system had worked properly,
um, he would... Jill Meagher would still be alive.
We won't go in here but let's go back to that other jail - school.
Now that to me, was a jail.
New Plymouth Boys High. Yeah.
Let's go in. Yeah.
Amazing.
This was the... this was the... we used to call it the assembly hall.
This was, every morning the whole school would assemble here,
face the stage, which was... the stage was there.
Um, the principal's office, Mr McNaught,
his office was in that little corner over there.
Yep. Has not changed one bit.
Were you a good student?
No, I was a smart-arse. Yeah, I...
Define 'smart-arse'. I didn't apply myself, you know.
"Dog ate my homework." "Didn't do homework."
Didn't... I only did as much as I had to, you know.
Couldn't wait to get out of school.
Couldn't wait to leave and get out in the real world.
This used to be the football ground.
Oh, football. The footy field.
Oh, that is gorgeous!
This is the gully and that's where we played football games.
(GASPS) Down here.
Watch yourself. This is spikey stuff.
I will.
This is it.
Oh, my God.
All the seats, you know, are all natural.
They're natural seats! Natural seats.
What kind of sport did you play? I played football. I played rugby.
Were you competitive? Oh, very.
I want to do something for you down here
that has not been experienced except by other football players,
the Maori haka.
(GASPS) Please do!
The New Plymouth Boys High School haka, if I can remember it, alright?
Yes. Yep.
(PERFORMS HAKA)
Ha! Ha!
I love it!
It's so powerful and so exciting.
So you would do that with your classes...
Every day, every time, before every match, we'd all get up,
every person on all the banks,
for the visiting school to scare the shit out of them.
And we'd all do it and we'd... And it does.
We did, yeah.
Let's go and have a look at the classroom.
Sounds good. You can do that haka any old time.
(LAUGHS)
Now, what about favourite teachers?
I didn't really have favourites.
I don't think I was a favourite pupil of many of them.
Is this classroom familiar?
Yeah. I just saw the...
Oh, look I just happen to have a set of drumsticks here.
What's the Derryn Hinch technique? Do you know, I...
Well, you see how I'm not lying, I'm old fashioned
because I don't hold drumsticks like that.
I hold them like that, which is the real way to...
Who knew?! There you go.
Who knew, Derryn Hinch? (LAUGHS)
There we are. That was lovely. Gee, that's going back.
So, you were keen to leave? Oh, yeah.
And so when is the first gig...
When is your first cadet gig?
When does that cadet gig start?
That's in... that started in January 1960.
So, I left here at the end of November 1959...
How old are you? 15.
And then, um, in January, I started work at the Taranaki Herald
as a cadet and, uh...
What sort of stories are you covering, Derryn?
What are they sending you out for?
You'd be covering court or county council meetings,
or, uh, flower shows or, you know, all sorts.
Everything, you did everything. All sorts.
And you... is it starting to make sense?
Are you starting to understand story telling?
Yeah, I loved it. Yeah, I loved it.
And I had this, um, a sort of mentor,
her name was June Littman, she was a very good sub-editor
and should have been the first woman editor, she was that good.
Why wasn't she the first woman editor?
Because she was a woman. Oh.
She was female.
And I asked her once why she took an interest in me
and not the other cadet that started at the same time as me
and he fell by the wayside.
She said, "Cause you'd come back in after the paper came out
"and say, 'I wrote this in the intro and you changed it to that, why?'"
And she thought, "If you are that interested, I'll tell you."
What did the move to Christchurch mean to you?
What was that about?
It was a big city, it was a metropolitan newspaper,
you are going from a few thousand to a big, big paper,
but most importantly, I was desperate to get graded.
Here you start as a cadet, it's meant to be a four-year cadetship
and I thought I was better than that.
All in all I did three years,
from the day I left this classroom,
I would have done three years of learning journalism in here,
got on a boat to Australia
and got a job as a police reporter on the Sydney Sun.
Well, luckily, we won't have to drive to Christchurch but we will fly.
Shall we go? Yes.
Great.
Here we are in Christchurch.
Colombo Street, the main drag and this is Kilmore Street
and this is the home of the Christchurch Star on which I worked.
Well, it's gone. That...
Oh! That was the Christchurch Star.
Was it just there, Derryn? Just right... Just there.
A big, fairly modern building too,
from about four or five storeys high.
Now, of course Christchurch, in the last five years,
has been still under repair after a terrible earthquake.
But what was different about it from New Plymouth?
Was it the excitement? The life?
Oh, yeah, 'cause it was the city.
You know, New Plymouth is very pretty but it's small,
Christchurch is still probably one of the prettiest cities,
until the earthquake,
was one of the prettiest cities in the world, you know
and life revolved around the Avon River and the cathedral
and I had a special feeling for Christchurch
because my only aunty and uncle lived in Christchurch at the time
and so it was very exciting and then... and this was the big smoke.
It was a great time to be a young journo.
It was a very glamorous sort of job to have, you know,
and it always stayed that way.
And even now, I mean, I'd still... if I was back reporting now
I'd still have fire in the belly, you know, to do it
and you just... you get passionate about it and feel about it
and you just loved it, just relished the work, you know?
Will you take me to the cathedral? Sadly, what's left of it.
We just crossed the Avon River there.
Do you still feel like a New Zealander?
No. Not at all.
I know my parents weren't happy when I... when I changed citizenship
but I'd been gone so long
and I've been a citizen for more then 35 years.
Look at that there.
It looks like it happened yesterday still, doesn't it?
I mean, everything we're seeing around.
That was the steeple was right there,
you can see the end there, the whole steeple came down.
And so you came here because your uncle and aunt lived here.
Yeah, and Uncle Ken would...
His job, two jobs he had was to take you up the steeple,
up the very narrow stairs, all the way up to the top of the steeple,
look out over there
and then you knew after that, you were going to go to the Avon
and you were going to go for a ride in a boat,
which I hadn't even heard of a punt, but you'd go punting on the Avon.
Fantastic.
Well, let's go and visit your older brother, Des.
At your Uncle and Aunt's house. That sounds good.
Well, look who we found here. (LAUGHS)
Mr Hinch! Mr Hinch!
How are you, mate? Oh, good. Good to see you.
Do I get one? Oh, I get this.
That's quite nice.
How are you, Des? There it is.
There's the house. Look at that, hey.
Your uncle and aunt's house. Wow-wee.
Incredible. It still looks the same.
Wow.
Oh, look at that view. (GASPS)
We used to be able to see the cathedral from here.
Oh, it's the trees.
But you can't now, the trees have grown.
Oh, this is something else. I know, it's beautiful.
This is us for what used to be called Barracks Week at high school.
It's probably the only photo we have of us together as kids.
Derryn is there... What have you got gloves on for?
Because he was the drummer. I was the drummer.
I know that but I didn't know you had to wear gloves.
White gloves and... and... the belt to hold your drum on the side.
Of course.
And I was battalion weapon training instructor
and you wouldn't meet anyone more opposed to guns than me.
How different were the two of you growing up?
Very. That is the one word I would use.
'Very'. Very different.
You both agree there. We do agree, don't we?
Yeah, we do. Let him tell it first and I will see if I agree.
You tell us and you agree.
I was the... boy who never got into trouble,
did his homework, did whatever he was expected to do,
worked hard, wore my cap, pulled my socks up, all that sort of thing.
What are you suggesting? That Derryn did the opposite of those things?
Exactly. And he's right. Yes.
Because he was the swat, as they used to say in New Zealand...
That's the word, 'swat'.
And apart from being the academic and all that sort of stuff,
there was a touch of rebelliousness there
and there was the old leftie in him
because he went and lay on the tarmac
to protest against the Springboks football tour...
Ooh, yes.
What year, that was about when...? '81.
Even earlier than '81 but...
You both, in different ways, have a strong moral code.
Where does that moral code come from for you, Derryn?
Look, I don't know, but I suspect it would come from my mother
and my grandparents
because they... Our grandparents were very Christian people,
they didn't go to church,
they did the right thing and you were taught about telling lies,
you were taught about what was right, what was decent,
what was fair.
Des, did you think that Derryn would go into politics at all?
I thought he might but I thought if he was gonna do it,
he would have done it 20 or 30 years ago.
It's quite extraordinary, really,
that this has happened so late in life.
Yes. Yes.
But with still such energy and such gusto.
Yeah. But he does everything with gusto.
Once he decides he's gonna do it,
once he decides it's gonna be done, it's gotta be done.
It's gotta be done. Yes.
And, um, and what traits do you think Derryn gets from his parents?
From your parents too.
Oh, golly...
Drinking.
Well, I wasn't... That was the first thing that came into mind, actually.
From my dad and my grandad. From his dad, yeah. Yes, yes.
What would you have got from Mum, do you reckon?
Mum was very, very clever. Yes.
That's where we got our academics. She was very smart.
She had that just quick intelligence, good sense of humour,
spoke terribly loudly, we realised later on.
That might be a Hinch trait. Yes.
Shouting? Yes.
Well, it has been so lovely to bring some family into this episode
and to get the two Hinch boys together.
Look at this, we're on the beautiful Avon River.
It's beautiful.
You had a meteoric rise, really,
and you became a very opinionated, very blunt host on radio and on TV.
Do you ever think you overdid it? Did it go too far?
No.
And why do you say that?
Well, 'cause I was honest, it was accurate.
And sometimes it was unpalatable. Mmm.
I mean, as William Randolph Hurst once said,
"News is something somebody doesn't want published,
"all the rest is unpaid advertising."
Does your drinking stem from your childhood?
Do you think that's where it comes from?
Oh look I... I'm not a great believer in that.
I think that is an inherited... the inherited thing is an excuse.
But yeah, you're responsible for your own behaviour.
You know, I mean, just 'cause your father is a car thief
doesn't make you one.
Just 'cause your father is a drunk, doesn't make you one.
No, I think that's an easy out.
No I was, uh, it was all my own doing.
Do you regret it? All my own doing.
Oh, yeah, parts of it I do, yeah.
I do. I mean, I was stupid. I drank far, far too much, you know?
Especially after getting the liver transplant.
But they were separate things.
I'm not trying to excuse it, by any means,
as I said, it's all my fault and I take responsibility
but my drinking didn't cause my liver problems -
I got liver cancer, primary cancer of the liver.
I'm lucky it was a primary cancer
because only about 5% or 10% of liver cancers are primaries,
that's why most people who have liver cancer can't be transplanted.
Uh, so that's why I could have concentrated chemotherapy
and radiation treatment on my liver and that stalled it
but then I didn't realise how lucky I was
because... I actually had held my old liver in my hand,
they got it out, I've held it in my hand
and the pathologists had a look at it and I said,
looked at it and said, "Well, do you see many as bad as this?"
And he said, "Usually at autopsies."
And I said bleep.
I said, "Well, OK, how long do you reckon I had to live?"
And he said, "Well, now I've got it out and had a good look at it,"
he said, "I reckon about two weeks."
You're a senator now. Yep.
Is it what you expected?
Uh, this sounds very much like a politician,
it's much harder work than I expected.
In what way? Oh, just the input.
I mean, even though you are a small party,
we had seven different issues that we campaigned on
but what people have to understand, you have to vote on everything.
So you have to vote on the ABCC,
you have to vote on this, you have to vote on that
and so that means I'm not gonna vote for something I don't understand,
you have to read all the pros and cons
and you think, "Oh, where is this one going?"
I've got more than 6 million people whom I represent in Victoria
and you represent them all,
even all the ones who didn't vote for you.
But do you think politics might change you
before you have a chance to change anything?
Oh...
I mean, you said it in your maiden speech, you know,
some people went into it thinking they could change things
and make a difference and couldn't, for a variety of reasons.
There might come a point in a year
where we start to not recognise your independence or...?
Well, come and tell me. OK.
Come and tell me. Say, "Derryn, you've sold us out.
"You know, you're just like all the other pols."
And Neville Wran always said that by the time you get to the top,
he said, "You're so covered in blood and muck and shit",
I think he said,
"you forget why you went in there in the first place."
Now, that's a terrible thing to have to do.
That's a terrible thing! But that's why I tell people now.
I won't horse trade.
I won't do it and I've told... if I achieve something,
if the government gives me something down the track
that I really want, that's great but they won't have bought it.
They won't have bought it.
If little 12-year-old Derryn were to come walking down this jetty here,
what would you tell him?
Go for it. Just go for it.
Just do it.
How would you like to be remembered?
What do you think will be on your epitaph?
Just two words - he tried.
He tried. He tried.
Excellent. Mmm.
Let's go punting. Let's go take a punt.
Derryn, thank you so much for sharing so much of your story with us today.
It's been a revelation. Thank you.
Well, it's been um... the pleasure's all been mine.
Well, all I can say, Senator Hinch, is see you in Canberra.
See you in Canberra. See you in Canberra.
Thank you, madam. Punt along, James.
Captions by Ericsson Access Services
Copyright Australian Broadcasting Corporation