Pam Corkery’s brave return - ‘WHY I CAME OUT OF HIDING’

The straight-talking Kiwi believed the time was right to hang with a gang once more

For decades, popular journalist and broadcaster Pam Corkery was on our screens, talking on our radios or in Parliament.

But in recent years, New Zealand has been Corkeryfree since the 66-year-old took herself off to Brisbane, Australia and found other things to occupy her. Yet that hasn’t stopped her maintaining a keen interest in our current affairs and keeping abreast of everything that has been happening in her home country.

Which is why she is back on our screens after 14 years. In 2008, she did a two-part documentary called The Gangs, which gained her unprecedented access to gang life. She has returned to the topic after feeling concerned that gangs were increasingly in the media.

“I couldn’t believe what I was reading and seeing about the gangs in New Zealand,” says Pam. So much had changed since our documentary and instead of decreasing in numbers, there were more gangs than ever.

“I thought, This is nuts. We’re going through the whole gang drama again.’”

She rang her friend Laurie Clarke, who was the producer and director of those first documentaries, and suggested it might be time they took another look.

The result, The Gangs... 14 Years Later, is full of new information around what’s going on in our gang culture, much of which we haven’t heard about.

“We get into the corruption going on inside the gangs,” she explains. We’re talking white-collar corruption involving real estate agents, lawyers and accountants, and then the other countries coming into this country’s gang culture. It’s terrifying.