Good morning and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Fires devastate US West amid other catastrophes, academics call for protecting of Māori colleagues at Waikato, and Labour brings forward 100% renewable target. Remember the massive wildfires that swept through Australia, and how they turned the skies a deep and forbidding orange? It was less than … Read more
Each week in the lead-up to the election, The Side Eye cartoonist Toby Morris is going to teach us how to draw a different New Zealand politician. First up, it’s the prime minister. Click here for the rest of the How to draw series. Click here for the rest of the How to draw series. … Read more
Two lockdowns have meant businesses in a beloved central Auckland food court have struggled to pay their rent. They’re getting no relief from their former soap star landlord. Struggling businesses in the Elliot Stables building in central Auckland have been served Property Law Act notices from their landlord, demanding that they pay the shortfall in … Read more
Welcome to The Spinoff’s Election Live for September 10, bringing you the latest on election 2020 and other New Zealand news. Find official Covid-19 information here. For all you need to know about the cannabis referendum click here. For the assisted dying referendum click here. Explore the parties’ pledges at Policy. I’m on stewart@thespinoff.co.nz 7.00pm: The day … 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 Jonathan Ring, CEO of C-Prize winning company Zincovery. Considering how important steel is to so much of the … Read more
Google has launched a new election trends hub, deciphering how New Zealanders are searching for parties, leaders and major topics ahead of October 17. It’s been a long, hard six weeks since the “rogue” Newshub poll that gave Labour hope of governing alone after the October election. Since then, we’ve had a second wave of … Read more
Each year thousands of tonnes of zinc and acid are dumped into landfill as by-products from galvanising. This year’s winner of the Callaghan Innovation C-Prize challenge, Zincovery, is trying to solve that problem with its innovative recycling technology. It’s almost impossible to go a day without using a galvanised product of some kind. Every time … Read more
Every story in Bug Week clacks and hums with the anger of women. Here, the author explains why. Content warning: this article references sexual assault and family violence. It seems like a bit of a self-indulgent exercise writing about the genesis of a book. Books are texts, separable from their authors and the biographical circumstances … Read more
Did you pull off a kickflip this past weekend like it was nothing? You shouldn’t be surprised, because games and memory are linked much closer than you think. If you’re a millennial who had access to a gaming console in the late 90s, chances are you played Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. And chances are you … Read more
Since the late 1990s, suicide rates among young men in New Zealand have increased by almost 50%. ‘Zero Suicide Aotearoa’, the latest report from a cross-party mental health group, is looking to address these dismal suicide rates. After New Zealand placed 35th out of 41 OECD countries for our child wellbeing in the Unicef 2020 … Read more
Super Rugby team the Crusaders has decided to retain its name, despite it invoking a history of violence towards Muslims. The decision made researcher Luke Fitzmaurice angry, so he emailed the CEO of the Crusaders to tell him. To his surprise, he replied. In June 2019, the Crusaders rugby team announced a comprehensive review of … Read more
Good morning and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Labour unveils deeply conservative tax policy, concerning new information given about the Mt Roskill church cluster, and Electoral Commission investigating use of donations by NZ Public Party. For those wondering if we’d see anything vaguely resembling socialism or transformation in Labour’s new tax policy, the … Read more
Looking to wear your political affiliations on your sleeve? Eli Matthewson takes you through your options. As the news of the controversial “Green School” funding broke, I could think of only one thing: how almost everyone I follow on Instagram had already bought the Green Party jumper. At the start of the worst week for … Read more
The price of gold hit record highs last month, and New Zealanders are lusting for it. Josie Adams investigates the age-old attraction of this precious metal – and where we’re getting it from. Gold is real money. You can’t print it from a machine or birth it from a Bitcoin maths equation. You find it … Read more
The Ministry of Health has listed three Auckland hospitality venues as ‘locations of interest’ after customers tested positive for Covid-19. Three Auckland eateries have been linked to recent Covid-19 cases, with at least one closing for deep cleaning after being informed a customer had tested positive. The Ministry of Health website today updated its “locations … Read more
Welcome to The Spinoff’s Election Live for September 9, bringing you the latest on election 2020 and other New Zealand news. Find official Covid-19 information here. For all you need to know about the cannabis referendum click here. For the assisted dying referendum click here. Explore the parties’ pledges at Policy. I’m on stewart@thespinoff.co.nz The day in … Read more
In two weeks the Mt Roskill group of cases has gone from a small sub-cluster to New Zealand’s fastest growing source of infections. It is linked it to a church meeting held in lockdown and members who ‘don’t accept the science’ of Covid-19. Ashley Bloomfield has moved his Covid-19 concern level to orange, as cases … Read more
An essay about leaving New Zealand, and finding it again via Janet Frame. A quick note from our books editor, Catherine Woulfe: Meg Mason grew up in Foxton and Palmerston North. She’s a journalist – she lives in Sydney, and writes for places like The New Yorker, Vogue and GQ – and she’s just released … Read more
All Black fans are desperate to watch them take on Australia. But the arguments for playing in New Zealand are worse than flimsy, writes Scotty Stevenson. On October 10 this year, the All Blacks and the Wallabies will play the first match of a Bledisloe Cup series. If there is any fairness left in the … Read more
With live shows and events at the mercy of a mercurial virus, the New Zealand music business has been warped into a frustrating limbo. So how are local musicians dealing with it all? Alongside Covid-19, 2020 will be forever known as the year of “the pivot”; that dreaded term that was once isolated to the … Read more
A first-person account of one woman’s attempt to win justice after a sexual assault. As told to Alex Casey Content warning: This feature contains descriptions of sexual assault, which may be triggering to survivors. It was supposed to be the best day of my life. May 2017, my last semester at university, and I was celebrating … Read more
Is 2020 the year of the troll? Are you a troll? Emily Writes has a quiz to see if you can change. Sometimes I will get a Facebook message from someone saying: “Why did you ban me from your page? I’m not a troll! I was just trying to have a conversation!” Now, I might … Read more
Law expert Khylee Quince explains how racism plays a big part in the way current cannabis laws are applied – and why it’s time for reform. On October 17, New Zealanders will vote on whether they think recreational use of cannabis should be legal. It’s a non-binding referendum, which means that even if more than … Read more
Good morning and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: New sexuality and relationship education guidelines announced, things happen and announcements made on campaign trail, and reason for massive health funding shortfall in South Auckland revealed. New guidelines for sexuality and relationships education in schools have been released, with the aim of making them more … Read more
It’s results season for many of New Zealand’s biggest corporates, which find themselves awkwardly announcing large profits, with the wage subsidy helping them get there. We’re now approaching six months since the dread of late March, when over the course of a few fearsome days New Zealand closed its borders, locked its population inside and … Read more
Counties Manukau DHB, home to Middlemore Hospital, may have missed out on $300 million in funding over the last decade, according to documents released to The Spinoff. This article has been updated to include a response from Statistics New Zealand. “It’s like a resort, compared to Middlemore.” This isn’t a review on Trivago. Rather it’s a … Read more
The 2020 election has risen, bleary eyed, from its slumber, and so have Annabelle, Ben and Toby in a brand new Gone By Lunchtime. The campaign trail is alive once again, with Labour promising a Matariki holiday and National a health-driven response to meth addiction. The Greens are trying to put the train back on … Read more
Welcome to The Spinoff’s Election Live for September 8, bringing you the latest on election 2020 and other New Zealand news. Find official Covid-19 information here. For all you need to know about the cannabis referendum click here. For the assisted dying referendum click here. Explore the parties’ pledges at Policy. I’m on stewart@thespinoff.co.nz 8.00pm: The day … Read more
TVNZ has changed its rules for participation in the multi-party debate with new criteria that are arbitrary and unfair, writes Geoff Simmons, leader of The Opportunities Party. An earlier version of this article incorrectly suggested that Newshub had also changed its criteria and that the Advance Party would participate in its multi-party debate. We apologise … Read more