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LIVE UPDATES

National doubles down on boot camps, ankle bracelets

It’s the end of another week! Welcome to The Spinoff’s live updates, made possible by our members, for November 18. Reach me on stewart@thespinoff.co.nz

The agenda

  • National’s Erica Stanford seems to have changed her mind on ankle bracelets for teens.
  • The party is also standing by its plan to introduce young offender “boot camps” in the face of critics.
  • In touring news: The Killers are playing Auckland’s Town Hall next week! And Rod Stewart’s announced an alleged final tour of NZ for next year.
blog-nov-18.jpg

National doubles down on boot camps, ankle bracelets

It’s the end of another week! Welcome to The Spinoff’s live updates, made possible by our members, for November 18. Reach me on stewart@thespinoff.co.nz

The agenda

  • National’s Erica Stanford seems to have changed her mind on ankle bracelets for teens.
  • The party is also standing by its plan to introduce young offender “boot camps” in the face of critics.
  • In touring news: The Killers are playing Auckland’s Town Hall next week! And Rod Stewart’s announced an alleged final tour of NZ for next year.
Nov 18 2022

Black Ferns to receive Rugby World Cup bonuses

The Black Ferns are world champions (Photo: Hannah Peters/Getty)

Each Black Fern in the World Cup-winning squad will receive a bonus payment of $25,000, according to a Stuff report. In a statement to the outlet, New Zealand Rugby CEO Mark Robinson said the bonus payments were supplied by the sporting body as well as sponsors.

“New Zealand Rugby, with generous contributions from key partners Sky, Adidas and ASB, have created a bonus pool of almost $1m to acknowledge the incredible success of the Black Ferns team and management at the Rugby World Cup,” he said.

The bonus will be welcomed by fans and players alike, though with a record-breaking crowd at Eden Park and a record-high audience watching the broadcast on Three, many have argued a bonus should have been on the cards all along.

By comparison, the All Blacks were up for a $150,000 bonus per player at the 2019 World Cup if they’d won it, and $35,000 for making the final. Similar to this most recent bonus, the men’s bonus payment was offered by a sponsor (Adidas) and not as part of their regular payments.

This World Cup has ignited many conversations and debates around the commercial viability of women’s sports and athletes, and one would expect sponsorship interest in the Black Ferns – both as a team and as individual personalities – to grow in coming months.

What to watch this weekend: 1899, Spirited and Pepsi Where’s My Jet?

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Our Friday wrap-up of everything that’s available for you to watch this weekend, on the big screen, and the small one…

This is it, sci-fi geeks, the one we’ve all been waiting for: 1899, the new Netflix series from the German creators of Dark, has landed and by all accounts delivers spooky spiritual thrills on a boat. The Telegraph says this one goes to some “truly mind-bending places” but be warned: The Guardian calls it “painfully slow” and “absolutely agonising” so those thrills might take their sweet time to land. (Trailer here.)

If that’s not your thing, Netflix also debuts Pepsi Where’s My Jet?, a documentary that examines one person’s quest to win a jump jet in a 1990s soft drink promotion that went awry. It was supposed to be a joke, but Pepsi didn’t count on the one person who really, really wanted to win that jet.

Elsewhere, Dead to Me’s third season has arrived on Netflix, Yellowstone’s fifth season and The Sex Lives of College Girls’ second season have landed on Neon, and TVNZ+ is screening the concert film of Harry Styles: Live in Manchester. If you have kids and it’s raining this weekend, Netflix’s Storybots: Answer Time is the delightful, non-annoying, family-friendly, celebrity-filled show you need in your life. Anne Hathaway visits this season! (Trailer here).

If you’re after movies, Amazon Prime unveils the Kristen Bell comedy The People We Hate At the wedding (“A tepid glass of nuptial chardonnay,” says The Guardian), as well as the influencers-stuck-on-a-cruise-ship film Sugar (“Barely competent,” says The Globe and Mail). If you’re looking to get into the Christmas spirit early, Apple TV+ is streaming the Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds holiday flick Spirited, which has surprisingly good reviews (“Some decent gags,” says Empire.)

In theatres, the weekend’s big release is the #MeToo movie She Said, which dramatises the New York Times investigation into sexual assault claims against Harvey Weinstein (yes, NYT has reviewed its own movie and, unsurprisingly, gave it a great review). Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is still going strong despite mixed reviews and a lengthy run time, and David Farrier’s Mister Organ has become the biggest local documentary release of the year. That, friends, is a film so twisted you probably need to see it twice.

For everything else streaming this November, click here

Could this be the end of Twitter?

Image: Tina Tiller

Even since the Elon Musk takeover of Twitter there has been speculation the social media network could collapse. It seemed unlikely that Twitter would actually disappear… until now. According to – ironically – tweets, the website could be about to vanish.

Reports out of the US suggest Twitter has continued to haemorrhage staff in recent days, particularly after Musk himself request employees notify whether they were planning to stay on or not. According to The Verge, Musk asked employees to respond via a Google Form whether they would continue to work for the company during a phase called “Twitter 2.0”. Hundreds of staffers are said to have quickly decided it was the time to quit.

The Friday Quiz!

The Friday News Quiz

After a very special Porn Week-themed quiz last Friday, we’re back to regular non-porn-related quizzing this week. Do you remember anything from the week in news? Have you been casting a scrutinous eye over The Spinoff day after day?

Test yourself below!


National MP appears to change mind on ankle bracelets for teens

Education minister Erica Stanford (Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone)

National MP Erica Stanford only recently said the idea of putting ankle bracelets on teen offenders broke her heart. Now, her party’s proposed that exact policy – and Stanford appears to have fallen in behind.

The original comments were made on Newshub’s AM during a conversation about a policy then proposed by Act. “I, and the National Party, are not wanting to see 11-year-olds with ankle bracelets,” she said last month. “We’re going to whack an ankle bracelet on them? I mean, it just breaks my heart that we’re even talking about this.”

Alongside the headline-stealing proposal to chuck youth offenders in boot camps, yesterday’s new crime policy by National included a proposal to use electronic monitoring on offenders potentially as young as 10-years-old.

Stanford this morning told Newshub she was “really proud” of the new policy. “We’re not talking about Act’s policy anymore where we’re just going to whack an ankle bracelet on anybody – but to actually give kids boundaries, to keep them safe, we have to be able to monitor them in some circumstances.”

National MP Erica Stanford (Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone)

The Killers are playing Auckland’s Town Hall next week!

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Straight after their Monday night show at Spark Arena, pop-rock icons The Killers will be wandering over to the Auckland Town Hall for an “intimate” new gig just announced this morning.

Presale tickets go on sale today for the show, which will likely sell out incredibly quickly (though in the age of the Taylor Swift Eras Tour, can anything else be called “quickly”?)

Meanwhile, a different demo will be gearing up for the newly announced Rod Stewart tour – billed as his final tour of New Zealand. Joined by Cyndi Lauper, the rock legend will perform at Dunedin’s Forsyth Barr Stadium on April 5 next year before heading to, you guessed it, the Mission Estate Winery on April 8.

I’m so excited to return to your heart-stoppingly beautiful country. It’s been far too long since I performed there and I’m eager to celebrate being back with my Kiwi fans on my last major rock tour of New Zealand. And, with Cyndi Lauper on board, it’s going to be quite a bash,” said Stewart (Rod, not me) in a statement.

When the Facts Change: How do we solve our emissions issues?

Methane and nitrous oxide produced by cows and sheep remain the biggest barrier to Aotearoa meeting its emissions reduction goal. Science writer Melanie Newfield talks with Bernard Hickey in the latest episode of When the Facts Change to break down the government’s recent policy announcement and discuss why gassy livestock is so crucial to the country’s climate solution.

Listen below or wherever you get your podcasts

The Bulletin: How healthy are New Zealanders?

Stuff’s Hannah Martin breaks down the latest findings of the New Zealand Health Survey. The survey gives us an annual snapshot of the health of the nation. Most participants reported being in “good health” overall (88.4%​), similar to last year, and parents reported 98%​ of kids were in good health.

We’re smoking less, but vaping more. One in nine adults and almost a quarter of 15 to 14-year-olds have experienced high or very high levels of psychological distress. Only 10%​  of adults met the daily vegetable serving recommendation while 12%​ of children lived in households where food runs out “sometimes or often”, down from 20% in 2019/20​.

Want to read The Bulletin in full? Click here to subscribe and join over 36,000 New Zealanders who start each weekday with the biggest stories in politics, business, media and culture.  

‘A circuit breaker’: National defends boot camps in face of critics

(Photo: Getty Images, additional design Tina Tiller)

The National Party is standing by its plan to introduce young offender “boot camps” despite critics saying there simply isn’t any evidence they work.

Announced yesterday during a campaign visit to Hamilton, the revived proposal comes as part of National’s four point youth crime plan. Other elements include the possibility of ankle bracelets for offenders as young as 10 and the use of community support groups to provide wraparound help.

Speaking to RNZ, justice spokesperson Paul Goldsmith said the boot camps were part of a “number” of proposed changes. “They provide a circuit breaker to get the most serious offenders, a small group, 15 to 17 year olds, out of town [and] off the streets,” he said.

When offenders left the camps, they would be provided support from community help groups. Asked what the point of the boot camps was if additional support would be needed, Goldsmith said it was to indicate there are serious consequences for serious actions.

“It’s an extended period, it’s not a six week course… and then it’s followed by intensive supervision and community work,” he said.

Paul Goldsmith (Photo: Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)

The government was “soft on crime” and the issue had got out of control, added Goldsmith. “If you walk the streets of Hamilton and you talk to retail owners… there are two issues. They are focused on the cost of living crisis and they are focused on the breakdown of law and order. People are genuinely concerned about it.”

Boot camps have been a National Party policy on at least two previous campaigns and were actually rolled out under John Key in the early 2010s, though quietly ditched after low uptake. Critics, like current Green MP Golriz Ghahraman, have called out the plan as a “slap down to all the experts, victim communities, and… young people”.