The band has asked their record label to issue a cease and desist to stop the NZ First leader using their 1997 hit to support his ‘misguided political views’.
“I get knocked down, but I get up again,” blared through the speakers on Sunday as Winston Peters took the stage at the Palmerston North Convention Centre. Then the NZ First leader delivered a state of the nation speech where he compared co-governance to Nazi Germany, talked about plans to remove gender and sexuality lessons from the school curriculum and said that NZ First and their supporters have a “real chance to take back our country”.
He finished by paraphrasing the song he’d walked on stage to – 1997 hit ‘Tubthumping’ by British anarchist punk band Chumbawamba: “We got knocked down, but we got up again – and nothing is going to stop us now.”
It’s not the first time Peters has referenced ‘Tubthumping’. Launching NZ First’s election campaign in July last year, he warned members to steel for the slinging of dirt: “Just repeat to yourself the words of Chumbawamba: ‘I get knocked down. But I get up again. You’re never gonna keep me down.’”
But Peters’ fondness for Chumbawamba is not reciprocated. Asked for comment by The Spinoff on the use of ‘Tubthumping’, the band said they had not given permission, and had asked their record company Sony to issue a cease and desist notice requiring Peters to “stop using it to try to shore up his misguided political views”.
In a statement, Boff Whalley, formerly the lead guitarist, said, ‘Tubthumping’ was written “as a song of hope and positivity, so it seems entirely odd that the ‘I get knocked down…’ refrain is being used by New Zealand’s deputy prime minister Winston Peters as he barks his divisive, small-minded, bigoted policies during his recent speeches”.
Chumbawamba, who were active from 1982 to 2012, were openly anarcho-communists, following a far leftwing political ideology that rejects the authority of governments. They played benefit shows at miner strikes, picket lines, anti-war events and aligned themselves with Marxism, feminism, gay liberation, class struggle and anti-fascism. At the 1998 Brit Awards, in protest at the Labour government’s refusal to support the Liverpool dockworkers’ strike, band member Danbert Nobacon poured a jug of water over UK deputy prime minister John Prescott, who was in the audience.
While ostensibly a simple, catchy drinking song, ‘Tubthumping’, which was Chumbawamba’s biggest hit by far, has been described as “a Trojan horse designed to covertly deliver anarcho-communism to the masses”.
It’s not the first time the band has stepped in to ask a controversial politician to stop using ‘Tubthumping’. In 2011, Nigel Farage, the leader of British rightwing populist party Ukip, appeared on stage at a conference in England as the song played, which prompted band member Dunstan Bruce to say, “I am absolutely appalled that this grubby little organisation are stealing our song to use for their own ends. It’s beyond the pale and if they use it again we will consider legal action.” A spokesperson for Ukip said the party would stop using the song.
In New Zealand, standard public performance music licences typically held by venues don’t cover the use of music at political events, if that music is used in a way that suggests an affiliation with a political party. Written approval from both the songwriter and recording artists must be attained beforehand, otherwise there is a risk of infringing copyright. This would also address a “Moral Rights Risk” in the Copyright Act 1994, where using music in a way that the artist considers “detrimental to their honour or reputation” may breach their moral rights.
Chumbawamba join a number of artists who in recent years have publicly and legally opposed the use of their music by politicians. Neil Young opposed his music being used by Donald Trump, as did Adele, Rihanna, and the list goes on. Here in New Zealand, when the National Party used a track called ‘Eminem Esque’ that sounded remarkably similar to Eminem’s ‘Lose Yourself’ in an election campaign ad in 2014, Eminem pursued them and won NZ$600,000 in damages.
Whalley said the band would like to remind Peters that the song was written “for and about ordinary people and their resilience”. Tub-thumper is British slang for aggressive political protesting. The song was inspired by Whalley’s neighbour who drunkenly struggled to open his front door while singing ‘Danny Boy’ one night. Eventually, he got in, and the song became about perseverance. Whalley says the song is “not about rich politicians trying to win votes by courting absurd conspiracy theories and spouting misguided racist ideologies”.
]]>Brannavan Gnanalingam reviews the debut novel by Saraid de Silva.
One of the most baffling things for children who move to a new country is what their parents’ (or grandparents’) lives were like prior to moving – for kids in particular, they’re too busy trying to fit in in their new country to care all that much. And, as is often the case, by the time such kids are interested in their parents’ stories, it’s too late to ask those stories. It’s almost an unknowable gap for immigrant kids; that, on top of the shock of realising that our parents are human (which most kids have to go through) it’s the realisation that our parents had distinct lives in places we would never understand. In short, our parents contain multitudes, as well.
Saraid de Silva’s AMMA uses this unknowability as a starting point in her tale of three generations of Indian and Sri Lankan women. The first generation is Josephina, an Indian woman, originally from Pondicherry, who is living in 1950s Singapore with her parents, only for her family to betray her in horrendous ways – it leads her to escape to post-independence Sri Lanka. Her daughter Sithara tries to make her way in 1980s Invercargill and Dunedin. Her mother Josephina has closed up following the death of Sithara’s father, the family having moved over to Aotearoa for his medical career. Sithara and her brother Suri navigate a hostile (to put it mildly) environment in Southland. Sithara shifts to Otago for university, falling intensely into a relationship with Paul. Meanwhile, the third strand of her narrative follows her daughter, Annie, who has just arrived at Suri’s doorstep in London. She’s more sure of herself within a local context, but estranged from her mother after her nomadic childhood and her mother’s on-again, off-again relationship with the violent Paul (who’s been in and out of jail for domestic violence).
There is an annoying tendency in books that jump temporally to hold back information, and therefore use that withholding to gerrymander a climax. In AMMA, de Silva avoids that pitfall, and does not rely on that to create her narrative or build narrative momentum. Right from the outset, de Silva lays bare the traumatic events of her three characters’ lives. We learn of Josephina’s horrible treatment from her parents, Sithara’s desperation to be accepted within a Pākehā environment, and Annie’s confusion at the life she can’t quite figure out, let alone the information that she’s all too conscious of having been withheld from her.
The book uses the time differences thematically instead, to create a literal barrier between the three generations’ lives – because their key moments occur separately from the others, the three characters never actually fully come to understand each other. The thrust of the book becomes the extent to which the three of them can come to peace with each other’s flaws, while also highlighting the horrors or guilt that have shaped them. The book ultimately focuses on how people come to find themselves, despite what they – and their parents – go through.
It isn’t too blunt to say that the three women’s stories are stories of survival in spite of the men around them. Heteronormative narratives and/or misogynist men do their best to ruin the protagonists’ lives, and you see the real damage that has been done to them by generations of entitled men. Wider societal narratives also feed their way into the mix – arranged marriages among South Asian families, homophobia, sectarian violence in Sri Lanka, and Aotearoa’s struggle to acknowledge domestic violence are part of the structuring forces that affect the characters’ lives, but de Silva holds the narrative close to examine the effects on her protagonists rather than make grand sweeping statements.
In some respect the narrative is a reactive response to horrible behaviour. AMMA is a tribute to the ways in which women persist, and the way they can help each other. It’s somewhat telling that the female solidarity in the book skips a generation – Annie has a real affinity with Josephina (despite Josephina’s own mistakes), while Josephina has an intense bond with her own grandmother. The women belatedly learn from their own mistakes, and are able to help their granddaughters (you’d hope a similar process would occur for Sithara). AMMA is, also, in part a tribute to queer desire and the way her characters can also desire men who refuse to buy into such behaviour, creating this clear sense that it doesn’t simply have to be this way – there are indeed alternatives. However, the tragedy of the narrative is the extent to which people can’t escape the wider societal failings.
AMMA jumps between Singapore, Sri Lanka, Southland, Dunedin, Hamilton and London. This geographical dislocation matches the way the narrative and time works in the book – further adding to the unknowability that the characters find themselves in. There’s also a real sense of having to start all over again, all of the time, of never being able to find oneself settled. This is a common feeling for immigrants, particularly those of a diasporic background without a clear idea of what “home” is.
What really elevates the book is de Silva’s ability to put the reader within a specific location. This was crucial in a book that is so geographically unstable; what appears disorienting is typical of many South Asian immigrant experiences. de Silva has a real knack for being able to set a scene by focusing on impressionistic details that add depth to the various locations in the book. This is contained in a line about Invercargill’s wind or ice, description of a high-school party in Christchurch, or a brief moment of freedom in a Singaporean field. This perhaps is helped by de Silva’s background in radio and television, in which she clearly knows how to set a scene without taking away momentum or needing to rely on a clumsy metaphor instead. There’s a real genius in de Silva’s control of place, and the way she deploys this to ground her characters temporally – and historically.
What is obvious in AMMA is the way immigrants have to compartmentalise their lives geographically. That becomes potentially inscrutable when the reasons for one leaving are so traumatic, and that makes it that much harder for their children to understand the reason why their parents are the way they are. What’s clear from AMMA though is the way that these various histories never get revealed coherently or in a linear fashion. Instead they’re revealed in spurts or whispers. To de Silva’s credit, she’s written this book to be taken on its own terms, she never requires her own characters to justify themselves to the reader – only to themselves.
The characters in AMMA themselves cross boundaries – ethnically, sexually, and geographically. Nothing ever is really stable, despite the way people have a one-dimensional view of their parents, and the generations ahead of them. Maybe that’s where the real poignancy of the title comes in. AMMA, in all caps, means mother in many South Asian languages, but specifically in both Sinhalese and Tamil. The title hints at the misplaced and fixed view of the person who is responsible for their existence. The real sadness of AMMA, and its undoubted brilliance, is the way in which it depicts how those of us who are immigrants will never know the complexities, traumas and mistakes of where we actually come from, but that we have no choice but to try to figure it out anyway.
AMMA by Saraid de Silva ($38, Moa Press) is available for purchase from Unity Books Wellington and Auckland.
]]>After years of pressuring banks and other institutions to stop investing in fossil fuels, climate campaigners are making some progress. So how does divestment work?
For years, climate activists have been pushing banks and other big institutions to divest from fossil fuels. New research from climate advocacy group 350 Aotearoa shows that this public pressure has in many cases been effective, but that New Zealand’s Australian-owned big banks are well behind their domestic peers.
Divestment (or disinvestment) is the opposite of investment – choosing not to invest money in particular companies or causes. This can simply be withdrawing money from a company that isn’t doing well financially, but globally, it’s been used as a way to exert public pressure on organisations to no longer invest in areas that are considered harmful. 350.org, an international organisation with a New Zealand branch, has led a push to get big organisations to stop investing in fossil fuels around the world.
“A project can’t go ahead without the finance to back it,” says Adam Currie, a campaigner from 350 Aotearoa. “If they don’t provide funding, coal companies can’t get it out of the ground. ” If there is widespread divestment from fossil fuels, then these projects can be stopped; it’s an alternative to making laws that ban fossil fuel extraction.
As well as banks, divestment can target institutions like universities and insurance companies; for instance, in 2021 Harvard University in the US announced that it would end investments from its $US41.9bn endowment in fossil fuels.
Since 2015, 350 has been examining New Zealand banks to see which ones are best for the climate. Its latest round of research, released last week, showed serious progress: nearly every bank has already exited or has plans to exit funding thermal coal mining by 2030, and New Zealand-owned banks Kiwibank, Cooperative, SBS and TSB have no major fossil fuel investments.
The research is based on publicly available information as well as through discussions with the banks themselves. “When we engage with banks, the detail they provide shows how engaged they are with this issue, and how much the public cares about fossil fuels,” Currie says.
“This shows that banks are moving in the right direction, they just have to put their foot on the accelerator,” Currie adds. He laughs, thinking about his metaphor. “Or maybe I mean pull the fossil-fuel-free brake.”
Kiwibank, the world’s first bank to commit to withholding banking services from coal, oil and gas companies, is top of the list in terms of sustainability. ANZ, whose parent company in Australia has financed fossil fuel expansion projects that will create 5.3 billion tonnes of carbon, is the worst, according to the 350 research.
Of the big Australian-owned banks – Westpac, ASB, BNZ and ANZ – their New Zealand arms have minimal fossil fuel investments. However, their Australian owners (Westpac Group, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, National Australian Bank and ANZ Australia respectively) still have significant fossil fuel interests.
“The big four are in contractual relationships [with fossil fuel companies] and aren’t divesting,” Currie says. While Westpac Group has made the most progress, and promised to exit thermal coal funding by 2025, five years sooner than other banks, it still has $AU1.18bn invested in fossil fuel projects with plans to expand.
Currie says that the near-universal commitment by banks to stop providing funding to thermal coal projects is a sign that divestment tactics are working. “Thermal coal is one of the worst emissions creators – it’s an outrageous investment because it’s so damaging to the climate.”
Divestment can make it harder for coal, oil and gas producers to get funding for their new mining projects, slowing these developments down. However, there are loopholes, where banks can fund separate entities that then invest in fossil fuel expansion, and overseas groups can also continue to put money into these developments.
There are strong financial reasons to not invest in fossil fuels: surveying, extraction and processing are expensive activities, and require large amounts of up-front investment. A decade ago, fossil fuel companies were some of the most profitable in the world, but now, the energy sector is the smallest sector represented in key stock market index S&P500.
“It’s a moral signal to other companies – a way to use their influence to stop fossil fuel production,” Currie says. While many banks have expressed commitments to stop putting money into climate-damaging companies, he says progress needs to go faster. In a climate crisis, Currie says, “winning slowly is losing.”
Other big organisations that invest significant amounts of money and work with the public also need to divest, Currie says. For example, last year shares owned by ACC were responsible for making about 3.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. For comparison, New Zealand’s per capita emissions in 2021 were 15 tonnes; the average in Kenya was 2.1 tonnes. Other government funds, like the New Zealand Super Fund, have already committed to not funding fossil fuel projects to make their money more resilient to climate change. However, many Kiwisaver schemes are still putting New Zealanders’ money into fossil fuels.
As a consumer, Currie says that one of the best things you can do is to switch to a bank that is fossil fuel-free. If you switch banks then you should tell your bank why you’re switching, to make it clear that it’s because of its fossil investments. “If it’s not possible to switch, you can also send a letter encouraging your bank to change,” he says. From a financial as well as an ethical perspective, it makes sense to him to reduce the amount of money invested in fossil fuels. “Lots of people want to live their day-to-day lives and not have their savings for their kids’ future to be funding the destruction of their kids’ future.”
]]>For Boba, Ethan and Ashley, K-pop is a place to belong, a way to express themselves, and a bridge to connect with others.
The three young Polynesians are part of a K-pop fan community in Tāmaki Makaurau. It’s one of many that have sprung up worldwide as K-pop has gone from a musical genre in South Korea to a global cultural phenomenon.
Boba, from Henderson, has struggled to find a place to belong. As a non-binary queer and disabled person, they were bullied at school. Now, we see them dancing at K-pop events and in a photo booth with friends.
“It just comforts you,” says Ethan, a dancer who grew up in Fiji, Tuvalu, and Sāmoa. The documentary follows him returning to Fiji to teach K-pop techniques. He says that through dance he expresses himself – but not enough Pacific men do so because of stigma.
Ashley, who is Cook Island Niuean, reignited her love of dance through K-pop and now passes that along as a teacher. She says that expressing yourself within Pacific cultures can sometimes be difficult, but she is taking the positive reinforcement from K-pop into her own culture.
K-POLYS, a one-off documentary, presents intimate portraits of these three Polynesian K-pop fans. Directed by Litia Tuiburelevu and made with the support of NZ On Air.
]]>For Boba, Ethan and Ashley, K-pop is a place to belong, a way to express themselves, and a bridge to connect with others. This one-off documentary presents three intimate portraits of young Polynesians who are pulled into a Korean cultural phenomenon.
K-POLYS is directed by Litia Tuiburelevu, Produced by Hex Work Productions and made with the support of NZ On Air.
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Teammates who spend all their time picking fights with spectators are only helpful for the other team, writes Madeleine Chapman.
Anyone who has ever played a team sport competitively, particularly as a child and particularly, for some reason, basketball, will know that there’s a lot of politics involved. While there are some rare cases of a dozen teenagers putting aside their personal differences in service of a win, there will always be some personal drama that makes its way onto the court. This typically presents itself in a player being lazy on defence, or “not seeing” their frenemy wide open for a shot, or when there’s real beef, “accidentally” firing a pass way too hard for the other person to safely catch. It’s always the same players who can’t control their emotions and it results in arguments, pleading, and eventually a resigned acceptance that some teammates care more about their own feelings than the team’s success.
Winston Peters and David Seymour are those team mates. We might have all fooled ourselves into thinking that their individualistic tendencies would wane while in a coalition government but five months in, it’s clear that Christopher Luxon is in government with National while five parties act in opposition.
Despite being the two deputy prime ministers (Peters is technically the deputy until May 2025 and the Seymour takes over, which in itself is such a luggage teammates thing to demand), both have spent much of the past month yelling at everyone, accusing people of being biased and criticising the (previous) Labour government for doing anything.
First it was Seymour, taking the proposed closure of Newshub as a chance to deliver some strangely petty remarks about journalists, then posting online a screengrab of a 1News opinion piece with a suggestion (I guess?) that the state-owned broadcaster was favouring Labour by hyperlinking to a left-wing blog.
Even if he weren’t the self-proclaimed champion of free speech, questioning the editorial decisions of TVNZ in the middle of major industry cuts would be immature at best. But immature is exactly what Seymour has proven himself to be, because mere days later, he was posting seven-year-old screenshots of tweets from the co-chair of Health Coalition Aotearoa after HCA criticised Seymour’s proposal to scrap the free school lunches programme. The tweets were not kind to Seymour but they were also posted on a personal account as a private citizen, one tweet from 2017. Seymour, as a government minister, chose to share them publicly as a way to (I guess?) suggest that she should not be allowed to… freely speak… on political matters. Surely a man with a suite of portfolios to manage should not be concerned with a lone citizen’s Twitter account? It’s like when you see (to keep with the metaphor) NBA players getting into scraps with spectators. Embarrassing, immature, but easier to accept from a person paid to run around on a court than a man paid to soon be the deputy leader of the country.
Seymour has spent far too long as a political loner, thinking he needs to yell constantly in order to be noticed, scrapping for every possession. But when you’re part of a winning team and you have the ball, constantly yelling and picking fights with spectators just makes you look like you can’t handle the spotlight.
Not to be outdone, over the weekend Peters entered the fray with his state of the nation address. In it, he veered from even his own embargoed script and compared co-governance to Nazi Germany (he’s since doubled down on his choice of comparison and rolled out some of his usual tired insults and anti-trans rhetoric). That meant in a week where the Green Party revealed a third MP scandal in 12 months with Darleen Tana being stood down after allegations of migrant exploitation against her husband’s company, all of Sunday and most of Monday’s news coverage was instead dedicated to Peters essentially talking shit. Any reasonable person would say this was a foolish move from the government, but Peters and Seymour are only part of the government on paper. In reality, they throw the ball to whoever they like, whenever they like.
Separately, why have the two coalition minor party leaders delivered state of the nation addresses when Luxon delivered one on behalf of the government? Because they’re luggage teammates, that’s why. Seymour hasn’t experienced having a higher-ranked colleague in a decade and is evidently struggling to adjust to being both in power and not in charge, and Peters has never once worked well with others.
All this is simply the art of distraction, and on Monday afternoon while announcing a crackdown on “anti-social” Kainga Ora tenants, Luxon was asked about his deputy prime minister’s own anti-social behaviour in citing Nazi Germany when talking about the previous government. “There is a need for everyone to be very careful with their language… I don’t agree with those comments, it’s not the way I would have expressed it,” he said. He also said he would be speaking to Peters about it, though I can’t imagine how fruitful such a discussion would be were it ever to happen. Meanwhile, a report for corporate clients from pollster Talbot Mills suggests Luxon is struggling to connect with voters. He’s certainly committed plenty of his own fumbles in recent months but despite Peters and Seymour acting as if they’re independents, Luxon will never escape their trails of destruction.
I spent three years in a basketball team that had players who put their own emotions before the team. They were all technically excellent and when we worked well together, we were stronger than any team in the country. But they never did figure out how to be good team players, and as a result we never won when it mattered.
]]>The long-running Wellington music festival is too focused on the Jim Beam-ness and not enough on the Homegrown-ness.
There is something about Homegrown that’s difficult to place. A barely perceptible-ness. Like feeling a ghost is watching you from the corner of the room but when you look, there’s nothing there.
Homegrown capitalises on nostalgia; the reason you go is to listen to the music you grew up with. Not only that, the line-up is the same each year, so when you go again you get nostalgic about the previous time you went. It’s nostalgia-ception. The numbers back this up. A quarter of the artists at this year’s festival appeared last year. In fact, a sixth of them performed at the inaugural edition in 2008.
It’s hard not to feel that Homegrown is stuck in a bygone era, both in terms of music and drinking culture. The crowds are messier and drunker than comparable city-centre festivals like Laneway or Electric Avenue. As one overly-excited girl near the portaloos told us, “Homegrown is a bit like my ex. Pretty fun on the surface but struggles to communicate what he really is: a binge-drinker.”
Just like the festival itself, attending Homegrown every year has become repetitive. As is typical with most festivals, the first thing you do is agree in a group chat with your mates when you’re going to arrive (e.g. 2pm). You then spend ages getting ready, forget what time it is, and not enjoy a beer that you had to scull so you can still make it on time to meet your friends (3pm).
After finally getting out the door, you are inevitably distracted by side-quests such as tattoos, losing your wallet, getting a McChicken and sitting on the curb at BP Connect, and (if you’re so inclined) figuring out which choice anatomical spot you will stash your festival enhancers to get past security.
Of course, you wear an outfit that’s slightly inappropriate for the weather (dressing for Wellington weather is an impossible task), drunkenly line up to have your bag checked and your youthfulness questioned by someone who looks like a high schooler in a hi-vis vest.
Where at most festivals you’d start by checking the schedule of music for each stage, at Homegrown it doesn’t really matter. You can simply follow the crowd knowing that you’ll eventually be towed to the front-left of a Kiwi icon, or at worst, Shapeshifter.
Following the crowd or not, touring the festival’s five stages goes something like this.
Park Stage had the friendliest crowd. Stan Walker serenaded the sunset as two lads in duck shirts wound-up for the world’s longest chahoooo (at least 10 chh’s were counted). We also counted at least five people passed out and unaccompanied in bushes.
At Tiger Electronic Stage, Lee Mvtthews drew a surprisingly multi-generational crowd – perhaps because it was so warm inside the tent. Enjoyably, we spotted one guy watching the league on his phone, which he held up so those behind him could partake too.
The City Stage traditionally plays host to some of our biggest music icons. Last year it was Dave Dobbyn, this year New Zealand’s sweetheart Bic Runga. It’s a curious logistical decision that doesn’t seem to respect the artists or match the energy of the crowd. At one point security guards singled out a man who was completely sober with a green laser pointer and made him drink an entire bottle of water. Thrilling.
Lagoon stage, named for its proximity to a lagoon that you can’t actually see, had the youngest crowd. David Dallas and Savage brought the best of 2014-era New Zealand hip hop and 2014 antics. (Yes, inviting all the girls on-stage actually happened.)
The George FM Container Rave had great music and the highest density of sunglasses. Interesting for a spot where you can’t see any sun.
The Rock stage had the middle-agiest crowd. It was also the loudest. Maybe it’s the rock music, maybe it’s because the demographic are hard of hearing. But it was exactly like you’d imagine it to be: hundreds of black zip up hoodies, these things called cigarettes that people used before they learned to vape, and Jim Beam bourbon and colas that tasted exactly like Jim Beam bourbon and colas.
The most important part of any festival is, of course, the Portaloos. This has been a weak point for Homegrown in the past, but this year they were a total highlight. The toilets flushed, had liquid hand soap, didn’t smell and, very usefully, had lights (ever tried piss in a dark Portaloo while drunk?). Di from Spik-and-Span was absolutely on top of her game, keeping the whole operation clean and chatting to the girls to make sure they were OK. A top notch lass.
However, for a festival all about celebrating New Zealand music, the toilets being the main highlight isn’t necessarily a good thing.
Homegrown gets a lot right, like the ability to appeal to many people from different generations and walks of life, or spotlighting Wellington’s beautiful waterfront. However, the festival organisers are missing the mark for one important reason: Their choice of naming sponsor, and the vibe it fosters.
The lines for drinks are scrappy. There’s always a few too many people on the ground who’ve been taken advantage of by their drink. And while younger generations tend to be the target of anti-problematic drinking campaigns, the older generations were noticeably drunker, sloppier and more aggressive than their fresher-faced counterparts. Like a time-machine, Jim Beam Homegrown not only allows, but intends for its attendees to revisit a partying culture of decades prior.
And this is its problem. Jim Beam Homegrown is too focused on the Jim Beam-ness, but not enough on the Homegrown-ness. It promotes drinking more than music.
The remedy however, lies within. In glimmers, Homegrown offers the best of kiwi culture. People sharing space and having a good time, that pure meaning-of-life shit. This is the culture the festival could be promoting: good people, good yarns, good kai and great music all brought together for one hell of a time.
We wondered, as we skipped out past five ambulances and two cop cars on the way to our next adventure. Is it too late to bring some of that New Zealand skuxness back to what could be our flagship festival?
]]>As part of our series exploring how New Zealanders live and our relationship with money, a teacher explains why he and his partner are in frugal mode – and how they’re making it work.
Gender: Male
Age: 35
Ethnicity: Pākehā
Role: I am an intermediate school teacher and my partner is a head of department at a local secondary school.
Salary/income/assets: $205k per year between us before tax.
My living location is: Urban (central Auckland).
Rent/mortgage per week: $500 rent – we live in a small two-bedroom flat that my parents own and cut us a very good deal on.
Student loan or other debt payments per week: We tried to start a business in 2020 which failed. Between us we have $90,000 in personal loan debt from that adventure. I have paid off my student loan and my partner has about $20,000 left on hers.
Typical weekly food costs
Groceries: $200 for the two of us.
Eating out and takeaways: We eat out about once a month and spend around $50 a week on takeaways.
Workday lunches: Nothing – leftovers from dinner the night before.
Cafe coffees/snacks: Nil.
Other food costs: $80 for dog food for our ravenous husky x border collie.
Savings: We have about $90,000 in our combined KiwiSaver accounts at the moment and just had to empty our emergency savings account this week.
I worry about money: Always, multiple times a day, and in my sleep.
Three words to describe my financial situation would be: Finding our feet.
My biggest edible indulgence would be… Dairy-free Magnums.
In a typical week my alcohol expenditure would be… Nil – stopped drinking at the start of this year.
In a typical week my transport expenditure would be… Nil – we own an electric car and an e-bike which we charge at home on an off peak plan overnight.
I estimate in the past year the ballpark amount I spent on my personal clothing (including sleepwear and underwear) was… $400.
My most expensive clothing in the past year was… New pair of New Balance shoes.
My last pair of shoes cost… $189.
My grooming/beauty expenditure includes: Shaving cream and razors – $20 per month probably.
My exercise expenditure in a year is about: $300 for running shoes, $50 for a running top and shorts from Kmart, $200 for football team membership fees.
My last Friday night cost… I returned from supervising school camp so was in bed by 7.30pm, so nothing.
Most regrettable purchase in the last 12 months was… Forgot to update our calendar about a counselling appointment which we missed and still had to pay for.
Most indulgent purchase (that I don’t regret) in the last 12 months was: I bought a new e-bike to get to work after selling our car. I love it but it was expensive.
One area where I’m a bit of a tightwad is: is… Hah, just ONE? Everywhere.
Five words to describe my financial personality would be: Worried, anxious, scared, frugal, strict.
I grew up in a house where money… Secretive and revered. My parents’ approach was to drill into us that the only thing to do with money is to save it. I feel guilty every time I spend any money and it’s not pleasant.
The last time my Eftpos card was declined was… Years ago, probably when I was just starting out as a teacher.
In five years, in financial terms, I see myself… More stable – out of debt and working towards owning our own home.
I would love to have more money for… Holidays and weekend adventures.
Describe your financial low: Right now – we have a budget and 50% of our income is going to pay off debt. We took a risk and it didn’t work out. We are incredibly lucky to have even been able to try and we knew this might be an option so we are just putting our heads down and working for the next couple of years.
]]>The finance minister is denying that there’s a $5.6b shortfall in paying for the government’s campaign promises, including tax cuts. At his post-cabinet press conference yesterday, the PM refused to rule out new taxes to pay for the cuts, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here.
At a post-cabinet press conference described by the Herald’s Thomas Coughlan as “slightly chaotic” (paywalled), prime minister Christopher Luxon stuck with the promise of tax cuts being delivered in this year’s Budget on May 30 but would not say whether they would be the size promised in the coalition agreement and would not rule out new taxes to pay for the tax cut plan, including new taxes on working people. That was a question posed in response to a promise by Nicola Willis last year, who told the AM show in August that “[There will be] no new taxes to working people, our view is that the tax system has become unfair because the squeezed middle of everyday working people are paying higher rates of income tax.” Willis ruled out a GST hike earlier this month on the AM show.
As interest.co.nz’s Dan Brunskill reports Luxon said we need to wait for the Budget to see how the tax cuts look and how they might be funded. As Brunskill notes, elsewhere in the press conference, he said the tax package would be funded partly through “revenue raising measures” and partly through “savings that have been identified.” Muddying the waters is deputy prime minister Winston Peters agreeing with an assessment by Vernon Small published in the Sunday Star Times during his state of the nation speech on Sunday. It found the gap between National’s figures from August last year, and estimates now suggest there’s a $5.6b shortfall. The Herald’s assessment is slightly more favourable, suggesting there’s a $3.3b gap.
As RNZ’s Katie Scotcher reports, Willis is currently denying suggestions of a $5.6b shortfall, saying she won’t guarantee promised tax cuts will arrive in July until the policy has been discussed by the cabinet. Responding to speculation about how the Budget might look by saying cabinet needs to agree and to wait until it’s published is the government’s prerogative. Speaking to RNZ’s First Up this morning, Willis “I remain confident we can fund our tax reduction objectives in a way that’s responsible and affordable.” When asked whether the government can afford all its commitments after his state of the nation speech on Sunday, Peters replied, “our ones, yes.” The Post’s Thomas Manch has an astute read this morning on the length of Luxon’s wick in allowing Peters to raise questions about tax cut funding and make comments comparing co-governance to Nazi Germany. “How long will Luxon let this go on for? As long as Luxon wants the coalition to hold,” he writes. “This is quintessential Peters strategy,” he says.
If this is all sounding familiar, the run up to last year’s election was littered with talk of fiscal holes and wonky tax plan costings. Council of Trade Union analysis released last August suggested there was a shortfall of at least $3.3-5.2b in National’s tax and spending plans. It went both ways, with Peters claiming there was a $20b hole in the last government’s books and that public service bosses were being told to cut 10% from budgets to fund it. Three economists from across the political spectrum independently reviewed National’s figures on how much revenue the foreign buyers tax would raise and found it short by $450m. NZ First scotched that tax in its coalition agreement with National. One of the economists who made the independent assessment was former Reserve Bank economist Michael Reddell, who said yesterday, “I think many economists would take the view that we are starting with such a large fiscal deficit bequeathed to them by the Labour government that it’s not the time for tax cuts.”
]]>Kāinga Ora is New Zealand’s biggest residential landlord, housing more than 180,000 vulnerable people in more than 67,000 properties. Yesterday the government announced a crackdown on its tenants who fall behind on rent. One longtime Kāinga Ora tenant shares her experience.
For 18 years I lived in a 1960s standalone house in Auckland managed by Kāinga Ora. It had two bedrooms and over the years my children (sometimes all four of them) have lived with me. Most recently, it’s been me, my son, our pug, two cats and six hens. I have chronic pain, serious mental and physical health issues. I care for my son who has special needs. He’s developmentally delayed, can barely see out of one eye and has poor muscle tone which makes him floppy and clumsy. For the whole time, I’ve paid the full rent they’ve charged me every week, which is limited to no more than a quarter of my income. I didn’t damage the house, no holes, no graffiti on the walls or ripped off cupboards. Maybe I wasn’t the tidiest but I never damaged the place.
The house I lived in was unpleasant. There was rot everywhere. I first noticed the dry rot just weeks after moving in with two little ones. The wooden post which held the lovely French doors that opened onto the deck was rotted through and the whole thing would sway out from the house, unattached, when I opened it. They removed it and installed a ranchslider but then the floor next to that started to rot.
I kind of just expected that they would look after their own property and investments. They did yearly inspections where they walked through and quickly eyeballed the place. I think they looked for holes in walls, missing doors, anything illegal and obvious signs of damage.
Barely any repairs or maintenance were done while I was there. For years I had a tenancy manager who would talk over me, talk down at me, treat me like a naughty child, and even walked away while I was talking to him on occasion. I don’t think he ever did anything about my requests for repairs. When I showed him cracks in the walls or cupboards that couldn’t close in an inspection, he walked off without noting anything down. I got used to being brushed off and ignored.
Ten years ago I had to beg them to strip the wallpaper out of the dampest room and paint it instead so it would be easier to clean. It was a textured wallpaper so I had to spray on bleach to kill the mould that grew from behind it, then scrub with a brush to remove as much as possible that grew in the little crevices.
Sometimes the grass would grow up through the floor and up the wall. The sealed fireplace was never capped, so water had been pouring into it for years when it rained, the grout turned to sticky paste and the tiles were popping off. The wall it was on cracked and moved. Horrifically, my bedroom was full of mould that was hidden behind my headboard and drawers, despite having windows open all the time, a fan, an air purifier on 24/7 and a dehumidifier running when necessary. The front porch was collapsing because its support beams had so much rot they snapped.
I’d been complaining repeatedly for months, well, over a year about all the cracks that were spreading all throughout the walls in the kitchen, lounge, end room and laundry. When I walked through the house, loud creaking and cracking noises came from the floor and ceiling from other parts of the rooms or a different room entirely. The whole house appeared to be tilting and rocking as you walked though.
The Kāinga Ora wellness advocate was quite scared and concerned when I showed him, but their builder said it was all normal. I had discovered numerous beams and struts under the house were full of dry rot, and showed photos to the team leader and manager, who only popped her head just under the house once. Nothing was ever done, despite my constant reminding.
When I tried to get other agencies, like Te Whatu Ora or the council, to investigate or help, as soon as they heard it was a Kāinga Ora property they refused, telling me to contact Kāinga Ora and that they have people to do that.
When my friend tried to fix a crack in the bathroom wall and it collapsed because the whole inside was black with mould. Kāinga Ora finally sent tradies who were supposed to decontaminate and remove the rotting bathroom (it had been growing mushrooms and was full of black mould for years that seriously impacted my health). Instead they contaminated, damaged, broke and caused four fridges and freezers full of food to go off, because they left the power off for multiple days and literally ripped the power cord right out of the deep freeze.
I think they did over $25,000 worth of damage to my property. Kāinga Ora said we accept no responsibility, and neither did the tradies. The whole thing has done my head in.
They ripped out handfuls of soggy, slimy, black mould-infested wall and dropped it onto the floor, with only gloves on – no PPE, no sealing off the area. They didn’t lay down so much as a tissue to protect my stuff or the house. Then they trampled all that filth into the carpet, and nobody cleaned it. I covered it in plastic to protect me, my family and my little pug.
Obviously my health has been badly affected. I had no idea why I was getting so sick. I’ve had croup several times in this house and I never had it before. I don’t have asthma but the last 18 months I had to use an inhaler more and more. I had stuffy sinuses and kept getting conjunctivitis even though I’ve never had any allergies before. I kept getting ear infections. I started to get psoriasis after two to three years in that house and earlier this year it was crazy bad.
After the bathroom was repaired, half the house was without power for three months. The electrician said the whole house needed to be rewired because the wiring was dangerous and faulty, but nothing happened. He left multiple holes in the walls, some covered by cardboard, which he denied making.
There was no oven for five months, and no heat pump for a year. The repairs in the bathroom were so poorly and dangerously done that they didn’t meet the building code and had to be redone six months later, as the floor was rotten and soggy and full of black mould again. I had complained from day one that the floor was squishy, and I nearly cut my toe off when I discovered a razor-sharp piece of metal sticking out from the corner of the shower.
I’m sure Kāinga Ora would have been quite happy to leave me there paying them rent (after all, I’d been doing that for 18 years even with a falling-down house), but I had health issues that couldn’t be taken care of there. I need an accessible shower or bath. After 18 months of asking, several doctor’s letters and an occupational therapist’s recommendation, I moved into a more suitable home just a couple of weeks ago. I had to ring every few months to see if anything was happening and was offered seven unsuitable houses before this one. Within the first few days here, I was breathing better.
When we moved the furniture to leave, the cracks in the walls immediately became much much worse, and spread extensively and deeply through the kitchen. We realised that two whole external walls MOVED when you pushed on them and so did several internal walls. I’m lucky the house didn’t collapse.
I’m NOT grateful for the years of pain and fear and health problems that I’ve suffered. That house has had such a huge detrimental impact on my health. I had no idea why I was getting so sick. I went from outgoing and bubbly, walking around playing Pokemon Go and shopping for bargains, to having more and more pain and health issues.
As told to Gabi Lardies.
]]>Why does this myth persist, and what’s the real reason our skin is suffering?
It’s one of the biggest international grievances New Zealanders hold, up there with the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior and 1981’s underarm incident. We’re quick to tell international travellers that the world’s pollution led to the formation of an ozone hole above us which makes our sun fiercer than anywhere else.
We’re not the only ones. Wander over to Reddit and you’ll find multiple threads of people concerned about travelling or moving to New Zealand because it’s “under an ozone layer hole”.
And yet the popular notion that the ozone hole is the reason we have the world’s highest skin cancer rates – and why the sunburned British traveller is a fixture of our summers – is a myth.
So why does this myth persist, and what’s the real reason for our dismal skin cancer rates?
First, a brief explainer. The ozone layer is a diffuse accumulation of ozone molecules between 15 and 30km above the earth’s surface. Fortunately, it absorbs about 90% of the cancer-causing UVB radiation from the sun. Without this layer, the planet would essentially be irradiated, making it almost unlivable.
But inadvertently, humans invented a molecule that destroys it. In the 1970s, scientists discovered that synthetic molecules called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), used in aerosol cans and refrigerators, were reacting with the ozone layer, causing it to slowly break down. Despite the threat of irradiating the globe, progress to curb CFC use was sluggish and CFC producers fought reductions at every step.
Then in 1985, there was an alarming new discovery. Satellites found the ozone above Antarctica was thinning at an alarming rate, with an area of about 20 million square kilometres thinning by up to a third each spring. And this “hole” was increasing in size each year.
For New Zealand, with the largest population close to Antartica, there was a real fear the hole would continue to expand, leading to a huge spike in UV radiation here and a future tsunami of skin cancers.
Fortunately, the discovery galvanised global action and countries signed the Montreal Protocol in 1987 to phase out CFCs. It was enormously successful, and CFC production plummeted. But because the gases are extremely long-lived, those released over preceding decades continued to react with the ozone layer, and Antartica’s ozone hole continued to grow before peaking in 2006.
Given the very real threat that the ozone hole posed to New Zealand, it’s not surprising it’s become embedded in the popular consciousness. However, NIWA emeritus researcher Richard McKenzie says the ozone hole saga is one of crisis averted, rather than an ongoing catastrophe.
“It’s been a success story,” McKenzie says. “Because of the success of the Montreal Protocol those worst-case scenarios didn’t eventuate and the impact has been rather small.”
“The skin cancer rates we have in New Zealand have nothing to do with the ozone hole,” he adds. “They’re primarily to do with a displaced population with the wrong skin type spending too much time in the sun in the summer.”
That’s right: the most significant reason New Zealand and Australia have the world’s highest skin cancer rates is due to colonialism and immigration. The overwhelming majority of skin cancers in New Zealand are found in Pākehā with skin types evolved to suit lower UV levels. As well as having naturally lower UV levels, the UK is also at a far higher latitude than many people realise, and consequently the peak UV levels are about half that found in New Zealand. British and northern European skin types just aren’t evolved to cope with the UV levels here.
Consequently, skin cancer rates among Māori – who have evolved skin types suited to the UV levels here – are generally five times lower than for Pākehā. The latest figures show that in 2022, an incredible 96% of the 3,116 melanoma registrations were for European/other ethnicity, and only 2.6% (81) for Māori, 0.5% (16) for Pasifika and 0.25% (8!) among Asian ethnicities.
“If there were no ozone hole, we’d still have high skin cancer rates in New Zealand,” McKenzie says. “But the rates will go down in future as a lot of the immigrants to New Zealand have darker skin types that are more suitably adapted to the UV levels we get here.”
Another important factor behind our high skin cancer rates is that, despite being closer to the equator and having higher UV levels than Europe, New Zealand tends to be cooler because we’re surrounded by cold ocean. It’s a lot easier to spend all day in the sunshine when it’s 18 degrees in Invercargill than 35 degrees in Tangier, even though the burn-factor may be the same.
But there’s more. The ozone hole forms over Antarctica every year between August and October, and then breaks up and ozone levels return to normal for the rest of the year. However, at its largest extent, it is nowhere near New Zealand, lying more than 1000km to the south. And when the ozone hole forms each year, New Zealand actually has the highest concentrations of ozone on earth, due to variations that lead to more ozone passing overhead here in spring.
Even in Antarctica, you’ll struggle to get a tan when the ozone hole is in effect due to the low angle of the sun at that time of year. UV levels at Scott Base in spring are about the same as in Auckland in winter, and peak UV levels on the continent are still during summer, when the sun’s rays are more direct.
Beyond the ozone hole, the whole world has experienced a general depletion in ozone levels due to historical CFCs and this has increased UV levels by less than 5% – but New Zealand isn’t any more affected by this than anywhere else, McKenzie says.
Another misconception is that UV levels in New Zealand are extremely high. UV levels are much higher at lower latitudes, closer to the equator, where the sun’s rays are more direct, and high-altitude places like the Andes and Tibetan Plateau.
In Invercargill, the UV Index typically peaks at seven at midday in January, while UV levels in Auckland typically peak at 10 (despite the former being closer to the ozone hole). But further north, in Darwin, levels average 13 at midday in summer, and they regularly peak in the mid-to-high teens closer to the equator. The highest UV levels in the world occur in the high altitude Altiplano plateau in Peru, where UV levels peak at 25.
However, peak UV levels here are naturally about 40% higher than similar latitudes in the northern hemisphere. Lower levels of pollution and dust in the southern hemisphere accounts for about half of this difference; the clearer air lets more UV through.
The southern hemisphere also has naturally lower levels of ozone due to the way the gas is transported around the globe, which blocks less UV here. And by chance the southern hemisphere is about 3% closer to the sun in summer due to a quirk in the earth’s elliptical orbit. This makes UV levels here about 7% higher than in the north.
To help people understand how UV levels change through the day, and throughout the year, McKenzie has helped to develop an app, UVNZ, which shows the current and peak UV levels for your location.
This isn’t to say that ozone depletion wasn’t a serious issue or that fears about the ozone hole were overblown. It has been estimated that if CFCs continued to be produced, there would have been an additional two million skin cancer cases each year by 2030. Fortunately, despite a particularly large ozone hole forming over Antarctica last spring, it has been gradually decreasing and the ozone is expected to return to normal by mid-century.
“Ozone depletion would have had a major effect but because of the huge success of the measures used to control the problem it never became a major issue,” McKenzie says.
]]>He’s bringing ‘Sophie’ back, yeah.
Goodshirt’s ‘Sophie’ music video is one of the most instantly recognisable New Zealand music videos of all time. Featuring a woman listening to the song on headphones while her entire house is burgled behind her, the video won the New Zealand music award for Best Music Video in 2003, was added to Nga Taonga’s best 100 music videos of all time in 2009, and was featured in Anthems: New Zealand’s Iconic Hits in 2019.
In 2020, ‘Sophie’ garnered attention once more after a strikingly similar video was released by American rock band Eels, in which headphone-wearing Mad Men star John Hamm is burgled while listening to music. “It’s a crazy coincidence that we ended up with something so similar,” said Mark Oliver Everett of Eels. “The nice thing about this being called to our attention is now I know the band Goodshirt.”
And now, just last month on The Graham Norton show, Justin Timberlake performed his new song ‘Selfish’ while a number of men, clad in black, removed all his possessions. It is unclear whether Timberlake had seen the Eels video (Google’s only eel-based connection was that Katherine Ryan called him a “grubby little eel face” last year), or the Goodshirt video (the only useful result for Justin Timberlake + Goodshirt is this).
So, is Justin Timberlake bringing SophieBack? “I’ve got no idea,” said Gareth Thomas of Goodshirt over email. While being extremely complimentary towards the camerawork and choreography, he wasn’t about to claim that any kind of copying had taken place. “It’s nice to be part of the creative continuum,” he wrote. “After all, we stole the burglar idea from silent films such as the Keystone Cops and Charlie Chaplin.”
The central subject in ‘Sophie’ is a young woman (let’s call her Sophie) who, wrapped in a towel and fresh out of the shower, eschews risk of electrocution and plonks headphones onto her wet hair. She listens to ‘Sophie’ and becomes so transfixed by the fascinating true-to-life story, she doesn’t notice that her whole house is being pillaged by black-clad burglars.
Justin Timberlake could not be further from wearing a towel. In fact, the man is dressed as Dr Evil. While Sophie remains unaware of what’s going on behind her, Timberlake’s burglar dynamic is much more nuanced and complex. Not only can he very clearly see them, but at one point he watches one walk away while singing “I know I may be wrong, but I don’t wanna be right”. Inside job?
Sophie’s house is filled with thrilling trinkets such as a lime green iMac G3, a surfboard, a birthday cake and an inflatable whale. Justin Timberlake’s house looks like a Citta-laden therapist waiting room, and the only interesting object is a vinyl record that turns out to be his own bloody upcoming album. Once again we ask: inside job?
Sophie’s burglars are played by the members of Goodshirt. While only one of them wears a black balaclava (band member Gareth Thomas was unable to make the shoot so needed a stand-in), all of them are equally frenzied in executing their heist. This likely had something to do with the fact that they shot the whole thing around 20 times to get the timing just right.
Justin’s burglars are much more calm and collected, with one of them even helpfully stopping to present the above album cover to the camera. Some of them are wearing boiler suits with rags hanging out of their pockets like mechanics. Another is wearing a cheese cutter. It certainly raises the question: are these even burglars at all, or is Timberlake simply relocating his therapy practice?
Sophie sits entirely still for the duration of the song, moving only to change chairs and tuck into a piece of birthday cake. When he’s not doing what can only be described as “fancy footwork”, Timberlake is sliding off chaise lounges, ducking under couches, and moonwalking between the hardened criminals robbing him out of house and home.
Both ‘Sophie’ and ‘Selfish’ start with the letter S? Coincidence?
In the final moments of ‘Sophie’, Sophie turns around and realises that she has been the victim of a serious home invasion. She drops the piece of birthday cake she is eating and clasps her hand around her mouth to stifle the screams. Her life’s possessions are gone. The bean bags: gone. The stuffed crocodile: gone. Wearing only a towel, she will have to rebuild again from scratch.
By comparison, Justin Timberlake is basically cracking up the whole time as he is reduced to nothing but the grey villainous smock on his back. After the last curvaceous chrome lamp exits stage left, Timberlake beams, moonwalks once again over to his last remaining chair, and drops down in time with the curtains. The room is plunged into darkness and the audience erupts.
The man’s lost all his Citta wares, but at least he’s brought SophieBack into the zeitgeist.
]]>The second season of Ryan Murphy’s Feud is a sadder and slower entry into his canon of true story-telling, leaning heavily on a verdict about the cost of a single work of art.
Hollywood heavyweight Ryan Murphy has had a bit of “ick” about him in the last few years. He faced accusations of breaking the picket line during last year’s Writers’ Guild strike. Stories about unhappy cast members bubble up from the past sets of his many series. Dahmer, the story of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer and a monster hit for Netflix, faced criticism for being voyeuristic; the families of Dahmer’s victims were upset about what they viewed as profiteering from their pain. There is also garden variety criticism that some of Murphy’s work just isn’t that great.
His latest real life retelling, Feud: Capote vs The Swans, coincidentally or otherwise, prods at some of the questions that dog Murphy and the cultural landscape at large. Can you, and should you, separate the art from the man? What is fiction, what is fact and what is a justifiable blurring of the two? What lines are crossed in pursuit of a great story, and when, if ever, is it worth compromising the trust of friends and family to tell it? How close is too close?
Capote vs The Swans is the second season in Murphy’s Feud series. The first season dramatised the well-documented rivalry between Joan Crawford and Bette Davis. The central feud in this season exists between writer Truman Capote and a bevy of powerful New York high society women known as the “swans”. It’s based on the book Capote’s Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era by Laurence Leamer.
Set across several decades between 1955 and 1984, the inciting incident for the feud occurs in 1975, following the publication of Capote’s ‘La Côte Basque, 1965’ in Esquire magazine, billed as an entree to his unfinished novel, Answered Prayers. Capote was one of many writers credited with the birth of “new journalism”, joining Gay Talese, Norman Mailer, Joan Didion and Tom Wolfe in blurring the lines between the literary style of writing associated with fiction, and straight reporting. ‘La Côte Basque, 1965’ blurred lines further and was a thinly veiled “fictionalised” and scandalous account of the inner lives of the swans, women Capote revelled in being around but was forever studying.
The series details the fallout after publication, as several swans pledge to ruin Capote for his betrayal of trust. For most of the show, he remains unrepentant. He was an insider but always, by his own assertions about the role of the writer in society, on the out.
The cast, as with most Murphy vehicles, is star-studded. Naomi Watts plays Babe Paley, an American style icon, wife of TV executive William Paley, and head “swan”. Diane Lane is Slim Keith, and Chloë Sevigny, herself sometimes named the “it girl to end all it girls”, is C.Z. Guest. Calista Flockhart makes a welcome return to the screen, dripping with acid as Lee Radziwill, sister of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and Demi Moore and Molly Ringwald play Ann Woodward and Joanne Carson, respectively.
British actor Tom Hollander is unrecognisable as Capote. The physical transformation, the voice mimicry and the elevated mannerisms grant Hollander centre stage in most of the scenes he’s in but raise a common question about the line between caricature and truly great performance. That feels especially pertinent because Capote was openly gay. While we’ve gotten miles past a singular gay stereotype in film and television, the myth of the effeminate sad man with mother issues still persists. Jessica Lange’s “bad mommy” roles now haunt Murphy’s shows, and her turn as the ghost of Capote’s mother almost serves the mythology of Murphy’s worldbuilding as much as it does the show’s.
Ultimately, because the story is so centred around Capote, as he lurches from bon vivant to poison-penned viper, journeying from the top of the heap as faithful companion to drug-addled decline, enough is revealed about his inner life to land Hollander’s performance on the side of great. Gus Van Sant directs six of the eight episodes, and his faithful adherence to the style of Albert and David Maysles (Grey Gardens) in the third episode, which documents Capote’s sociey peak at the Black and White ball in 1966, and his own humanistic approach to bringing subcultures into the light, gives us more of an insider’s view of Capote and his motivations, than any of the other characters.
Watts is quite perfect as a cold yet vulnerable Paley. A beautiful bird trapped in a gilded cage, Watts plays her with an icy fragility. Watts’ precise movement, as she pats her bouffant and pulls on gloves for yet another society performance, is a physical manifestation of the freedom of wealth and the entrapment of societal position.
Paley, with her revealed insecurities, gets more exploration than any of the other women. Sevigny, as C.Z. Guest, the most empathetic of the swans, operates as something of a moderator between Capote and the women. She brings an almost unbelievable earthiness to a woman who once told the Washington Post, “If you have money and servants then you’re helping somebody. If rich people didn’t spend money the country would be in much worse shape than it is today.”
Flockhart hisses, bitter and brittle, forever in the shadow of her sister. Lane remains a consistently enraged force as Keith throughout. Towards the end of the show, Sevigny’s character tells Capote that his biggest sin wasn’t the betrayal of trust but the reduction of the women to “two-dimensional caveman drawings”. That Lane and Flockhart’s characters don’t really sing more than one note across the eight episodes doesn’t seem like an issue of performance but instead reveals the limits of writing an ensemble drama with an adversarial premise at its heart.
The use of dreamscape, relentless time-hopping, and a bottle episode in which Capote spends time with writer and civil rights activist James Baldwin renders chronology useless in tracking what is consequence and what is prelude. The only sure thing is that you are witnessing Capote’s decline, perhaps at the hands of the women who cut him out of their lives, perhaps at his own. The time jumps are frustrating to follow at times but give the show a different pacing to the first season.
Ultimately, it’s worth watching. It’s beautiful, with no detail spared in revealing the literal interior worlds of three decades of New York high society life. Actors playing real people always start at a disadvantage, but the cast – Hollander, Sevigny and Watts in particular – deliver more than enough to avoid death by a thousand comparisons. Departing from Murphy’s pacier and more sensationalist retellings of true life stories, it benefits from sitting with the misery and sadness. It could have been gossipy plot points, high drama, great costumes and climatic performances from a cast of divas. Instead, it is a tragedy in several acts that delivers a verdict: the risk Capote took as a writer in observing the highest echelons didn’t pay off.
The show takes a risk making that judgment call, but it undoubtedly makes a worthy contribution to a debate Capote played a big role in stoking about where fact ends and fiction starts.
All eight episodes of Feud: Capote vs The Swans are streaming now on Neon.
]]>Are you deeply passionate about sharing Māori stories? We’re on the hunt for an experienced writer/editor to lead coverage in our Ātea section.
Ātea is a deeply valued section of The Spinoff site, offering Māori perspectives and insights across politics, current affairs and culture. We are thrilled to be looking for a dedicated writer/editor to lead this coverage.
We want someone who is deeply passionate about sharing Māori stories and elevating new and experienced writers alike. The ideal candidate would be a strong writer with a confident point of view, and someone who has an interest in a range of topics and tones, from the most serious to the silliest. This role would include frequent conversation with other senior editors so an enthusiasm for collaboration is a key element.
The Spinoff offices are in Morningside, Auckland, but we would consider a remote working arrangement for those living outside of Tāmaki Makaurau. We would also consider less than 40 hours a week for the right candidate.
Producing a minimum of 1.5 high-impact written pieces per week, with a focus on te ao Māori politics and current affairs.
Collaborating with The Spinoff editor on editorial strategy and planning for Ātea coverage.
Commissioning The Spinoff’s te ao Māori coverage, generating ideas, assigning stories and soliciting pitches from a range of freelance contributors.
Candidates should have a minimum of four years’ experience in media. This could be a position for an established editor or an experienced writer ready to take the next step in their career.
Please email your application to jobs@thespinoff.co.nz. All applications require a CV and a cover letter to be addressed to The Spinoff editor, Madeleine Chapman. Applications are due by March 29, 2024, but may close earlier if a suitable applicant is found.
]]>We round up everything coming to streaming services this week, including Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, Apple TV+, ThreeNow, Neon and TVNZ+.
TVNZ’s new three-part documentary series takes us behind the scenes of Gloriavale and reveals what it’s like to live in – and leave – the extreme religious community. Over three consecutive nights, the series reveals the level of detailed planning that goes into escaping Gloriavale, and features “unprecedented access to its inner workings, the unravelling of its leadership and the pursuit of justice by the group of passionate and dedicated people known as The Gloriavale Leavers’ Trust”. It shares the true accounts of those who have managed to escape and seeks answers to some unanswered questions about Gloriavale’s dark history. A challenging but compelling watch.
Hold onto your cocktail and put on a hat covered in tropical fruit, because Apple TV+’s Palm Royale looks like one of 2024’s most promising new shows. The cast alone is incredible: Kristen Wiig, Alison Janney, Carol Burnett, Josh Lucas, Laura Dern, Leslie Bibb and even Ricky bloody Martin all star in this lively comedy-drama set in late 1960s America. Wiig plays Maxine Simmons, a woman prepared to do whatever it takes to be accepted into an exclusive and glitzy Palm Beach society. It’s the classic outsider-looking-in story, and the vibe is White Lotus mixed with Mad Men. A feast for the eyes, at the very least.
Netflix’s new sci-fi series is adapted from Liu Cixin’s 2008 best-selling novel about a group of scientist friends who are trying to work out why the laws of nature have gone all wonky. Turns out, they’re about to be invaded by aliens. “The series portrays a fictional past, present and future wherein Earth encounters an alien civilization from a nearby system of three sun-like stars orbiting one another, in an example of the three-body problem in orbital mechanics,” Netflix tells us. Cool, cool, cool. Spanning several continents and decades, 3 Body Problem is a slick and impressive series that sci-fi fans should hoover up quickly, ideally before the aliens really do arrive.
The Christopher Nolan epic about the inventor of the atomic bomb won the Oscar for best picture last week, and this week, it drops on Neon. Spinoff writer Stewart Sowman-Lund reckoned Oppenheimer was the best cinema experience he had in 2023, concluding that “Oppenheimer offers a worthy reminder that while Nolan is arguably best remembered for his work in the science fiction and action genres, he’s a master of the dramatic as well”. The great news? You can watch this three hour extravaganza from the comfort of your own home, perhaps while simultaneously reading this piece about all the female scientists who also worked on the Manhattan Project but for some reason didn’t feature in the movie.
Fans of Selling Sunset should check out the second season of Buying Beverly Hills, the Netflix reality series that follows Mauricio Umansky’s (husband of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Kyle Richards) gazillion dollar real estate brokerage. Cue blue Californian skies, wealthy celebrity clients and a whole lot of luxury homes that have twice as many bathrooms than bedrooms. What’s that about, America?!
Good Luck to You, Leo Grande (March 19)
Physical 100 S2 (March 19)
Young Royals Forever (March 19)
Brian Simpson Live from the Mothership (March 19)
Forever Queens S2 (March 19)
Homicide New York (March 20)
Dinner Time Live David Change (March 20)
3 Body Problem (March 21)
Androgyny (March 21)
Strays (March 22)
Buying Beverly Hills S2 (March 22)
Shirley (March 22)
The Martian (March 22)
Red Eye (March 22)
The Vault (March 22)
The Casagrandes Movie (March 22)
Palm Royale (March 20)
The Doll Factory (March 19)
Mission to Burnley (March 22)
Escaping Utopia (March 24)
Platform 7 (March 24)
Quiet on Set (March 19)
Freaknik: The Wildest Party Never Told (March 21)
Road House (March 21)
Davie and Jonesie’s Locker (March 22)
Painting with John (March 19)
No Hard Feelings (March 20)
Oppenheimer (March 22)
The Valley (March 20)
Top Chef S21 (March 21)
Hinterland (March 18)
Malum (March 18)
The Third Saturday in October (March 18)
The Third Saturday in October Part V (March 18)
]]>Every week that passes seems to tighten the fiscal noose for Christopher Luxon and co – a noose, moreover, of their own making.
“Don’t tell me what you value: show me your budget, and I’ll tell you what you value.” This phrase, a favourite of US president Joe Biden’s, resonates here at a time when our National-led government is reducing the rate of benefit increases in order to fund a $2.9bn tax cut for landlords.
Budgets more generally are also posing a problem for Christopher Luxon and co. Every week that passes seems to tighten the fiscal noose – a noose, moreover, of their own making.
Last month came the little-reported news of a massive financial mistake in National’s estimates. During last year’s election campaign, the party had claimed that by increasing benefits more slowly than Labour had planned (linking them to inflation rather than wages, in technical terms), it would save $2bn over four years. The true figure, it turns out, is $669.5m.
And the news keeps getting worse. Two weeks ago, we discovered that National’s largesse towards landlords, reinstating their ability to deduct mortgage interest costs from their tax bill, will cost substantially more than the $2.1bn previously estimated. And last week, Inland Revenue estimated that the planned tax on online casino operators would raise just $145m over four years, far short of the $719m figure National bandied about on the campaign trail.
Yet worse news may be due. Last year National costed its plan to raise tax thresholds at $8.9bn. But wage increases since then will have pushed more people into higher brackets, further raising the cost of cutting their tax bills. The Climate Commission, meanwhile, has warned that auctions of carbon credits – earmarked by National to help fund $2.4bn of its tax cuts – are “not a reliable source of income”.
And don’t forget that – thanks to Winston Peters’s veto – National has to do without the $3bn that it (somewhat implausibly) claimed it would get by taxing foreign house-buyers. Even just based on what we already know, the government has to find at least an extra $5.7bn to fulfil the financial plan it outlined on the campaign trail. Peters acknowledged as much at the weekend.
It is, admittedly, hard to cost policies in opposition, when a party lacks access to Beehive spreadsheets and models. (Which is why the finance minister, Nicola Willis, should make good on her previously expressed support for an independent fiscal institution that would, among other things, cost opposition policies.) But despite National being supposedly the party of the economy, and despite Luxon having had a much-vaunted team of fiscal wonks advising him, the party seems to have made a terrible fist of the job.
Not only were independent economists right to be sceptical last year about the party’s pledges; its future claims will be even more closely scrutinised. New Zealanders expect their leaders to be both compassionate and competent, but currently National is struggling on both counts.
It also faces a familiar dilemma as the May 30 budget approaches. To fill the $5.7bn gap and run its promised surplus by 2028, it has three main options: raise more revenue, borrow more, or cut more public services.
User charges – such as the higher car-registration fees trailed by transport minister Simeon Brown – could boost the coffers, but not by $5.7bn. The tax threshold rises could be delayed, effectively increasing revenue – but at the cost of some embarrassment to Willis. Borrowing more for infrastructure, and delaying the date of returning to surplus, would be perfectly sensible, and Luxon has refused to recommit to the 2028 target. But any big moves here would run counter to National’s anti-borrowing rhetoric.
Deeper public service cuts, therefore, may be in prospect. National has insisted that its efficiency drive, including 6.5-7.5% budget cuts for dozens of agencies, will, over four years, shave $6bn off government spending without harming “frontline” services.
But while most public servants would admit there is some back-office fat to be trimmed, analysis by trade union economist Craig Renney – who was consistently right about National’s financial problems on the campaign trail – suggests some services currently within scope for cuts are absolutely those that Joe Average would consider “frontline”. These include Customs, firefighting, search and rescue, Predator Free New Zealand, cybersecurity and District Court services.
The axe may, ultimately, fall elsewhere. But even the prospect of cuts to such services heightens the absurdity of the $2.9bn landlord tax break.
Bear in mind there is no hard evidence that Labour’s removal of the interest-deductibility provisions increased rents. Treasury research refutes the idea that landlords’ costs are the main driver of rent increases; far more important are tenants’ incomes, which determine how much landlords can realistically extract, and a lack of houses, which inhibits the competition that might otherwise force rents down.
There is no serious reason to believe landlords will pass on any substantial amount of their $2.9bn tax cut to tenants. Nor, at a time when we want to shift investment away from property and make life easier for first-time buyers, is there any logic in allowing landlords the same interest deductions that other businesses enjoy.
And so the tax cut remains a huge handout to people who are, according to Statistics New Zealand surveys, disproportionately concentrated in the country’s wealthiest tenth. A handout that comes as the government is cutting funds for food banks and wheelchair users. A handout that is, in the final analysis, funded partly by taking away from beneficiaries some of the extra money they would have got under Labour. What was that saying about values?
]]>Auckland may be the largest city in Aotearoa, but it’s the small community-led organisations within it that make the city thrive. The Spinoff spoke to two council-funded organisations who are doing their bit.
“Torrent.” That’s the word one 40-year resident of Dundale Avenue used to describe what became of the stream, then placidly gurgling a few metres from us, when the January 2023 floods wreaked havoc across Auckland. She had paused in her work – ripping up the English ivy blanketing the riverbanks, pulling out the tree privet that sprouted among it – to explain, one gloved hand resting on a dead branch, how that flooding sparked the chain of events that led to her being here on the bank of the Whau Stream, in the company of a dozen other volunteers, on a sunny Saturday morning over one year later.
After the floods, local residents approached then-MP Michael Wood about maintaining the waterway along the Whau Stream running adjacent to Blockhouse Bay’s Dundale Avenue. Wood engaged Auckland Council’s Healthy Waters, which in turn funded EcoMatters Environment Trust to coordinate the community in helping to care for the Whau Stream under the aegis of the council’s 10-year Making Space for Water programme.
Making Space for Water is a key investment priority under Auckland Council’s Long-term Plan proposal, which is currently out for public consultation. The programme is an integral part of the Long-term Plan, as it invests in infrastructure to strengthen Auckland’s resilience against flooding. The programme proposes seven operational initiatives including delivery of critical works, repair and rebuild to help build resilience for the stormwater network and reduce the impact of future flooding.
Before the floods, the Blockhouse Bay resident said, if one had wanted to help care for the stream, there was no communal action to join. That changed with EcoMatters’ involvement.
Auckland’s streams, explained EcoMatters’ Pamela Gill (Ngāti Porou, Te Aitanga-a-Hauiti) – when she wasn’t attacking a large wild ginger plant or advising volunteers on the difference between native houhere and invasive privet – are a vital aspect of our urban environment.
“Healthy, thriving streams are really important. They provide habitat for our native birds, bats and critters, trees and grasses – they are really important spaces. They can help fight climate change as well. Our urban forests are vital for helping to provide shade and absorb carbon.” And when it rains and the city’s drainage systems reach capacity, “an open stream can carry more water to the sea, which can help to reduce flooding. The water has to go somewhere. We all need to be thinking about where it’s going.”
It shouldn’t, Gill says, only be the responsibility of those at risk who need to do that thinking.
She motioned at the houses opposite, and the impermeable concrete driveways down which water cascades towards the stream in a downpour. “We’re all in this waka together.”
“We all need to be supporting the council and the wider community to care for our natural environment so that it can support us. I come back to that whakataukī from Whanganui: ko au te awa, ko te awa ko au: I am the river and the river is me.”
And, as Gill points out, what better body than the council – ideally the embodiment of the city’s collective will – to kick-start that communal mindset? The funding provided by the council makes this community action possible.
“We couldn’t have done it without Auckland Council. Many Aucklanders are wanting support to care for their streams, and we’ve really appreciated the council’s willingness to meet their needs, particularly around supporting community-led action.”
A similar nexus of community interests first breathed life into The Kai Ika Project, a collaboration between the Outboard Boating Club, LegaSea, Westhaven Marina and Papatūānuku Kōkiri Marae. It began in 2016 when the club approached LegaSea seeking ideas about what to do with the unwanted bits of fish left over at their onsite filleting stations. At the time the club was dumping them, but as LegaSea’s programme lead Sam Woolford explains, they knew they could “do better”. “We said, ‘Well, why don’t you give them to the marae?’”
Some cultures regard the fish head as something to be discarded; others consider it a delicacy. In te reo Māori, for example, the fish head is called rangatira kai, meaning “chiefs’ food”. Many other cultures also revere fish heads as something to be savoured, and the elegant simplicity of The Kai Ika Project lies in its ability to harness what is already one of Tāmaki Makaurau’s greatest strengths: the diversity of cultures that call it home.
“The beauty of Auckland and of being multicultural is what allows us to actually use the fish completely… I joke and say that for us fish heads are the fabric of our society,” Woolford says. With that guiding kaupapa in place, the programme began modestly, moving perhaps 250kg of kai moana a week. “It was one pickup a week, it was mainly just being used through the marae.”
When Covid-19 hit and uncertainty wove itself into our lives, demand exploded. Recreational fishing was obviously disallowed under the restrictions, but the essential service provided by commercial fisheries continued; Woolford “went out and made friends with them”. Another company Royal Wolf provided a container, Campbell Plumbing and local electricians chipped in to get the necessary infrastructure in place. “Over that first lockdown, we went from about 250kg a week to 1,250kg a week,” Woolford says. “We just scaled up massively, because the community needed support. What else are you going to do?” By the end of Auckland’s second big lockdown, “the queues were even longer”. At its peak, The Kai Ika Project was distributing 2,000kg of seafood every week.
It was in the midst of that rapid growth that Auckland Council became an integral partner, through regional grants within its Waste Minimisation and Innovation Fund.
“Suddenly, there was some quite large capital expenditure required,” he says. Vehicles, full-time employees: without additional funding, there was a ceiling to what The Kai Ika Project could achieve.
The investment of the council, Woolford says, allowed them to serve the grateful community. Once, he remembers, coming across a kuia at the marae who “just got up out of her wheelchair and gave me a big hug. Didn’t say a word. Stuff like that is powerful.”
But even so, Woolford says, The Kai Ika Project has never been able to keep up with demand, something that has only worsened as the cost-of-living crisis has followed on the heels of Covid. Current capacity sits at between 1,250 and 1,500kg a week.
In the interests of creating a self-funding model, Kai Ika operates a filleting station at Westhaven Marina, where you can get a fish filleted for three dollars, with the proceeds flowing back to cover distribution costs. And the programme has been expanded to Wellington, with interest growing in other regions too. There are cooking programmes, and Papatūānuku Kōkiri Marae will soon open a “koha café”, where a fish-based menu will be available for what people are able to pay. Everything, Woolford says, is done in the interests of becoming economically self-sufficient and “feeding more people”.
And they’ve already reached plenty of stomachs. The Kai Ika Project recently surpassed 400,000kg of fish that would’ve otherwise gone to landfill; what can’t be eaten is used to fertilise the approximately 80,000 kumara grown and given away by the marae every year. It has created what Woolford calls an entire “waste-recovery industry. There are jobs, now we employ people to do what didn’t exist five, six, seven years ago.”
And, as he says, it couldn’t have been done without the support of the council. “It’s their investment that’s allowed us to break those barriers down.”
What do you want from Auckland Council’s Long Term Plan and Waste Management and Minimisation Plan? To find out more information and have your say on key issues please visit akhaveyoursay.nz or your local council library or service centre by March 28.
]]>So many questions, so few answers. And at the end of the day… a blanket.
You can find almost anything on AliExpress. A low quality iPhone case for $2? How about this deeply unsettling Mona Lisa costume? Or what about a blanket with a low quality print of the Palmerston North council building on it?
The Spinoff was first alerted to the existence of this item, “Pond And Council Buildings Palmerston North Throw Blanket”, by a user on Twitter who questioned why they could buy a blanket with the Palmerston North council buildings printed on it. Good question.
The mayor of Palmerston North, Grant Smith, was similarly perplexed when approached for comment, before disclosing: “I’m gonna buy one”.
There was no response from the seller when asked why this item existed, so I decided to carry out some investigative journalism of my own by buying the blanket, in spite of the many concerns around AliExpress as a retailer, ranging from data protection, to scams and questions about how items available on the platform are made.
According to AliExpress, just three blankets have been purchased at the time of writing, which presumably includes myself and, now, the mayor.
A week or so later, a very exciting package arrived to confirm that yes, it does. Whether it was worth the $37.46 plus shipping is another question. Here’s how the blanket performed when assessed against several key criteria: comfort, warmth, quality, versatility and coolness.
A blanket can still be a good blanket even if it doesn’t provide warmth. They can offer a sense of protectiveness or cosiness that transcends pure temperature. Someone I know will routinely drape a blanket over themselves no matter the weather. Why? Comfort.
In this area, the Pond And Council Buildings Palmerston North Throw Blanket gets a tick of approval. I ordered the biggest size (200x150cm), which means it’s definitely more appropriate for a bed than the office. Nevertheless, myself and others were quickly drawn to its faux-fur texture. Hard to give this blanket anything less than top marks for comfort.
Score: 5/5
Given the blanket arrived at the peak of summer it’s been hard to properly judge its warmth. The blanket is described as being made from “microfleece”, which is not especially insulating but very lightweight. Used to combat The Spinoff’s aggressive air conditioning, it has done a solid job of keeping me warm at work. Would I trust it to keep me cosy, in bed, in the depths of winter? Probably not.
Score: 3.5/5
There are two aspects here that must be assessed. Firstly, the print. From afar, it looks quite good. But up close the Pond And Council Buildings Palmerston North Throw Blanket loses some points. It appears to have been a pretty grainy image to begin with and it’s not entirely clear why it was chosen for a blanket. I can’t find the original image, though it is also available – for a substantial premium – on another blanket you can buy from RedBubble, so it could also be a case of blanket plagiarism.
We must also assess the quality of the blanket from a textile perspective. Given it already had large strands of loose thread when it arrived at our office, it doesn’t score highly in terms of its construction.
Score: 2.5/5
On AliExpress, the blanket is described as being appropriate for: “Picnic, Travel, Home, Hotel, Airplane, Sofa.” Hard to argue with this.
Score: 5/5
This criteria is of course entirely subjective. On the listing for the pricier but otherwise identical Redbubble blanket, the item’s print was described as showing “across the pond to the ugly council buildings in the square in Palmerston North”. Can ugly be cool? The enduring popularity of Crocs suggests yes.
Mayor Grant Smith praised the original photographer for including not just the council building, but also the neighbouring pond and garden. This makes it cool in his eyes, and means the print has nice tones of green to contrast the stark grey. “The council building normally gets profiled for other reasons,” admitted Smith. “Although it did win awards when it was first put up, it has been said that it’s not the prettiest building in the world. It’s interesting that somebody is putting it on a blanket.”
It’s worth remembering, however, that coolness is cyclical. Something that is cool now could easily be uncool in a couple of years. Will this apply to the Pond And Council Buildings Palmerston North Throw Blanket? Or does it have a timeless appeal? Hard to say.
Score: 4/5
Overall score: 20/25
Verdict: The Pond And Council Buildings Palmerston North Throw Blanket is a thing that exists.
]]>Labour’s Chris Hipkins says New Zealand deserves better than a deputy PM who behaves ‘like a drunk uncle at a wedding’, writes Catherine McGregor in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here.
On Saturday, New Zealand’s most mercurial politician returned from a short trip to Asia, where he held a series of serious, high-level meetings in his role as foreign minister. On Sunday, he was back in rabble-rouser mode, delivering his state of the nation speech to a packed audience of NZ First faithful. According to a report by Stuff’s Glenn McConnell, the deputy PM spent the first part of his speech attacking the previous Labour government before pivoting to culture war issues including te Tiriti and co-governance. He said the latter was pushed by people who thought “their DNA made them somehow better than others” and compared it to the ideology of Nazi Germany. Asked about it later, Peters defended the comparison, saying New Zealand’s Jewish community would “understand” what he meant. Labour’s Chris Hipkins said it was a reprehensible comment. “Kiwis deserve better than a deputy prime minister who behaves like a drunk uncle at a wedding,” he said.
Before Peters’s speech, the biggest politics story of the weekend was the fallout from the Greens’ suspension of MP Darleen Tana over migrant exploitation allegations levelled at her husband. Commentators observed that the Tana news could hardly have been more badly timed for the party, coming just a day after former MP Golriz Ghahraman appeared in court on shoplifting charges. Writing in the Sunday Star-Times, Andrea Vance notes one striking similarity between the two cases: having learned of the allegations, each time the Greens waited multiple weeks before informing the public. It’s a pattern of behaviour that “signals the Greens are no longer as wedded to openness as they once were,” writes Vance. “And frankly, a disdain for the role of the media.”
For Vance’s colleague Luke Malpass (paywalled), the Greens’ silence on the Tana matter is understandable given that the MP said the official complaint against her husband came out of the blue. “What is a leadership supposed to do with that – put out a press release saying someone’s spouse has an employment law hearing, which the MP says she knows nothing about and there was no suggestion that she did? No.” Tana’s failure to disclose a second Employment Relations Authority complaint is the more serious problem, Malpass says. “Sins of omission are still sins. And in politics neglecting to tell your party leader important information is most commonly viewed as lying.” The string of recent scandals raises questions about the quality of the Greens’ vetting of potential candidates, writes the Herald’s Thomas Coughlan. “There are also questions around whether the caucus needs to be read the riot act over the importance of fronting up to the party hierarchy as soon as an MP becomes aware of a potential problem.”
Meanwhile in Wairarapa, the Labour Party was wrapping up its caucus retreat. With controversy growing over the apparent $5.6 billion fiscal hole in the government’s books, it’s likely there were conversations in Masterton about whether Labour should go on the attack. So far Chris Hipkins has been content to stand back and let National dig its own hole. That’s a mistake, suggests the Sunday Star-Times’ Vernon Small (paywalled). “With this government making a wasteland of its predecessor’s reforms, Labour’s low-key approach and its reticence to defend its record is letting National off the hook”.
]]>In the wake of the news about Newshub and TVNZ, one question has been on everyone’s lips, and Madeleine Holden set out to answer it the old-fashioned way.
Following the monumental news about the impending closure of Newshub, and then the bleak follow-up over at TVNZ, all my colleagues started murmuring the same question: how many of us (journalists) are left in the country now?
The trajectory before the recent wave of job losses was already pretty dismal. In the 2018 census, for example, the number of people who recorded their profession as newspaper or periodical editor, print journalist, radio journalist or television journalist was 3,381, down from 3,525 in the 2013 census and 4,071 in the 2006 census, and there have been significant layoffs in this perpetually turbulent industry since 2018. But hundreds of journalism jobs are on the chopping block following proposed cuts to Three/Newshub and TVNZ in recent weeks; my best guess, based on surrounding reporting, is that around 235 journalism roles will be impacted. It’s an enormous blow to the dwindling number of working journalists in this nation, which is… what?
The latest census data will be released in May, but it will be immediately out of date, given the data was collected in March-June 2023. So I took matters into my own hands and decided to find out the old-fashioned way: by emailing every single media outlet in New Zealand that might reasonably be expected to employ at least one (1) journalist and quite simply asking them how many journalists have jobs at their organisation.
I know, I know. How could I possibly capture everyone? What seemed like a simple task at the outset turned into an incredibly stressful, stye-inducing quest: deadline looming, I would be tallying up the final number when someone in the office would pipe up with, “What about [obscure local newspaper/niche magazine]?”, sending me hunting frantically for contact details and adding row upon row to the spreadsheet. I have almost certainly forgotten some media outlets that should have been on this list, for which I preemptively apologise. I did, however, give it my absolute best shot to include as many as possible – I really do have a stye to show for this – and I think the data I have gathered is comprehensive and interesting, even if it isn’t perfect.
As for who counts as a “journalist”, I cast the net fairly wide. Careers.govt.nz defines it as a person who “researches and produces stories for websites, print, radio, television and other media”, and that was a good enough working definition for me, so I didn’t limit the list of organisations to hard news outlets and included more “lifestyle”-focused publications like New Zealand Woman’s Weekly, Cuisine and Kia Ora. I did, however, exclude product catalogues (eg Hunting & Fishing), industry and trade publications, and magazines that are primarily advertorials for their owner companies (eg Habitat by Resene).
The full list, in case you would like to point out any glaring omissions or quibble with my decision, is as follows (NB: titles owned by parent companies are included within that organisation’s count, and the list is in no particular order): The Spinoff, Stuff, NZME, TVNZ, RNZ, Warner Bros Discovery, Sky, Whakaata Māori, Newsroom, NBR, Are Media, Allied Press, Metro, NZ Geographic, Home, HERE, Pacific Media Network, E Tangata, Coconet, Crux, Ashburton Guardian, Greymouth Star, Valley Profile, Waatea News, Gisborne Herald, Beacon Media Group, Wairarapa Times Age, Westport News, Wairoa Star, School Road, Fashion Quarterly, Indian Newslink, Local Matters, BayBuzz, Pantograph Punch, Global HQ/Agri HQ (Farmers Weekly), NZ Classic Car, The Shed, SCG Media, Guardian NZ, Cuisine, Interest.co.nz, Readers Digest, Mindfood, The Motor Caravanner, Oh Baby, NZ Trucking, Motorhomes, Caravans & Destinations, Farm Trader, Lifestyle Magazine Group, Mediaworks, Top South Media, Devonport Flagstaff & Rangitoto Observer, Mahurangi Matters & Hibiscus Matters, Gulf News & Waiheke Weekender, Good Local Media Group, Atiawa Toa FM, Awa FM, Kia Ora FM 89.8, Maniapoto FM, Moana Radio, Ngā Iwi FM, Ngāti Hine FM, Radio Kahungunu, Radio Ngāti Porou, Tainui Live, Tautoko FM, Radio Waatea, Raukawa Vibes, Tahu FM, Te Arawa FM, Te Hiku Media, Te Korimako o Taranaki, Te Ūpoko o Te Ika, Tūmeke FM, Tūranga FM, Tūwharetoa FM, Craccum, Salient, Debate, Canta, Critic, Nexus, 95bFM, Radio One 91FM, Radio Control 99.4FM, RDU 98.5FM, RadioActive 88.6FM, Aukaha Regional News Service.
I asked the above outlets to provide the total number of FTE journalists employed at their organisations, ie permanent employees, not freelancers/contractors, and to include staff like editors and producers who contribute journalistic work. Other than that, the definition of a “journalist” was for the recipient of my email to determine.
In a heartwarming turn of events, the vast, vast majority of media outlets were responsive to my request and transparent about their numbers. For the small number of organisations that did not respond, I made an educated guess by using the information on their website, LinkedIn sleuthing and texting people who work there.
At this point I already had a very good picture of the overall number of journalists in Aotearoa, but my method left the snag of independent journalists, eg anyone making a living from their Substack newsletter, plus the problem of freelancers. Given the spirit of the inquiry was to get a sense of journalism jobs in New Zealand, I made the decision to only include those Substack journalists I could reasonably guess were making a sustainable living from that work. Based on an internal tool provided by Substack showing the top 10 New Zealand publications, plus a bit of Spinoff inside baseball, I made an educated guess that that number is no more than four, and maybe only one.
One final disclaimer before I give you the juicy number. In 2020, the introduction of the Public Interest Journalism Fund changed the media landscape considerably. The $55m fund, made available by the government and administered through NZ On Air, created 219 new journalism jobs. The fund is now closed, and while my headcount is based on today’s numbers, it’s worth noting that we can expect a further decline in the total number of journalists as the remaining PIJF roles come to the end of their contracts. According to NZ On Air, of the 219 roles funded by the PIJF, about 200 are still being funded by NZ On Air or by the news organisation. However, several media organisations I spoke to indicated that current PIJF employees on fixed-term contracts would not be having their contracts renewed.
So without further ado, my best guess, based on the above process, of the number of journalists working in Aotearoa today is 1,674.
Assuming the worst comes to pass at Newshub/Three and TVNZ, that total will be around 1,439.
]]>