OPINION: On Saturday morning I woke up and started getting messages. Most of them said something like, 'Wow, what did you ever do to Maggie Barry?'
It turns out The New Zealand Herald had just run a story suggesting Maggie, the MP and recent Minister of Conservation, was a workplace bully.
They'd got hold of some secret recordings of her, and one of them mentioned me.
It was really weird to overhear somebody talking about me. And because media have been asking me for comment, and because you all heard it too, I wanted to take a couple of minutes to respond.
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Truth is the stuff on that tape not the worst thing anyone's said about me. It's probably no worse than what you or I have said about people we don't like when we thought our conversations were private. And actually, it's a good thing for the media to upset politicians from time to time - it means we're doing our job.
But there's a bigger issue here. What does it tell you about a Minister of Conservation that she has this reaction to someone speaking up in support of conservation?
I'm someone with a microphone, with a voice. If she can so easily dismiss my ideas as "pathetic", what chance do you have of being heard when you write her a letter, or make a submission to a select committee, or turn up at a protest?
I have a theory: I think what made Maggie Barry most angry about my piece on The Project was that she could tell it was striking a chord.
She says I was opinionated, but I wasn't actually sharing my views. I was sharing the views of every scientist, DoC worker and volunteer I'd ever spoken to, who told me again and again that New Zealand's natural world was on the verge of collapse and the Government wasn't doing enough to stop it.
Here's the proof that it was the right message at the right time: more than a million of you watched, liked and shared our stories about conservation last year, and six months later Maggie Barry lost her job.
Then in May, for the first time in nine years, DoC was given some more money for their baseline budget to spend on protecting our threatened species.
The new Minister is Eugenie Sage. We'll be watching her closely, and hopefully from time to time, I'll piss her off too.
Newshub.
