Fearless: Rachel Stewart - Opinion Writer of the Year 2016.
Fearless: Rachel Stewart - Opinion Writer of the Year 2016.
I LOVE Rachel Stewart, the Whanganui-based, award-winning columnist for the NZ Herald and various other publications.
She is intelligent, incisive, scathing, witty and fearless. She does not pull her punches and I would hate to run into her in a dark alley if she was having a bad day —after all, she did threaten to break blogger David Farrar's legs if she ever met him in a dark alley!
For those of you unfamiliar with Rachel, she lives here in Whanganui and was the 2016 Canon Media Awards Opinion Writer of the Year.
She has been rather controversial at times about farming and once received a death threat in her letterbox from some half-baked moron.
She even had a truckload of manure dumped on her driveway by some irate farmer, but she was thankful for that — as was her garden and all the trees planted on her rural sanctuary.
Rachel is an environmentalist, advocate of synthetic milk (which scares the hell out of farmers) and reducing farming's footprint, was a farmer herself for many years, is a past president of the Whanganui branch of Federated Farmers and, like myself, was a locomotive assistant for NZ Rail when rail once thrived here.
She is also an animal lover who abhors animal cruelty. With a baseball bat in hand, she stared down a group of young men, having smashed the hell out of their vehicle, when they had dragged a live goat behind it — just for the fun of it.
Earlier this year, Rachel copped criticism from bloated, opinionated blogger Cameron Slater, of Whale Oil infamy, who called her a click-bait, hard left, liberal retard.
Cameron's a bit like that, it's his hobby — he even had a go at me once.
And recently journalist Gordon McLauchlan was critical of Rachel calling for the shutdown of hate speech in relation to an article that criticised the inclusion of te reo Maori in everyday use (even though te reo Maori is an official New Zealand language), and for — as he stated — "believing in her own bullshit".
Being outspoken, and a lesbian to boot, Rachel is a prize target for your typical rugged Kiwi farmer, often suffering from excessive testosterone levels and dwindling sheep numbers.
It's easy for some to label her a man-hater, but that could not be further from the truth. I've never found Rachel to be like that — she speaks her mind, doesn't sugarcoat things or mince her words, and some people feel threatened by that.
You could argue she often brings ire upon herself, as we all do from time to time, but it's important to remember we are all different.
Rachel is no Mother Teresa and will never win a Nobel Peace Prize or a popularity contest, but at least you know where you stand with her.
The point about Rachel's articles is that she gets attention ... people sit up and take notice. If she is guilty of anything, she is guilty of being too passionate and of caring too much — qualities that should be admired.
I hope she enjoys a well-earned break over the holiday period and comes back in the new year refreshed, enthused, as passionate as ever and with both barrels blazing.
Steve Baron
■ Steve Baron is a Whanganui-based political commentator, author and founder of Better Democracy NZ with degrees in economics and political science.
