Questions were raised after RNZ pulled one of its own podcasts featuring Anika Moa and the former Labour MP before its release. Now, The Spinoff can reveal what was actually said.
There’s nothing like an eleventh-hour retraction to stir up interest in the exact thing you would rather people didn’t see. In September, Radio New Zealand abruptly announced that after advertising a podcast interview between Anika Moa and former Labour MP Kiritapu Allan, the episode would no longer be released in season two of It’s Personal with Anika Moa.
The result was a wave of unprecedented interest in the longform interview podcast and growing speculation about what was said and why it was enough to be removed after the season had already premiered.
It’s Personal with Anika Moa was announced by RNZ in February 2024. The first series would be 12 longform interviews with “notable New Zealanders about life’s tough lessons”, hosted by singer and entertainer Anika Moa and released as both an audio podcast and a Youtube web series.
Moa’s approach to interviewing is well-known, with comedy shows like Face to Face with Anika Moa, and Anika Moa Unleashed, which saw her interview prominent New Zealanders – including politicians – heavily weighted to comedy and roasting. “It’s Personal with Anika Moa reveals what’s perhaps the multi-talented performer and broadcaster’s greatest gift – a remarkable ability to get people to tell her things,” read the RNZ media release announcing the podcast.
And while RNZ may be most known for combative politicial interviews on shows like Morning Report and Checkpoint, Moa was quick to distance herself and her show from that expectation.
“I’m not a journalist, I’m a human sharing a conversation about someone’s life. Empathy is everything. There is some pretty serious kōrero, but we have some great laughs as well,” she said in the release.
The first season, and particularly the first episode with producer Chelsea Winstanley, proved popular. In September, RNZ announced a second season of It’s Personal with Anika Moa, teasing “entertaining” and “emotional” interviews with actor Morgana O’Reilly, musician Jon Toogood and former Labour minister Kiritapu Allan.
Twelve days later, after the first episode of season two had already aired, RNZ issued an update and correction. “Following an editorial check of the episode of It’s Personal with Anika Moa featuring Kiritapu Allan, RNZ has made the decision not to air the episode.”
The statement specified that RNZ’s editorial policy applies to both staff and contractors (Moa is contracted to RNZ for the show). “While It’s Personal with Anika Moa is an entertainment, personality driven, interview show rather than news or current affairs, the topics covered in the interview included recent news events and they needed further context,” it read.
“While highly respecting the right of individuals to express their opinion, we found that given the subject matter of the interview, the episode did not meet our Editorial Policy with regards to impartiality.”
The release did not specify who or what was specifically ruled to have breached RNZ’s editorial policy, nor why the full episode was pulled rather than re-edited or updated.
The Spinoff requested the taping of the episode featuring Allan, and received it under the Official Information Act this week. It is 47 minutes long, recorded in the RNZ studios earlier this year, and opens with a content warning for readers that there will be discussion of suicide and strong language.
Below is an overview and snippets of key topics covered.
Life in parliament
Moa: Te Pāti Māori are going on about having their own Māori parliament, and then there’s Parliament, and that is inherently te ao Pākehā. So everything that they do within parliament is white man rules, white woman rules, white this, white that, white wash. How do you see te Pāti Māori values with their Māori parliament? How do you see that working, and if you had the choice again, would you join te Pāti Māori and get that vision across the line?
Allan: I’ll tell you a funny story: I think almost every single political party prior to me going into Parliament had asked me at some point in time to run for them. Greens, Act, National, NZ First …
Moa: National? Even Nats?
Allan: Oh, yeah! My aunty Georgina te Heuheu, she was trying to get me when I was young!
Moa: Even National? OK, were they wanting to top up the colours? Add a bit of brown to white town?
Allan: [Laughing] Oh, shush you.
A few minutes later…
Moa: What I want to talk about is intergenerational trauma [and] Māori wāhine in a political sense. You’ve got Marama [Davidson] who’s going through breast cancer. You went through cervical cancer, you had your raruraru … And then the media go down on brown, [like] Tory Whanau, they just want to annihilate a certain people. Why? Why are they doing this? Where’s the support for mana wāhine in politics?
Allan: It’s interesting that you’ve even raised that, because I don’t think that many people see that … because I think you have to be that to see that. And I can go through almost every wāhine Māori that has been into that institution: Nanaia Mahuta, how was she treated? Meka Whaitiri, Georgina, Donna Huata, Claudette Hauiti, Metiria [Turei] …
Beautiful wāhine Māori from so many different places, who were chewed by a system … the system wasn’t designed for us, it wasn’t by us and it wasn’t designed for us, you go into it to try and challenge some of those things. And for as long as you can, you do, but that machinery is made to eat you.
Look at how many wāhine Māori and takatāpui … All of them have left, every single one of us have left that place in not positive ways.
Jacinda Ardern’s resignation
Moa: Do you remember when Jacinda stepped down and I texted you and went ‘go bro, go for the leader!’ And you went “heeeelll nooo! Gay, Māori, a woman, I’d get absolutely slaughtered.”
Allan: [Laughing] Oh, man, straight up, the amount of text I got at that time, it was insane. I was just like, “Y’all gotta understand, this literally would be a suicide mission”. And to some extent, it ultimately was anyway, just being the position I was, that was enough. You know, being a front bench minister was enough to sort of be my lynching orders.
I actually cried when one of my dearest, dearest friends, Barbara Edmonds, became the spokesperson for finance in Labour. Because of what I perceive is going to be the scrutiny that she would come under that could be so detrimental to her. And she’s amazing. She’s incredible.
The RNZ speech
Allan: I just remember there was a period at the beginning of last year, feeling like I couldn’t breathe for a period of time, and kind of clutching for a lifeboat, and there just wasn’t one there.
There was a point in time, I gave a speech at this farewell gig, this little media institution called RNZ, Radio New Zealand. Everyone kicked up [about it], but that was a real pivot point. After that, there was this kind of like compounding, like it just became story after story after story. It just kind of unlocked this tone, I think, where every story from there out basically became this really negative one about me.
Moa: Toppling you. They’re toppling you.
Allan: It was. It was so interesting, just to see how it built momentum, [and] we could all see it happening. It takes one thing, and it was that speech at RNZ, and it just started this rolling ball … Jacinda [Ardern] had left by that time, and she’d obviously borne the brunt of a lot of, like, kind of the toxic media coverage. Perhaps there was some boredom, and they needed another target, I don’t know …
But once that started happening, it’s very isolating. When the highs are high, that’s also isolating. When the coverage is too good, that’s isolating. When the coverage is bad, it’s isolating. So you’re often isolated … it’s your face out there, and you’re getting smashed everyday. You get your mother crying on the phone every single day because of some other negative thing that you’ve done.
Bullying allegations
Allan: The words that were often prescribed to strong Māori women: “oh, she’s just so aggressive”, “ugh, what she’s saying is alright, but if she could just tone it down a bit, you know, just tone it down, all of it”. And then you’d say one thing in exactly the same way as [someone of] a different demography in the [exact] same meeting, and the way that you are heard, received, and the response is just immeasurably different. I explained it to one political editor who was trying to run a bit of a story on me one time. I said to her, “you go talk to people in this building, and you ask, ‘who is it that is yelling in this building?’ You tell me who it is, that’ll tell you who it’s not.” There was a particular demography of people where it was absolutely acceptable to slam tables, and kick and swear …
Moa: Who?
Allan: I’m not telling. But [they] weren’t where the stories were generated from, it wasn’t about those people. Now, any of that behaviour is poor, and it’s rubbish, and should never, ever happen ever in any environment. But it always intrigued me to see who the story is about [in terms of] behaviour, because it’s acceptable from those that have been in power forever to perpetuate the behaviour.
Moa: So a man wouldn’t be called a bully, but a woman would be? “Bullying, she’s bullying …” and it’s like, um, I’m just doing my job. Is that how you saw it?
Allan: Imagine this: you’ve got a 30-something-year-old gay Māori minister boss, and you’re a 60–something-year-old Pākehā dude who’s been at the top of your career for a long time, and you’re having to listen to this young bucker from worlds I do not understand, or will try to understand, telling you what to do.
And then when you don’t do it and you failed to deliver, and then she’s saying “you’ve failed to deliver,” well, she’s just out of line, isn’t she? Could I have done things better? Heck yeah, every single day I could have done things better.
The car crash and arrest
Moa: All the shit that you went through, you know, the night you drove, whatever the fuck, drunk or whatever. Can you look back at it now and think, ‘OK, of course I was going to go down this hole of despair and suicidal thoughts and drinking and blardy-blardy-bah?’
Allan: At the start of last year I really couldn’t manage [my depression and suicidal thoughts] any more. I’d told people I wanted to quit. I felt very obliged to stay. I needed to get out, I wasn’t OK. And I didn’t, and I should’ve. So that’s the first thing. I wish I’d just listened to myself.
It’s a funny one, the [media] story was I was rip-roaring drunk, got DIC’ed [charged with drink driving], crashed a car, got run down by dogs, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That night was horrible, but first I’ll say it was nowhere near even close to one of my worst nights. It was just a shitty one that everyone saw. Secondly, I had consumed some drinks before driving – no one should ever do that – [but] it didn’t reach a threshold for DIC.
Note: Allan’s breath alcohol level that night was 335mcg. The legal limit is 250mcg, but criminal charges are only applied to readings over 400mcg.
Moa: So that’s your story: you drank, you got in a car, you didn’t get done for drink driving?
Allan: No. I got a $250 fine, though.
Note: Allan was charged and convicted in May for refusing to accompany police after crashing a car while driving over the legal alcohol limit.
Christopher Luxon and the 2023 election
Moa: What do you think of Chris Luxon? Are you allowed to have a thought about him?
Allan: Of course, I’m my own person now. I think Chris Luxon is a guy [and] that the world has always been a place that he can be very comfortable in, and operate very comfortably in. And it was always probably just an option on the table to become the prime minister. Because why not?
Moa: Could have been anyone, right? Well, any white, pale, male style. Could have been my granddad. You know, people wanted to vote for National because they were sick of Jacinda and Labour, and that’s just the fact. Not me of course, I’m just speaking for the people. For the farmers.
Allan: Look, I don’t think Chris Luxon is a bad guy. I think he’s a guy that has operated from a privileged position all of his life and continues to do so. And we’ve been talking about a lot of kind of the unconscious bias, or that privilege of not having to see things from, you know, different starting places in life, different rungs of the ladder. He wouldn’t have had to experience that before, and will not, and there’s comfort in that for others.
On being diagnosed with ADHD and PTSD
Allan: I was pretty broken, after everything with the work, the end of my working career in politics, like, basically, it took 10 weeks to go sit on a couch in my parents’ house and cry, or whatever else it is that you do. So it was through that period that I was getting all the diagnosis [ADHD and PTSD]. So once I went through that and didn’t believe the outcome [at first], and then I started having to have quite like, intensive therapy. And they talked to me about the role of medication and the role of therapy, and that they played two distinctly different roles. So I started taking the medication. It was this constant, like, push, pull of trying to get the right things. And we still change it every now and then, depending on what’s going on.
I quickly discovered it was a game changer, like, absolutely life saving. All the things I was worried about, my creativity going… That’s like, one of my things that I like about myself. I like the way that my mind works. I thought that would go. Turns out it didn’t.