Amid the misinformation and anger, Kylie Parry, parent of two beloved transgender children, serves up the important facts. And her kids pitch in, too. As a parent of two transgender children I try really hard not to read the opinions of people who have issues with transgender youth (and with transgender adults). I couldn’t avoid … Read more
Aren’t Can’t Don’t: Contrary to popular opinion, lots of young people care deeply about politics and are desperate to have their voices heard, writes youth journalist and activist Azaria Howell. On September 24th, 2018, I rushed to the mailbox to see what I had received for my 17th birthday. To my delight, a card (that … Read more
Good morning, and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Shift in media mindset shown by Stuff’s climate change coverage, GCSB blocks Chinese telco tech company, and Greens push for prisoner voting rights. We’re going to lead off today with something a bit different to the usual – we wouldn’t normally start with a story about … Read more
The immigration minister has revealed that Czech convicted drug smuggler Karel Sroubek is liable for deportation after all. Does it all mean Lees-Galloway should resign, as some have demanded? Toby Manhire battles it out with Toby Manhire A review of evidence in the case of Karel Sroubek, the Czech drug smuggler who Iain Lees-Galloway decided … Read more
Former ski patroller Julie Scott has taken on a challenge of a very different kind: finding low-cost homes for families in New Zealand’s most expensive property market. Not all heroes wear capes. Sometimes they walk among us and perform their magic without needing to transform into someone different. It’s the seemingly ordinary-looking jobs that can … Read more
While the suffrage anniversary offers real cause for celebration, not everyone exercises their right to vote. In the second of two films in our Aren’t Can’t Don’t series, made with the assistance of NZ On Air, women explain why they don’t vote. One hundred and twenty-five years after women voted for the first time in a … Read more
Shaun Johnson burst into the NRL as the presumptive saviour of the ever-woeful Warriors, but his moments of transcendent brilliance were increasingly few and far between, and now he’s been cut loose. Jarret Filmer looks back on his career. There were few things in Warriors history more exhilarating than a Shaun Johnson sidestep. There’s some … Read more
A round-up of 20 best-sellers this Christmas – featuring the world’s first ever recorded use of emoji reviews. 1 Shit Towns of New Zealand (Allen & Unwin, $24.99) ? 2 The Beautiful Poetry of Donald Trump by Rob Sears (Canongate, $28) ? 3 Normal People by Sally Rooney (Faber, $33) ????? 4 Milkman by Anna … Read more
Alice drinks outside her comfort zone, and Henry enjoys a young, fruity pinot gris named after a Martinborough legend. GOOD GEORGE BREWING ROSÉ CIDER WITH STRAWBERRY & LIME JUICE 946ml, 4.5%, $14.99 from Fine Wine Delivery Co What’s this, a cider for beer of the week? Madness! I know, I’m as shocked to my very … Read more
Flying almost anywhere in Europe for the price of a mid-price restaurant meal? If there was ever a reason to move to the UK, budget airlines are it, writes Elle Hunt in the latest instalment of her Elleswhere series about life as a New Zealander in London. Once I paid several hundred dollars for a … Read more
An ex-colleague of Linda Astor, who tricked her way to becoming the head of clinical psychiatry at Nelson-Marlborough Health, has spoken out for the first time about working with the fake psychiatrist. Tracy Neal of RNZ reports. The Medical Council says the chances of a pretend doctor working in New Zealand are not impossible, as … Read more
The Hitman series has been all around the world – Europe, Africa, Australia, other continents – but it’s taken eighteen years to reach our dusky shores. So how accurately does Hitman 2 capture Hawke’s Bay? Sam Brooks investigates. There are scant few games that are set in New Zealand. It’s basically just Jonah Lomu’s Rugby, which is … Read more
Aren’t Can’t Don’t: 125 years after New Zealand women won the right to vote, we take a look at what the first polling day looked like for Māori women… sort of. Today is the 125th anniversary of women taking to the polls to vote in the general election for the first time, 10 weeks after … Read more
Speaking to The Spinoff’s On the Rag podcast, Clementine Ford predicted one man would turn up to protest her speaking event. What she didn’t anticipate… was four. Last night in the Auckland suburb of Freeman’s Bay, feminist commentator Clementine Ford’s speaking event was met with a small group of angry protesters. With protest plans laid … Read more
On the 125th anniversary of women exercising suffrage for the first time in NZ, the support party has called for a change in the law that sees incarcerated people ‘unjustifiably denied the right to vote’. The Green Party has added its voice to a growing call for a change in the law that denies people in … Read more
When it comes to tension between the US and China, National and Labour are on the same side – the fence. Guyon Espiner examines a foreign policy that tries to have it both ways. We have the Five Eyes alliance with the US but have no free trade agreement with them. We have the FTA … Read more
Aren’t Can’t Don’t: The ban on prisoners voting is the worst kind of anti-democratic law – harsh, disproportionate and fundamentally at odds with the idea that human rights belong to all of us, write Tania Sawicki Mead and Ashlesha Sawant of JustSpeak Many New Zealanders would likely vote for fairness as our foundational virtue as … Read more
Aren’t Can’t Don’t: As a formerly incarcerated person, I know that denying the right to vote violates respect for human dignity, sending the message that absolute rehabilitation is impossible, writes Awatea Mita. It’s 11.00pm and I am returning to Auckland Region Women’s Corrections Facility as a “release to work” prisoner. I’ve earned a position of … Read more
New Zealand is engaged in a long-running, intense, and completely reasonable debate over whether Santa is a boy or a girl. Hayden Donnell offers his own equally reasonable addition to the discourse. New Zealand is being torn apart by a single debate. For days now, people have been commenting angrily on Stuff Nation. The chairman … Read more
Good morning, and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Major workplace reform bill moves forward, dire warning for Hutt Valley from climate change, and plans are afoot to pedestrianise large parts of Auckland City. The coalition government has signed off on the workplace relations changes that they intend to pass into law, reports Stuff. The bill … Read more
In a video filmed for a conference the health minister was scheduled to open but then withdrew from, celebrity chef Jamie Oliver implores David Clark to pass a sugar tax. Watch below. Following on from the dressing down he directed at the National Party for failing to attend a sugar tax symposium last year, … Read more
Kids will spend hours playing video games anyway so you may as well hook them into an online adventure that teaches them something, an Attitude Awards nominee says. Tim Young says technology makes him “superhuman”. The founder of social enterprise Education These Days walks the talk when it comes to using tech to improve people’s … Read more
While the suffrage anniversary offers real cause for celebration, in 2018 not everyone has the right to vote. In the first of two films in our Aren’t Can’t Don’t series, made with the assistance of NZ On Air, women explain what it meant to be denied an opportunity to vote while imprisoned. One hundred and twenty-five … Read more
The rain poured down on the Great Kiwi Bake Off this week. Were the gods crying because Clayton had gone, or because they’d heard it was ‘Free From’ Week? Tara Ward power ranks episode 7. ‘Free From’ Week is hardly the sexiest of baking topics, is it? It’s certainly no cock on a pie, and when … Read more
Steve Braunias reviews the new autobiography by Roger Daltrey, singer with one of the best and worst groups of all times, The Who. The Who! Godawful mostly, although not always. All those unlistenable rock operas and what-not. Tommy. Jesus. But even that fruity melodrama about a deaf, dumb and blind kid who sure did well … Read more
A very special episode with thanks to our friends at The Women’s Bookshop. They said it couldn’t be done. They said we couldn’t get Clementine Ford back to do another pod. But we did, and here it is. Promoting her new book Boys Will Be Boys, Clementine spends an hour in The Spinoff studio to answer … Read more
The Spinoff asks the experts for tips on what food to match with your beer. For millennia beer was the second-class cousin of wine. Whenever people were invited over for dinner, wine would be rolled out from the rack. A fruity Spanish something to accompany the chicken marbella, a Chianti to go with the spag … Read more
The new world ain’t so new anymore – especially when you’re killing bears who might not actually be bears, and when your mum has already been there for approximately two hundred years. Tara Ward recaps episode four of season four of Outlander. Holy guacamole, mates, Outlander is BACK. I know it never really went away, although … Read more
Newstalk ZB listeners were treated to not one but two absurd opinion pieces from the hosts this morning, on a modest new government proposal to get kids cycling. There’s a rumour about Newstalk ZB’s ratings that perhaps explains a lot about their hosts’ opinions. The station first really boomed in the early 90s, coinciding with … Read more