Chapter 1: What extraordinary event took place at Paremoremo Prison nearly 50 years ago?
Hi, I'm Sharon Brett-Kelly and I'm at the Maidment Theatre or the site of the Maidment Theatre at Auckland University where nearly 50 years ago something extraordinary took place. It's all quiet here now, no students and of course the theatre's all gone but imagine six of the country's worst criminals getting into a fierce face-off and it was all above board, even celebrated. Why here? Well,
That's what today's detail is all about. Their trip alone from the prison to the maidment was eventful enough. But add in the ex-head of a top-notch private school and a future deputy prime minister and things get even spicier. You'll hear Sir Don McKinnon's take on events later. But right now, I'm off to meet drug dealer turned criminologist Greg Newbold at his home in
to hear his version of events, a story he's told in his new memoir. We're talking about Paremoremo Debating Club and my first question to Greg, who was in the two teams?
Yeah, I was the first speaker. I was the drug dealer. Kess was second. Murray Kess, well, he was a lifer. He'd killed his wife. He shot her, but always denied his guilt. He was a fundamentalist Christian. And then there was Brian Agnew, who was a safe blower and a bank robber. Gosh. And he was an old hand. He was a very good debater.
And who was in the other team, do you remember? Yeah, Bain Huggett was the lead speaker, and he was a drug offender. He's dead now, unfortunately, he died of liver cancer. But he had Hep C, and that triggered the liver cancer, I think. We all got Hep C, of course, because we were all using the same needle. And the second speaker was Nellie Bly. In fact, one of the members of the Paranormal A team,
Wasn't granted parole, wasn't allowed to go out, so we had to fill in with a bloke who we called Nellie Bly. Not because he was gay, we called him Nellie Bly because he used to tell fibs all the time. He used to tell lies, and Nellie Bly's rhyming slang for liar. Yeah.
And the third one was Joe Sage, who was a drug importer from California, and he'd imported a whole lot of Buddha sticks. So how did you even get there in the first place? Did you go in a van?
Yeah, it was the first time it had ever happened that Paramo fielded two teams at the Athenaeum level. And both the teams got through to the final. And so we all loaded into the van. We got all our civvies out of the receiving office.
So what were you wearing, do you remember? I was wearing the clothes that's in that photograph, which was a pair of bell bottoms, platform shoes and a wide lapel jacket. And a tie. And a tie, yeah, I don't know how to do ties, so someone would have tied that tie up for me.
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Chapter 2: Who were the key members of the Paremoremo debating teams?
You know, that then they create this feel-good atmosphere and that others who had done equally bad things were also feeling good for them. I mean, you know, it's really hard for me to get a grip on that. What I found was when I was in jail is that the guys I knew in jail were different people on the outside because in that jail there were only 48 in each cell block. We all knew each other intimately.
And when you're in a group like that and everyone's under a microscope, your whole reputation depends on the way you behave. If you fall out with someone or if you do something bad, the whole community is going to be down on you. So there was very, very strong social pressures to conform and very strong social pressures to fit in.
After three or four visits to the prison, you only know them as the individuals that are in front of you, less by whatever the crime was. The crime is just something that's in the background. And after I'd probably been there even six months, you actually forget why most of them were even there.
Did the debating make a difference to their lives, do you think? You know, did it stop them going out and committing? Are there less recidivists? Yes. I don't know. I get asked this question a lot. Did I make a difference? I think my involvement and setting up the debating club, bringing in outsiders, all the rest of it, I think it all helped.
nÅralaise their life in the prison and made it a little bit easier for them to adapt to the outside world. But I can tell you some very prominent names in the debating club who came back to prison within a couple of years of going out. I can tell you others who just disappeared into the landscape and were never seen again.
When you left, you were quite sad about leaving. Yeah. It's hard to believe, really, that you'd feel sad about leaving the maximum security prison. I'd made such good friends, you know. But was it, I mean, you make it sound so warm and fuzzy and fluffy. It was. But how could it be? How could it be? There were guys I, you know, I just liked so much and they all came, gave me presents, you know. Bloody hell, you know, it was amazing.
And prisons today, because you're still quite connected writing about justice system. Yeah, well I've retired now but I've still got several inmates writing to me. Have you? Yeah. So how does it compare? I mean are prisons more disciplined when it comes to things like letting in drugs and also behaviour within the prison system?
Prisons are a completely different world now to what they were. During the second national government with Ralph Hannon, Minister of Justice, and John Robson, Dr John Robson, the Secretary for Justice, they liberalised the prison system from the 1950s, lock them up and leave them. They wanted to liberalise and make New Zealand prison system the most advanced system.
ngÄ ngÄ ngÄ ngÄ ngÄ ngÄ ngÄ ngÄ ngÄ ngÄ ngÄ They screwed the jails down. Suddenly an escape became a major failure and they screwed down on drug use and they screwed down on pretty much everything. So the prisons became far more disciplinary and far more oppressive and that resulted in more tension between inmates and more tension between inmates and staff.
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