Updated: TVNZ, Sky City Casino, John Key and the naughty Nats perverse idea of a “Fair Go”: Kevin always liked the limelight, so lets let him have it!

In response to Dr Edwards blog post/article, TVNZ Fair Go journo Kevin (Milne) wrote:

BE: I’ve removed one offensive and potentially defamatory comment about Kevin. I can’t of course vouch for the factuality of what you’ve said, since I wasn’t party to any of these events. With the exception of the clearly defamatory, we trust people to tell the truth. I can only observe that some of this sounds rather intemperate.

We also received, via email,  Justice and consumer rights campaigner Dermot Nottingham”s comment, we have however not edited it, after all it is his story and his personal opinion of Milne and has undoubtedly been formed as a result of his own personal experiences of him, Fair Go, TVNZ and its so-called “staffers”:

Hi Brian

I can attest to the behaviour that you speak of and I have encountered first hand.  I represented two guys alleged to have ripped of a “family man” over a mortgage related fraud.

The details are not important other than to say that I met Simon Mercep for the first time and was not impressed with his “open mind”.  In essence my clients were “thieves and robbers” and the shows “client” was the victim.  At our first meeting I  warned Mercep as to defamation and his response was that the show had never been successfully sued.

They started running promo’s the earliest ever in day and time slot and Mercep stated unequivocally that the show would run that week as they had the paper trail from Adam and Eve.  I spoke of an injunction and they, including Milne, laughed raucously. I laughed even louder back, thinking that it was a laughing contest not a pissing contest.

Fair Go’s alleged victim, ACC fraudster Evonne Puru attempted to inveigle Nottingham in her bold as brass second attempt at defrauding ACC

The ads kept running and I waited till 5pm on the night of the show before I dropped a bomb.  The show had to begin by Milne apologising for the lead not being able to run, and it was replaced with a story about “skin coloured bandages not being skin coloured as advertised”. Not to say the least Milne was real anti.  The same thing happened the following week when I dropped another “information packet”.

On the third week when the show went to air, the story contained an admission that I had obtained a complete confession from the shows “client” that he unreservedly withdrew every allegation against my clients. What Milne did not tell viewers was that I had proved that the alleged offending was actual offending committed by the shows “client”.

The story went from one of their biggest ever to a complete whimp, but Milne and Mercep misled the viewers.  But Fairgo were not finished with me yet.  I also represented ACC claimants (for no fee) but a fee was paid to a Union that I was involved with.  A client asked me to be involved in promoting perjury about her pain levels and the amount of medication that she was on.  I refused outright and then found out that she had been convicted of ACC fraud over similar issues involving a large amount of money.

She had been claiming home help when she and her husband were labouring on building a new home. The union offered a refund of the majority of the fee.  The show came at “me” like you wouldn’t know.  Mercep came around to my house without warning with a camera crew in tow.  My partner was home with our one year old daughter.

I subsequently did a studio interview with Milne, but before the interview things got ‘really hot” out the back with some of the production management.  It was such a laugh as I put them off their game, and they attempted to make it real personal.  Milne was waiting for me in the Studio “all prettied up” and offered his handshake, which i laughed at and said “lets do this Kevin, just you me, and New Zealand.

They showed three minutes of this woman being interviewed in Australia (yes they had travelled overseas to interview her at home on the Goldcoast and on ACC) when she went out to the mail box she dropped a letter; and had to get Mercep to pick it up because “OF THE PAIN”.

Anyway back to TVNZ studio’s Milne gave me a minute, and as I had appeared on Holmes (the news, breakfast, 60 mins and 20/20 relating to my many campaigns), I waited until there was 20 seconds to go and the resultant exchanges made Milne look like a complete idiot.

He started shouting at me as he was being fed dribble through his earpeice when I was winning the exchanges and in the end I used the word “factual matrix” and Kevin jumped on these words asking “what does that mean”.  I answered that if he “did not know the meaning he should not be fronting the iconic show”.

The ear piece hummed again and Milne started yelling “are you going to dob her in Dermot” and I answered, “so Kevin you think she is guilty as well“.

The shot of his face was priceless.   At the end of the show Milne misled the viewers by saying that “the victim” had had a misunderstanding with ACC but that she had since paid the money back.

A fraud conviction a misunderstanding? The show got great numbers and allegedly 100’s of emails.  IN BALANCE, THEY READ OUT ONE THAT THOUGHT I WAS AN IDIOT’ and another that stated that IN TWENTY OR SO YEARS OF MILNE BEING THE PRESENTER MILNE HAD NEVER BEEN TAKEN APART LIKE THAT BEFORE”.

The next week they ran still further comment about the meaning of the words “factual matrix”.  The interview was shown again in the “summer series” as lead story, and Milne was so badly damaged that he included the interview in his retirement show as one of the best three stories he had been involved in. But Milne “edited it” removing all of the exchanges where he was made to look a complete fool.

Milne is a complete narcissist and is a malicious, disingenuous bully.  I find it funny that so many kiwis (New Zealander’s) have caught on to how the show has now run its course.  I feel that it should never again, if it is left on air, become a 30 year “fiefdom” of the likes of a journeyman reporter like Milne.

It should be about great topic, and if there is not enough left to talk about, cut the shows throat.  Surely in thirty years every topic has been done to death.

BE: I’ve removed one offensive and potentially defamatory comment about Kevin. I can’t of course vouch for the factuality of what you’ve said, since I wasn’t party to any of these events. With the exception of the clearly defamatory, we trust people to tell the truth. I can only observe that some of this sounds rather intemperate.

The edited version of Nottingham’s comment can be read at the very bottom of Dr Brian Edwards blog post:

A Kafkaesque story that should horrify you. And it’s set in New Zealand!

Milne, Mercep and the girls and boy’s who play in the TVNZ sandbox “FAIR GO” have taken any opportunity to impugn Nottingham, why?

One reason is that he is one of the few people who has fronted up to the cameras and successfully challenged the programs agenda and Milne et al hated it.

There is, however, another far more nefarious reason for Fair Go’s Treatment of Nottingham. The program was under instructions, from the top, to harm Nottingham’s reputation as an advocate. We’ll be discusing TVNZ’s criminal activities, its culture, motives and behaviour in upcoming posts.

We’ll leave you with some of Kevin Milne’s own recollections of how TVNZ played a very dangerous game with the truth:

Milne said that when he left at the end of 2010 he told management there needed to be a much stronger firewall between editorial aspects of TVNZ, marketing and senior management.

“I was surprised that was not taken a little more seriously.”

He knew of situations where the producers of current affairs programmes had been rung by TVNZ corporate managers.

In one case he was aware of a corporate executive who had rung Fair Go saying: “You’re doing a story about a mate of mine – I’m just ringing up to see how things are going.”

“I just think those sort of phone calls are off limits,” he said.

“I am not saying there was any attempt to change something we were doing – but there should not even be phone calls like that.”

Source: FAIR GO FIREWALL (nzherald.co.nz)

We think that the only “mad, bad or sad character” is Kevin himself and that he might, yet again, be bending the truth….. just a smidgen. Just one example of how Milne’s mates, TVNZ executive management who were beholden to certain National party players (who we will not name at the moment), helped out their wealthy pals is to be found in this post:

Colin Giltrap, motor vehicles are not the only things Giltrap has bought