NEW ZEALAND
Stuff
HELEN HARVEY
Last updated 27/10/2014
.
Controversial Aussie broadcaster Derryn Hinch was sacked from the Taranaki Herald the day after a big rugby match was on in New Plymouth.
At the weekend he was back for a reunion marking 25 years since the paper closed.
In 1965 the big game was a Ranfurly Shield match that Taranaki lost, and now veteran Taranaki journalist, Jim Tucker, then 17, had to take the match report over the phone, because all of the senior staff had gone to the pub with Hinch.
Hinch started the night doing the police calls and on the way back to the office, he called in to the Royal Hotel for a drink with a journalist friend who had come up from Wellington, he said.
Several hours later a reporter came looking for him and never went back to work.
A while later another colleague came looking and he also stayed. Then the assistant editor arrived at the pub and, like the others, never left.
“The next day I got a call from the editor Rash Avery – I think you are a bad influence, so don’t come back tomorrow. I said I have never been sacked by a nicer person.” …
He first time in jail was in 1987 for naming a paedophile priest, he said.
“I wasn’t being a cowboy. Before I named him I went to the police. I went to the police minister. I went to the premier. I went to the church. They said he was going to be facing court – leave it.”
But the man was running a camp for children, so he felt he didn’t have a choice, Hinch said.
“If I stopped one parent sending their kids . . . I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t do it. Since then I’ve become a bit of a lightning rod for it I guess.”
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.