spinofflive
The Philip Polkinghorne trial is everywhere – is that why we can’t look away?
The Philip Polkinghorne trial is everywhere – is that why we can’t look away?

SocietyAugust 16, 2024

Drugs, sex and ‘murder’: Why can’t we look away from the Polkinghorne trial?

The Philip Polkinghorne trial is everywhere – is that why we can’t look away?
The Philip Polkinghorne trial is everywhere – is that why we can’t look away?

It’s got all the fantastical elements of a true crime Netflix series, and our news media is saturated with it. But is it all a bit much?

The Philip Polkinghorne trial has it all: the backdrop of an affluent Auckland suburb, sex obsession, methamphetamine use, a Canadian rope expert, an unhappy marriage, a dead woman and her husband in the defence. The New Zealand Herald has likened the trial to OJ Simpson’s, while it and media rival Stuff have both launched podcasts dedicated to breathless Polkinghorne coverage alongside daily live blogs. No moment, no piece of information, has been missed. 

Polkinghorne, and the public, are now nearly halfway through the trial brought by the Crown, which alleges the 71-year-old murdered his wife, Pauline Hanna, by strangulation while possibly under the influence of methamphetamine, or prompted by an argument concerning Polkinghorne’s sexcapades. The prosecution alleges Polkinghorne staged her death to look like a suicide. Hanna was found dead in the couple’s Remuera home on Easter Monday 2021, and the defence maintains she took her own life before being found by her husband. At his first court hearing in August 2022, Polkinghorne pleaded not guilty.

The Crown alleges Polkinghorne lived a double-life, and evidence heard so far paints a picture of a man whose wealth was disappearing on a methamphetamine habit and sex workers in Auckland and Sydney, and an unhappy woman pressured by a controlling husband and her role as a DHB boss, helping to roll out the Covid-19 vaccine. 

There are many ways to engage with the Polkinghorne trial – in the 24 hours after the hearing began on July 29, the New Zealand Herald launched its podcast Accused: The Polkinghorne Trial, a live blog, recap of the hearing’s events and commentary from former court reporter Steve Braunias, who described the trial as “a case from the golden age of tabloid journalism” and later, “the most scandalous trial of the century”. Driving the streets of Auckland, headlines from NZ Herald about the trial shine out from digital billboards. Some of the quotes played out in recordings are such fodder for headlines you can almost hear the furious typing of the court reporters. This from Hanna, for example: “He screws women, and he hurts me, but I know he loves me … I just know he’s such a sex fiend and wants to have sex with everyone.”

It’s not just the Herald though. Stuff launched a second season of its own true crime podcast The Trial to follow the Polkinghorne case, alongside a daily live blog. For lighter reading, 1News and RNZ are offering multiple written stories rather than rolling blogs.

An ‘ad nauseam’ access to the courts

It may seem par for the course now, but court reports weren’t always so instantly accessible, or padded out in immense detail. Award-winning journalist Donna Chisholm first began her career in court reporting for the Auckland Star in the 70s, when stories were written in the press bench by hand on paper with carbon copies, which were later run back to the office, or retold over the phone so an editor could copy it out for printing, line by line. If there was no available phone, you kept two cents in your pocket to find a phone box.

Now, journalists enter courts armed with laptops that can instantly update stories with the push of a button, so that as soon as a verdict is called, the public will know about it too. Throw a live blog into the mix, and the reporter can publish every statement they hear without having to worry about editing to fit a word count.

It may seem like “ancient history” now, but court reports weren’t always so instantly accessible, or padded out in immense detail (Photo: Getty)

It’s an ability which shocked some members of the public in the reporting of the Lauren Dickason trial, also live blogged by the media. However, Chisholm says she doesn’t have any ethical concerns with today’s coverage of the courts. For one, it removes some of the inherent bias in reporting. “I think that it’s probably safer in many ways than cherry picking,” she says. “Obviously, there’s angles to stories, but a blow by blow of every single witness and everything they said, ad nauseam, is in there, and if you’re interested enough, you can go and find it. You’re not relying on another person’s filter.”

Back when Chisholm was in the press bench, reporters spent all day in the High Court sitting through every case in the courtroom, waiting to hear something that might be newsworthy. “There wasn’t any better example of what was happening in the community,” Chisholm says. Witnessing the courts on a daily basis “gives a far better reflection of what’s happening out there than the one-off spectacularly newsworthy cases like [Polkinghorne].” The truest example of this she recalls is a case from 1978, concerning a 17-year-old Niuean boy Iki Toloa, brought before the magistrate accused of stealing a comb from his workplace.

He was stopped by police on Auckland’s Karangahape Road while walking home from his work at Consolidated Plastics factory in Ellerslie. Toloa was arrested, charged and convicted of theft from his employer. “I was sitting there and thinking, ‘why?’ What that said was, this is racism in action,” Chisholm says. “I actually went running back to the office with the story, that’s how outrageous this was. And [then-acting editor Pat Booth] put it all over the front page.”

The follow-up became an even bigger story – University of Auckland law lecturer, David Williams, handed himself and a UOA-branded pen over to police for arrest. This became a front page story, too, after police chose not to charge him. “[Toloa’s] only real crime was that he was poor and walked home at night,” Williams told Chisholm at the time. Following Chisholm’s front-page reporting, Toloa’s case was referred back to the courts where police failed to present any evidence and his conviction was vacated. Chisholm says watching Toloa’s case unfold was a class in “racism 101”.

David Williams’ pen (Photo: The Single Object)

Polkinghorne sits at the opposite end of the spectrum to Toloa. As a wealthy white man, his trial is unlikely to offer a lesson on institutional issues, instead it taps into our curiosity of how the other half lives. And the life of Polkinghorne is particularly fantastical for a court case. As Chisholm points out, you don’t typically expect your eye doctor to go around and “thump” somebody. “This trial obviously has everything: with most murders, you don’t get status, you don’t get wealth, sex, drugs, all in one pot,” she says. “That’s pretty unusual in court, and that’s not really what court coverage is all about.”

Our fascination with true crime

Anyone with a Netflix subscription and internet access will recognise the true crime genre has grown exponentially since the 2010s, though its history is much longer, back to the gallows of 17th century London. The Polkinghorne trial has coincided, for this reporter, with a first time reading of In Cold Blood. The 1969 Truman Capote novel, which follows the quadruple-murders of the Clutter family in Kansas, is often touted as the pioneer of the true crime genre, though considering it arrived following centuries of crime reporting, it might be more suitable to think of it as a grandfather of the genre.

In 2024, where reading is meant to be a break from our constantly updating social media timelines, In Cold Blood offers no respite from the horrors of the real world. In immense detail, Capote retraces the family’s last day on Earth, the anxiety-inducing hunt for the killers, and their subsequent downfall. The book has sold millions of copies worldwide, though it began as a four-part series for The New Yorker.

It’s not hard to imagine, like the Clutter family’s small town community, Remuera locals gathering in cafes and recounting the trial of their former neighbour over coffee. Maybe they’re the same people packing out the public benches in Polkinghorne’s courtroom – on Wednesday, the Herald noted that “to get into Courtroom 11 this afternoon, media and lawyers have had to push past at least a dozen mostly older people who are coming to watch every moment, and who have massed in the corridor outside to ensure they get a seat.” On a separate day, Stuff described a group of older women loyally sitting in to see the trial.

Truman Capote’s famous true crime novel In Cold Blood began as a series for The New Yorker (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)

Drew University criminology professor Scott Bonn has chalked interest in true crime up to the adrenaline our brains produce when we “witness terrible deeds”, and the fact the genre can be consumed in a controlled environment where fear can be manageable, and we can act as armchair detectives.

Crime author and DeSales University criminal justice professor Katherine Ramsland also argues true crime gives us viewers a puzzle to solve, and that “people gawk at terrible things to reassure themselves that they are safe”. Former lieutenant commander of the New York City Police Department, Vernon Geberth, has said that true crime piques our curiosity, and that a viewer can insulate themselves from the “reality of the horror by viewing the events through the prism of entertainment. This tends to make the reality less threatening, because the event happened to someone else.”

Whether or not he is found guilty of murder, Polkinghorne and all his flaws have already been immortalised in the public mind and media. And so has Hanna – the victim at the centre of this trial, whose death has inadvertently produced hundreds of headlines. She has no idea that the nation has been breathlessly following the last years, months, days and minutes of her life, trying to piece together her story like a game of Cluedo. What remains is her family, loved ones and friends (such as The Housewives of Middlemore), and while the Polkinghorne trial may serve as entertainment for some, for others it acts as a constant and jarring reminder of the loss of the woman they loved, the struggles she faced in her marriage and ways in which her husband may have failed her.

Keep going!
Shakespeare above all; cursive; fiddly grammar lessons with no relevance to daily life: let it go. (Image: The Spinoff)
Shakespeare above all; cursive; fiddly grammar lessons with no relevance to daily life: let it go. (Image: The Spinoff)

OPINIONSocietyAugust 15, 2024

The ‘good old days’ of our education system weren’t actually good

Shakespeare above all; cursive; fiddly grammar lessons with no relevance to daily life: let it go. (Image: The Spinoff)
Shakespeare above all; cursive; fiddly grammar lessons with no relevance to daily life: let it go. (Image: The Spinoff)

Education’s not what it used to be in Aotearoa. That’s something to be glad about, argues David Hill, who taught high school in the 60s.

Our schools are a mess. At least, that’s what The New Zealand Initiative (especially its “Senior Fellow”  Michael Johnston), Family First, various business leaders, and the coalition government all say. 

NZ Initiative frets that “we have a school curriculum that elevates nebulous competencies above rigorous academic knowledge”. (Actually, we have a multitude of curricula and syllabuses, acknowledging the range of ambitions and abilities across students, but moving on.) Critics of our education system say we need to go back to basics, reintroduce Shakespeare and grammar. Things ain’t what they used to be.

Indeed they aren’t, and as an ex-teacher (secondary, 16 years), I’m so pleased.

It’s exactly six decades since I taught my first class. They were Year 11 (Form 5E, in 1964 parlance) at an inner-suburb Auckland high school, and I still marvel at how they endured the English syllabus I had to inflict on them. 

It was “rigorous academic knowledge”, all right. NZI would have been delighted. The “E” of 5E meant that in the rigid, academically-streamed system of the 1960s, the class was ranked second-bottom of the six fifth-form classes. They knew this: “We’re dumb,” was how Jonas put it. Yet I was meant to teach them exactly the topics that 5A covered. No tailoring of content to acknowledge their struggles, thank you. That way nebulousness lies.

The Admirable Crichton (1957), film adaptation of the play we studied in class.

Of the 34 pupils in 5E, 28 left at the year’s end. The boys went to apprenticeships or factory and other semi-skilled roles; the girls also to factories or office jobs. They expected such work; were looking forward to it in many cases. And to prepare them, I was supposed to teach the difference between a gerund and a participle, between metonymy and synecdoche, how a compound sentence differed from a complex one. Yes, the same grammar lessons we’re being asked to reintroduce. Again, I marvel at 5E’s tolerance.

I didn’t teach them Shakespeare. Instead, I had to take them through 100 laboured pages of The Admirable Crichton, J M Barrie’s Edwardian fantasy of an aristocratic English household shipwrecked on a desert island. Note the relevance to 5E’s own lives.

Their poetry anthology featured Wordsworth, Byron, Tennyson. Their set novel was Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim. They floundered through its compound-complex sentences, sighed with relief when it was over. Poor innocents: waiting for them in the following term were Charles Lamb’s 19th century Essays of Elia. How long before 5E never wanted to read a book again?

I taught high school English for four years before I dared introduce any New Zealand content or female authors, and then the only class set available was Katherine Mansfield. Now? What riches. What relevance.

I like the idea of classes studying a set text. It can unite them, develop their academic and social skills. Shakespeare? I know a number of schools where the guy is taught – to classes with appropriate abilities. Making him compulsory? Seems a sure way of turning many students off literature.

So instead, why not use set texts which our students can immediately relate to? How about New Zealanders Eileen Merriman, Kate de Goldi, Des Hunt, Rachael King?  I’m sure Family First and the NZI know them. Catherine Chidgey, Ted Dawe, Owen Marshall for the seniors? Some of those might feature on Family First’s hilarious Woke Up list.

It wasn’t just 5E English who had to endure. In 1964, I also taught a mid-level Form 4 (Year 10) Social Studies class. Their syllabus for Term 1 was 18th century British settlement in North America. That gripping relevance again.

Students wrote in cursive in the 60s, and I took marks off assignments which were untidily written. (Photo: Getty Images)

I’d like to reassure concerned critics that I taught my 1964 classes no “nebulous competencies”. I made no acknowledgement of Māoritanga or ethnic and gender diversity. No silly stuff about social backgrounds, interaction with others, creativity. Our schools do now, so it’s no wonder New Zealand 15-year-olds have just scored highly in the OECD’s Pisa Tests for Creative Skills

I know it’s a cliché, but an education system should prepare students for life as well as work. Does that mean giving priority to “rigorous academic knowledge”? Actually, both those adjectives are so, well, nebulous, that it’s hard to answer lucidly. 

Of course I want our kids to acquire knowledge, plus an awareness of academic skills and a persistence in achieving them. As a writer, I still visit schools, and I see those elements being taught in almost every class I go into, in ways apposite to each group.

‘Love The Spinoff? Its future depends on your support. Become a member today.’
Madeleine Chapman
— Editor

Was my 1964 teaching “rigorous” in other respects?

Hell, yes. I dictated whole pages for them to write down. I ran tests every Friday on what 5E had battled through from Monday to Thursday. (Note that NZI wants regular tests reinstated as well.) 

If anyone scored below the arbitrary level I decreed, they got a lunchtime detention. That included Sharon and Gary, who were in 5E only because they’d topped 4F the previous year, and who found the level of their new class almost entirely beyond them. It was only when I saw Sharon in tears after her fourth consecutive “failure” that I consigned such detentions to my teaching dustbin. But just think how splendid it would have been for her if another government recommendation – to rank students in terms of test results from their first year at school – had been implemented then.

In 1964 classes, everything was handwritten. That, especially cursive script, is one more essential skill our concerned critics want reinstated. I took marks off assignments which were untidily written. Poorly coordinated Brian and Joy scoring consistently badly as a result? Their problem. Rigour ruled.

I mentioned earlier that a few of the 5E students came back in 1965. Six of them, in fact. Two made it into Form 6 (Year 12). Four didn’t: they’d fallen short of the magic 200 marks, which was the criterion – a rigorous criterion, of course – for passing the School Certificate exam and moving up. Yvonne missed by two marks. Tough luck, Yvonne: she and the other three had to endure the entire fifth-form year again, alongside younger kids and with self-esteem visibly bruised.

Useful training for life’s setbacks, I hear you say? In fact, life is usually more flexible, flecked with sensible compromises. So is our current system, where students can take subjects at different levels, acknowledging their varying skills. 

One other form of rigour in my first teaching year: I caned boys who misbehaved. A couple cried with pain; others slouched back into class, defiant and truculent. I never saw one become a better pupil as a result. All hail our education system for abolishing corporal punishment.

I taught my New Zealand social studies class all about 18th century British settlement in North America.

Some criticisms of our education curricula show breath-catching unawareness of the multiplying demands on today’s schools. Teachers today are expected to handle a constantly expanding range of subjects. They can no longer feel confident of parental or community support. They deal with greater numbers of pupils afflicted by increasingly severe physical, intellectual, and behavioural issues. In a society of yawning economic inequality, many state schools are ludicrously underfunded.

Teachers are the ground troops of education. They need appropriate backup. Instead, the ministry of education is trying to chop nearly 600 positions, and building cutbacks mean 100-plus schools have to hold classes in halls, staff rooms and libraries while they wait for proper classrooms. 

I’d be grateful for suggestions from critics on how a school with such dwindling support and accelerating demands can enable 16-year-old S., autistic, dyslexic, and physically violent from foetal alcohol syndrome, to get the best out of rigorously taught Shakespeare and grammar. I encountered S. recently, and I marvel at the patient skills his teachers show towards him.

We’re all experts on education. After all, we’ve all been to school. It does fascinate me, though, when people say, with head-shaking disapproval, “I don’t know what they teach them in school these days”. Don’t they hear what a disqualifying admission that is?

I think we should listen to critical voices, such as those in my opening paragraphs. In fact, I urge it. Outside viewpoints can be relevant and helpful.

But demands which mostly seem aimed at reversion, at going back to the “good old days”? In what other field of human activity would we urge such a step?   

But wait there's more!