<&>Wellington Corpus of Spoken New Zealand English Version One <&>Copyright 1998 School of Linguistics & Applied Language Studies <&>Victoria University of Wellington <&>side one <&>0:40 entertainer gary mccormick appears regularly in the media in print radio and television often he's taking a good natured poke at what he sees as the absurdities of new zealand life but behind the clowning is a person who feels very strongly about being a new zealander and giving <&>1:00 people a fair go in his early twenties what he acknowledges was his iDEALism lead him to stand for the porirua city council gary mccormick describes it now as an interesting time i was elected to the porirua city council by a margin of one vote er in fact the labour party at the time actually contested the result in a magisterial recount er i was elected by the people of porirua because i had been conspicuous running dances for young people in the city in fact there was virtually no entertainment for young people in the city when i started a group called the porirua youth council and on the strength of that i received a number of votes at the election and ended up sitting on the porirua city COUNcil and naively i think i thought that probably <&>pronounced trobably <.>ch certain changes could be brought about unfortunately in porirua at that time there was a stalemate really between a conservative faction and a very small liberal <&>2:00 group consisting largely of er helen smith who was the first values candidate in new zealand i think to win an election to a body like that er ken gray the all black captain although he wasn't captain at the time and myself we <.>w so it was three upping against thirteen and the reason i packed it in after about eighteen months or twenty months was the fact that we just didn't seem to be getting anywhere we were REALly wasting our time and energy and it was driving me crazy and <.>i i just found it all so frustrating sad and there were quite often very bitter exchanges and it was just no fun to be there and because we weren't making any headway it seemed pointless to stay and i decided there were other things to do so OFF i went what were you hoping to achieve when you went in there i didn't really know much about politics at all i went in with a quite simple some would say simplistic idea that um you could quite easily <&>3:00 convince people that we needed for example more facilities for young people in the city and er more services and then of course it turned out that that wasn't the case um i since know a lot more about this but er there was no way we were going to be able to bring those things about at that time there wasn't the money and there <.>w certainly wasn't the inclination from central government er national government at the time and indeed the <.>p good many of the people who were on the council er led relatively privileged lives in terms of life in porirua and they weren't in any great hurry to make any difference to the state housing areas around so er voc that's the reason why we didn't get anywhere and i <.>w word i was aPPALLed by how little we managed to achieve you were i guess somewhat idealistic then were you? i was VERy idealistic in fact i'm STILL idealistic which is the interesting thing er i just WOULDn't WASTE my energy er in certain types of forums any more because i realise those are NOT the forums that necessarily lead <&>4:00 to change and likewise i am NOT really ideally suited in terms of temperament er for endless dull meetings and the frustrations that go with politics and i'm quite critical of politicians both national and local in my various capacities as a commentator er at the same time i do admire their perseverance in many cases the fact that they do go through all the stuff and they keep going through it i can't fully understand why but they manage to do it and i give them credit for that much i don't think that i'm capable of that sort of carry on even at my now approaching middle age or middle aged capacity as a forty year old i don't think i could handle even now yeah round about that time <.>i <.>i if i remember this quote correctly you said something like um in twenty years new zealand will be a great place yes well <.>i <.>i think that that's RIGHT i think it IS a great place in some areas and in fact i <&>5:00 do seem to <.>s feel strongly <.>th that these things happen in sort of twenty year bursts for example new zealand now is er much more multi cultural than it was i mean it's exciting i was on the plane the other day with tipene oregan we were talking about some of the enterprises that maoridom have come out with and i think they're so exciting er i completed a documentary in <.>th in the past twelve months about GISborne called gisborne strikes back which recently screened on television one and that reflected to my mind a very exciting town this provincial town which now has er all sorts of strengths coming to the fore so my feeling when i originally said that in twenty years time new zealand will be a great place i think was a reference to various forces coming through people ideas cultural things um a willingness er to acknowledge the strengths of everybody in the community the different types of groups the different people <&>6:00 and that it would be a more diverse place and i think it is and we NOW have to make the NEXT leap forward in new zealand which is to give everybody a fairer deal for some <.>ur unknown reason in recent times um people haven't been getting that fair deal any more and er that goes completely against what i understand kiwi life to be so i think we've had this aberration with sort of er the douglas thing rogernomics as it was called though i hate to give a name to er the name of a man to that horrible thing that happened in new zealand but this er neglect of people at a certain end of the er <.>s social <.>s scale er i think has been a terrible thing so we've got to get back that back on track again in the next twenty years just cast your mind back to that time you took off for gisborne i think it was was it the first time you'd taken off for gisborne um i'd been there once or twice before just on surfing trips but er in fact i'd looked at a number of places around the country <.>o on the west coast new plymouth er taranaki i'd been around there and up to northland um but i <&>7:00 decided that gisborne was the most attractive sort of place for the sort of lifestyle thing that i wanted so OFF i went to gisborne and been there ever since apart from the er the obvious trips away and all sorts of other projects but i'm based there one of the things that happened to you there apart from surfing was that um you continued writing poetry perhaps took it a bit more seriously then did you than you had in the past? quite right oh you've done some research here <{><[>it's very good laughs you're quite right i did do that i um when i was up in gisborne after a year of sort of surfing and doing odd jobs around the place um i was running a poultry farm at one stage i <.>at had been scribbling away all that time and then <.>i it started to become more important to me to have some sort of outlet for the things that i felt strongly about and um poems became that outlet really and i was just scribbling for my own benefit until i met a chap called john benson er now deceased i'm sorry to say and he was writing poems as well and we did our first book <&>8:00 of poems together called gypsies and we then went on the road in an astonishing act of audacity believing that people would listen to us and it was over a summer and we stopped off in all sorts of beach <.>p resorts and read poems and people bought our books and that's how we got started and it was in gisborne that <.>i i had a second book published which won a pen poetry award it was called and um voc out of the blue i received a cheque in the mail and this award and er that i think in turn led to the start of touring with people like sam hunt and so on so forth so yes it did all start in gisborne at the beach <[>i have laughs much of your poetry i think was about people and how they work and about yourself right it's sort of people poetry if you like yes <{><[><.>i I think so yes it's never been too abstract or at least i'd hope not um yes there's <.>a i think each of the books that i've had published er are DIFFerent but <&>9:00 they do have this fairly intense interest in how people and things work in this country so in that sense it's very localised poetry and i think that's the reason why in both sam hunt's and my own case people would bother to come along and listen to us you know <.>they it made sense to them <[>mainly what's happened to the poet he's still THERE er i often think poetry <.>is it's really or to be a poet is to have a sense of space and distance and DIStance is the key and <.>i i've looked at the musings of other people who write poetry whom i respect and um they often say the same things in different ways it's the sense of DIStance from other people i mean i AM an observer of life even no matter how much i'm involved in television or radio or whatever else i'm doing i'm ALways separate i don't hang around for example when i do live shows i don't stand around afterwards at the bar and talk for hours with people and i like to GET AWAY and look back move off to <.>the er you know a decent space and and think about it <&>10:00 i NEED that time to think about things and er and i think that's the poetry thing in me it's still there and i'm still writing poems i just haven't been bothered publishing them because i still need that outlet and i still value that sense of space which i think is the source of poetry for people who write it in nineteen eighty two i think it was you had a serious <.>and well it was a tragic car accident you lost your girlfriend that dianne colombus er what happened for you in that that must have been quite <.>a a VERY traumatic experience yes it was very interesting because er how these things happen i mean people don't know in advance generally speaking that things like that are going to happen to them um but <.>di i was on the road then with a rock band i'd moved on from the poetry thing doing tours with sam alone and i'd started doing support acts for various touring rock and roll bands er which in those days was big business and er <.>we <&>11:00 <.>i the top bands in new zealand used to get you know <.>ten er ten hundred twelve hundred people a night and i was touring with dave dobbyn or about to start a tour dave dobbyn i was driving north and dianne and i were in the zephyr at the time and <.>w strange enough that very morning we'd discussed our entire relationship from when we FIRST met when i was doing a poetry reading at canterbury university and standing on a table making a fool of myself and she must have taken pity on me or something or other and taken me under her protective wing and we discussed this right through until the various tours we'd done and the fact that she'd moved up to gisborne to where i'd at that time bought a house and so on so forth we'd just finished discussing this when we arrived in taihape and drove through taihape and it was only a few miles on the other side of taihape that a truck lost control coming round a corner and ran over the top of the car and that was it i mean that was the end <.>of of that relationship it <.>w <.>w WAS interesting on that drive north for some peculiar reason we had discussed ALL of these things so um YES it WAS <&>12:00 er traumatic and it er the next thing that happened was i was disturbed by the lack of action in bringing people to account this may be my idealism once again but i felt that um there should have been more answers given and so i took a private prosecution against the trucking company and the driver because the police wouldn't do it and er i filed the papers myself actually in nelson while i was on another tour LUCKily didn't make any mistakes but then was faced with having to take them to court and er mike bungay is a very compassionate man and i <.>w i never met him before in my life i walked into his office told him the details and mike took the case and so the next six months was very much involved in er getting all the evidence together and bits and pieces to go to court at the time it caused quite a fuss because it's very rare that a private prosecution of that kind takes place in fact the dominion newspaper in wellington er wrote an editorial about it as i recall and we <&>13:00 were able to sheet home the responsibility er for the accident so that that trucking company and the people involved were called to account so that did take a you know a good eighteen months of my life in a sense getting over that um and indeed <.>f some <.>p friends of mine er mainly in the music business that i was still touring with would say that it probably took me longer <.>w <.>i probably went into a fairly RAUcous phase in my life then for maybe it was two and a half years probably before i sort of slowed down again <.>and and just sat down quietly <.>and and DEALT with the er with the problem of adjusting to life without a person who was a very imPRESSive and very special woman dianne so YES that does happen and i you know <.>th <.>th the <.>only the thing <.>th that stays with me now about it is you know there's er some terrible things happening to people all over the place and possibly having an experience like that makes you more aware and more understanding <.>of of you know the fact that <&>14:00 human life on the planet is a pretty tenuous existence and you got to appreciate every moment of it <&>14:04