Good morning, and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Phil Goff puts CCOs on notice, PM Ardern in Bangkok for crucial summit, and Greenpeace criticises continued fracking amid UK moratorium. Auckland mayor Phil Goff starts his second term facing a range of challenges, particularly around Council Controlled Organisations. CCO unaccountability appeared to be one of … Read more
The prime minister is in Thailand for the East Asia Summit. RNZ’s political editor Jane Patterson sets the scene. The last-minute cancellation of Apec in Chile has left the East Asia Summit (EAS) in Thailand as the new main game in town. The two summits are usually held close together; Apec is viewed as the heavy-hitting event, … Read more
The Great Kiwi Bake Off is back for a second season, and all is right with the world again. Tara Ward serves up the power rankings for week one. Welcome back, my flaky pastry cherubs, to another glorious season of The Great Kiwi Bake Off. Please take my sweaty hand as we enter the moist marquee … Read more
Uther Dean responds to the essay we published last week, in which Sandra Simpson expressed her frustration at people who misunderstood and disrespected haiku. When I was writing haiku there were two kinds of people who liked to tell me I wasn’t writing haiku. The first were early millennial or late Gen X white men … Read more
What could an online private investigator discover about you? Madeleine Chapman paid $99 to find out. When my colleague mentioned in passing that she once stood front row at a Beyoncé concert and incoherently screamed a line of a song into Beyoncé’s microphone, and that footage of the incident was somewhere on Youtube, I knew … Read more
The Single Object is a series exploring our material culture, examining the meaning and influence of the objects that surround us in everyday life. In a shed at the foothills of the Southern Alps, Peter King has made special lathe cuts of recordings by an eclectic array of musicians. Kiran Dass writes here about her … Read more
What’s the best way to get adults reading? Get them reading when they’re children – and there’s no better place to start than the Unity Children’s Bestseller Chart. These lists of the bestselling children’s books at Unity Wellington and Little Unity in Auckland cover the four weeks to October 31 2019. AUCKLAND 1 Mophead: How … Read more
Dietary Requirements is The Spinoff’s monthly podcast in which we eat, drink and talk about it too, with special thanks to Freedom Farms. This month we’re joined by controversial food ‘grammer Albert Cho of Eat Lit Food. Albert Cho, the 22-year-old Aucklander who’s garnered a huge following for the forthright, often foul-mouthed reviews he posts to … Read more
The reward for being a smoker in the hospitality industry? Extra break time than non-smokers, causing many hospo workers to pick up the bad habit. For years it’s been a running joke in the hospitality industry that in order to get more breaks, young workers should start smoking. But it turns out there’s actually some … Read more
Growing up, illustrator Toby Morris rarely saw the New Zealand he knew in comics – until he discovered Terry Teo. The school library. Hampton Hill Primary. Tawa. 1990. I’m curled up in a corner on the carpet so the teacher can’t see what I’m reading and I’m having a moment. It’s a comic that looks … Read more
Sam Brooks reviews the most anticipated game of 2019: Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding. A man walks, with dogged purpose, across an empty but beautiful landscape. Every few seconds, a blue wave radiates outwards from him, highlighting little things dotted across that landscape – a ladder here, a rope there. A stack of cargo boxes balances precariously on … Read more
The Real Pod assembles to dissect the week in reality television and real life, with special thanks to Nando’s. It is the end of My Restaurant Rules NZ and gods everywhere are weeping. Tyson and Denise from Rustic Kitchen left tiny tractor tyre marks over their opponents at Moxie, Julia got a Bachelorette makeover and Raf … Read more
What are you going to be watching in November? The Spinoff rounds up everything that’s coming to streaming services this month, including Netflix, Lightbox, Neon, Amazon Prime and TVNZ on Demand. Click here to read our listings for October The Biggies His Dark Materials (NEON, Season 1 weekly from November 5) Feel like your life … Read more
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND 1 Mophead: How Your Difference Makes a Difference by Selina Tusitala Marsh (Auckland University Press, $25) “I think an excellent and … Read more
A new poem by Wellington poet Jenny Bornholdt. Duck Three Ways Let’s put our mother’s favourite cat socks on and move to Canada. * Let’s eat duck three ways. The first the way my flatmate hit one in his car. After bundling the body into the boot, he drove home, traumatised, to tell … Read more
Spurred by a piece on The Spinoff calling for people to amplify indigenous voices around the climate emergency, Nadine Hura asked an indigenous activist what that means in practice. ‘Amplify indigenous voices’ is a sentiment I’ve been hearing more and more, but I’m left wondering what it means in a practical sense to those saying … Read more
The Gen Z-targeted mobile application TikTok is finally being noticed by adults. But what is it? Here’s a quick explainer. What is TikTok? TikTok was the most-downloaded app in the Apple store last year. It’s a mish-mash of the deceased Musical.ly and Vine, with over 500 million active users. The app allows you to film … Read more
Good morning and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Painful testimony at abuse in state care inquiry, student loan generation in focus, and hoiho breeding season wrecked. This week, public hearings for the Royal Commission into abuse of children in care have finally got underway. This is a useful backgrounder on it from Radio NZcontributor David … Read more
Its first full-time reporter will lead the project, which includes a dedicated section of its homepage for New Zealand. The Guardian Australia is leading a significant move into New Zealand, confirming that it has hired its first full-time reporter in New Zealand and is introducing a new variation on the homepage specifically served to New … Read more
Alex Casey, Leonie Hayden and Michèle A’Court tackle the past month in women, with thanks to our friends at The Women’s Bookshop. Boo! We witches are back for a scary Halloween podcast, after a month where Freddy Krueger (Harvey Weinstein) showed his face in public and was courageously confronted by two women in Los Angeles. … Read more
The return of the original girl group babes, the twink Taylor Swift, and New Zealand’s most electrifying rap group are all part of our songs of the month. International ‘Flowers’ by DJ Spoony (feat. The Sugababes) An orchestral-ish cover of a early-00’s garage hit? Sure, whatever. But put the Sugababes, and I mean the original … Read more
With Apple TV and Disney+ launching in November, we have more viewing options than ever before. Tara Ward takes a closer look at the myriad of TV streaming services available. We’re spoiled for TV choice these days, and with Apple TV and Disney+ launching in New Zealand next month, our viewing horizons just got a … Read more
Sandra Simpson, champion of haiku, writes to those who misunderstand – and disrespect – the form that defines her writing life. (This weekend, a response from Uther Dean). On March 15 this year The Spinoff published in its coveted Friday Poem spot 11 “haiku” by Uther Dean. The quote marks are intentional. Brace for a … Read more
Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand. This week he talks to Valentin Ozich, founder of I Love Ugly. The fashion industry isn’t an easy one to break into. Very … Read more
Today marks 75 years since the first official refugees – Polish children fleeing the horrors of World War II – arrived in New Zealand. On the anniversary, historian Ann Beaglehole reflects on our history of settling refugees. Hundreds of smiling school children, waving New Zealand and Polish flags, greeted the Polish children when they arrived … Read more
There is a profound asymmetry in the power dynamic between offshore tech companies like Google, Facebook and Viagogo and a domestic regulator in a country like New Zealand. But that doesn’t render us impotent, argues the privacy commissioner, John Edwards Last year in Auckland, a young English backpacker, Grace Millane hooked up with a man … Read more
He Kākano Ahau is a podcast by writer and activist Kahu Kutia (Ngāi Tūhoe) that explores stories of Māori in the city. In episode two: rangatahi making connections in Ōtautahi Christchurch. What defines the current generation of rangatahi Māori? Some might call us millennials, the first generation to be born fluent in digital technology. Some … Read more
Good morning, and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: National releases discussion document on social services, new sea level rise research raises inundation fears, and updates from Wellington’s messy mayoralties. National has released a discussion document on social services, in order to shape their policy into the election. It’s the latest in a series of discussion documents … Read more
It was supposed to be Auckland’s answer to Melbourne’s laneways or New York’s Chelsea Market, but the empty sites at Queen’s Rise paint a very different picture. Alice Neville reports. In June 2018, to much hype, a new “laneway-style dining destination” opened in downtown Auckland. Housed behind the historic facade of the QBE Centre building … Read more