Auckland’s rail services are now carrying 20 million people a year. That’s double the number just four years ago and we’ve reached the milestone three years faster than the planners expected. Matt Lowrie of Greater Auckland looks back at how the city’s commuter train travel was saved from extinction. This story was first published in … Read more
As Suits clocks up its 100th episode, Tara Ward rounds up more shows on Lightbox that have soared past triple digits. Only very special things make it to 100, like the Queen Mother, Kiwi shoe polish and legal drama Suits, which celebrates its 100th episode today on Lightbox. Suits has wrangled its way through seven … Read more
In our video series Kiwis of Snapchat, comedian Tom Sainsbury sources exclusive Snapchat footage of Kiwi citizens making the news. Today: Bill English gets hyped for tonight’s leaders’ debate. Click here for all our Kiwis of Snapchat videos. This content is entirely funded by Simplicity, New Zealand’s only non-profit fund manager, dedicated to making Kiwis wealthier … Read more
When Natalie Robinson shared her journey to home ownership on The Spinoff earlier this year the responses included snark, unsolicited advice and shame. Now she says we need to keep talking about New Zealand’s housing crisis, but without the antagonism. Earlier this year, I noticed an article on The Spinoff, calling for people who were … Read more
As the most notorious figures in boxing and mixed martial arts collided in The Money Fight this weekend, Don Rowe sat down for a few beers with Israel Adesanya, a multi-sport veteran of almost 100 fights, to talk about fame, defeat and the realities of a sport centred around dishing out brain damage. Supported by Garage … Read more
Charlotte Grimshaw reviews A Strange Beautiful Excitement, Redmer Yska’s superb telling of Katherine Mansfield’s childhood and teenage years in Wellington. Samuel Revans, who died in 1888, the year Katherine Mansfield was born, was an enthusiastic promoter for the New Zealand Company. His handbills were distributed in London and went in for a fantastic degree of license, … Read more
Tonight on TVNZ1 at 7pm, Jacinda Ardern and Bill English will go head-to-head in the first leader’s debate of the 2017 election. To make the viewing experience all the more exciting, we’ve assembled the mother of all drinking games. We strongly advise using non-alcoholic beverages. Take a sip when you hear/see: “Let me finish” “With … Read more
With the announcement today that Roger Waters is heading back to New Zealand for a tour next January, Pete Douglas takes a look at his intermittent and sometimes misunderstood solo career. It’s hard to imagine now, but when Roger Waters left Pink Floyd in 1985, he initially struggled to match the success of his remaining … Read more
The SpinoffLab™ puts the Labour Party’s ad starring Jacinda Ardern through its captioning machine. View the first National Party ad, explained, here; the National Party teal-runners ad, explained, here; the first Labour Party ad, explained, here; and the first Green Party ad, explained, here. The leadership switcheroo meant plenty of things for the Labour Party, and among them … Read more
Australian feminist author Clementine Ford is in town this week for Shifting Points Of View at WORD Christchurch. Leonie Hayden talked to her about feminist parenting, the power of the Twitter thread and how to start a revolution on your own. Golden Girl Betty White once questioned why people say ‘grow some balls’. “Balls are … Read more
It contains one of the most memorable lines in New Zealand advertising, but what else went into making the iconic Vogel’s O.E. ad? Maha Albadrawi, with help from Lucy Zee, investigates. As a kid, I watched a lot of TV. I still do, really, only now we call it ‘consuming content’ and it can be done … Read more
Forget the cliches of women in top hats and bustiers singing tired songs about heartbreak. Auckland Live’s International Cabaret Season is full of energy, emotion, feminism and mischief, writes Sam Brooks. There’s a billion definitions of cabaret, from the clinical to the etymological to the base. For me, cabaret takes the best things of live … Read more
James Dann goes to a candidates meeting in a tightly fought seat. And the event’s biggest star, Gerry Brownlee, isn’t even standing there. Meet the candidate sessions are a wonderful opportunity for us to come together for two hours, ask our representatives and potential representatives important and meaningful questions, listen patiently to their responses, then … Read more
Lisa Melville is a lesbian mother and PhD student at Waikato University where she’s looking at the decisions and experiences of lesbian mothers in Aotearoa New Zealand. Here she talks about what those experiences can look like. A lesbian has just told you that she or her partner is pregnant. What is the best … Read more
Maraea Rakuraku is an award-winning playwright whose latest work is being presented in Te Pou’s Kōanga Festival in September. Sam Brooks talked to her about history, playwriting and cultural commentary. Kōanga Festival is a two and a half week festival (September 1 – 17) presented by Te Pou, Auckland’s Home of Māori Theatre, consisting of … Read more
Thirteen years after she would walk past him every morning on the way to work, Kiran Dass talks to Matthew Bannister of Sneaky Feelings about the band’s return and its place in Flying Nun folk lore. With their bright ringing guitars, melodies, and soul-kissed pop songs, Dunedin’s Sneaky Feelings seemed to be outsiders among the diverse Flying … Read more
Who wrote the novel about a vain, womanising, and corrupt New Zealand political party leader? Who wrote The Spin? In 1996, now-extinct publishers Hodder Moa Beckett copied the idea of Primary Colors, a steamy, silly, best-selling novel of American political life by Anonymous, and rushed out The Spin, a steamy, silly, okay-selling novel of New … Read more
For years little data existed on the mythical first home buyer and how much of the housing market they occupied, so CoreLogic NZ started tracking “buyer classification”. Nick Goodall, head of research at CoreLogic, says despite market and regulatory changes, first home buyers are holding on. New Zealand has a vivid image of the “first … Read more
The High Court has agreed that the payout for the miscarriage of justice was insufficient. Law professor Andrew Geddis explains the basis for that decision When the government announced in June of 2016 that it would be giving Teina Pora some $2.5 million as compensation for wrongfully convicting him and so keeping an innocent man … Read more
New Zealand’s search for a bona fide celebrity builder to carry the torch lit by Cocksy may finally be over with the arrival of TVNZ 1’s no nonsense new home reno show. It all seems so long ago now, but there once was a time when the only home renovations on New Zealand television were … Read more
We continue serialising an epic essay from the New Zealand Initiative’s Eric Crampton, exploring what life is like in and out of New Zealand. Today: chapter five, on drinking. Read chapters one and two here, chapters three and four here and chapter five here. Chapter 6: Driving you to drink Trillian did a little research in the ship’s copy of … Read more
Political scandals are popping up everywhere but what the people really want is cold, hard stats. So Madeleine Chapman went along to the Labour and National campaign launches and crunched only the most important numbers. Campaign launches. How important are they in an election? This is a genuine question because, until recently, I’d never been to … Read more
Erena Shingade meets Auckland-based singer and producer Miloux, who recently released her second EP of languid electronica. It’s a Thursday in New Zealand Music Month and pedestrians are glancing through the tinted glass of Morningside bar Flight 605. Haunting synths shimmer from a three-piece electronic set, bass notes vibrating the 1930s led-light windows. This is … Read more
Henry Oliver watched ten hours of Neil Finn live-streaming in case you didn’t have time to. These were his highlights. Every Friday evening for the past four weeks, Neil Finn has live-streamed a recording session from his own Roundhead Studios, joined by, in his words, “a loose knit collection of impassioned and slightly random people, … Read more
From his first encounter as an 11-year-old kid in Te Awamutu to yesterday’s funeral service, James McOnie remembers some of his favourite Pinetree stories. He didn’t want to be called “Sir”, but Colin Meads deserved it. Sir Colin will always be remembered as perhaps our greatest ever rugby player but now, as so many stories … Read more
Like it or not, friendships tend to change after babies. Spinoff Parents editor Emily Writes thanks her friends without kids who have stuck by her – even through conversations about poop. Friendships change when people have kids. It’s inevitable. Becoming a parent is huge – and it changes every minute, every second, of your day. It … Read more
The good news is that The Real Pod team are back to talk some guff about reality TV and real life in New Zealand. The bad news is that there’s still a pile of rubbish outside Jane’s house. Another week of literal and metaphorical rubbish on The Real Pod this week, as Jane continues to … Read more
Yesterday Bill English said climate change isn’t important to Kiwis. Megan Rich, the principal of Granity School near Westport, says he’s wrong. The prime minister’s assertion that most Kiwis don’t wake up thinking about climate change is little comfort for those of us lying awake on the West Coast. Perhaps he might like to speak … Read more
Like the podcast, but a book! While that sounds boring and pointless, Duncan Greive controversially argues that it’s actually good. I found the 9th Floor “urgent and revelatory” upon its release in April and May, writing somewhat pompously that it “strips our recent political history of much of the distracting rancour which accompanied it in … Read more