Steve Braunias' Secret Diary of ... Jami-Lee Ross

By Steve Braunias

Senior Writer·NZ Herald·

19 Oct, 2018 04:00 PM4 mins to read

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Ex-National MP Jami-Lee Ross speaks to Newstalk ZB's Heather Du Plessis Allan about the allegations he has levelled against the National Party.

Opinion by Steve Braunias

Steve Braunias writes for the Listener and Newsroom.

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COMMENT:

MONDAY

I feel fine now. I mean, sure, I had a mental breakdown and I was in a very dark place and I was the victim, very much the victim, and I suffered and I was covered in boils and I wore a sackcloth and ashes and endured nameless agonies but I feel fine now.

It's a lovely day for a drive. God, people are slow! But I overtook every single one of them because no one or nothing could stop me from reaching the manifold destiny that awaited me as I drove from Auckland to Wellington to spread my important message.

I drove past Lake Taupo. I was thirsty and could have drunk the lake in a single draught. I drove through the Desert Road. I felt like exchanging my car for a camel and riding it through the Rangipo Desert in long, flowing robes, a thin smile on my tanned, rugged and very handsome face.

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I looked at my very handsome face in the rear-view mirror many, many times. I thought of how it would soon look to a breathless nation. I practised different smiles, different expressions of injury, different expressions of profound self-importance.

I put the top down past Taihape. I felt the wind in my hair. It stroked it, caressed it. It couldn't get enough of it! My hair was driving the wind crazy.

I unloosened my tie on the Horowhenua plains. There's nothing plain about my body, and I slowly began to uncover, to reveal, to expose, and took a certain sensual pleasure in driving past the Kapiti Coast in the nude.

I was hardened in my resolve as I entered Wellington.

TUESDAY

I've never felt better in all my life. I never wanted the press conference to end. I could have gone on forever. Towards the end of it I had to bite down the temptation to stop talking and to sing! To sing loud, to sing to the very heavens! Because wasn't I giving a concert? Wasn't I live, onstage, feet firmly planted on the black and white tiles in the greatest theatre of all, Parliament, where so many performers have entertained the nation - but surely no one has ever transfixed the nation like I did, in my gala performance, in my great hour, in the spectacle I made of myself.

Thank you all for coming.

WEDNESDAY

I'm on top of the world. I'm peaking. Is this how Christ felt? Jesus, too, had He been around today, would have made His way to Wellington police station equipped with the secret recordings that I made of private conversations.

And just as He had His scribes, I had journalists, so many journalists, follow me to the police station. I felt them like raindrops, so many raindrops, falling on the branches of a mighty totara, i.e. me.

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They scattered all around me. I tasted them on my lips. I touched them with my hands. I uncovered, I revealed, I exposed - I exulted.