Great read, thanks for sharing. Lived in Auckland at the time but on the shore. Was vaguely aware of the house & in reading your article I realise I know a number of former citizens of the big house!

great stuff Russell. I'm in the position of not owning a a home. Have owned 2, just not in the rising part of the property cycles! I love your reference to a nest. As a grandparent I have my 2 moko & my brothers moko for sleep overs from time to time & it is a great experience consciously making a nest even when you don't own the straw!
Re stories, I host over night talk back most weeks on RadioLIVE. I have a person who texts me most mornings telling me to stop talking about my family & my life. My response is that they are the only things I know for sure. Much of everything else is, as you point out, mere opinion., even if it is at times well informed. When we as a species can tap into our empathy, I believe we will have so much more of a chance to live to our potential. Bottomline, many of us could relate to each others stories, if we were willing to listen & to share.

a powerful read Claudia, thankyou

Superb read, thanks Russell and totally concur with your take on this.
I did have a couple of reactive thoughts when seeing footage o this incident These are rendered almost irrelevant by the actions of Sonny Bill, Liam & Steve.
However I did think that even though he is young Charlie lInes & his Dad or care giver who was hugging him at the end of the event must have known he was inviting some form of intervention. I imagine he must have had to help to get over the hoardings, so it was a pretty irresponsible act in the context of the event. The other was that the 'Supervisor', which is the word that was on the security guards jacket, seems to have watched way too many such tackles in news reports, what the hell was he thinking he would achieve with such an aggressive intervention on a kid. I imagine his life will be altered for some time to come by this.

Thankyou Emma for posting that. what an amazing take you have on something I cannot even begin to imagine. I try to live through and express gratitude every day for the smallest of blessings, your writing has magnified the need for me to make sure I continue to do so. all my love goes to you. Thankyou

Thanks Stephen for putting into words what I have thought is the way forward for the NZ screen production industry for many years. We are actually reaping a bit of the legacy of how the industry has operated for way too long, … that being we are many separate entities who come together to work on projects but don’t have any dialogue around industry issues and forward planning, we’re just happy to have a job from project to project.
One of the great shames of what has happened in very recent times is that this government figured they could offset the competition from overseas players by stripping any remaining rights local ‘independent contractors’ in the screen production industry had and by also opening the industry up to offshore workers so that production companies could import workers without having to apply for visas… a quite astounding slap in the face to all NZ screen production workers.
As an actor I had a contract for my work on Lord Of The Rings that stated I would receive residuals from the merchandise sold based on my characters likeness. After enquiries it was revealed this totalled over US$10M. However having not received any monies I decided to seek recompense through the generous support of an LA entertainment lawyer. Finally after 2 yrs and having reached the Superior Court of LA, the big boys got away with not honouring that contracted commitment, they had made a mistake in their acounting! Residuals are screen production workers IP payments and one of the ways many overseas workers survive between gigs. Unfortunately here in NZ we have never really taken the long term view instead we’re just happy we have a job, from job to job, but when the jobs dry up ………… well we may be about to find out what happens.
Lets look at the NZ gaming industry and how they're doing it, lets get the government to encourage private investment in local production to supply a global market, lets get cracking!