4 ...proudly brought to you by Mazda. Tonight on Sunday, the judge who found himself in the firing line. The Canadian judge and his encounter with Judith Collins. One official said she is very hostile. He was tasked with resolving our most infamous murder case. My family ` they're all dead. For the first time, Ian Binnie speaks about his face-to-face interview with David Bain. I wanna talk to that man. He's still alive. I can hear his answers and make up my own mind if I think he's pulling a fast one. And you buy that? It happens. It happens. And why he's still angry at our government. Judith Collins is the absolute poster case of why politicians should be kept out of it. I had all these messages on Facebook saying, 'You should read this blog about this woman. She's nuts. You'll really like it.' She went from exhausted mum to blogging superstar. I'm fascinated that they are popular because I think they're just the day-to-day inanities of raising kids. The real-life domestic chaos behind the words of Emily Writes. God knows I've done the weirdest shit to try and get my kids to sleep. And How Ridiculous. The amazing trick-shooters... And it just keeps coming in, keeps coming in. Yeah! ...reclaim their world record. It's the biggest shot that anybody has ever done in the world ever. Captions by Anne Langford. Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2017 Kia ora. I'm Miriama Kamo. He was the man hired to put the David Bain case to bed. End of story. But that's not what happened. Instead Canadian former supreme court judge Ian Binnie, the man tasked by our government with investigating the case, says he found himself on trial, criticised and humiliated after finding that David Bain was innocent and deserving of compensation; the results of his year-long inquiry thrown back in his face by New Zealand politicians. Tonight, you'll hear some of Ian Binnie's crucial Q and A with David Bain himself. And in his first New Zealand television interview, Ian Binnie speaks with Janet McIntyre about being caught in the middle when Kiwi politics and justice collide. I felt that I'd gone to New Zealand, which I like very much, and got mugged. Toronto, four and a half years down the track and thousands of kilometres from New Zealand, former Canadian supreme court judge Ian Binnie, QC, is still smarting from the way he was treated by the New Zealand government. They got the answer they wanted. All right. So they can claim victory. Victory at what expense? Victory at the reputation of New Zealand as a fair-dealing country. Ian Binnie has had a glittering career as a highly respected judge, described here in Canada as one of the most influential legal minds in the land. His opinion, his presence is sought out by organisations as powerful as the United Nations. In 2011, out of the blue, he got a phone call from the New Zealand government. He had no idea of the firestorm he was about to walk into. NEWS ARCHIVE: Five years on, still no one is prepared to make a call on compensation. It's not going to help David Bain putting forward a report that's not going to stand up to public scrutiny. I cannot make a decision based on what's in front of us. Who's going to want to take it on after what happened to Ian Binnie. Ian Binnie's report into the Bain case was trashed by the then justice minister, Judith Collins. It's simply not credible. Oh, Crusher, yes. Well, I didn't feel crushed, you know, but I felt that if she could have, she would have. NEWS ARCHIVE: Five members of one family all dead. It's the case that's divided New Zealand for 27 years ` the mass murder in Every Street, Dunedin, in June 1994. David Bain claimed he'd come back from his paper round to find his whole family shot dead. They're all dead! I came home, and they re all dead! But the jury didn't believe him and he was jailed 13 years for their murders. He's very, very upset. He seems to be convulsing downstairs. He seems to be very upset, indeed. In 2007, the Privy Council quashed Bain's convictions, and after a second trial, he was found not guilty. REPORTER: Did you have any doubts today, Joe? No doubts today. No doubts since 1996. But was he innocent? That's what David Bain now needed to prove to the government before it would consider compensation for his years in prison. The then justice minister, Simon Power, turned to Ian Binnie in Canada. His brief ` to determine was David Bain innocent. Did you know anything about the David Bain case? Nothing. It was a wrongful conviction, that it was highly controversial. I was told later that nothing I would say would change anybody's mind, and the best advice would be to deliver my report on the way to the airport. Having made his way to the very top of Canada's legal profession, first as a barrister, then the deputy minister of justice, right through the courts to supreme court judge, Ian Binnie had developed a strong interest in cases of wrongful convictions. The Bain case intrigued him. What was your starting point? The starting point was the Privy Council. The legal system has pronounced at the highest level there was a substantial miscarriage of justice and a wrongful conviction. Period. So with that in mind, was it inevitable that you were going to go down a path that would lead to you finding him innocent? No. 11,000 pages of documents to work through: court transcripts, interviews, photographs. 10 months of work. This is not all the material. This is the material that I brought home. But crucial for Ian Binnie was to meet David Bain face to face. I wanna talk to that man. He's still alive. I can hear his answers and make up my own mind if I think he's pulling a fast one. And they did meet at Auckland's Copthorne Hotel, along with Bain's long-time supporter, Joe Karam. I had the impression that quite often when you see them on television, David Bain is about to say something and Joe Karam would speak for him, and I wanted to liberate David Bain to talk for himself. So he sat Joe behind David. Well, I just didn't want it suggested that there were nods and winks going back and forth. I was concerned that somebody might suggest afterwards, somehow, there was some communication between Joe Karam and David Bain during the interview. How willing did you find David Bain as an interviewee? I found him very willing, very straightforward. He is an interesting man. He is a huge man. When I was introduced to him, I am 6' 1", and he towered over me. He didn't exhibit any great sense of humour in our conversation. Of course it was not a humorous topic. So would you be interested in hearing some of that interview? Sure. Mr Binnie would later be criticised for relying too heavily on what David told him. RECORDING: Can I have your full name, please? And you swear that in answer to the questions I pose, you will give the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. For the first time you're about to listen to David Bain describing finding his family dead; first his mother, Margaret. The pathologist say it's more likely they were closed. Why didn't you at that point call Emergency? Going from room to room, he says he found his 13-year-old brother, Stephen, dead. When you say you touched Stephen's shoulder, do you recall touching anything else? Then Bain says he went into his sister Laniet's room, where he heard something ` a noise coming from her. But the allegation against you personally is if you heard noises from Laniet, your instinct should have been to rush over and try to help her. You said it should have been his instinct to rush over and help her. Aren't you curious to know why he didn't do that? That would have been my instinct, but his story up until that had been that he was in a state of shock, so I really wasn't surprised that he didn't react as you would, walking into your sister's room and hearing her gurgle. So you accept that? That being in a state of shock was his excuse for why he didn't help her? That's his explanation. I take the explanation, I put it together with the explanation that he gave to a lot of other things and I form an overall impression. It took almost half an hour from the time David Bain arrived home for him to call emergency services. They're all dead!! Who is all dead? My family! They're all dead. Hurry up! David Bain told Ian Binnie he blacked out after finding his family. Can you explain what you are referring to when you talk about blacked out? And you buy that? It happens. It happens. It's striking, isn't it? David Bain seems to have a lot of memory lapses, and you put that to him yourself in the interview. Yes. And you yourself question whether it is a convenient lapse of memory. Yes. That's one of the reasons I wanted to interview him. I wanted to get a sense of whether he was playing games. And I came away clearly with the impression that he was not playing games. After the break, Ian Binnie's own theory about what he thinks really happened. It's the ultimate act of revenge. And the judge finds himself on trial. I thought the whole thing was a stitch-up. 4 What kind of person murders their own family? As the Crown put it, something snapped in somebody's head. But who snapped? Former Canadian judge Ian Binnie says it was 58-year-old Robin Bain who killed four family members, sparing David, out on his paper round, before changing his clothes, then committing suicide. But David remarkably bears his father no malice, as he told Ian Binnie in 2012. Is it really plausible that a man, having murdered most of his family, changes his clothes, cleans up some of the scene and then shoots himself? How plausible is that, really? I think it is plausible because it looks to me that Robin was putting the blame on David, setting him up. What have I got to worry about today? Binnie points to evidence of Robin's deteriorating mental health and the crumbling family dynamics; Robin, banished from the house to a caravan out the back, his marriage broken, and David replacing him in Margaret's affections. Binnie reckons Robin set his son up to make him look like the murderer. Robin had a good deal of reason to resent David massively, and what better revenge could you have than to leave your son with the blame? What could be more damaging to David than to leave him under this cloud of suspicion that resulted in 13 years in prison for murdering the family. It's the ultimate act of revenge. It's hard to imagine a father doing that to his son. Is it any harder to imagine a son killing his entire family, having had no background of mental instability, no indication of imbalance as against a father who had quite a history of mental issues. But what about that cryptic message found on the family computer? Binnie reckons Robin typed it, all part of his elaborate attempt to set David up as the killer. To make it look like a fake suicide note? Yes. It's a hell of a thing to do to take out four innocent people just as vengeance on the son you loathe? These things happen, you know. Murders that from the outside seem inexplicable are inexplicable because we don't understand what's going on within these families until it's too late. Somebody snapped. Robin had a lot more reason to snap than David. David, so far as I can see, had no reason to snap. How did Binnie get to this point? Why does he think David Bain is innocent? First he takes issue with the Crown's theory that David murdered four family members, went out on his paper round and came back to kill his father. If David Bain had, in fact, got up early, murdered his mother, brothers, two sisters, why wouldn't he go out to the caravan where Robin was sleeping and put a bullet in his head? Why would he leave the house with all these bodies knowing that Robin could walk in at any time and find them and call the police? Ian Binnie says he considered all the available evidence to reach his conclusions, including the bloody sock prints found on the carpet. Whoever made those footprints was likely to be the murderer. Whose footprint was it? I believe it was Robin's because there were a number of tests done. But there was contradictory evidence on that, wasn't there? Er... It could equally have been David's footprint? No, I don't think so at all. Ian Binnie says if they were David's bloody footprints and he then put on running shoes to do his paper round, it begs an explanation. If he was wearing bloodied socks in the running shoes at the time he went on the paper route, there would be blood on the insoles. They examined the running shoes and found there was no evidence of bloodstain. But there was something in the evidence that did bother Ian Binnie ` the broken glasses found in David's room, one of the lenses found in his murdered brother's room ` the scene of a violent struggle with the killer. David's first trial lawyer claimed David told him back in 1995 he was wearing those glasses the night before the murders. That lawyer, Michael Guest, even told the Crown of his client's admission. But that's not what David Bain told Ian Binnie. You've got the problem that David told you that he hadn't worn those glasses for months,... Yes. ...but he told his first trial lawyer he'd been wearing them that weekend. How do you reconcile that? I accept that he had worn them during the weekend. And I accept that that is a contradiction. I accept that it's a significant contradiction. I have to put it in the broader context of everything else that he has said. If you accept David Bain was wearing those glasses, and they were broken in the struggle, doesn't that point to David Bain being the killer? It's not as simple as that. There are just too many unanswered questions relating to how those glasses got there. But Ian Binnie didn't foresee how the glasses contradiction would be used to discredit his report. More on that later. There were other problems for Ian Binnie. Much of the original crime-scene evidence had been lost or destroyed; evidence which might have conclusively proved or disproved the case against David Bain. He was denied the opportunity to make his case because the evidence, that, according to the detective's manual, should have been preserved, wasn't preserved What evidence? They didn't preserve the Luminol carpet, they didn't preserve the skin around the bullet wound in Robin Bain's head. What could be more fundamental in the investigation of a firearms murder than to look for firearms discharge residue on the alleged killer? So what do you say about the police investigation? I thought this investigation was exceptionally inept. And overall, what did you conclude about David Bain? In all probability, and I say that's a strong probability, I think he's innocent. In August 2012, after almost a year of investigation, Ian Binnie delivered this report, almost 200 pages, to Justice Minister Judith Collins. It was forthright and critical. David Bain, he found, was not only innocent, he deserved compensation. This report sparked a furore. Coming up, Ian Binnie summoned to the Beehive. 'Be careful. You're entering the death zone.' The fracas and the fallout. It's not going to help David Bain putting forward a report in which I don't believe would stand up to public scrutiny. Judith Collins is the absolute poster case of why politicians should be kept out of it. (WHISPERS) There's our manager Neville. He's super picky. (WHISPERS) There's no fault he can't see or crack he won't spot. And no conversation he can't hear. 3 When Ian Binnie is not travelling the world as a judge and international arbitrator, he keeps bees. They are amazing creatures. They live in very well organised, little social communities without the need for government and lawyers and journalists, and they do lot of good in the world, unlike lawyers, journalists and the rest. What's the question you're most commonly asked about the bees? Uh, people are most concerned about getting stung. As he was once in another beehive far far away. September 2012. I was in Cairo at a meeting of the International Commission of Jurists. It was urgent that I come to Wellington. I said, 'You know, can't we do this on the phone? 'You know, it's a long way to Wellington from Cairo.' 'Oh, no, no. No. You've gotta come.' So he jumped on a plane and two days later he walked into Justice Minister Judith Collins' office. Everybody's got a very long face. 'Oh, you know, they say that there are errors in your report.' Were you concerned? I was surprised, you know, how, sort of, hyperventilating they were about all of this. One official said, 'She is very hostile.' 'Very' was sky-writing, bold face, flashing italics, you know. 'Be careful you're entering the death zone.' So I go up and I walk in. The Minister is sitting there in a fluorescent pink something or other. What did she say to you? She said, 'Do you not think that you exceeded your mandate?' In Collins' view, Binnie had gone too far by recommending compensation, and she was upset about something else. An email she'd just received from Michael Guest, David Bain's first trial lawyer, who was concerned that Binnie's report pointed to Bain's innocence. Guest wrote that David's admission to him back in 1995 that David had been wearing those controversial glasses the night before the murders, a statement never tested in court, was damning. He said it 'shatters any suggestion of innocence'. In his view, David was guilty, an amazing thing for a lawyer to say of a former client. And his reason was the glasses. What the Minister was exercised about was that David Bain's own lawyer would be denouncing him. Lawyer Michael Guest, the author of that email, was disbarred in 2001 for dishonesty unrelated to the Bain case, and later reinstated. But back to that meeting. So we get into a very brief discussion of why I don't think Mr Guest is the most reliable source, but there's no two-way discussion. There are these sort of volcanic statements followed by silence. He says 15 minutes later he was out the door, on his way home to Canada. I think after the event, she wants more about Michael Guest, so I put in more about Michael Guest and sent that off. Four months later, after Ian Binnie had made adjustments, retracted his recommendation for compensation, and re-presented his report, Judith Collins called a press conference. She was not happy. It is simply not credible. I would never put a report like this up to my Cabinet colleagues and ask them to make a decision based on it. The Minister had already commissioned a peer review of Ian Binnie's work. Former High Court Judge Dr Robert Fisher, QC, found Binnie had exceeded his mandate by recommending David Bain be paid compensation. He'd made errors and excluded significant evidence, like the bloodstains on David's clothing and his fingerprints on the rifle. Fisher added Binnie relied too heavily on David Bain's own accounts at the expense of the evidence,... DAVID BAIN: I have nothing to do with the deaths of any members of my family. ...and he'd been wrong to criticise the conduct of individual police and Crown witnesses without giving them the right of reply. I thought the whole thing was a stitch-up. I was entirely clear that she was not going to accept the report. She was not going to accept the recommendation. The only question was how she would figure out a way of getting rid of it. What do you think was going on in the background? I think the government was bound and determined not to pay compensation. I think the police exert very powerful influence, particularly on Collins, who I gather had previously been the minister of police, and I think the issue was not the money, I think the issue was the stigma. They did not want to relieve David Bain of the stigma of being a serial murderer. Why not? Because that would mean the police had successfully prosecuted an innocent man who spent 13 years in prison, and really had stigmatised him for life as a serial killer. At the time, Judith Collins denied claims that the government shopped around for the conclusion it wanted. In a statement to Sunday, she says she stands by all her statements and actions in this matter. She refutes Mr Binnie's allegations and insinuations; and refers back to the findings of the Fisher report and the subsequent investigation commissioned by her successor, Amy Adams. I cannot make a decision based on what's in front of us. REPORTER: Amy Adams, now the third justice minister, is seeking more advice. That advice came from retired Australian High Court judge Ian Callinan, QC, who, after another exhaustive inquiry, found the opposite of Ian Binnie; that David Bain had not established his innocence, and on the basis of that report, Cabinet denied him compensation. Then this... The Crown has agreed to make an ex gratia payment of $925,000. 'So why then,' asks Ian Binnie, 'did the government pay almost a million dollars 'towards David Bain's legal fees, to a man they believed was not innocent of mass murder?' This thing has been political from the outset. I don't believe for a moment if the Cabinet thought that David Bain was a serial killer, they would pay him $925,000. They wouldn't. They'd say, 'You know, we've at least got enough principle to deny a mass killer $925,000 of taxpayer money. Ian Binnie still reflects on being summoned to New Zealand for what he calls a moronic meeting, a 15-minute dressing-down by the then justice minister Collins. His report? A year of work discarded. My thoughts were that this was a woman of surpassing arrogance. That she considered herself the centre of the universe and the rest of us were bit players who would come and go at her beck and call. Ian Binnie says New Zealand needs an independent commission to scrutinise claims for compensation after wrongful convictions. Judith Collins is the absolute poster case of why politicians should be kept out of it. She, in effect, backed the government into a position from which it couldn't retreat. Now, in the end, they got the answer they wanted. All right, so they can claim victory. Victory at what expense? Victory at the reputation of New Zealand as a fair-dealing country, victory at the expense of a man who spent 13 years in jail and feels that he was, I'm going to say screwed by the system. So, we sought a response from Justice Minister Amy Adams about why the government made the ex gratia payment of almost a million dollars to a man who was unable to prove his innocence. She said the government set out in full the reasons at the time, which were, in effect, to recompense David Bain for time and costs. New Zealand's Criminal Bar Association has invited Ian Binnie to address its members in August. He's accepted. Well, next, the hilarious, honest, sometimes potty-mouth blogs that are comforting sleep-deprived and exhausted parents. She's a blogger with a huge worldwide following ` Kiwi mum Emily Writes. People say I don't even have children. That's my favourite. That this is like one elaborate performance. Like, yeah, that's your scoop. I don't have children! You're messy, Mum. You're messy. 4 Welcome back. The highs and lows of parenthood. Emily Writes knows it and doesn't shy away from it. The Wellington mum of two is redefining the term 'mummy blogger' with her honest and sometimes shocking accounts of motherhood. Her columns are read around the world. And through them, Emily's creating a space where mums and dads are finding support through the tough times. Here's Melissa Stokes with Emily. (BABY CRIES) Chances are you've experienced it or at least heard about it. Just when you think that you're turning a corner with sleep, and then you're not. Bedtime. It can be long, repetitive... (BABY CRIES) ...and downright exhausting. God knows I've done the weirdest shit to try and get my kids to sleep. So Emily Writes writes about it. You might be so exhausted that you're crying on the toilet, but these are the best days of your life, so be grateful, be grateful. And she struck quite a nerve. Some people say I don't even have children. That's my favourite. That this is like one elaborate performance. Like, yeah, that's your scoop. I don't have children. Are you finished? Yep. You're messy, Mum. You're messy. The toy-laden lounge in her Wellington home would suggest otherwise. These are Emily's two little boys, Eddie and Ronnie. It's their antics Emily writes about... How about some bananas? ...and it's gained her thousands of online fans. Emails from all over the world, places I've had to Wikipedia where they're writing from, you know. And every mother is trying her hardest. So is parenting harder now or have we made it harder? Oh, I think parenting has always been hard, but it's some kind of, like, people think you win a medal for not saying it's hard. Sometimes when I see comments online and stuff, and it's like, 'Well, I had 800 children 'and I never complained.' What's that achieving? You know? I don't believe you. It's down. Down the big hill. Parenthood is what Emily dreamed of. We had so many long walks along the beach with our dog, going, 'What would we do about school? 'What school...?' You know, we planned our whole children's lives before we had them. Emily and Alex ` they fell in love young and fast. We've been together since we were kids and, um, when I met him at 17, it felt like a real turning point in my life. I suddenly felt very, um, safe and stable and loved, and all those wonderful things. But it took six long years of trying for a baby before they could finally call themselves parents to little Eddie. He was so perfect and it was such a moment of, like, 'Oh my God.' You know what it's like when you first hold your baby in your arms. You're just like, 'Wow, we're parents now.' Then when we got home, we started to notice that he had, like, this strange way of breathing. (GASPS FOR AIR) Their tiny baby wasn't thriving. It was months before they learnt Eddie was suffering from a serious condition affecting his larynx. It broke us. Our first most longed-for baby being in ICU, not being able to breathe on his own. After each surgery, he would be better for a short period and then the breathing would come back, so it was like the, sort of, unending nightmare. By 2, he was on the mend and a big brother when baby Ronnie entered the world. Emily Writes was born then, too, delivering that blog on being grateful after being told to enjoy every minute of parenting. I'm constantly telling parents be grateful, be grateful. One day they won't be puking on you, and they'll be like, 'Oh my God, I long for the days 'when I was covered in sour milk and diarrhoea,' so be grateful. She thought a couple of her friends might find it funny. Up it went on the Internet. And then I saw that it had like a million hits, and I had all these messages on Facebook saying, 'You should read this blog about this woman. 'She's nuts. You'll really like her.' What her audience seemed to love was her honesty. These things like, 'I cried and cried reading your piece because I feel like I can never say, 'I'm just having a bad day.' Her followers demanded more. The former journalist was suddenly meeting deadlines again, churning out weekly comments. READS: 'Oh, chipmunks, how I love thee. You are my office. You are my home away from home. 'I am writing this seated in your comfortable, brightly coloured chair. 'Your staff know my coffee order. They do not judge me for my bad parenting.' She may write under a pseudonym, but in the middle of the night, Emily is the friend who gets it. It's really lonely at night when you're awake with a crying baby or a toddler that's got a temperature; just watching Dora constantly on repeat. And I would just read her blog posts and really feel like you're kind of getting company and that you're getting support. You feel like you've got a friend with you sitting there right with you, and often giving you exactly what you need to hear in those moments. And a bit of a laugh, too, which... (LAUGHS) What's your favourite column? The Tarzan movie. (ALL LAUGH) A movie review inspired after a few wines, and not so much about the film. I'm just... I'm a very happily married, very normal, suburban mum who just very much likes the male form. It's incredible. I can't actually, like, form words talking about Alexander Skarsgard's body. Emily's review had 1.5 million hits online, but not everyone gave her five stars. These are not to revisit. Um... READS: Dear author Emily, you need to get shagged very, very badly. 'This is the most sexiest blog, opinion post I've ever read.' 'Imagine the outrage if a man wrote an article about an actress in a similar manner.' Imagine! 'Stupid, sexist woman.' But it's not just that post, is it? Cos you get men commenting on a lot of your posts. I do. Men, you know, insisting they know how to do things that they don't, like telling me how to breastfeed. Like, one of the best ones was some guy, like, he raved about how to stop vaginal prolapse or something, and I was, like, 'Are you a gynaecologist?' 'No. Just have an opinion.' While Emily finds it easy to laugh off the overly opinionated, the online haters can hurt. Saying I should have aborted my children and things like that. I have recently had to turn off comments on the blog. It breaks my heart a little bit because that's one of the ways mums were reaching out to me. That was a really hard decision. I don't know if it was the right one but it's very hard to live your life with your phone pinging with comments, 'You're a horrible person.' There have been pieces that have copped criticism too. Hi, there. Idris Elba here. And I'd like you to be my valentine. The British actor making this tongue-in-cheek video to win a date with him. Just you and me. No one else around. Just us. Pepper soup and fufu. That's an African dish, and you pound the yams. And you know what? I'll let you pound my yams. And I just wrote a response to what I thought was an amazing video, and I didn't consider enough. I was objectifying a black man, and I didn't consider it. I thought it was just like Alexander Skarsgard, and it isn't. And I accept that and I apologise... She has since removed the column, and from her laptop, Emily's trying to create something special. It's creating a space, I guess, where we can talk about the hard stuff. There's this thing about, 'There's no village any more. 'There used to be a village and now everybody's on their phones.' And it's like, 'No, there is a village. It's on their phones. I am sorry if that upsets you.' Her village spilling out into the real world. WOMAN: Up on our toes. Ballet for everyone. Free lessons to low-income families and children with health issues. Nicely running. OK, guys, now we're all going to get a little bit faster. She set up the charity after Eddie's illness. The boy that couldn't breathe, now a blue blur streaking around the room. Two years on from that first blog, Emily's still writing about her boys. I often think my posts require a name. I'm fascinated that they're popular because I think they're just day-to-day inanities of, um, raising kids. (APPLAUSE) Oh. Oh gosh. And about to become a published author. OK. OK. Hopefully... (LAUGHTER) You're meant to laugh at this one. (LAUGHTER) You know, so many of her columns, it starts off and it's real zingers and she's being real snarky, which I love, um, but at the end, it comes around to really compassionate things about mums and babies, and how much we love our kids. Compassion but no advice. Emily says mums get enough of that elsewhere. I think there's a lot of, sort of, relentless pecking at mothers about what they're doing. Do we judge mothers too much? Yes. We have so much judgement on mothers. It's so... I think it's just desperately sad that so many mothers feel so judged and just shamed for every decision they make, from when they're pregnant, you know. 'Oh, you're having a coffee? 'Oh my gosh, it's the end of the world.' Like every other mum, she's doing it day by day, waiting for those moments when the mundane becomes magical. I think there's a big focus on losing yourself in parenting, but I think a lot of us find ourselves in parenting and we find each other in parenting. It's very... Parenting has been very redemptive for me. It's transformed me. I feel really lucky to be able to share it with people and have them share their stories of parenting with me. Emily's book 'Rants In The Dark' is released this week. Her work regularly appears in The Spinoff where she's the parenting editor. Up next, You Tube basketball sensation 'How Ridiculous' reclaim their amazing world record. Yeah! Brett was like, 'Did that go in?' And I'm like, 'I'm pretty sure it went in.' And even we had doubts. Hello again. You may remember our story on How Ridiculous ` a bunch of guys from Perth who became an Internet sensation when they set the world record for the highest-ever basketball hoop shot from a huge 126m dam in Australia. Now, two years on, they're back to break that record ` this time in Switzerland. Here's Denham Hitchcock with where it all started. We're not superhuman people. We're just ordinary guys who have got a passion, and we're willing to go for it. At a remote dam in southern Tasmania, this happened. ALL: Yay! (WHOOP) The reaction, as everyone saw in the story, was just going nuts when it happened. You know, there was just an immense amount of relief and celebration and joy, all in one moment where everything is amazing. A 126m world record. The pictures quickly rebounded around the world. (SPEAKS FOREIGN LANGUAGE) (SPEAKS FOREIGN LANGUAGE) In the first week, I think it went to 5 million views on You Tube. Trick-shot videos are what Brett, Scott and Derek make for a living. Three guys from Perth known as How Ridiculous. Their job? # Let's get ridiculous! # Landing impossible shots from any height,... Yeah! ...any way possible. Yeah! This is a great opportunity to beat the odds. It may take days, it may take weeks, it may take minutes, but, you know, you can do a lot of things if you push it. It started in high school. Backyard fun became improbable challenges. Then they took their talents sky-high. The Waca light tower is 67m tall. Sink a basketball from here and it would be a new world record. Former member Kyle nailed it. ALL: Yeah! Soon they were out of the backyard and on to the world stage. Their trick-shot talents taking them to the Netherlands where they beat their own world record, landing this from 91m. When it goes in is that, I guess, immediate sense of, 'Did that actually go in?' You know, did that actually happen? Sunday Night took the boys to Gordon Dam in southern Tasmania. At 126m, a new world record was waiting. Watching the Aussies make their shot were five American trick-shot trailblazers known as Dude Perfect. They're very much like us. They love to push the limits. They love to try and do things that people haven't done, so I'm sure for them to see us set a benchmark, you know... They're really competitive, as well, so I'm sure they would have seen it and been like, 'All right. If we get the chance, we'd love to try and top that.' And that's exactly what Dude Perfect did. Off a building in Oklahoma, they nailed a height of 162m, beating our boys' record by a staggering 36m. The first reaction was like, 'Good on them.' They did it, I think, pretty quickly. But there was a bit of, 'Man, we've got to get that record back.' Which brought the Aussie sharpshooters to a mega dam in Switzerland; standing 180m out of the ground. It's just unbelievably big. Like, how do they even build this, you know? With their cameras in position, Scott and Brett at the base, Derek steps forward for his very first shot. It's my first at attempt. Here we go. I think I threw my first one and it was probably 10m out to the right. But I thought, 'No, the distance is all right.' The second one I let go. Pretty good distance as well, maybe 5m to the left. Ohhhhhhhh. Yeah. Just lined up the third one, let it go. I was just watching it. It was out to the right, out to the right, and then it just keeps coming in, keeps coming in. Oh! Yeah! Brett was like, 'Did that go in?' And I'm like, 'I'm pretty sure it went in.' And even we had doubts. It is like a feeling which is hard to describe. It's the biggest shot that anybody has ever done in the world ever. It was just mind-blowing, really. That is the most amazing thing! Official height ended up being 180.9m, so about another 20 on what Dude Perfect did. How Ridiculous have reclaimed their record and the challenge now falls to the Americans. The ball is in their court. We can't say what they're thinking, but I know we're already scheming to go bigger, so we'll have to see what happens. Whooooo! Whoo-hoo! Man, that is amazing, isn't it? That's our show for tonight. Join us on Facebook and Twitter, Sunday TVNZ.