As bad as Maureen Pugh's attempts at climate change debate may have been, on balance, the media behaved worse.

TV3 made it a lead story, which was bad enough, given it wasn’t.

And they made it a lead story not only because Pugh is easy pickings, but because they so obviously and overtly and unprofessionally hate National, even when they keep telling us they are balanced.

But even their efforts were overshadowed by the headline in the Newsroom blog site; 'Climate deniers should not be MP's'.

Really? What condescending tosh.

The media are so far up their own jacksie at times, they have no idea how out of touch they are and how dangerous that is.

If climate deniers can't be MP's what's next? Thick people? People the media don’t like? Boomers?

When you start seriously suggesting such things you are in fact arguing against democracy. What makes democracy so valuable is it is, allegedly, a representation of all of us.

The good, the bad and everything in between.

It's not perfect, but it's better than anything else they have been able to come up with.

The truth of it is, Pugh is not alone in thinking climate change is not man made and you can yell the science is settled all you want - they don’t believe you.

The truth is there are scientists who argue a not dissimilar line to Pugh's.

It doesn’t make them right; it doesn’t mean you have to agree with them. But you can't cancel them because in a democracy they have a right to a view and a right to a vote.

And I would defend their right to be wrong and ill-informed, in my view, more than I would ever defend the right of some jumped up journalist prescribing who should and shouldn’t be allowed to represent us.

Rawiri Waititi on Valentine's Day was celebrating the death of Captain Cook and I found that offensive.

But he went to the local electorate and got enough votes to get to Parliament and you have to respect that.

Imagine if I had said radical Māori should never be allowed to be in Parliament. How do you think that would have gone for me on Twitter or the socials? How many formal complaints do you reckon that would have drummed up?

Maureen Pugh was, at least, honest in her view and for that she was ridiculed by a channel that hates her party and a journo who thinks he's superior.

I don't think, at the end of it, she was the worst of the offenders.