Leading from the front issuu

HOSKING INTERVIEWS PAT
ON STEWART MURRAY WILSON
by jes magill
Talking to Pat on the phone one night, he mentioned he
was being interviewed by Mike Hosking on Newstalk ZB
the next morning; topic, Stewart Murray Wilson. “Shit!”, I
thought. “Pat will get eaten alive”.
Pat can be a convincing public speaker, getting his
points across beautifully, most of the time. At other
times he can ramble. He’s fond of the ‘stream of consciousness’
delivery, where he leaves it up to his audience
to connect the dots and if you know him well, you
can. Speaking in riddles is another of his verbal devices,
where he lets his mind wander where it will, picking out
a few key phrases and hoping their meaning will land
somewhere accessible to his audience.
The caustic king of the airwaves, Mike Hosking, could
really have a field day with the idiosyncratic elder statesman
of Napier’s Restorative Justice campaign crowd.
“Please prepare thoroughly,” I implore Pat. “Write down
what you’re going to say and PLEASE mention the victims.”
“Yes, yes”, he says.
Pat and my husband Richard, have some robust discussions
on law and order in Aotearoa and I’m pretty
adept now at diverting potentially tricky conversations
that lead nowhere and simply raise blood pressure levels.
When Richard heard that Pat was visiting Stewart
Murray Wilson, the Beast no less, in Whanganui Prison,
his reaction was extremely strident.
Next morning I made sure the radio was set on National
and Richard left the house without hearing a peep
from 1ZB. I’d forgotten about the car radio though and
20 minutes later he rang. “You’ll never guess who I just
heard being interviewed …”
But, I needn’t have worried. The interview went superbly.
Pat spoke a pro, like the genuine Restorative
Justice campaigner that he is. Mike, in a rare display
of civility on topics not dear to his heart, simply asked
questions and listened. In the interview Pat ventured a
claim for visiting society’s most marginalised and Mike
said, it was hard to argue with that. A valuable morning’s
work at the office, Pat. Well done!
TRANSCRIPT OF PAT’S
INTERVIEW WITH MIKE
HOSKING, 7.20AM,
JUNE, 11, 2015
Mike: Here’s a request out of left field. Pat Magill is looking
for people to visit Stewart Murray Wilson at his home
in the grounds of the Whanganui Prison. You know Wilson
of course, he’s known as a prolific sex offender but
Pat Magill has been visiting him for years and hopes others
will start and do the same.
Morning Pat. Are you his only visitor?
Pat: I think a priest calls on him from Marton but I think
there’s very few who have visited him.
Above: ‘Having someone for breakfast’ could easily have referred to Mike Hosking’s interview of Pat one morning on NewstalkZB.
Mike was uncharacteristically mellow however, throughout the korero, asking questions, listening and seemingly agreeing with Pat at
the end. That’s one for Restorative Justice!
Restorative Justice – for an unjust justice system 171