HAS DAVID FARRIER ABUSED HIS STATE-FUNDED ORGAN DONATION?

A Salient Side-Show to a Mediocre Doco

A kerfuffle surrounds David Farrier’s film Mister Organ. The side-show to the film involves journalist and broadcaster Sean Plunket. There’s certainly no love lost between Farrier and Plunket. Here are Farrier’s latest social media postings on Plunket.

This Substack is a tad niche and long. However, it’s a complex story that can’t be told in short form. Full facts and detail are sometimes vital. Moreover, the Farrier/Plunket/Organ side-show to Mister Organ raises intriguing questions about public funding of films, social media, main-stream media bias and the political independence (or lack thereof) of New Zealand’s Courts and Police. And wrapped in the side-show is a mystery that we’ll seek to solve.

What happened?

Here's the series of events:

• The New Zealand Film Commission granted David Farrier $750,000 of public funding to make a documentary film centering on his interactions with a man named Michael Organ. (The size of that grant casts stark doubt on the genuineness of Farrier’s claim to media channel The Spinoff that “If I had my time again with this, I guarantee you I would not do it”.)

• The film, entitled Mister Organ, took about three years for Farrier to make and premiered in New Zealand on 7 November 2022. It features Farrier, Organ, Organ’s romantic/business partner Jillian Bashford-Evers and an Auckland antique shop called “Bashford Antiques” that Organ and Bashford-Evers jointly ran.

• On 29 September 2022, just before Mister Organ was released in New Zealand, New Zealand’s Family Court issued a “without notice” temporary Protection Order under New Zealand’s Family Violence Act 2018. The Order prohibited Farrier from having anything further to do with a certain “vulnerable person” (whom we’ll call “X”) who has never been publicly identified. In addition, the Order required Farrier to undergo a non-violence program. The Order also prohibited another person (whom we’ll call “Y”) from contacting X. The Police served the Order on Farrier on 4 November 2022.

  

• In late October and early November 2022, Plunket published excerpts of the Protection Order on his social media, with the names of X and Y redacted and Plunket’s “take” on the Court order. Plunket amplified his disclosures live on air on The Platform, the on-line media channel that Plunket runs and part-owns.

• On 7 November 2022, the same day Mister Organ premiered in New Zealand, Farrier told Today FM’s Tova O’Brien that he will “absolutely” take legal action against Plunket for defamation. That legal action has not eventuated, and for good reason – truth is an absolute defence to any claim for defamation and nothing Plunket published or said about Farrier was untrue. On his Webworm internet site, Farrier later tried to walk back his threat to sue Plunket, stating:

Where is the defamation case I am absolutely going to take against him?

This confusion is on me. Back when I was promoting Mister Organ in New Zealand, radio host Tova O’Brien asked me if I was going to take action against Sean.

I answered along the lines of “YES!”

The issue was that we’d just been talking about the existence of the Family Court case. It was about 6am in the morning, and by the time we were talking about taking action against Sean, my brain was still thinking about the Family Court case and getting it dismissed.

My “YES” was about fighting that Family Court case. Not taking a defamation case out against Sean Plunket.

• In a ruling issued in March 2023, the Family Court discharged the Protection Order, including its requirement that Farrier undergo a non-violence program. The Court’s decision contained the following:

… to accommodate redress for Farrier while attempting to be protective of the core familial relationship, I consider that it is appropriate for this paragraph and the conclusions of my judgment only to be published with anonymisation as noted in the paragraphs now recast. I also record that neither Organ nor Farrier were the core applicant and respondent. 

[155] I find that there is a family relationship.

[156] I have been met with a conflict in relation to the allegations of family violence. I have not found in favour of the applicant on the balance of probabilities.

[157] I have reached the view even if there was family violence that a final protection order is not necessary and that the temporary protection order should be discharged. 

[158] The material that supported the original application was devoid of specificity. The duty judge was left with concerns but further information has identified that a number of the concerns raised by X related to a period of more than four years ago and even those allegations lacked substance.

[159] There was significant embellishment in the initial affidavit. When parties come to the Court to seek orders on a without notice basis, there is an obligation on them to be full and frank in their disclosures. There was not full and frank disclosure on this occasion. 

[160] Moreover, there is considerable substance to the suggestions that the application was designed to impede the release of Farrier’s documentary. It does not make any sense to conclude otherwise given that the evidence is clear that X and Y had had no contact with each other for some years. Counsel for Y’s submission that the internet engagements post-dated the application was on solid footing. 

[161] Although X was emphatic that the proceedings were not born of the pending documentary film release date, the photographs that attach to X’s original affidavit all came from the promotional clip for the documentary.

[162]  Y is in (...) and has no intention of engaging further with X. Farrier is in California and has no wish to engage at all with X nor Organ.

[163] There has been no collusion between Y and Farrier that gets close to triggering s 89. Y agreed to be interviewed by Farrier, and in that interview expressed concerns for X because of Organ’s actions. The interview took place some years ago. 

[165] Standing back and looking at the matter as a whole X does not need protection from Y who only has X’s best interests at heart.

[166] As a result the order in X’s favour against Y falls. As a result the order against Farrier falls. As a result the order in favour of Organ falls.

[167] The temporary protection order is discharged and the application for a final order dismissed.

• It’s apparent from the above that the Protection Order also protected Organ.

• On 21 April 2023, the Police charged Plunket with two identical offences under New Zealand’s Family Court Act 1980. Each charge was that Plunket had published a report of proceedings identifying a so-called “associated respondent” of the vulnerable person (X) – that “associated respondent” being, according to the Police, Farrier. The charges were ridiculous and slightly sinister. The only relevant offence created by that legislation is that of identifying a vulnerable person. There is no offence of identifying an “associated respondent”. And Farrier was certainly not a vulnerable person. Farrier is one of the two individuals against whom the Protection Order was made. It’s hard to imagine the Police could have been that stupid. The charges were not public, but on 27 April 2023 - the very day Plunket was scheduled to appear in the Wellington District Court (Plunket’s appearance was adjourned) – The Herald’s “Open Justice” section was able to report the charges. Clearly, the Police had leaked the charges to The Herald.

• On 23 June 2023, the Police sheepishly but quite rightly withdrew the baseless - likely bad-faith - charges against Plunket.

Who’s in the wrong?

So who’s the real villain here?

Farrier is a darling of the “progressive” political Left, which regards Plunket as the exact opposite - a Devil Incarnate lurking in Aotearoan Media. What, then, might Plunket have done wrong? Farrier insinuates that the Protection Order against him was something that should never have been publicized and repeats like a mantra that Family Court proceedings are “notoriously confidential” (words not to be found in the Family Court or Violence Acts). But why should the now-discharged Protection Order have remained forever secret? The Order was real and related to a film that Farrier had been paid three quarters of a million dollars of taxpayers’ money to make. There was therefore a legitimate public interest in the fact that, in connection with Mister Organ, a Protection Order had been issued against the film maker. Plunket was diligent in redacting, from the excerpts of the Order he published, identifying details of everyone involved except Farrier. (The Spinoff was equally diligent in “un-redacting” and publishing some of Plunket’s redactions.)

What of Farrier’s conduct? With Mister Organ, Farrier looks to portray himself as a victim of Organ, which is simplistic to say the least. If Mister Organ achieves nothing else, Farrier successfully records his own distinctly paranoid stalky-ness, which was the basis for the Protection Order.  Farrier’s cavalier obsessiveness is nicely demonstrated by his theft of Bashford Antique’s sign, and the Disputes Tribunal order for him to pay Organ $3,000 in compensation for his thievery. Clearly, New Zealand’s Courts and Tribunals don’t view Farrier as favourably as his acolytes.

One of the weirdest aspects of Mister Organ is that Organ is self-evidently an archetypal conman and grifter, but Farrier is oddly incapable of seeing Organ for what he so obviously is. In addition, even though Organ is delusional and mentally unwell, Farrier hounds him relentlessly, along with Bashford-Evers, together with Organ’s family. For a balanced and insightful take on Farrier and Mister Organ, you can read Damien Grant’s article Mister Organ: A voyeuristic tour of damaged human detritus for our amusement | Stuff.co.nz. Grant’s article ends, perceptively and amusingly:

So, my own verdict on Mister Organ, the movie? Well, I'd argue that Farrier set out to make a film about someone who lives off damaged souls at the fringes of society, who lacks self-awareness and is seemingly incapable of understanding, or perhaps caring, how his behaviour negatively impacts those around him.

He succeeded.

A Mystery Solved?

Farrier told Stuff “I find it surprising and alarming you can be dragged into a Family Court case...” and it’s indeed difficult to see at first blush what all this has to do with family matters. However, in discharging the Protection Order, the Judge confirms “I find that there is a family relationship”. So, what’s the family relationship, and who might be X (the vulnerable person) and Y (the individual who, with Farrier, was prohibited from contacting X and Organ)?

To be clear, I don’t know, and can’t say for sure, who X and Y are. But I’m willing to speculate; idle speculation can be cheap fun. Bashford-Evers was maligned for the systematic and highly lucrative wheel clamping that went on outside of Bashford Antiques. But was that dubious (albeit legal-at-the-time) activity really her initiative? The clear signs from Mister Organ are that Bashford-Evers was, and probably still is, under Organ’s charlatan spell. It’s tenably clear therefore that Bashford-Evers is X – with Organ, as her partner, also protected.

So, who’s Y? Y must be a member of Bashford-Evers’ family. The Family Court decision discharging the Protection Order states “Y agreed to be interviewed by Farrier, and in that interview expressed concerns for X because of Organ’s actions. The interview took place some years ago”.

Bashford-Evers has a son, Israel Jamie Evers. I seemed to recall that Mister Organ included an interview by Farrier of Bashford-Evers’ son. But, annoyingly, I couldn’t easily check that because, despite being funded with our taxes, Mister Organ has been withdrawn from free-to-air play on TVNZ+ (or anywhere else).  Could it be that Mister Organ and the events surrounding it have become an embarrassment for the New Zealand Film Commission and the departed Labour Government? And if Farrier’s relationship with Israel was confined to a one-off interview, why was Farrier included in the Protection Order in the first place? Umm.