Former meth criminal Billy Macfarlane, now 53. Photo: Stephen Parker
Billy Macfarlane knows only too well the highs and lows of the Bay's meth scene.
He was once a drug lord and lived in an eight-bedroom million-dollar mansion in Tauranga's Ohauiti hills. He thought he had it all.
But his next home was to be an 8 by 8 prison cell.
Today, Macfarlane, a 53-year-old father of five, is bunking in the back room of his mother's humble Rotorua home.
Today, Macfarlane says he is living a very different life to the one he used to have.
Instead of being a kingpin bankrolling a major P operation, he is teaching te reo in Rotorua and says he is talking to police with a view to mentoring young offenders and troubled youths to help them avoid the kind of life he once lived.
Today power and respect have very different meanings for him.
But Macfarlane has clear views of meth: "Looking for the answer to win the war on meth is like trying to eat an elephant. How do you do that? One bite at a time. It's a war that cannot be won in one magic strike but has to be fought constantly in small battles".
Waiting for him at a Starbucks cafe crowded with cruise ship passengers on Tauranga's waterfront, I wonder what a former 'drug lord' looks like. When he comes in accompanied by his young son, he looks like any local dad - even down to the 'dad uniform' of jeans and sneakers. Macfarlane fetches his youngest son a chocolate frappucino.
It is hard to fathom this father used to be someone whose "don't f*** with him" reputation was widely known, who knew the players in a notorious drug-related murder, and who was locked up in New Zealand's highest-security prison.
Growing up, Macfarlane says he excelled in sports. He represented regional teams in rugby league and rugby union, but not long after leaving high school was arrested on driving charges and sent to a detention centre for several months.
The friendships he forged back then allowed him to burrow deep into the heart of the criminal underworld.
"I spent several years living in Australia and worked for an organisation ... a bunch of rich businessmen with power issues. It became apparent to me that just like here in New Zealand there is no discrimination as far as drugs, money and power go. Methamphetamine is a drug which is both used and abused by people from all walks of life, from the beneficiaries to the high-rollers. The sooner society accepts and understands that the better and the easier it will be to deal with the issues surrounding it".
Back in New Zealand, Macfarlane says he escaped prison in the 1980s and was involved in police chases.
Macfarlane says he started smoking cannabis at age 23 while in prison. In the late 1990s, he was introduced to a new drug which was making its way around "discreet circles".
Back then it was called PP.
He first smoked meth on tin foil with an old friend who he says was one of the country's first P cooks. The friend has since died.
Macfarlane's "mischief nature and his strong desire to get rich" led him to teach himself chemistry and everything he needed to know to make meth. He was eventually arrested for manufacturing meth and sentenced to six years in prison in 2004.
In prison, he attended a Tikanga Maori wananga run by 'Mahi Tahi'. As he learned te reo Maori and as he began to embrace Maori values his focus slowly started to shift.
Following his early release in late 2006, he attended Te Wananga Takiura o Nga Kura Kaupapa Maori in Auckland where he studied te reo Maori, attending for five months before moving away from Auckland and moving to Tauranga "to make a new start".
Little did he know this decision would lead him back to his life of crime.
Macfarlane says he moved to Tauranga with good intentions but soon found himself associating again with old acquaintances and falling back into old habits.
He initially planned on building a new home in Tauranga, but when the chance arose for him to pay the mortgage on a friend's Ohauiti mansion, he believed it was a dream come true.
But the dream didn't last. In July 2009, drug squad detectives raided the mansion. He was arrested and charged with "financing an organised drug ring".
Macfarlane was arrested in Tauranga along with 12 other people, men and women from Auckland after a drug squad investigation codenamed 'Operation Royale', which intercepted texts and bugged phone calls.
Macfarlane had been bankrolling one of New Zealand's most prolific P cooks, Christian Clifton, who was sentenced to life imprisonment. Clifton's was the first ever New Zealand life sentence for meth manufacture. Macfarlane had given $120,000 to Clifton to help buy enough pseudoephedrine in the form of Contac NT pills to make more than $1 million of methamphetamine.
Macfarlane was eventually sentenced in August 2011 to 14 years' imprisonment, reduced from 16 years because on the eve of his sentencing he arranged for a cache of 15 weapons - including military style rifles and sawn-off shotguns - to be given to the police.
In 2012, after Macfarlane had spent a year in Paremoremo maximum security prison, his mansion was ordered to be forfeited to the Crown under the proceeds of crime law and not long after was burned to the ground in a suspected arson attack.
"Following sentencing I was transferred directly to maximum security. I was spiritually, mentally and physically deflated and for the first few weeks of my sentence I found it difficult to operate and constantly wondered if and how I would survive,'' he says.
''I had arrived at the crossroad that many prisoners get to when they are handed very lengthy sentences and it was the first time in my life that I had ever experienced despair. Despair is a powerful emotion that can lead a person into a very dark place but for me it signalled that I had reached a critical time in my life.
''The first few months were made more difficult by the fact that I was in denial about my offending. In a matter of weeks, I had gone from living in a million-dollar home to living in an 8 by 8 cell. I knew right then that something needed to change or I would end up dying in prison. At that time, I had no idea what I needed to change or how I was going to do that."
In March 2012, Macfarlane was transferred from maximum security up to the Northland Correctional Facility in Ngawha and while he was there several things happened which he says changed the course of his life and changed him as a person.
After attending a Tikanga Maori wananga in prison, Macfarlane was offered the opportunity to do some mentoring in the Kea Young Offenders Unit. He moved into the unit and lived amongst the young men taking up a role as a teacher of te reo Maori.
"My close involvement with the men over that time brought about many changes in me and actually re-sculptured some of my values and beliefs. I found myself doing things I had failed to do with my own children and other things that I thought I would never do but really enjoyed.
''It's true that I was a teacher and mentor for those young men but they were also teaching me. They taught me some of the most valuable lessons I had ever learnt. They taught me how to be patient, kind, honest, non-judgmental and in many ways how to be a better parent.
''I could see where many of their parents had failed them, I could see where I was failing my children ... but it wasn't about blaming anyone, it was just about understanding it and changing it, so yes there is no doubt that my time in Kea had a huge impact on my character".
Seven-and-a-half years have now passed since his arrest in 2009 and Macfarlane has lost his home and all of his material belongings. But he says he feels more successful now than at any other time in his life due to the fact that he never really knew the true meaning of success.
Before that, success meant being highly competitive and winning was everything. Success was defined by how much money a man has. Respect was earned often through violence. And with success and respect came power.
Today, Macfarlane says he is a vastly different man. He now teaches te reo in his hometown of Rotorua. He has just completed a level 7 diploma in te reo and Maori leadership and he has a goal to set up and facilitate "offender wananga" working with others who are struggling with a life of crime and looking for positive guidance and support.
New Zealand Maori Arts and Crafts Institute general manager Eraia Kiel was instrumental in helping Macfarlane integrate back into the Rotorua community, together with Wera Aotearoa Charitable Trust General manager Israel Hawkins. Kiel helped him into his current role where he is teaching te reo classes three nights a week.
"We believe in him. I have known him nearly all my life but he and I went down very different routes. As a kid, he was a great artist and sportsman but he went down the wrong path. He is an intelligent man with much to give and it was unfortunate that in the past he focused his energies in the wrong places."
Kiel says it is not just him who has welcomed Macfarlane back but influential people in the community.
"Whanaungatanga or connectedness is so important to turn a person's life around and that is what we are trying to do here, they say it takes a community to raise a person, well it also takes a community to reintegrate a person. It's a collective effort, we have a saying in our culture 'nā tōu rourou, nā taku rourou ka ora ai te iwi', that is "with your contribution and my contribution the people will prosper'.
Kiel said he had been impressed by the way Macfarlane had really worked to turn his life around in prison.
"We were blown away by his dedication. He used to run classes seven days a week. Because you could see he was harnessing his skills for the right reasons, even the guards looked up to him."
Kiel says his goal for Macfarlane would be "for him to be the most positive role model for his child and grandchildren that he can be and share his story to inspire others who are searching for a better quality of life."
When asked about Macfarlane, police said they could not discuss individuals.
"Police do work in partnership with people from all parts of our communities to prevent and reduce crime and other harms. We encourage anyone making positive changes in their lives and seeking to support others in their recovery from methamphetamine and other drugs and alcohol harm," a spokesperson says.
Macfarlane says that over the past five years his commitment to change has come from the depth of despair in 2011 and has been fuelled by his passion for Tikanga Maori as well as his responsibilities as a teacher, a father, a grandfather and as a member of society.
"I measure my success now by what I have to give to society and not what I have taken from it. I measure my success by the pride I see in my family's eyes when they see how I am now and what I am doing now. As for respect and power, well I am working hard to earn respect now rather than taking it, and power for me is about power with not power over."
We meet again at Tauranga's Phoenix. Sitting on outside tables, his parole letter nearly blows away in the wind. He is determined never to return to prison.
"I am a different man...I used to have it all and then I lost it. In prison I never missed my house, I never missed my car and I never missed all the money but I really missed my children and my family. I have my freedom back now and with that another opportunity to be the father and the grandfather that my children need me to be."
It comes as Winston Peters has yet to back up claims he's made about Dr Ayesha Verrall.