We round up everything coming to streaming services this week, including Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+, Apple TV, ThreeNow, Neon and TVNZ+.

Spider-Noir (Prime Video, May 27)

Nicolas Cage stars in Spider-Noir as the aging Ben Reilly, a down-on-his-luck private eye and the only superhero in 1930s New York City. Drawn from the Oscar-winning animated film Into the Spider-Verse, Reilly must become The Spider once more when he stumbles across a dangerous web of corruption. His foe? Brendan Gleeson’s Silvermane, a cunning and cutthroat mobster. Presented in both monochromatic black and white and in eye-popping colour, the web-slinging detective series is a big-swing for the Spider-Verse, so tune in to see if it sticks the landing.

Propeller One-Way Night Coach (Apple TV, May 29)

Fresh off the plane from Cannes, John Travolta adapts his own 1997 novel of the same name in this directorial debut. Starring Clark Shotwell as the wide-eyed Jeff, and Kelly Eviston-Quinnett as his self-absorbed mother Helen, the film follows the two as they embark on a red-eye cross-country flight to Los Angeles. With the trip transforming into a life-altering journey filled with adventitious moments, this “charmingly quirky” film is one for the whole whānau.

Raging Grace (MĀORI+, May 30)

In writer and director Paris Zarcilla’s remarkable feature film debut, Max Eigenmann plays Joy, an undocumented Filipina immigrant. She’s employed at a stately mansion to care for a bedridden, terminally ill old man, but as Zarcilla “carefully builds his suspenseful tale with a horror twist layer-by-layer,” it becomes evident that nothing is as it seems as a monstrous danger will soon befall her. Labelled as a “first-rate suspenser with a sociopolitical soul,” Raging Grace is one to watch if you enjoyed Get Out and Parasite.

The Unicorn (TVNZ+, May 27)

Before Walton Goggins wandered the wasteland in Fallout, he starred in The Unicorn, a sitcom that follows the accomplished American actor as Wade, a recently widowed father of two daughters. Encouraged by his tight-knit group of friends to move on from the loss of his wife, Wade re-enters the dating scene, and to his surprise he’s quite the catch. In this “thoughtful and sophisticated sitcom about what follows mourning,” Goggins is joined by a stellar ensemble cast including Rob Corddry, Omar Miller, Maya Lynne Robinson and Michaela Watkins. What’s not to love?

Star City (Apple TV, May 29)

A spinoff of the critically acclaimed For All Mankind, Star City takes us back to the age of the space race, and proposes a reality where the Soviet Union became the first nation to put a man on the moon. Set behind the iron curtain, this “propulsive paranoid thriller,” charts the story of the cosmonauts, engineers and intelligence officers who risked it all in the race for the moon. A blend of The Man in the High Castle and Chernobyl, Star City is bound to be a riveting watch.

Pick of the Flicks: The Long Walk (Neon, May 30)

Based on Stephen King’s dystopian novel of the same name, Francis Lawrence’s The Long Walk follows 50 teenage boys in a televised contest where each competitor must maintain a nonstop walking pace of 4.8 km/h. Those who fall behind are executed, and the walk only ends when there is one boy left standing. Featuring rising stars Cooper Hoffman and David Jonsson, alongside Hollywood legend Mark Hamill, the fraught film has been described as “a tense and surprising dystopian drama, steeped in personal and national ethos.” The Long Walk isn’t for the faint of heart, but it may be one of the best Stephen King adaptations ever made.

The rest

TVNZ+

Without a Paddle (May 25)

Without a Paddle: Nature’s Calling (May 25)

Appropriation Nation (May 26)

Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life (May 26) 

Celebrity Treasure Island: The Cutting Room Floor (May 27)

The Unicorn S1-S2 (May 27) 

Live Aid: When Rock ‘n’ Roll Took On the World (May 29)

Make it at Market S2 (May 30)

Ghost (May 30)

The Secret Life of Pets (May 31)

Operation Fortune: Ruse De Guerre (May 31)

MĀORI+

The Free Man (May 25)

Cats (May 29) 

Monolith (May 29)

Red Shoes (May 30)

Raging Grace (May 30)

Rams (May 31) 

Netflix

Jae-seok’s B&B Rules! (May 26)

Untold UK: Vinnie Jones (May 26)

My 2 Cents (May 27)

Murder Mindfully S2 (May 28)

The Four Seasons S2 (May 28)

Calabasas Confidential (May 29)

Brazil ’70: The Third Star (May 29)

Rafa (May 29)

K-Pops! (May 30)

AFI Life Achievement Award: A Tribute to Eddie Murphy (May 31)

Neon

Rick and Morty S9 (May 25)

A Big Bold Beautiful Journey (May 25)

Now You See Me: Now You Don’t (May 26)

A Few Good Men (May 26)

Bust Up (May 27)

Community S1-S6 (May 28)

The King of Queens S1-S9 (May 28)

Workaholics S1-S7 (May 28)

Glee S1-S6 (May 28)

Homicide: Life on the Streets S1-S6 (May 29)

The Life of Chuck (May 29)

The Patriot (May 30)

The Long Walk (May 30)

Prime Video

Spider-Noir (May 27)

Disney+

Sofia the First: Royal Magic (May 26)

Deli Boys S2 (May 28)

RoboGobo S2 (May 29)

Criminal Minds: Evolution S19 (May 29) 

Apple TV

Propeller One-Way Night Coach (May 29)

Star City (May 29)

DocPlay

This Is A Bomb (May 25)

AroVision

Fuze (May 27)  

Having trouble deciding which streaming service deserves your hard-earned dollar? We’ve got you covered. 

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed when you’re looking for something good to watch on television these days. With so many different streaming services to choose from, and thousands of shows and movies at your fingertips, the choice has never been more difficult. Which streaming service is the best value for money? Which one has the latest blockbuster movie or must-watch prestige TV drama? Where can your kids watch every episode of Bluey, and where can you binge your way through a gripping true-crime documentary series?  

With each streaming service offering different things, it all comes down to what you want, whether it’s award-winning festival films, locally made comedies, or trashy reality TV series. With this in mind, The Spinoff has updated our long list of every on-demand streaming service in New Zealand for 2026, with details on what each one costs and what their biggest drawcards are, and organised them by the lowest monthly subscription price. 

If you’re still stuck for choice, don’t forget to check out our New to Streaming guide each Monday for the latest TV and movie recommendations. 

Free

Beamafilm

Beamafilm offers a specialised selection of independent and award-winning movies, historical documentaries and TV series. Access is free with a participating library card. No ads, some local content, captions where available.

Best content: Catherine the Great, Top of the Lake, The Cliff.

Filmzie

Filmzie is a free streaming service of independent films, documentaries and TV shows. No local content, pop up ads on the website. 

Best content: A mix of obscure titles, from Dying for Everest to In Law Wedding Wars. 

Freeview

Freeview is available for free across New Zealand, with its Smart TV app bringing together a number of free-to-air local TV and radio channels into one place, making live TV easier to watch. Captions and audio descriptions on selected programmes.

GagaOolalala 

This Taiwan-based Asian streaming platform offers a wide variety of LGBTQ+ content to worldwide audiences, including romance, drama, comedy, fantasy and horror. General membership gives you access to a limited selection of shows for free, but you’ll need to upgrade to VIP for full access ($6.99 USD a month).

Best content: Smile After Tears, Double Helix.

Kanopy

Kanopy is another free streaming service if you have a participating library card, and includes thousands of critically acclaimed and award-winning films. It describes itself as “quality, thoughtful entertainment”, and is an excellent free-streaming option. There’s also Kanopy Kids, which features a solid selection of educational shows for preschoolers. No ads, a selection of local content, captions where possible.

Best content: Pike River, Cousins, Wicked For Good, Workmates, Parasite, Lady Macbeth, The Dressmaker, Lady Bird.

Māori+

Māori+ is the on-demand streaming service for Whakaata Māori and it celebrates the people, places and cultures of Aotearoa. It’s a fantastic source of local comedy and drama, current affairs, international films, sport, kapa haka, educational content and documentaries for all ages, and there’s always new content being added.  Captions are available, no ads. 

Best content: Homesteads, The Hui, Ahikāroa, Marae, Moana, Chat Her Up, Marlon Williams Ngā Ao E Rua Two Worlds, Not Even, Once Were Gardeners. 

NZ On Screen

NZ On Screen recently relaunched its website to offer an on-demand platform of 120 New Zealand film classics (which you can purchase from $6.99 per title). What’s still free to watch, however, are over 4,000 titles from New Zealand’s TV, film, music video and web series history, including archive news clips, interviews, profiles of industry figures and uniquely curated collections. It’s a fascinating place to look back at who we used to be, and what we used to watch. All local content, no ads, no captions. 

Best content: Start with classic episodes of Country Calendar, Havoc, Islands of the Gulf, Gloss, Outrageous Fortune or Shortland Street, and see where you end up. 

SkyOpen (via SkyGo)

Sky Go is free for Sky customers, but those without a Sky account can still use it to watch Sky Open (free-to-air, formerly Prime) content. There’s a lot of sports and lifestyle shows, and there’s also some great locally produced series and documentaries. Includes ads, captions are available. 

Best content: Small Town Scandal, Whina, Shepherdess, Raised by Refugees, Clarkson’s Farm, Forever Auckland FC, The Ridge, My Favourite Dead Person.

ThreeNow

ThreeNow’s streaming platform has improved both in usability and content in recent years. It now has a little bit of everything – local dramas and comedies, reality TV, lifestyle shows and some very watchable documentary series. There’s also a strong showing of bingeable British and Australian thrillers, and a selection of live-TV channels that broadcast one show, 24 hours a day.  There are ads, captions where available. 

Best content: David Lomas Breakthrough, Survivor, Crackhead, 7 Days, Game of 2 Halves, The Valley, The Assassin, Married at First Sight Australia, Dinosaur, New Zealand Tomorrow, Tangata Pai, Guy Mont Spelling Bee, Happiness.  

Tubi

Tubi is an American streaming service owned by Fox, and has mostly classic movies and older TV shows. No subscription required, no local content, there are ads and captions are available. 

Best content: Great if your kids love The Magic School Bus or My Little Pony.

TVNZ+

TVNZ+ has built up an excellent library of movies, lifestyle, drama, reality and comedy TV shows to make it the best free streaming service in the country. However, issues from a recent upgrade have annoyed thousands of users, which TVNZ has apologised for and resolved to fix. But if you only want one streaming service in your life, TVNZ+ should be it, particularly if you don’t want to pay anything. With its broad range of quality local and international shows and films, there’s something here for people of all ages, and new shows are introduced regularly. There are ads, closed captioning is available where possible. 

Best content: Code of Silence, Taskmaster, The Rookie, Bluey, Celebrity Treasure Island, Great British Bake Off, The Other Bennet Sister, The Miniature Wife, Riot Women, The Chase, Grand Designs NZ, Shortland Street, Country Calendar, Outrageous Fortune. 

WaterBear

A Dutch streaming service with hundreds of documentaries dedicated to the environment, society and sustainability. Waterbear believes stories have the ability to drive change, and features localised stories from around the world. Shows watched go on to support environmental projects. 

Best content: Oceans Initiative, More Like Paul, The Last Harvest. 

Under $10 per month

NZ Film On Demand (from $1.99 per hire)

The NZ Film Commission’s pay-per-movie service offers a rich variety of exclusively New Zealand films, including new and classic titles. Films are hired for a seven-day period. 

Best content: Smash Palace, An Angel At My Table, Utu, Goodbye Pork Pie, What We Do in the Shadows, Boy, Rain, Poi E, Eagle Vs Shark. 

Shelter ($3.99)

If you love architecture, you’ll love Shelter. This niche Australian platform specialises in films about architectural design, urban planning and the environment. Students get a half-price monthly discount, no ads, free seven-day trial.

Best content: Tiny Spaces, Inspired Architecture. 

AroVision (From $4.99 per hire)

AroVision is the impressive New Zealand on-demand streaming companion of AroVideo, and features over 3,000 films for rent. Their library focuses on festival and award-winning titles that won’t appear on bigger streaming platforms, and with each film hand-picked by the knowledgeable AroVision team, there’s no dud choices here (plus, there’s plenty of more mainstream picks to keep everyone happy). Prices are per film rental, and there’s lots of fantastic New Zealand titles.

Best content: Wuthering Heights, Fackham Hall, Not Only Fred Dagg, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, Life in One Chord, Sinners, The Haka Party Incident, The Rule of Jenny Pen.

AMC+ (From $6.99)

AMC+ is a streaming bundle that brings together a mix of series and films from Acorn TV, Shudder, Sundance Now and AMC into one subscription. There are ads, although you can upgrade your subscription to avoid them. 

Best content: The Anne Rice Universe, The Walking Dead Universe, The Son. 

iWonder (from $6.99)

A thoughtful range of documentary films and TV series covering a variety of different genres, including crime, politics, history, sport and business. You’ll learn heaps. Free 14-day trial. 

Best content: On the Wild Side, The Carnivore’s Dilemma, Riders of Destiny. 

Acorn TV ($7.99)

A small but sweet catalogue of cosy British detective dramas set by the sea and slightly quirky murder mysteries. Reassuringly gentle stuff. Free seven-day trial, some local content. 

Best content: Under the Vines, My Life is Murder, The Sounds, Annika, Foyles War, Dead Still, Whitstable Pearl, Recipes for Love and Murder. 

Curiosity Stream (from $7.99)

Time to tap into your big brain with Curiosity Stream, which was created by Discovery Channel founder John Hendricks. Curiosity Stream focuses on factual entertainment and offers a collection of science, nature, history, food, travel and technology documentaries.

Best content: Land of the Hobbits, Across the Ice, Nature’s Return.

HIDIVE (from $8.99)

Hidive is dedicated to Japanese Anime, but with a smaller collection of shows than fellow anime streaming service Crunchyroll. Free seven-day trial. 

Best content: Petals of Reincarnation, Hero Without A Class. 

Shudder ($8.99)

Shudder is a streaming service for horror, thriller and supernatural fans. There’s both film and TV shows, with new titles added each week. Free seven-day trial, no ads. 

Best content: Tales from the Crypt, Dolly, Heresy. 

Crunchyroll (from $9.99)

This streaming service celebrates all things Japanese anime, with an impressive 2,000 titles for anime fans to choose from. Free seven-day trial for premium plans. 

Best content: One Piece, Attack on Titan, My Hero Academia. 

Disney+ (from $9.99)

Disney+ sneaks into this category thanks to a $9.99 monthly subscription that includes ads. It’s great value for money (if you don’t mind the interruptions), because Disney+ is the streamer with a little bit of everything, and easily the most family friendly of these cheaper streaming options. Disney has both the latest prestige, big-budget drama series for adults – think Love Story and Rivals – as well as lots of movies and shows for kids (there’s also a small collection of Disney kids’ movies translated into te reo Māori). It even has a bit of ESPN sport, and depending on your subscription type, you can download shows and movies to watch offline. Standard package is $18.99 per month, while premium is $25.99. Closed captioning is available. 

Best content: Rivals, Love Story, The Testaments, High Potential, Paradise, Dying for Sex, Only Murders in the Building, The Bear, Shogun. 

DocPlay ($9.99)

Expand both your brain and world with DocPlay, an Australian-based streaming service focused exclusively on documentary film and series for Australian and New Zealand audiences. Its curated catalogue of nearly 2,000 titles includes everything from fashion to politics. Free 14-day trial, no ads, closed captions where available, and there’s plenty of local content.

Best content: Black Coast Vanishings, Celia, Decades in Colour, Mr Nobody Against Putin, The Road to Patagonia. 

Under $20 per month

Hayu ($10.99)

Like many other streaming services, Hayu has increased in price since our last update, but this time you’re actually getting more bang for your buck. Hayu began as a must-have platform for reality TV fans, due to it offering over 300 reality shows, many available on the same day as the US. This month, however, Hayu moved beyond reality TV to offer a selection of other shows and movies, including dramas, comedy series and blockbuster films. Free seven-day trial, no ads, captions are available.

Best content: Hacks (seasons four and five), Prime Minister, Below Deck, Real Housewives, Ladies of London, The Valley, Apples Never Fall. 

Prime Video (from $10.99)

Prime Video offers a mix of blockbuster original content and a lot of older movies, TV shows and documentaries. The amount of New Zealand content has improved ever-so-slightly in the last year, but there’s still not much on there (Masterchef NZ, anyone?). You can upgrade your sub to avoid ads, closed captioning where possible, free seven-day trial. 

Best content: The Boys, Last One Laughing UK, Deadloch, Young Sherlock, Scarpetta. 

Apple TV+ (from $12.99)

Apple TV+ only holds its own original shows and movies, which often feature an impressive line up of Hollywood stars and directors. While its library isn’t as extensive as other big-name platforms, there’s a definite sense of quality over quantity here, with many Apple shows becoming award-winners. No ads, closed captioning available (plus a variety of subtitle languages), no local content.  

Best content: Severance, The Studio, Your Friends and Neighbours, Margo’s Got Money Troubles, Widow’s Bay, Shrinking, Ted Lasso.

Mubi ($14.99)

One for cinema fans. International streaming service Mubi offers a hand-picked collection of independent and festival films from around the world. Free seven-day trial, no ads, cheaper subscription rates ($8.99) for students.

Best content:  My Father’s Shadow, Die My Love, Pompei: Below The Clouds. 

Neon (From $14.99)

HBO Max launches in Aotearoa next month, which means you’ve only got a few weeks to access its award-winning shows (like The Pitt or The Last of Us) on Neon. New Zealand-owned Neon recently revamped its brand to reassure subscribers that it will still offer a premium mix of series and films, and is moving to a “more curated” slate. Over the next few weeks, new shows from the likes of Paramount, BBC Studios and Lionsgate will be added, as well as some promising new local series like Morgana O’Reilly’s new cop drama Bust Up, comedian Josh Thomson’s comedy Good Bones and a second season of the family-friendly Secrets at Red Rocks.

Neon is also adding full seasons of shows like Lost, For All Mankind, Dawson’s Creek and Downton Abbey, and it already has a fantastic selection of shows for young kids. Neon has two price options: a basic package (with ads) is $14.99, while the standard package (no ads, option to download content and watch offline) is $23.99. Individual movies are also available for hire. Closed captioning where possible.

Best content: Heated Rivalry, The Audacity, Dutton Ranch, The Agency, Mint, Outlander, Blood of My Blood, Unforgotten, The Madison.

Netflix (from $17.99)

The one and only Netflix offers a huge selection of films, documentaries, TV shows, anime and award-winning original shows, and arguably gives you the most shows in one place. Sometimes you have to fight through the weeds to find the good stuff, but it’s the perfect place to come if you’re looking for a highly bingeable Harlan Coben thriller or a gripping American true crime docuseries. There’s always something new to watch on Netflix, although sadly, there’s still not much local content on offer. Closed captions are available, you can download content to watch offline, and you can choose from three different price packages (Basic $17.99, Standard $25.99, Premium $33.99). 

Best content: Legends, Beef, Should I Marry a Murderer, Stranger Things, Adolescence, Squid Games, Formula 1: Drive to Survive, Black Mirror, Bridgerton.

YouTube Premium (from $17.99)

If ads make you angry, YouTube Premium offers unlimited ad-free access to all of YouTube’s content, plus the ability to download videos to watch offline and stream music. It’s currently offering a two-month free trial with a monthly sub that starts at $17.99 (there are additional student and family plans available). 

HBO Max (launches in June, price TBC)

HBO Max launches in New Zealand on June 16, and will be the new home of big prestige television shows like The Pitt, The White Lotus, The Last of Us, and House of Dragon. Official pricing details and packages will be announced closer to the launch date, but we’re guessing prices will be somewhere in this monthly price category. 

Over $20 per month

Sky Sport Now (from $29.99)

For the sports lovers, Sky Sport Now provides live and on-demand access to 13 different sporting channels, including Sky Sports and ESPN. Includes Sky ads. $29.99 will get you a one-day pass, or there’s a monthly pass for $59.99. You can also buy a monthly bundle with Neon for $69.99. 

Best content: International rugby and netball, Super Rugby Pacific, NRL, Formula 1, NBA, Premier League

Sky Go (from $45)

Sky Go allows Sky customers to stream Sky live-to-air and on-demand content. The Eentertainment package starts at $45 per month on a 12-month contract, and gives you access to numerous channels of drama, documentaries, news and kids shows.  A new channel called Sky Drama starts in June, featuring a selection of premium dramas and international language series. Sky’s on-demand sports packages begin at $65 per month.   

Best content: The Audacity, Dutton Ranch, live sport, up the Wahs etc. 

Dame Jools Topp has died after living with breast cancer. As one half of the Topp Twins with her sister Lynda, Jools brought joy to generations of New Zealanders.

This story was originally published on RNZ.

One of the country’s most loved entertainers, Dame Jools Topp, has died at the age of 68.

She had breast cancer, a disease that she was first diagnosed with in 2006 before it returned in 2021.

Jools died at home on Saturday with her twin sister Lynda, brother Bruce, close friends and “all her fur-babies by her side”, a statement from the family confirmed on Monday. A celebration honouring Jools’ life will be announced shortly.

“It is with deep sorrow and unimaginable grief we announce the passing of my beloved twin sister Jools. She lived bravely with breast cancer for 22 years. Now she is finally free to ride on Pegasus, her winged horse, and round up sheep again with our dad Peter and all her precious dogs,” Dame Lynda wrote.

Brother, Bruce Topp added: “Jools shared with me all the joy and love and special times that a brother needs. I will hold her in my heart forever.”

As one half of the Topp Twins with her sister Lynda, Jools Topp brought joy to generations of New Zealanders – and fought for change while she was at it.

A gifted country singer and a skilled comedian, she was also a vocal protestor against racism, sexism, homophobia and more.

The Topp Twins knew how to hold an audience in the palm of their hands – and they made countless live appearances from country halls to the stages of London and New York.

They created several TV series, an award winning documentary about their lives and a bestselling book.

Raised as a “wild child” by loving parents on a Waikato farm, Jools’s deep love for New Zealanders was clear in her many beloved and hard-case characters.

A favourite was the goofy and excitable Camp Leader – played in a huge woolly cardie and horn-rimmed glasses.

She was under the thumb of Lynda’s bossy Camp Mother, but often rebelled, always without a script.

“My character, camp leader, she’s sort of inside herself but she’s so hard to control. I never know where she’s going to go,” Jools said in the Twins’ 2009 documentary film.

She also played one of the two Kens – classic kiwi blokes, with sideburns and 70s suits.

On both stage and screen, the Topps would interview people in character, with the ability to put audiences at ease – and have them rolling in the aisles.

None of their characters were scripted, something Jools acknowledged other performers might find that frightening.

“But if you gave us a script we’d be terrified because that wouldn’t give us the freedom to react with our audience and play with our audience and go places and do things,” she said.

Country music was where it began for Jools and Lynda – and their trademark harmonies often went hand in hand with protest.

In the turbulent 70s and 80s they would busk in downtown Auckland, or attend demonstrations, performing their protest songs.

They protested against the 1981 Springbok Rugby Tour and for a nuclear free Pacific and in support of the Homosexual Law Reform bill.

Jools told RNZ in 2015 they wanted to use their talent for change. They were often asked to write or perform songs at rallies.

“It brought people together, it made them feel like they were part of a cause,” she said.

Jools has said many of their values came from their parents.

They had a idyllic, “wild” country childhood on a farm in Waikato, raised with their brother Bruce, by very loving parents who let them be themselves.

As the sisters told Music 101 in 2024, they were out lesbians when they became famous – a time when others in the limelight often felt they couldn’t be.

“It was pure honesty about who we were. And if you didn’t like it you didn’t have to come and see the show,” Jools said.

“But New Zealand came with us.”

They were made Dames Companion to the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2018, saying at the time that meant Camp Mother, Camp Leader, the Kens and all their other characters were knighted now too.

Jools said the honour, once reserved for people of a certain class, was an acknowledgement of all they had fought for.

“The Queen must have said ‘yes.’ She had to tick the box. She must have said ‘oh yeah …give those lesbian twins a bloody medal’,” she said.

Prime minister Christopher Luxon said Dame Jools was a New Zealand icon.

“She lived a life of purpose, she made the country a happier place, and she leaves a legacy of humour, warmth, and joy that will endure,” he wrote in a post on Facebook.

Former prime minister, Dame Jacinda Ardern, wrote she was thankful for the twins contribution to New Zealand.

“You can’t really describe an icon, but you can thank them,” she wrote on Instagram.

The pair had lived in different parts of the country at times but Lynda told Kim Hill in 2023 they were always connected.

“It’s like a golden thread we call it. It’s just there, you’re always connected to your twin. We usually speak to each other every day but sometimes if you don’t then all of a sudden the little thread will get a tug.”

In a video tribute that played at the Country Music Honours in Gore on Friday night, where the twins were honoured for their contribution, country singer Tami Neilson described meeting the pair at the event many years earlier.

“Jools said, ‘when the door opens for you in this business, especially as a woman, you need to shove your foot in that door and kick it open and hold it open for others to follow though behind you’,” Neilson said.

“And that’s exactly what they did for me. They’re a foundation on which I stand, and a standard to which I always strive.”

Jools was was first diagnosed with breast cancer 20 years ago, undergoing chemotherapy and other treatments that took a toll on her body.

When it returned, she did some treatment but said she wanted to focus of living well.

She had been taking great joy from life, particularly from riding her horse, she told Kim Hill, saying then she was not afraid of dying.

“We’ve had a charmed and beautiful life – and hopefully we’ve changed people’s lives along the way. And it’s important to us. It’s what Mum taught us, it’s what Mum instilled into us.”

The arts funding body is pushing some funding power to the regions. Books editor Claire Mabey walks through the changes and what they might mean.

Arts funding body Creative New Zealand (CNZ) is pushing through the most significant changes in decades. On May 1, its chief executive Gretchen La Roche announced that CNZ’s two new “ambitious” strategies, Toi Ora and Tū Mai Rā – released in April – meant the organisation needed to adopt “a different focus and approach to how we operate”. 

La Roche went on to broadly outline how CNZ would be changing – and those changes are, to put it in plain terms, huge. In a nutshell, CNZ will de-centralise its funds by partnering with regional organisations. 

Hold the phone… what even is Creative New Zealand? 

CNZ is a government agency that supports arts organisations, like arts festivals, theatre and dance companies, literary organisations and arts media, as well as individual artists, like visual artists, writers, theatre makers and musicians through funding. It stays away from film and TV projects because the Film Commission and NZ on Air fund those.

CNZ also has an advocacy team who work to rally support for the arts and support artists’ interests. 

About 25% of CNZ’s funding comes from the government. The government’s contribution has remained static since 2005/2006 with the exception of a $1 million increase in Budget 2019, while contributions from the NZ Lottery Grants Board Te Puna Tahua funding has increased substantially over this period. In fact, CNZ now frames avoiding a reduction in government funding as good news. 

How has CNZ funding worked up until now? 

Arts organisations and individual artists or groups could look for a fund that aligned on the Creative New Zealand website and put in an application through CNZ’s online portal. The funds were contestable, meaning applicants were in competition with one another. All were assessed, but only some were successful. 

Some larger organisations were on multi-year contracts for funding through what were called the Kāhikatea and Tōtara funds, but those contracts will all wind up by December 2026. Arts organisations across the country are now applying to new, multi-tier funds. Results from those funding rounds are due from July and the sector is bracing for a shake-up: there is no way that every organisation is going to be successful. There is simply not enough money to go around.

So, what’s this big change all about then?

“The biggest shift that you’ll see is the establishment of regional partnerships, enabling regions to make decisions about their arts development needs,” La Roche said on May 1.

CNZ is running a registration of interest process to find regional arts organisations to administer funds. CNZ says it’s looking for “trusted organisations, collectives or consortiums deeply connected to their communities, who understand their local creative ecology”. They want these organisations to be “collectives who understand the artists, communities, opportunities and challenges unique to that place, and have a base infrastructure to build on”.

The registration of interest document says that CNZ is looking for one partner in each of 16 “delivery locations” – from Te Tai Tokerau to Whanganui to Southland – and that these partners need to: “lead arts development; administer and distribute regional funding; connect artists, organisations and communities; build partnerships and grow investment; be advocates for arts and ngā toi; and support long-term sustainable arts ecosystems.”

The ROI process closes very soon on May 29, with successful applications notified in June. The partners will be signed up by January 2027, with delivery beginning from July 2027: a swift timeline for such an ambitious change.

Basically, this means CNZ is devolving funding from a central model to a regional one. CNZ told The Spinoff this would make funding “easier” and that “our expectation is that applying for funding will be simple with a quick turnaround time due to scale, streamlined process and decisions being made closer to artists and arts communities”.

So, who could these regional partners be? And how is it actually going to work?

Administering funds is not a simple process. It’s admin-heavy work that requires time, staff and streamlined processes to ensure fairness and equity. It could be a challenge to find arts organisations in all 16 locations that have both the art-form neutrality and capacity to take on that large list of CNZ requirements. 

CNZ told The Spinoff that while the new direction will add partners, it wants to avoid adding layers of bureaucracy. “Most regional partners will build on infrastructure, relationships and capability that already exists in their communities. We will also provide support in a variety of ways to enable this, including centralised tools and systems.”

The Spinoff asked CNZ how, under a model with so many partners, will consistency be maintained. We also asked how Māori would be represented and how will all art forms be equally championed? 

CNZ said regional partners would need to deliver funding opportunities “in line with CNZ’s current practice” and that “there will be clear expectations around transparency, fairness, accountability and good decision-making. At the same time, CNZ will continue to hold the national overview and support regional partners as an active national network that shares ideas, insight and momentum.”

Could councils be regional partners?

There’s no stipulation that councils are ineligible to apply to be a regional partner, but they don’t seem to fit the description of the kind of organisation that CNZ is looking for. For example, Wellington City Council is currently proposing a 5 % cut to its arts budget which would seem to negate the CNZ requirement for its regional partners to advocate for the arts and long-term sustainability. 

The bigger question is around what councils may or may not do with their own arts funding if regional partners are going to be channeling CNZ money. CNZ told The Spinoff that it doesn’t expect councils to reduce their arts funding once the regional partnership model starts up. “Currently we have limited levers to actively encourage other stakeholders to maintain and grow their investment in the arts and culture within their regions. We believe that offering a confirmed multi-year commitment of investment to a region enables us to approach key stakeholder conversations in a different way.

“Regional partners will be supported to focus on growing investment and building stronger regional relationships, including with councils, iwi, philanthropy and business.”

So, does CNZ have more money to support this change? 

Lol. No. There’s not even additional funding to set up the regional partners with the staffing they’ll inevitably need to do all the new work. 

It is interesting that this radical change to the model is happening alongside a fresh lot of planned cuts to the public sector. CNZ hasn’t confirmed whether it will cut staff as a result of the new devolved model, but it did say that as “part of changing the way we do things and in line with our new strategic direction, CNZ is reviewing its operating model to best deliver value and outcomes to artists and the sector. We will share more information over the coming months about our new ways of working”. 

What will CNZ be doing if it’s not administering funding? 

CNZ will be focussing on “some targeted national and international funding and support opportunities”. There will be more information on this in the next few months “as we continue to develop our strategic areas of focus and deliver our regional partnerships programme”. CNZ will also be trying to find more money for the arts. “We want to grow investment into arts and creativity from multiple places, including local and central government, philanthropy, business partnerships, iwi, trusts, central government relationships and cross-sector collaboration”.  

Exactly how it is going to do this is not yet clear because it says it doesn’t “intend to pursue local philanthropic or corporate sponsorship or to replicate work being done in these spaces already by others”. 

So, is this new decentralised funding model a good thing or not?

It’s too early to say, especially without more detail. The devil lives there, after all. On the one hand, empowering communities sounds great, but when arts communities are already lean and lacking in robust infrastructure it’s hard to see who these partners could be. It’s also not like arts organisations aren’t already out there trying to present their value and attract investment. 

On the other hand, if, through this new model, CNZ can find a way to ultimately increase the level of arts investment, then that will be a positive shift. The first step will be finding out who the 16 regional partners are going to be.

After years of scandals, sexism and toxicity, fresh allegations from Married at First Sight UK could be the final nail in the coffin for the franchise, writes Alex Casey.  

This article discusses instances of sexual and domestic violence, please take care.

It started off so sweetly and so Scandinavian. The Danish social experiment called Gift ved Første Blik began in 2013, bringing together an expert panel of two psychologists, an anthropologist and a priest to match vying singles who would meet, and marry, at the altar. Comprising of only three couples and lasting just eight episodes, the series was a true social experiment that observed the couples getting to know each other without the need for meddling confession boxes, intimacy week challenges or booze-soaked dinner parties. 

Over a decade later, the show is practically unrecognisable from the wide-eyed innocence of those early experimental seasons. As Married at First Sight metastasized around the world, the format ballooned to much larger casts and much longer seasons, throwing in all manner of production devices to ensure as much conflict (and betrayal) as possible. It feels as if MAFS’ race to the bottom finally hit the finish line last week, after multiple women from MAFS UK alleged they were sexually assaulted by their onscreen husbands during filming.

Contestants Lizzie and Chloe, not their real names, shared eerily similar stories during Panorama’s half hour exposé “The Dark Side of Married at First Sight”. Lizzie alleged that her husband became violent during sex on their honeymoon and left her with bruises, threatening to “throw acid at me” if she was to tell anyone. In another instance, she alleged he said “you can’t say no, you’re my wife” before raping her. Chloe too alleged that, despite clearly saying no, her MAFS husband proceeded to have sex with her. Both men have denied the allegations. 

Shona Manderson from the 2023 series of MAFS UK also alleged that her then-husband Bradley Skelly committed a non-consensual sex act while they were filming the show. “We were having sex, and a boundary was crossed completely,” she said. “My partner came inside me without my consent. We had agreed that we were pulling out. I was shocked, I was confused. We said that we weren’t doing that.” Skelly’s lawyer told Panorama that Manderson had consented to the act, and categorically denied any allegations of sexual misconduct. 

These women’s stories have not just brought the response of production into question – in the case of Manderson, she was taken to get the emergency contraceptive pill the next day – but the broader problems that arise from a reality format that forces strangers into an intimate living situation. “My goodness. Allegations of rape and sexual assault have arisen from a reality show built around the conceit of strangers ‘marrying’ each other at first sight, then cohabiting in the full expectation that ‘marital’ relations will ensue,” wrote Lucy Mangan for The Guardian. “The only possible true surprise here, surely, is that this hasn’t happened before.” 

She’s right, and bleaker still is the many examples where the final product has seemingly been prioritised over the safety of participants. Just this year, MAFS Australia edited an entire couple out of the show after the groom was accused of violence against a previous partner on social media. Last year, groom Paul Antoine confessed to punching a hole in the wall in his MAFS AU apartment following an argument with wife Carina. He was put “on notice” by the experts, but ultimately allowed to see out the series. 

Even here in New Zealand, MAFSNZ groom Chris Mansfield was edited out of the show in 2019 after Stuff reported his outstanding domestic violence charges in the United States. His victim later told NZ Herald that she was pregnant at the time of the incidents, and that he “almost killed [her] a couple of times [through] strangling.” While Mediaworks said every participant is subject to a criminal record check and psychiatric assessment, they were unable to obtain information about charges or outstanding warrants under privacy law, and relied on the participants’ own disclosure.

For some grim reason audiences have been able to move on from these examples, but this recent bout of allegations feels different. Major advertisers are running for the hills. Channel 4 in the UK has removed all seasons of Married at First Sight UK from streaming platforms, and launched a full external review into the welfare of the show’s participants. It has even been escalated to a government level, with a spokesperson for British prime minister Keir Starmer saying the allegations were “extremely concerning” and must be investigated with consequences where “wrongdoing or criminality is found”.

ThreeNow has followed suit and removed all seasons of MAFS UK from its platform as of last week. “Sky made the precautionary decision to remove all seasons of Married At First Sight UK from ThreeNow, following the media reports overnight,” a Sky TV spokesperson told NZ Herald’s Media Insider. “As the allegations relate specifically to the UK production of Married At First Sight, we are not removing any other programming from our platforms at this stage.”

Still, it is going to be very hard for the rest of the franchise to shake off such a dark chapter in its history, especially when the latest seasons of Married at First Sight appear to have had no problem casting all manner of men with damaging views on women and their role in society. In MAFS AU this year, Danny said that doing something as emasculating as moving in with a woman would make him feel like a “bit of a bitch”, while the Trump-loving Tyson wanted a “submissive woman” who would do all the cooking and the cleaning and have at least five of his children.

This moment could be the nail in the coffin for Married at First Sight, and perhaps it should be. Reality romance feels like it has been in a death rattle for years now, and audience preferences are clearly changing. It’s not necessarily that we don’t want to see drama and tension on reality TV, but maybe we just don’t want to see that playing out within the most intimate relationship a person can have. Survivor is built on social strategy and manipulation and just finished its 50th season. Celebrity Treasure Island has no shortage of clashes and tears, and is now 25 years old. 

I’d argue this is why murder-mystery game The Traitors has risen through the reality ranks in recent years and eclipsed the likes of Love Island and MAFS – the conflict and betrayal is built into the format from the very beginning. It’s much easier to stomach a show filled with villains and backstabbing when you know it is an inherent part of the gameplay, rather than something that privately seeps in through the walls of those claustrophobic MAFS apartments. What it says about us in 2026 that we’d rather watch people murder each other than marry each other? I’ll leave that up to you. 

The 8,700 lost public sector jobs will be replaced, in part, by AI. But nobody can say how it will work or what it will cost, writes Catherine McGregor in today’s excerpt from The Bulletin.

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The plan

The response to the government’s pre-Budget announcement has not been warm. Finance minister Nicola Willis set out plans last week to cut 8,700 public service jobs across around 40 core agencies by 2029, saving $2.4 billion – with artificial intelligence named as the mechanism to fill the gaps. Critics, economists and AI experts have spent the days since asking two blunt questions: does the government know what a pivot to AI really entails, and has anyone actually worked out what this will cost?

The announcement framed AI as a “basic expectation” across government departments. As Emily Broadmore – a former political adviser and workforce transformation strategist – writes in The Post (paywalled), the plan makes sense in principle. The problem is the execution, and whether those in charge know enough to drive the strategy in the right direction. After all, “the people ordering a transformation of our public service,” she writes, “just admitted they are using the most powerful tools ever created to… edit speeches.”

The bill

Talking to RNZ’s Phil Pennington, University of Auckland law and technology professor Alexandra Andhov foresaw significant costs that are likely to eat into that $2.4b figure. Enterprise-scale AI is not a one-off purchase: it comes with ongoing licence fees, model upgrades, and the costs of auditing and oversight. “The costs that we pay for AI today are heavily subsidised while the AI companies are trying to capture as much of the market,” she noted. “These are not the real costs that AI will cost.” In parliament, digitising government minister Paul Goldsmith said he didn’t have any figures on the estimated rollout and licensing costs, nor seen a cost-benefit analysis.

Andhov raised a second concern: almost all the AI the government is likely to use is built by American companies, and the money spent on it will leave the country.

The know-how

Even if the costs stack up, a deeper problem remains: does the government understand what it’s doing? Broadmore argues that the announcement conflates two very different things. Yes, AI will compress certain kinds of work – things like first drafts, briefings and standard comms copy – and “if this is done properly, this new leaner, sharper workforce will significantly outperform the way our public service currently operates”.

But the government doesn’t seem to have grappled with what that means for the traditional career pipeline. “The grad policy adviser learned to read political risk by drafting OIA responses,” she writes, by way of example. If that entry-level work disappears, so does the experience base that leads junior staff into senior management.

The rules (that don’t exist)

Then there is the question of how AI use in the public sector should be regulated. New Zealand’s only government guidelines, released last year, are voluntary. Asked about this by Newsroom’s Fox Meyer, Goldsmith rejected a suggestion that rules should be put in place before the AI transformation got underway.

His position is quite different to the approach in Australia, where a chief AI officer is employed by every federal department. Writing in Newsroom, Andhov notes that in NSW, every agency must complete a risk assessment before deploying AI, with high-risk systems listed on a public register. The New Zealand government has none of that.

The risk of getting it wrong is not theoretical, Andhov says, pointing to crises like the Dutch childcare benefit scandal, in which an automated fraud-detection system resulted in tens of thousands of families being falsely accused of cheating, causing people to lose their homes and children to be taken into care. “‘We’ll use more AI’ is not a budget line,” she writes. “It is a major policy decision, and right now it is being made without the basic safeguards.”

Polling shows voters may have a different view of immigration than recent political rhetoric would suggest.

The early laps of a long 2026 election campaign have seen immigration pop up again and again. New Zealand First, seizing on the free-trade agreement with India and reprising the sort of “Asian invasion” rhetoric it debuted in the 1990s, set the ball rolling with Winston Peters’ speeches warning of “loose immigration” and “mass immigration”, “unfettered immigration” and “massive immigration”.

A few days later, Act announced its immigration policy, which includes changes to the “skilled migrant” category and a daily $6 fee for migrant workers to fund infrastructure. It prompted many, including the immigration minister, to speculate that the party was playing catch-up with New Zealand First’s anti-immigration platform. “It certainly feels like it,” said Erica Stanford, who saw streaks of “populist” and “kneejerk” policy in Act’s announcement. She judged that Seymour “hasn’t thought this through very well”, adding: “That’s a little bit typical sometimes.”

In a pre-budget speech, Christopher Luxon indicated that immigration was likely to be front and centre in the approaching campaign. “It’s an issue we’ll watch closely, and you should expect to see careful policy on immigration from National as we get closer to the election,” he said. “And my message to the business community is that when it comes to immigration, when faced with a choice between social stability and your bottom line, I will choose the former every single time.”

Peters, speaking in west Auckland last Sunday, suggested the others were marching to his beat. “Mr Luxon? He did a speech the other day as leader of the National Party talking about his concern about immigration,” he said. “Wow! Where did you get this 11th-hour experience? This road to Damascus epiphany? And Seymour – he made a similar speech.”

Speaking on Newstalk ZB last week, the prime minister had a dig back. “I think there’s a bit of anti-immigration cosplay going on where some politicians are pretending to be Trump or Farage or Le Pen,” he said, noting “remarks from Winston for example.” He added: “We don’t have uncontrolled or illegal immigration in this country.”

Why the surge in immigration talk? Politicians are evidently exercised about the issue, but are voters? How strong is the sentiment, and what is the ceiling for the anti-immigration vote? The most recent Ipsos Issues Monitor puts immigration a good way down the list, tied in 11th, with just 8% in February picking it as one of their three biggest concerns.

Immigration has barely bothered the scorers in Ipsos Issues Monitors across recent years – it’s the trajectory, however, that may be pricking the ears of political parties.

Around the world, anti-immigration rhetoric has become part of the political furniture. In two countries that we often compare ourselves with, the UK and Australia, it has been a hot-button issue in recent elections. Reform UK, led by Nigel Farage, took 26% of the overall vote – easily the largest share – in council elections earlier this month. A couple of days later in Australia, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party won its first ever lower house seat, securing 57% of the vote in a rural New South Wales byelection.

More broadly in Australia, polling has for some time now suggested one in four people back One Nation; the party consistently outpolls the Liberal-National coalition. In the UK, Reform has come first in every major poll for more than a year.

Comparable studies by Ipsos, however, show immigration does not concern New Zealanders on anything like the level seen in Australia, where three times as many nominate the issue in their top three, or the UK, where the result is fivefold New Zealand’s, and right at the top of the pile (compared with fifth in Australia and 11th in New Zealand).

Isolated in the South Pacific, New Zealand does not have the border challenges that beset many parts of the world. “There are echoes of the divisive anti-immigrant politics overseas,” said Massey University sociologist Paul Spoonley. “You see it in phrases like ‘mass migration’. But I would continue to make the point that we have a merit-based system of immigration. Overseas, debates are often dominated by asylum seeker policy and people arriving at the border without documentation. We don’t see that here.”

He added: “Clearly there’s some concern, but it’s not in the Ipsos top 10. Compared with health and other factors it really is not significant.”

The Social Cohesion in New Zealand report, published in April by the Helen Clark Foundation, found that 53% consider immigration “makes New Zealand stronger” down from 56% in 2024. Asked about the number of immigrants accepted in recent years, 36% said it was too high, 43% said about right and 6% too low. A study conducted in Australia using the same methodology measured 51% saying immigration is too high.

Spoonley said he was encouraged by the findings from research by the Asia New Zealand Foundation, which suggests 56% believe immigration from Asia has a positive impact. “I think the positive ratings about migrants have been tracking upwards for the last 20 years,” he said.

The most recent Talbot Mills poll for clients has a revealing entry on immigration, breaking down perception of the issue on party lines. Overall, 40% believe immigration to be a force for good. Among NZ First voters, that falls to just 14%. For National backers, it’s 48%.

The rhetoric itself could create something of a feedback loop, said Spoonley. “I suspect there will be a bump in concern about the issue simply because people are listening to the politicians.”

The next Ipsos Issues Monitor is expected any day now, and the Asia New Zealand Foundation’s latest report is published next month. 

Politicians backing a bill to define the terms ‘woman’ and ‘man’ in law reckon they’re doing it to support new mothers. Alice Neville isn’t so sure. 

In announcing his party’s support of the Legislation (Definitions of Woman and Man) Amendment Bill, Act leader David Seymour referenced a vulnerable section of society few would deny deserve support and empathy: new mothers. Beginning his Facebook post with a helpful description of breastfeeding (“we are mammals because the female of the species has mammary glands that produce milk for feeding offspring… most people call these glands breasts”), he went on to rail against the term chestfeeding. “New mothers have been made to sit back and nod at this nonsense for fear of offending someone. When you’re forced to pretend things you know are not true you are no longer a thinking and valuing being in a free society.”

Powerful stuff. The sentiment was shared by NZ First’s Jenny Marcroft, who introduced the bill – which seeks to legally define the term woman in law as “an adult human biological female”, and man as “an adult human biological male” – in parliament last week. “It’s clear a woke contagion infected the health department, deleting the word ‘women’ to be substituted with ‘pregnant people’, ‘people with a cervix’, ‘individuals capable of childbearing’, and ‘chest-feeders’,” she said, offering no actual evidence of this alleged infection. Marcroft’s colleague Casey Costello had struck a blow a year ago with a letter to Health NZ, she said, but still the woke contagion persisted.

It’s odd, then, that if you look at the comprehensive maternity and pregnancy section on the Health NZ website you’ll see multiple mentions of women and men, with nary a “pregnant person” or “person with a cervix” to be seen. But I guess the contagion can be sneaky. “Morning sickness is different for everyone,” reads one sentence. This should clearly be “morning sickness is different for every woman”. Yes, the extensive breastfeeding section does not once use the term chest, but nor does it mention mammary glands. Makes you think.

It’s heartening that the coalition – the bill passed its first reading with the backing of all three governing parties – is looking out for new mothers. I was one once, back during that dark era when the Labour government ruled over us, and can attest that it’s a vulnerable time. The year was 2022, and wokeness, apparently, was at its peak. Yet oddly, while gestating future human capital, I don’t recall once being referred to as a pregnant person by any health worker. True, maybe it happened but I didn’t take note of it – because, you know, I was a pregnant person and I had more important things to worry about. Like having to awkwardly explain my situation after almost every member of the health workforce made the repeated assumption that I had a partner who was an adult human biological male and the father of my unborn child. Funnily enough, I didn’t. I was, wokely, having the kid on my own, using donor sperm. 

This assumption certainly didn’t change when my baby entered the world, inconveniently six weeks early, and nor did any wokeness rear its ugly head. Mercifully, I was not helped with chestfeeding – phew! I wasn’t helped with breastfeeding either, to be fair. My daughter had entered the world on a Friday, and the lactation consultant didn’t work at Auckland Hospital at the weekend. I didn’t have a midwife, as I’d made the deeply unwoke and privileged decision to engage a private obstetrician as my lead maternity carer. A postnatal midwife was included in this expensive service, but only once my baby and me had left the hospital. 

So there I was, on Ward 98, with whispers of Covid spreading on the ward. A long-time staffer said it was the busiest and most chaotic weekend they’d ever experienced at the hospital. Over four days, recovering from a caesarean while my baby was down the hall in NICU, her weight dropping under 2kg due to my useless mammary glands not doing their job, I didn’t see much of any representative of the health department, woke or otherwise. The occasional stern message was sent from NICU that my baby needed colostrum, but nothing much was coming from the aforementioned glands, which were bruised after hours spent desperately trying to squeeze out a drop of liquid gold into a plastic teaspoon. So I kept my eyes glued to the swing doors in my shared room in the hope that someone, anyone, would burst through and help me. 

When finally a ward midwife blustered into the room looking extremely stressed, I politely asked for help. “Where’s your partner?” she said in a distinctly pissed off tone. “We can’t help you.” She ranted a bit about the health system being broken. Yeah, no shit, I thought. Then she left. 

There wasn’t room for a partner, to be fair, in my curtained-off corner of a room shared with a pregnant woman who had preeclampsia (she made a complaint on my behalf after overhearing the above reprimand, bless her). But my sister (who, having birthed three children of her own, was certainly of more use than a baby daddy anyway), joined me for long stretches, squished up against the industrial breastpump and unhelpful sterilising set-up, which comprised a massive basin of water I couldn’t carry due to having just undergone major abdominal surgery.

On account of this absurd arrangement, it was impossible to keep the curtain closed, which led to an even more absurd situation where I was told off for exposing myself while pumping, which I had to spend approximately 98% of the day doing. Thankfully my sister was there to witness this particular episode, otherwise I would have dismissed it as some sort of trauma-induced hallucination. “Close the curtain!” a passing staffer (nurse, midwife, I wasn’t really sure) reprimanded me. “Someone might see your breasts!”

We laughed in disbelief. We were in a fucking maternity ward. It was probably the least woke moment in a thoroughly unwoke time, though being yelled at by a healthcare assistant for bleeding on the floor was up there too. But hey, at least nobody called me a chestfeeder.

The point of this fun walk down memory lane is not to elicit sympathy but to underline that in my experience, wokeness is not a problem in maternity care in this country. But I guess there must be a good reason for our government to progress this bill, and I’m sure this week’s budget will address the “significant strain” the maternity sector has been under for decades, which has resulted in experiences like mine being not even that bad in the grand scheme of things.  

I can’t help but shake the feeling, though, that maybe, just maybe, the backers of this bill aren’t really doing it for new mothers, or to protect their daughters from playing netball against “someone who should be playing blindside flanker for the first XV”. 

Maybe, just maybe, it’s not about women’s rights at all.

A septuagenarian estranged from her children reflects on her ‘chalk and cheese’ relationship.

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Age: 72

Gender: Female

Sexuality: Heterosexual

Ethnicity: Nga Tiriti Pakeha

Religion: Existential taoist and equal-opportunity atheist.

Occupation: Sort of retired. I run an AirBnB.

Length of relationship: 46 years.

Children: 4 (1 deceased, by suicide, and we have joined the world epidemic of estrangement from the rest.)

How we met: Studying overseas as temporary students who both came home.

The best thing about my relationship: That it’s finally settled into something we both enjoy.

A problem we can’t seem to resolve: His chaotic mind and lifestyle vs my love of structure and routine. He’s kind but self-centred, and I’m autistic. Language is my superpower and his only noun is “thing”.

This is how we share/separate our finances: When we worked, both salaries were always considered joint income, and we had a regular allowance that went into individual accounts. That allowed us to support our family appropriately while still having the ability to follow our own interests. I earned more than him until I took early retirement because of burnout. I still carry out all the financial actions and decisions that have allowed us a comfortable retirement.

This is how we split chores and childcare: When there were four children he contributed enormously and I didn’t feel solely responsible for everything domestic. Once I retired (with only one child still at home) it became harder to justify to myself and I did the lion’s share, though I never took over vacuuming so now it’s hardly ever done. Since he’s retired I’ve all but given up cooking, to my great relief. On the other hand, I do no house maintenance; he loves carpentry and I love gardening so that’s worked out OK.

Our sex life in three words: A happy memory.

The thing that makes me a good partner: I care about his wellbeing and keep him in mind in (almost) all my decisions.

The thing I need to work on to be a better partner: Not reacting badly to his crazy disorganised approach to life, the universe and everything.

What I most appreciate in my partner: He still makes me laugh, after all these years. I think that’s helped.

What I most resent in my relationship: All the times he’s dismissed my needs and told me the things I care about don’t matter. Now that I’ve come out as autistic he’s a lot better, though I can’t drop the masking completely.

The thing that has changed the most about my relationship over time: Mutual tolerance of our differences. We have enough in common that we’ve enjoyed our life together overall, and we both have a quirky approach to many things, which we appreciate and enjoy. We have been described as “chalk and cheese” but actually our fundamental values are very similar.

It would surprise people to know this about my relationship: There are times when we can’t stand the sight of each other.

Our last big fight was about: Understanding the difference between “before” and “after”. I made the mistake of telling him when children develop this and he got really pissed off. Given that I once wrote a paper on it, I felt it was not irrelevant to the discussion.

If I hadn’t met my partner: I’d probably have lasted a bit longer with the partner I already had, but not indefinitely. At least I hope not – I’d have been widowed long ago.

I expect my relationship to last until: One of us dies, though we disagree about who is entitled to last longer. Neither of us would care to find a replacement – who can be bothered going through all that again?

My relationship advice is: Survive the horrible bits and they’ll pass like tumbleweed, eventually.

Celebrated essayist David Hill catches a regional bus and learns a few things on the journey.

We watched him at the first stop for the Intercity bus.

He stood at the back of the waiting crowd while they pressed forward with their luggage. (It is a crowd and a press when Intercity passengers board; none of your effete airline queues.) He was early 20s: skinny, pasty, a straggly beard. He wore a hoodie, tracksuit pants and jandals. Tats dotted his cheeks and neck.

He stood at the back not out of deference to others, but because he was finishing his fag. When his turn to board came, he took a final drag, dropped the stub on the concrete, hoicked into a nearby flowerbed and slung a soiled sports bag into the luggage compartment. My wife Beth and I stared straight ahead as he came down the aisle. We said nothing; judged everything.

Three-plus hours later, we arrived at a toilet stop. Beth’s back makes getting out of a seat a slow and uncomfortable business. As she eased herself into the aisle, making apologetic noises, a voice spoke from behind her. ”You wanna hand there, lady? No rush. Take your time.” It was – you guessed – the hoodied hoicker.

Yes, a cute and cliched narrative. Yet it typified the things we saw and heard on a long-distance bus trip last month.

We went by bus because it costs about 30% of air travel. Because there’s no longer a train service from our town. Because we’ve driven the route often, but wanted the chance to sit up high and stare into river valleys or people’s front windows. We didn’t travel that way for a learning experience, but it turned out to be one. I’ll try to explain without sounding too repellently patronising or ignorant.

I mentioned that young guy’s wardrobe and appearance. The majority of our fellow passengers looked the same, whether they were 16 or 60. And like the hoodie-wearer, most of them smoked or vaped. Every toilet or snack stop saw a strew of figures on the footpath, dragging in, puffing / wheezing / coughing out, as enough smoke for a small forest fire rose around them. They took their nicotine into the loo with them; every lungful was precious.

And, again like that young guy, they were courteous. Beth and I were the eldest by about a decade, I estimate, though it was hard to be sure among the life-worn faces. Other people stood back for us, offered help, even enquired after our welfare. Beth was addressed as ”lady….dear…darlin”’. I was ”mate….man…bro”. I have to tell you that receiving that last honorific from a 40-or-so-year-old with three functioning teeth and a head shaved to display a snarling skull tattoo was quite a boost.

The drivers were courteous, too. They welcomed us on board, introduced themselves, ran through the itinerary, thanked us for travelling with the company. I know it’s a learned routine, but all through the trip, they sprinkled their announcements with ”please… thank you… appreciate it”. They called us ”sir… ma’am”. Kristi, who looked as if she could fit into the Black Ferns’ front row, and whose hair was intricately plaited into tiny braids, laughed and joked as she loaded those sports bags and shopping bags, and finished every announcement with ”Be kind to one another”. I rather fell for Kristi.

About 1.5 million NZers ride InterCity buses each year. The ones we saw – passengers and drivers alike – well, they were Kiwi Battlers. I said before that I’d try not to be patronising or ignorant, and I can’t use the KB label without seeing our PM’s smirk.

But the phrase did push itself forward. You felt that life was largely a slog for a lot of passengers; that they relied on stoicism and endurance to get through. You felt also that it would take just one judgemental look or condescending remark from someone, for their battling to become overt, even aggressive. By the end of our ride, I admired them and liked them. I also felt a bit scared of them.

Scared? We looked and sounded different from them. How crass that sounds, but my work, my upbringing and education, my social network, even my pastimes mean I’ve acquired certain communication skills and health awareness. Beth’s teaching life, plus our move from big city to the provinces gave us a financial safety net (with a few frayed cords), so we almost certainly live more easily and comfortably than most of those bus passengers.

What else did I feel about them? Discomfort and a perverse nostalgia, because they showed how our image of Aotearoa as a land of equal opportunity is now a faded fairytale.

I also felt shame, because I know so little of them, because New Zealand’s present social structure means I seldom meet them. Up till the age of 21, I went to state schools, played rugby, did my National Service Army Training, did holiday work in woolstores and timber yards. I mixed constantly with guys like that young man on the bus. It startles me to realise that in the last half-century, such contact has almost entirely ended for me. My life has narrowed as a result, and I’d hardly noticed it.

I feel a responsibility, too. To stay aware. To never be judgemental. To try and do something practical (yes, I’m talking food banks, local charities, other middle-class conscience salves). You may add tokenism to my condescension, etc. I acknowledge the transitoriness of all good intentions, but those bus trips moved me. I’ll try to make that movement positive and useful.

When we finally got off at our stop, the young guy from my opening paragraphs disembarked as well. As we headed for the taxi stand about 100 metres away, where just one cab waited, I felt a bit miffed to see him in front of us, already claiming his ride. Miffed and surprised; I’d (patronisingly again) not seen him as a taxi sort of person.

Then, as we arrived, we saw the cab driver shaking his head. The figure in hoodie and trackpants shouldered his sports bag and sloped off. ”He doesn’t want a ride?” I asked the taxi bloke. He shook his head again. ”Said he’d get a mate to pay me when we got there. No, thanks, I told him. Ones like that, they get out of the cab and they do a runner. I’ve learned that the hard way.”

I was silent. I wanted to say how agreeable the young guy had been, how you shouldn’t spring to judgement based on preconceptions, how a refusal like he’d just experienced might alienate him even further. But hell, what did I know, after a few hours’ fleeting experience? And at least the taxi driver wasn’t being patronising.

It’s official: you are visiting 2026’s best news, current affairs or specialist publication.

The Spinoff has won best news, current affairs or specialist publication at the 2026 New Zealand Media Awards.

The judges said: “The Spinoff distinguishes itself as New Zealand’s most fully realised modern media platform: strong journalism, multi-format depth, impressive metrics and a distinct voice now entrenched in the national news vernacular.”

The Spinoff strongly endorses this insightful take.

NBR was runner up for the award.

The Spinoff’s senior journalist Hayden Donnell was a finalist for best columnist, opinion or critique, and political reporter Lyric Wawiri-Smith was a finalist for best up and coming journalist.

Maiki Sherman won political journalist of the year at the awards, held in Auckland last night.

Sherman resigned from her role as TVNZ’s political editor earlier this month, saying her position had become untenable following intense pressure after a right-wing blogger broke a story about her conduct at a drinks event in finance minister Nicola Willis’ office a year earlier.

She got the biggest laugh of the night, when she took the stage and said, “Well, well, well…”

She said the award affirmed what she knew deep down – that she was a “darn good journalist”, and that she held politicians from across the political spectrum to account. 

Stuff won best news provider and RNZ’s Sam Sherwood won reporter of the year.

Afghan biscuits have attracted controversy over claims the name has racist origins. The real history is more complicated.

The Afghan biscuit is one of New Zealand’s greatest sweet treats. A chocolate and cornflake biscuit that is simultaneously crunchy and incredibly soft, smothered in a thick layer of chocolate icing, topped with half a shelled walnut. It’s a nationwide staple of bakeries and school tuck shops.

However, the biscuit has copped a bad rap in recent years over concerns that its name may be racist. Amid the George Floyd protests in 2020 and subsequent racial justice reckoning, many brands reconsidered their outdated product names. Uncle Ben’s rice, with a grey-haired, smiling black man on the packaging, became Ben’s Original, Eskimo lollies became Explorers, and Allen’s Red Skins became Red Rippers. 

The Afghan biscuit was caught up in this wave. Today, Afghan is most often a national identifier of the citizens of Afghanistan, though historically the term often referred to the Pashtun ethnic group. In 2021, a Christchurch cafe made headlines when it changed the name of its Afghan biscuit to the “1908 biscuit”. The cafe manager told Stuff the world was “changing continuously” and the new name “may make people feel less uncomfortable”.

At the same time, Griffin’s changed the name of their milk chocolate Afghans to milk chocolate roughs. A company spokesperson told Stuff at the time that the name could be a reference to the 19th century Afghan wars, although acknowledged “there are other theories in circulation”.

There was a lot of well-meaning concern. It’s highly likely that the Afghan biscuit could have inspired racially motivated insults at some point in its history. But as for the actual origin of the name, no one seemed too sure. 

The late food historian Helen Leach suggested the biscuit was named for Afghan people who drove camels in the Australian Outback from the 1860s to the 1930s. “The most reasonable answer to why they are named Afghans was there were Afghans running the camels in Australia,” she told Stuff. 

One of the more troubling theories suggest the biscuit is a reference to dark-coloured skin. Others have posited that the walnut looks like a turban or that the craggly texture resembles Afghanistan’s mountainous terrain.

While there are plenty of ideas circulating, no one seems to know for sure. So, in the interest of journalism, The Spinoff appointed its most mediocre white man (me) to dig through the historical archives and determine whether this chocolate biscuit is racist. 

The first recipe for something which could be described as an Afghan biscuit comes from the Timaru Herald in 1933. The recipe for “chocolate cornflake” biscuits is essentially identical to the modern form, including chocolate icing and a walnut. 

The following year, in 1934, Aulsebrook & Co began advertising an “Afghan biscuit”. The company, which merged with Arnott’s in the 1960s, was behind many of New Zealand’s most iconic biscuits including gingernuts and iced animals. The first full recipe under the name “Afghan biscuits” was published in the Hawke’s Bay Tribune in March 1935. It was another year before it first reached the pages of an Australian newspaper. 

What could have inspired someone in 1930s New Zealand to give a chocolate-cornflake cookie creation the name “Afghan”? The answer appears to lie in the Twentieth Annual Drapery, Textiles and Women’s Wear Exhibition held at the Royal Agricultural Hall in London in 1928. 

A writeup of the event in the Daily Express said: “‘Lido blue’ and ‘Afghan brown,’ according to the models seen at the Drapery Exhibition, are to be the favourite colours of the season. The Afghan brown has a copper glint.”

The models at the exhibition were right. Afghan brown took the fashion world by storm. By October that year, fabric and clothing stores in New Zealand were advertising Afghan brown fabrics for the first time. Throughout the late 1920s and 1930s, several fashion columns mention women  wearing Afghan brown outfits to social events. 

There is little explanation for why the colour was named Afghan. One British article, which was republished by New Zealand newspapers, said the colour was a “delicate compliment to the visit of King Amanullah”. Amanullah Khan, the king of Afghanistan, visited the UK in March 1928. 

A New Zealand women’s columnist, writing under the name Hinemoa in 1929, used this brief reference to draw the conclusion that the colour was in reference to his skin. “The visiting Royalties entertained last year in England are responsible for the new shade known as ‘Afghan Brown’”, she wrote. “We are afraid they might not take it as a compliment if they were aware that the tint is supposed to duplicate that of their complexions.”

Many shades of brown in the 1930s were named after the skin complexions of various ethnicities. The 1928 drapery exhibition also debuted a shade of brown called “Pawnee”, in reference to the native American tribal group. Several advertisements in New Zealand listed Afghan brown alongside a colour named after the N-word. 

The problem with the skin colour theory is that Amanullah Khan, like most Pashtun people, had rather fair skin. If the colour were named for skin tone, whoever named them had never actually looked at an Afghani person.

In 1976, the US National Bureau of Standards produced Color: Universal Language and Dictionary of Names, an attempt to standardise colour naming conventions. It listed Afghan as the “same as Chippendale” and Afghan red as identical to checkerberry or hypermic Red. 

While most British people would have had little contact with Afghan people (other than the soldiers who had served there in previous wars) they were familiar with Afghan export goods. This is where the connection to the 1928 drapery exhibition is important, because Afghanistan was a major exporter of luxury fabric products. 

One of the most famous was the Bokhara rug, which appears to be the inspiration for Afghan red. The traditional hand-woven carpet is dyed a rich red using the crushed roots of the madder plant and patterned with intricate brown detailing. The rugs are traditionally made from the wool of the adult Karakul sheep. 

The pelts of young Karakul lambs were highly prized for coats, hand warmers, and the traditional Karakul hat. Karakul pelt clothing came in a range of colours but was most commonly a reddish brown shade that matches the description of Afghan brown. The tight curls of the pelts create a ripple effect which is reminiscent of a walnut or the craggly texture of the biscuit. 

The exact etymology of the Afghan biscuit may be lost to time, but based on the historical sources it seems the most likely explanation is this:

After the chocolate cornflake biscuit was popularised in the 1930s, someone – possibly a marketing manager at Aulsebrook & Co – decided it needed a catchier name. They chose “Afghan” because it was a trendy term that accurately described the reddish-brown colour of the un-iced biscuit. The texture of the biscuit and/or the walnut may have added additional meaning due to the resemblance to Karakul pelts – which was likely also the inspiration for the colour’s name. 

Hospitality stalwart Geeling Ching’s favourite downtown Auckland bites include wonton soup inside a mall and freshly shucked oysters in the ferry building.

“I have lived in the central city for over 20 years. I’ve seen places come and go, the influence of our growing Asian population, explored the city’s venues both big and small, embraced the diversity we now offer,” says model, actress, hospitality maven and Tāmaki Makaurau icon Geeling Ching.

After decades working front-of-house at some of the city’s most legendary – and occasionally notorious establishments – including Cin Cin and Ramses, Ching has returned to Soul Bar & Bistro as general manager. Ching was involved with the waterfront institution at its opening in 2001, spending 12 years helping to shape the restaurant before eventually departing. Now, she’s back. “I have come full circle and am back in my hospo home,” she says.

Of her affection for her downtown Auckland stomping grounds, Ching says, “I love how cosmopolitan we have become. I love that we have such a great range of offerings to suit every taste and pocket, every lifestyle and every time of day (well, almost).”

Three words that sum up the food in downtown Auckland: That’s too hard!

Everyone has a dining out pet peeve. Mine is: Poor service, rudeness, lack of training.

The local dish I crave most: The kingfish tartare, mango, jalapeño, avocado and lime corn cracker at Somm on Princes Wharf. I loved the kokoda here and when they took it off the menu I nearly cried – but this replacement is equally addictive.

The best restaurant in downtown Auckland is: Soul, of course!

Why I love Soul: It is warm, reliable and welcoming – the kind of place people always feel good coming back to. We’re also incredibly lucky to have executive chef Gavin Doyle, who really gets to unleash his creativity here. The menu has that perfect mix of Soul favourites that people crave and fresh new dishes that make dining here feel exciting every time you visit.

My go-to order is: It was the delicious fig toast with ricotta and cherry mostarda (the perfect bite) but sadly figs are out of season now; so maybe the pappardelle with beef short rib ragu – the ultimate comfort food. Or the green goddess – tastes delicious and it’s good for you! And there’s always the perla potatoes with miso beurre blanc – super more-ish.

When I’m craving something cheap and cheerful I head to: The White Lady. Either for a ham and cheese toastie or if I’m really hungry a classic cheeseburger. Always reliable. The Lady has been around for so long for a good reason. And it’s always a great place to people-watch.

The most underrated local gem is: Ekiben – the takeaway sushi store located in the Waitematā train station. Opened by a team of Korean chefs (who worked at Soul previously), the sushi is super fresh and delicious. They also have ekiben (little meals on rice), noodles, snacks. Try the “scoop pies” – perfectly sized desserts for a sweet treat. They do catering and helpfully, they’re open till 7pm if I need to grab a quick dinner.

A place I’ve been dying to try is: Sumi at City Works Depot. I love Japanese food and I love that we are seeing more “street-food” style venues rather than fine dining-esque establishments.

Also Trivet in the JW Marriot. Wallace Mua is an ex-Soul chef. He’s creative, kind, a truly lovely human being. And he met his wife at Soul so it’s a gorgeous love story. They are beautiful people in every way.

For a late-night food fix you’ll find me at: The White Lady.

Downton Auckland’s best… 

Sandwich: The bánh mì at Nam Nam in Commercial Bay. Roast pork is my go-to; they have the balance of ingredients down perfectly

Bowl of soup: Eden Noodles’ wontons in chicken soup – a childhood favourite.

Baked treat: I LOVE pies, so Roti Bros in Commercial Bay would have to be a favourite. A pie in roti pastry? Genius!

What defines a great pie? A pie is a very simple concept so every part must be great – the pastry (or in this case the roti), the filling (all delicious); truly a sum of only two parts that need to be perfect.

If you’re after spice, make a beeline for: Cafe Hanoi. Vietnamese food tends toward a softer kind of spice – but still so delicious.

A little local treat that always cheers me up: A dozen freshly shucked oysters with a glass of bubbles at Shucker Brothers in the ferry building, while waiting for the ferry.

My favourite grocery shop: Japan Mart – so many interesting things! I always end up buying more than I had planned.

For the best produce, I stop in at: The Fish Market in Wynyard Quarter. Everything seafood-y in one place, from fresh to smoked to frozen, whole or fillets, shellfish and crustaceans, tins of great sardines, even lemons!

For outstanding people watching, go to: The White Lady after midnight on a Friday or Saturday night. Or, the front terrace at Soul any time.

The place I’m most likely to bump into someone I know: Ditto the above.

The place I go to avoid bumping into anyone I know: Ah if I told you that then it wouldn’t be a secret would it? But I’m quite fond of hotel lobby bars….

The place I return to again and again: Grand Harbour does the best yum cha in the city. A favourite with family and friends. It’s a must when people say they have never been to yum cha – they are blown away by the experience.

A restaurant I would love to relocate to downtown Auckland: Andiamo. Good Italian is hard to find downtown.

Why I love eating in downtown Auckland: It’s a foodie’s paradise; you can always find something good whether you’re looking to splurge, celebrate, eat cheap and cheerful, or grab something on the run.

Rachael King reviews Charlotte Grimshaw’s latest novel.

There’s a video currently going around the internet where a guy called Baron Ryan takes on the role of both an interviewer and a writer. Interviewer Baron pesters writer Baron to confess that his novel is all based on his own life, which the author denies in an exasperated manner. Reader, I shared it with the caption: “reviewing Charlotte Grimshaw’s latest book.”

I suppose if you came to The Black Monk knowing nothing about the author, you would have a completely different experience. After all, novels are fiction, and it’s famously rude, and frankly exasperating, to suggest otherwise. And yet.

If you have read Grimshaw’s other work, fiction and non-fiction, the disclaimer at the beginning of The Black Monk – “All characters in this novel are fictitious. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidence” – immediately seems disingenuous. But below it lies another statement and a clue that the games are about to begin: “All characters in this novel are fictitious. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is synchronicity.”

Alice Liddell (the name is surely not accidental with its connection to Lewis Carroll and looking-glasses) is a children’s author, but possibly not a very good one: “Did she write children’s fiction because she avoided facing the world? Could she write a novel for adults…? Not the banal clichés, the stereotypes she’d been getting away with, her mad professors and gutsy girls and brave, sarky boys…” As she watches her older brother Cedric (Ceddy) slowly poison himself with alcohol, she finds herself haunted by a shadow she dubs the Black Monk. First described by Ceddy when he was young, the shadow now inhabits Alice’s world, always lurking in the periphery, making her cast her mind back over her life and find connections everywhere. The monk is made flesh in Anton, a mysterious German shoe salesman she first encounters in Karori cemetery, when she’s young and hungover. The only proof she has that Anton exists and is not a figment of her imagination is the tooth she keeps hidden in the back of a freezer. It’s a memento, a talisman, one of a few that pepper the novel.

If you are looking for a linear story, The Black Monk is not it. Like Grimshaw’s memoir The Mirror Book, it is fragmentary; it jumps around in time periods, doubling back on itself, reiterating and repeating dialogue, interrogating and revisiting scenes. When the narrator says “Now, Alice sat at her desk,” after a flashback, it’s unclear when “now” is, and anyone waiting for the story to “start” will possibly read until the end.

Thoreau said, “Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still”, and it’s safe to say that Grimshaw has a favourite bone. I haven’t read all her books, but the latest three – two novels and a memoir, plus the short story also named The Black Monk – are all about a woman who is a writer grappling with truth and fiction within her family. All include a cold, gaslighting mother, a mysterious woman that the narrator becomes attracted to (in the case of the memoir, it is the absence of this woman that is noted: the lack of a close female friend), a psychotherapist, a shadowy figure, and an unhappy family (though they will deny it). If I think of Tolstoy’s quote about all happy families being alike, this is turned on its head in Grimshaw’s fictional worlds: all these families are remarkably similar.

In this novel you’ll find elements of The Mirror Book and all her other novels, including an acrobatic paragraph that tours through the author’s whole back catalogue of titles. In a dream, Anton talks to her about “provocation and guilt and foreign cities, about opportunity and singularity … a starlit peninsula … and a woman whose name meant ‘blue butterfly’.” But there are also elements to be found from Grimshaw’s columns, and her past writing on auto-fiction, in which she invoked Karl Ove Knausgård and Catherine Chidgey, and her musings on Trump and Ukraine, which are other ever-present threads through her work. 

In The Mirror Book, Grimshaw touched only briefly on her relationship with her brother, Oliver, who died in 2024, two years after the memoir was published. In it, she wrote that his “behaviour seemed to me not only strange but opaque. His past and present life was one of the mysteries I’d tried to explore, but my questions were blocked and disapproved of by my literary family.”

In The Black Monk, Alice decides to tackle an adult novel (though she wonders if she has the confidence). She describes it as “a story about herself and her brother, and that she had the idea of writing a character who was a shadow, one she had never named.” Elsewhere she spells it out: “She’d never written about Ceddy’s addiction, nor described his wild, erratic personality.” For Alice, it’s time to finally write about her brother. “‘I’m writing a confession’, she said and added, ‘But it’s fiction.’” 

Recently in The Post, Grimshaw spoke about her brother, who was an alcoholic, but stated, “The characters in my book are completely fictional as are their experiences.”

The Mirror Book again: “Fiction is an arrangement of the facts just as the writer wanted them. It’s the world through the looking glass, strands of our own stories appearing in fiction although they’re denied in real life.”

Alice believes she is collaborating with the universe, with the Fates. Each night she emails what she has written and imagines the emails being intercepted, the data distorted, “so Alice could legitimately say: this is not a true confession, this is fiction.” And yet, she is also “shaping the data received from the ether. She was making art out of all that was unsayable.”

I’m no expert but I’m familiar enough with some key Jungian ideas, especially about storytelling, to see them everywhere. Grimshaw quotes Jung liberally, and Alice begins to suspect that the Black Monk, the shadow that haunts her, is an aspect of her self. The shadow will write the truth she is unable to say out loud. It will create order from the chaos of her family.

Alice thinks she sees connection in everything, “because storyteller”. She believes in “some kind of collective consciousness, because otherwise how did she focus on the very thing that was significant, that was going to be significant. How did she know?” Like Jung – whose archetypes are found in everything from The Wizard of Earthsea to Star Wars – Alice believes that we’re wired to look for connection and meaning in everything, but that she is walking “the border between paranoia and prescience”. Synchronicity is all well and good, but when does it start to get worrisome? Alice’s connections – her paranoia and her prescience – are one of the most interesting aspects of the book. They lend the novel an uncanny, mysterious air, verging on the supernatural (if it were a film, there would be liberal use of a Hitchcockian dolly zoom). The narrative repeats itself, making points over and over, almost word for word, which does start to feel delusional. Are these characters even real? Did that really happen the way Alice recounts it? Surely not everything is connected? 

And yet here is the reader, this reader at any rate, scanning the text for connections to the author’s other work, fiction and non-fiction, trying not to be interviewer Baron. It starts to feel like living inside a reality TV show where you’re not sure who is real and who is an actor.

More connections: another thing that links all the books I’ve mentioned is the strange activity of writing fiction. How as novelists our unconscious builds connections between things; how we use the people around us and the events in our own lives, sometimes disguised, sometimes in plain view, sometimes deliberately, sometimes not. Similar mantras come up here as the ones that emerged in The Mirror Book: go and make a story out of it; life gives you material, so use it; telling your story is existentially important. Here, the psychotherapist says, ‘Telling your story is important… But if you are to heal, your narrative has to be true.” This is echoed by Cedric, the brother: “If you can’t tell your story… there is no order, only anarchy, and you are alone.”

So, here we have a novel about a woman writing a novel that will be a confession, but also a eulogy, and it will be about her brother, and her mother, and it will be true, but it will be distorted enough that it will be fiction. The novel will try to make sense of all the connections Alice finds around her, because she is an artist “making meaning and beauty in a chaotic, disorderly world”. 

Perhaps The Black Monk is a necessary step to close the loop, now that the author’s mother and brother are no longer alive. There is such a poignancy to Alice’s efforts to connect with them both – to help Cedric out of the mire of his addiction, and to find any kindness from her mother, Rula, who is a facsimile of the mother in Grimshaw’s novel Mazarine, in The Mirror Book, and in the Black Monk short story. She leans away from her daughter in photographs, a familiar image. She finds “endless jokes” in life but denies family problems, offering her daughter no warmth.

Alice’s childhood and adolescence mirror the author’s on multiple points, and with a memoir existing that uses the same material, there is no longer plausible deniability, and perhaps that is the whole point of it. An author denies that her book is anything other than fiction; the reader knows the truth. There is the evidence, right there.

The Black Monk feels like another piece in the Grimshaw “uber book”, which is how David Mitchell’s novels are often described. They fight with the truth, with fiction; they take us on a journey through one of the most original minds in New Zealand literature. And in among the repeated recycling of questions and attempted answers there are arresting descriptions of the streets outside the window, or the weather, which this review hasn’t even touched on. There are side characters who appear and disappear with their own mysterious intentions that may or may not be imaginary or repurposed by Alice’s mind hungry for synchronicity. 

You don’t read this book for the plot. You read it for the mind-bending, impressionistic wordiness of it all, for the tour through a character’s splintered psyche, through the “I and the I and the I” of it all. You also don’t read a Charlotte Grimshaw novel passively. You’re constantly on your toes, looking for meaning and connection. You are part of the experiment. You are accepting that this is fiction, you are complicit, and therein lies its genius, and the genius of its author.

The Black Monk by Charlotte Grimshaw ($38, Penguin NZ) is available to purchase from Unity Books.

A new board game seeks to teach young people the power of politics, without all the boring stuff. And it’s already approved by parliamentarians.

Would you make a good politician? Do you have what it takes to gain influence, pass policies, win seats and form a government? Wait, do you even have the foggiest clue about how our democracy works? 

These questions are the aim of the game in Democrasee, which seeks to make understanding politics a little more fun. It’s already been trialled in classrooms by rangatahi, who have, apparently, come away with dreams of actually making it into parliament. A number of MPs have also tried their hand at it, and if you ask defence minister Chris Penk, it’s “almost as fun as the real thing”.

The game is the brainchild of Chris Pongi, a man who’s more of a gaming geek than a political tragic. His past ventures include Taufamana, a collective that incorporates Pasifika storytelling into chess to get youth into the game. With Democrasee, Pongi wants to bring an “innovation in education” to schools and share his passion for helping young people understand difficult topics.

Too many people have a one-size-fits-all approach to education, Pongi says, and some methods of teaching put too much onus on the student for failing to understand a concept. “I believe that the teacher should be the one that should cater the way we divvy out information [to different learners], so it can be met halfway,” Pongi says.

In Democrasee, your end goal is to get as many seats as possible in parliament so you can form a government. It’s like Monopoly in the sense that travellers move along spaces on the board hoping to land on, and own, an electorate seat. Because it would be a bit of a stretch to fit all 71 electorates in Aotearoa on the board, some are lumped together – for example, the South Auckland tile represents six seats. You can also win Māori seats, and negotiate and form coalitions with your fellow players.

To win the game, you’re going to need some winning policies. The policy cards you collect as you travel across the board can range from issues in the justice sector like legalising cannabis, to economic issues like raising paid parental leave. Then you also have your power cards, which can shift alliances and force your and other players’ hands – if you pull the “campaign overspending fine”, you lose one seat.

Pongi has never really been a massive politics guy. He didn’t vote in his first eligible election, but since becoming a father and nurse, he’s realised the long-term effects that policymakers have on society. “I didn’t understand it and didn’t really care too much for it,” Pongi says, “But I’ve got three kids now, and I know that anything that happens in the future is always going to impact them long after I’m not here.” He’s also found inspiration from his community, citing the powers of a close friend who works as a policy analyst to “save thousands of lives with the stroke of a pen”.

The Spinoff sat down for a quick play with Mt Roskill MP Carlos Cheung, Takanini MP Rima Nakhle, youth minister James Meager and defence minister Chris Penk. You would have thought it was poker night in the National Party caucus room – policy debates included some jovial hollering, alliances were formed and broken, and Meager proved himself to be capable of winning a Māori seat.

Players vote on their competitors’ favourite policies and surprisingly – for this crowd at least – my small business fund policy was trumped by Nakhle’s policy to make Matariki a public holiday. Pro tip: you can never really bet on what policy is going to be the biggest crowd pleaser by trying to cater to your fellow players. I never would have predicted I would be out-woked by the National Party.

As well as MPs, nearly 200 students across three Auckland schools have play-tested the game. Their feedback has helped developed the final version, which is the third iteration of the game. Pongi and his co-founder, educator Emma Kim, only launched Democrasee’s PledgeMe page this week, with children’s minister Karen Chhour as their first donor. You can order the game (in a family friend or classroom-friendly version) from the page, but you won’t find Democrasee in your local Whitcoulls — Pongi and Kim are hoping to raise $40,000 to roll the game out on a wider scale.

After our match, Penk told The Spinoff he believed the “literal gamifying of politics is a smart move.” He suspected the visual component of the game would make politics more interesting to young person. As for the ever so eloquent Penk, his favourite part of the game was the “passionate and parochial arguments with colleagues about the relative merits of two entirely different policies.”

Trade minister Todd McClay has also tried his hand at the game, and given it a thumbs up. “Our commitment to democracy and protection of the way we elect our parliament is one of the most important principles we must protect,” McClay said. “This game means more New Zealanders, especially our young people, can more easily play their part in how our country is governed.”

The Spinoff heads to the comedy festival. 

Guy Williams is one of New Zealand’s most high-profile political comedians. The problem is that political material doesn’t always mesh well with his standup persona of brash, unhinged idiot. Who wants to hear that guy’s political views?

This year’s show might have solved the problem. Titled Rich People Are Stealing From You And Blaming Brown People And Trans People And Some People Believe Them Aaahhhhhh!, it’s ruder and more low-brow than ever, but might be his best piece of social commentary to date. If you could summarise a thesis statement, it’s that he thinks the right has cornered edgy comedy for too long and “the left needs more fucked cunts”. 

Williams opened by informing the audience that he was about to say some “fucked shit” but reassured them that underneath it all he was a “good person”. He yelled “we love our trans brothers and sisters” and then ranted about why we should bring back the word “retard”, called Christopher Luxon a “human buttplug of a man” and suggested that David Seymour should do things to himself that may be illegal to print.

It was an hour of well-crafted dark humour with moments that would shock even the most jaded audiences. It was a direct, in-your-face pushback against political correctness from an explicitly socially liberal perspective. 

He’s a confident performer, comfortable with crowd work and improvisation, with a self-awareness of his public identity as a comedian and local celebrity. He knows he has a unique ability to reach across the cultural divide and appeal to both the educated urban elite and what he described as the “leg tattoo” demographic – disenfranchised young men, NRL and UFC fans, bogans, the kind of chud who goes on New Zealand Today to boast about stealing a monkey from the zoo. 

He posited a theory for his crossover appeal: he came from a privileged family, but grew up in a regional city (Nelson) and spent much of his time watching or playing sports. He spent almost as much time talking about rugby boots as he did making pedophile jokes. 

As liberal parties around the world navel-gaze about their inability to reach young men, Williams is part of an international movement of left-wing comedians who have figured it out: be ruder than them, funnier than them, and unabashedly confident in yourself.  As if to emphasise this, Williams ended the set by dominating an audience member in a game of one-on-one basketball on stage. He immediately stripped the ball from them, hit a spin move, drilled a fadeaway from the elbow, held his arms up in triumph and roared “I’m good”. /Joel MacManus

Joe Daymond’s Comedy Mixtape

It’s not easy trying to entertain a crowd of Wellingtonians at 6pm on a school night. Just ask local legend Joe Daymond, who brought punters in from the cold to the capital’s Hannah Playhouse on Tuesday for a 90-minute showcase, Comedy Mixtape. It might have been a struggle to get the audience warmed up at first, but Daymond’s cool crowd work, the line up of seven comedians and a few dirty jokes brought the house down by the end.

The vibe was supposed to be that of a garage party, Daymond said, before adding, “I’ve never been to a garage party with so many Pākehā”.

His lineup included Indian comic Jenice Goveas, who had a good bit in finding her inner white woman now that she’s an almost-resident. Tama Alexander had a joke about dressing up as Barack Obama – his leftie friends loved the impression, but hated the black face. It was the type of joke you feel like you don’t want to find funny, but it just was funny.

The standout performance undoubtedly came from US comedian Martin Urbano, whose horny jokes about eating arse earned the biggest laugh of the night. Because we live in the age of the internet, Urbano topped his routine off with a social media friendly skit: he fit as many jokes as possible into 60 seconds.

It almost feels wrong to go to a local comedy show in Wellington and say the best act was the American, but, hey, I’m simply reporting the truth. It also made my boyfriend and I wonder, did we find Urbano the funniest because we’ve been conditioned by the internet to believe American accents and jokes are just inherently funny? Much to think about.

But the best bit in the mixtape didn’t come from Daymond and his mates. It came from an audience member, who described her first date, 22 years earlier, with the partner who accompanied her to the show. She was on the JVille train, he was on the Hutt Valley line, and their paths converged at Te Aro Park, otherwise known as Pigeon Park. Cue an anecdote about her mate hooking up with a cousin in a public bathroom. It was a classic Wellington love story.

Funnily enough, Daymond pointed out, if we were actually at a garage party, this really was the type of shit you’d be hearing. I would have paid good money just to see a show centred on Daymond and the Pigeon Park lady.

Daymond’s mentor and Wellington comedy legend Raybon Kan closed out the show. His brand of comedy skewed to the older generations, with jokes that asked: do you remember the days before TV shows used to do a “previously on?” The days when you just had to remember what you experienced a week prior without technology doing all the remembering for you?

Even if this didn’t land with the Gen Zs in the crowd, I got plenty out of listening to the gentleman behind me giving a good guffaw and saying, “it’s so true.”/ Lyric Waiwiri-Smith

Henry Yan

Wellington’s Cavern Club is a bit of a dank hole-in-the-wall, but it’s a cosy place to catch some comedy. It’s probably a smaller venue than what the Auckland-born but now Melbourne-based Henry Yan is used to these days, but the intimacy of it all only heightens his comedic character’s clumsy social skills. During a set focused on the highs and lows of life as a perpetually single 30-year-old, you really start to feel like you’re on one of those bad first dates you’ll never stop telling your friends about.

I say this all in the most complimentary way possible. I loved Yan’s show, not just for the affordable pints and free Best Mayo sachets (courtesy of the comedy festival’s sponsor), but for the fact that I smiled and laughed so hard that my face almost hurt. 

The strength of Yan’s comedy is in his awkwardness, the way he says “haha, crazy…” after every other line (got me every time), the way he takes a joke bombing and turns it into another opportunity to make another joke, appealing to the audience’s pity.

Yan’s audience work was also impactful; he seemed to make a genuine connection with a fellow spreadsheet-obsessive in the crowd. Unfortunately, he wasn’t so lucky with the one single woman at the show. But there’s more comedic value in quiet rejection than the alternative.

Yan’s show wraps with the story of the first (and only) time he told a woman “I love you”. In classic Millennial fashion, he does it over text and it ends in him being blocked. It’s depressing and darkly tongue-in-cheek, but a dating experience all digital natives are familiar with. 

Yan dips in and out of this central theme of the show throughout, but manages to come back and tie it up with a nice bow. 

I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw a lot more of this Billy T Award nominee appear on our screens soon. Put him on Taskmaster, immediately. / Lyric Waiwiri-Smith

Sounds Funny with Suzy Cato and friends

Suzy Cato walked out on stage wearing denim overalls and giant, dangly heart earrings, sang “It’s our time, kia ora, talofa” and the shitstorm that is the world right now immediately began to recede.

This was a comedy show for kids, but it was also a show for adults who are, frankly, sick of being adults. What an antidote to laugh at bum jokes, to hear “knock, knock” from the stage and watch as a theatre of excited children yelled back “who’s there?” But wait, there was more. What a revelation to discover performers so talented that you, the parent, do not have to put on laughter for your children’s sake, but instead need to cross your legs so you don’t risk accidentally weeing a bit. 

Cato (who does not age) brought along Florence Hartigan as Captain Crossbone and joke-book writer Tom E. Moffatt, but it was comedian and musician Sam Smith and puppeteer Jon Coddington who really brought the house down. 

Smith, who was the lead writer for 7 Days and comes up with tasks for Taskmaster NZ, should consider releasing the song ‘Your Body Can Make Any Colour But Blue’. Seriously, New Zealand has a real dearth of songs about secretions and ooze. If he wants to do a vinyl version, it would make sense to chuck ‘Jerry the Dinosaur’ (“eating all the humans was his only flaw”) on the B-side. 

As for Coddington, who knew we needed to see a puppet do one-handed press-ups and imitate a duck? Let me tell you: we fucking did. 

The show ended with an open mic. Absolute respect to the 4-year-old who confidently took the stage, grabbed the mic, and went “I’ve forgotten my joke”. 

The only disappointment of the 90-minute show was that Auckland’s Q Theatre was only half full. Too many missed out on an afternoon of wholesome, life-affirming fun. 

Now, let’s all give a giant pakpaki to Suzy and friends. / Veronica Schmidt

Stephen K Amos

Stephen K Amos brought the visitor-to-New Zealand jokes. He had the accent down: “New Ziland”. He’d done his due diligence: “Don’t ever fly into Wellington, for fuck’s sake.” And he was ready to gently rile us up: “Vegemite? That can fuck right off.”

If you had followed the British comedian’s long and impressive career, though, that was about where the surprises ended. The show went back over well-traversed territory: the Covid pandemic, his parents, and that comedy is subjective. Some of the lines he’d first trotted out more than a decade ago.

If the crowd had been looking for fresh or edgy, they would have been out of luck, but the audience that showed up at 5pm on a Saturday seemed happy enough. They wanted the equivalent of meat and three veg and they got it. 

Amos threaded audience interaction expertly through the show – that poor bastard in the front row – built to the biggest laughs, and played to the middle-aged audience, with lines about the bygone hardship of manually winding car windows up, the proliferation of thoughtless opinion in the social media age, and the harshness of parents back in the day.

In other words, an oldie but a goodie. /Veronica Schmidt

The Christchurch Comedy Gala

At the start of the month, Christchurch showed up in force at the town hall for the first comedy gala to make it down south since 2017. Hosted by an astoundingly spry Dai Henwood, who revealed he had just undergone a round of chemo the week prior, the evening was a smorgasbord of over a dozen acts and just as many delectable compliments for the Garden City. “I can feel the smugness coming off you,” Henwood told the crowd. 

Along with Christchurch’s glow-up, there were a few other topics that were trending over the course of the night. More than one comedian had Gandalf’s infamous utterance “you shall not pass” as a punchline – is Middle Earth back, or did it never leave? Other popular subjects included bisexuality, autism and David Seymour. A couple of the men talked a bit about World War 3, and just as many women talked a bit about their sagging boobs. 

Last year’s Billy T winner Hoani Hotene was a local highlight, his laid back cadence a welcome gear shift to the general freneticism of the evening as he talked about his time in kura kaupapa among kids from all walks of life (including very talented bulldog sketch artists). Angella Dravid also brought the house down early on with her wide-eyed, deadpan delivery of some of the most shocking and surprising combination of words you’ve ever heard in your life. 

As for the international acts, Venezuelan comedian Ivan Aristeguieta brought a plethora of clever observations about how twisted the English language actually is. Australia’s Felicity Ward leaned on the speaker like a good friend at the pub while opening up about dating after divorce. Also from across the ditch was Elouise Eftos, whose sublimely confident set tackled everything from street harassment to sexy Italians (and roasted a local plumber for good measure). 

There were some moments that didn’t quite land. The crowd energy was waning by the time Christchurch’s Court Jesters took the stage to improvise a song as the final act of the night, and I wonder if they would have got bigger laughs earlier on in the setlist. I also have to shout out the punters in the front row who kept popping out of their seats to fetch more pottles of free mayonnaise. It’s been nine years since Christchurch had the chance, and here’s hoping we get it again. / Alex Casey

Everything you need to know about the A-League Men’s season climax, at Go Media Stadium on Saturday night.

Before this season, no New Zealand side had made an A-League final. On Saturday, Auckland FC, resplendent in black and blue, will be the second – and they’ll be hoping to go one better than the Phoenix Women who fell valiantly at the final hurdle last weekend.

Here’s what you need to know. 

Start with the essentials. When and where? 

Auckland FC and Sydney FC meet in the A-League final, kickoff 8.10pm on Saturday May 23 at Go Media Stadium aka Mt Smart. It’s sold out – 27,000-plus will be there – and it will be televised live on Sky Sport and delayed on Sky Open. 

If you’re heading along to Fortress Penrose, public transport is free with your match ticket. There’s also a watch party down at Britomart. The weather forecast is promising.  

Aren’t they playing at Eden Park?

Ah, no. You must be thinking of Auckland FC B.

Come again?

Auckland FC’s second team play South Melbourne in the OFC Pro League final – a weird new Fifa-concocted competition – on Sunday afternoon in Mt Eden. 

Let’s stick with Saturday night. Are these the top two teams in the A-League?

Neither side in the final made the top two – the first time that has happened in the league’s history. Both had to win a playoff then went into two-leg semifinals, in which Auckland FC gave Adelaide FC a shellacking away, 3-0, and the Sky Blues of Sydney overcame Newcastle Jets, who had topped the normal-season table by five points, on penalties. Auckland gets the home final by virtue of having finished above Sydney in the league.

What is the form guide?

Auckland FC had a spluttery final stretch but burst to life in that away game at Adelaide – their first normal-time victory in eight games. Sydney, chasing a record sixth A-League title, have only won two of their last 10 matches in regular play. Both sides had to win a penalty shoot-out on their way to the final. 

This is just Auckland’s second season. Where did it all go so right? 

Auckland FC exceeded all expectations in their debut season, winning the Premier’s Plate for topping the table, before falling in their semifinal. To make the final in season number two is something remarkable. 

The success is in part down to the steady leadership of head coach Steve Corica, who has drawn on vast experience as a player (including long service at Sydney FC) and in coaching. The squad was selected from a blank page with much dependence on data, along with a commitment to ensuring a local core within the group.

And the crowd!

Auckland FC, the third time of trying a fully professional team in the city, has exorcised the demons of efforts past by developing meaningful relationships with existing clubs across the city, leveraging growing appetite for the sport and building a superb matchday experience for fans, from the family-friendly hoopla at one end of the stadium to the joyous animal choir of the Port at the other. As the song goes, we’re black and blue, bay 22. (If you’re in bays 21-23, by the way, it’s about as reasonable to get salty at anyone jumping around and singing as it is to get mad about bouncing on a bouncy castle.) Kudos goes to CEO Nick Becker, whose commitment to the cause is epitomised in his being spotted tearing it up with the small, diehard posse of away fans at Adelaide last weekend. 

It doesn’t hurt, either, that there has been some hefty investment from Bill Foley, the Las Vegas billionaire financier, occasional Trump backer, sporting magnate and Master of the Foleyverse.

The Foleyverse?

His Black Knight Sports and Entertainment empire includes the Vegas Golden Knights, who play ice hockey in the desert, and interests in a number of football teams. Top of the list is AFC Bournemouth, who have enjoyed a scintillating season in the English Premier League, and stand on the brink of qualification for the Champions League. It’s an extraordinary achievement for a club that plays at a ground where the capacity currently stands at 11,307, well less than half the size of Mt Smart.

Other clubs with Black Knight funds include Lorient in France and Moreirense in Portugal. They recently sold their stake in Scotland’s Hibernian, and are reportedly poised to take ownership of the Exeter Chiefs rugby union side. If you’re reading this, Bill, can we interest you in a dynamic Auckland-based rugby franchise?

Who are the players to watch on Saturday night?

In goal, Michael Woud had a tough gig as successor to crowd favourite Alex Paulsen, but he’s really proved his mettle in recent weeks, with a handful of killer, clutch saves in knockout games. Captain and former Japanese international Hiroki Sakai is a talismanic presence on the right of defence. Francis de Vries is returning to full fitness at just the right time. They should name a stand after his left foot. 

Up front, Englishman Sam Cosgrove is hardly balletic, but a master of making a nuisance, and you cannot argue with a goalscoring record that made him joint winner of the league’s golden boot. Alas Uruguayan Guillermo May is injured, but as a consolation the month has been named after him. The stage is set for Jesse Randall, in his swansong before heading to Dundee United. At his best he glides across a different pitch from everyone else. 

And should a super-sub needed, cometh the hour for hometown hero Liam Gillion, football’s swashbuckling answer to Westley from The Princess Bride. 

Do the other lot have any players?

Sure. Sydney keeper Harrison Devenish-Meares, glows like a road cone and saves like a roadblock, having kept 11 clean sheets this season. Tiago Quintal, a 19-year-old with immense potential, is a danger from midfield.

Got any omens?

Of course. 

1. Sydney FC have never beaten Auckland FC in a competitive match. 
2. The first ever A-League final, in 2005, was played in Sydney. Steve Corica scored the winning goal for Sydney FC. This is the first ever A-League final to be played in Auckland. The Auckland FC head coach is Steve Corica. 
3. Success, they say, has many parents. Steve Corica and Patrick Kisnorbo, coaches of the two finalists, both have Italian parents. Italy’s beloved football league, Serie A, finishes this weekend, but already Inter Milan have been crowned champions, ahead of Napoli. Inter Milan play in black and blue vertical stripes. Napoli play in sky blue.*

Hurray for the final. Boo for the end of the season. It will be quite a wait, right?

Beautiful-game enthusiasts can enjoy the Champions League final early New Zealand time on Sunday May 31. And then face a yawning, agonising gap of 12 days until the World Cup starts.

*Sydney FC will presumably play in their white away strip but this tortured omen still works because Napoli’s away strip is also white.

The top 10 sales lists recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.

AUCKLAND

1 Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout (Viking Penguin, $38)

First there was Olive Kitteridge, then there was Lucy Barton, now there is Artie Dam.

2 One Last Question, Prime Minister by Barry Soper (HarperCollins, $40)

“The part-memoir, part-political history retraces the five decades Soper spent working in parliament’s press gallery, chaptered by the 12 prime ministers who ruled the roost throughout his working career. From Robert Muldoon to Christopher Luxon, no one is spared from Soper’s honest thoughts or the insider gossip he’s collected on them – though one particular Labour leader cops far more flak than most.” Read more of The Spinoff’s Lyric Waiwiri-Smith’s review of Soper’s memoir, here.

3 Empire of AI by Karen Hao (Penguin, $35)

Get a copy to Nicola Willis, stat. She might not be so enamoured with AI after reading Hao’s extraordinary insights into the cost of Gen AI. Then again, we’re all just human capital hoping to be replaced, aren’t we?

4 The Valley: Crime and Punishment in a New Zealand City by Asher Emanuel (Bridget Williams Books, $40)

One of the stand-out books of the year and the revelation of a major literary talent. Read Toby Manhire’s thoughts on The Valley here, and listen to special Gone by Lunchtime episode, here.

5 Goliath’s Curse by Luke Kemp (Penguin, $30)

“Now we live in a single global Goliath. Growth-obsessed, extractive institutions like the fossil fuel industry, big tech, and military-industrial complexes rule our world and produce new ways of annihilating our species, from climate change to nuclear war. Our systems are now so fast, complex and interconnected that a future collapse will likely be global, swift and irreversible. All of us now faces a choice- we must learn to democratically control Goliath, or the next collapse may be our last.”

Pairs well with item three, above.

6 All Her Lives: Nine Stories by Ingrid Horrocks (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $35)

Winner of the 2026 Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction at this year’s Ocks! Horrocks won because her writing is deeply thoughtful, deft and engaging. The stories weave women’s lives across time and space with subtle links between them. All hail the short story! You can also read Horrocks’ insightful books confessional, here.

7 Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir (Penguin, $28)

Uplifting cli-fi apocalypse featuring sweet alien friends is clinging on.

8 Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke (Fourth Estate, $37)

The one about the tradwife who wakes up in the past and has to suffer what tradwifery really meant.

9 Good Settler: Essays From Other People’s Lands by Richard Shaw (Massey University Press, $40) 

Shaw’s third book examining colonisation.

10 Famesick by Lena Dunham (Harper Collins, $40)

“The book passes through a number of ‘relationships’ (Adam Driver, stereotypical intense and rather boring actor; Jack Antonoff as cutesy, conflict-averse boyfriend for way too long) but to me, it’s mostly about Dunham’s relationship with Konner, and I think Konner does come off badly in it. Even while reading chapter after chapter of Dunham’s illnesses and Konner’s at times dismissive and unfeeling reactions, I knew how infuriating Dunham must have been as a collaborator. So where Dunham often attempted to paint Konner as the unfeeling, ambitious villain to Dunham’s genius, nervous, unwell heroine, I didn’t buy it. BUT, the key detail is given in passing: ‘she was 14 years older than me’. Read more from Mad Chapman and Claire Mabey’s conversation about Dunham’s latest memoir, right here on The Spinoff.

 

WELLINGTON

1 All Her Lives: Nine Stories by Ingrid Horrocks (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $35)

2 The Valley: Crime and Punishment in a New Zealand City by Asher Emanuel (Bridget Williams Books, $40)

Contentious bills ruled the week in parliament.

It’s overwhelming how much has happened this week in parliament and around it. For the last two months, the House has either sat in extended sittings or under urgency as the government tries to get through the last of its workload ahead of November’s election. Add next week’s budget day into the mix, and you’ve got MPs working over-over time – but working harder doesn’t always mean working smarter.

With Nicola Willis in Auckland to announce 8,700 job cuts in the public service, her colleague Chris Bishop wore the finance minister hat during Tuesday’s question time. He faced up to Labour’s whip-smart finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds, but it ended in someone else serving the House a lesson in economics.

Edmonds questioned whether cuts to frontline services were being used to “help save [Willis’s] budget after giving tax breaks for landlords and tobacco companies”. She was referencing the reinstatement of full interest deductions for residential property, and the repeal of smokefree legislation enacted by the last Labour government, part of the coalition agreement between National and NZ First. Willis had previously predicted the latter would retain the government a cool $1bn from ongoing cigarette sales. The government also halved the tax rate on heated tobacco products, sold by Phillip Morris, which some use instead of cigarettes.

Gruff as ever, NZ First leader Winston Peters rose for a point of order. It was a “total lie” to suggest any tax break had been applied, Peters said. “If less cigarettes are sold, there’s less tax to collect.”

“You’re saying that if someone’s not charged a tax that they were previously being charged, that’s not a tax cut?” asked Labour leader Chris Hipkins.

“No, you idiot,” Peters grumbled

So, after some back and forth, Edmonds changed her wording to “excise levy breaks for heated tobacco companies that are only applicable to one tobacco company”. 

Later, when it was Labour’s jobs and income spokesperson Ginny Anderson’s turn to question Bishop, the minister went for a different line. Sacking nearly 9,000 workers shouldn’t hurt, he argued, because “in the private sector, people lose their jobs and go for new jobs every day of the week”.

Wednesday saw a marathon reading of members’ bills. Act MP Laura McClure closed off the first reading of her deepfakes bill and sent it on its way to select committee with the support of the whole House. Other bills headed to the select committee include Labour MP Lemauga Lydia Sosene’s amendments to the Local Government Act, National MP Rima Nakhle’s bill to prohibit Crown funding to gang-affiliated organisations and National MP Tim Costley’s bill to match regional boundaries between government agencies and services.

Also read and voted through, despite raising the ire of the entire opposition, was NZ First MP Jenny Marcroft’s bill to define a woman as “an adult human biological female”, and a man as “an adult human biological male”. Perhaps it will provide emotional stability to those who feel their world falling apart at the suggestion that not everyone who menstruates is a woman.

Possibly receiving a vision of JK Rowling dressed in Kate Sheppard’s clothing, Marcroft said she was “hearing the words of our suffragist forebearers”. She talked about the need to protect women from the threat of gender ideology, to protect the country from becoming a “laughing stock”, to protect common sense. “Social cohesion is destroyed when a minority tries to use social engineering to redefine reality for the quiet majority.” Who knows if she considered the irony that she spoke as a member of NZ First, the smallest, but arguably loudest, party in the coalition.

Te Pāti Māori MP Oriini Kaipara offered a less colonial perspective. There is no definition of man or woman in te ao Māori, Kaipara told the House – it’s just “tangata”. Kaipara remembered her first kōhanga reo teacher, a trans person who taught her her reo and identity.

“I am a woman,” Kaipara said. “The architect of this bill does not speak for me, does not speak for Māori communities who safeguard our trans whānau, who are trans themselves.” There were a few tears shed by opposition MPs after the reading ended.

On Thursday, six new members’ bills were pulled from the biscuit tin. NZ First withdrew its Māori seats referendum bill that morning, replacing it with a bill concerned with free speech instead. But watch this space – it’s not like NZ First to refrain from playing swapsies in the biscuit tin.

After question time, filibustering from Labour and the Greens prolonged the first reading of disability minister Louise Upston’s Disability Support Services Bill. The bill comes after a supreme court decision in December which ruled that two parents who are caring for their disabled children full-time should be considered government employees, and afforded an employee’s protections and relief. Upston’s bill, set to pass with the support of the coalition, makes clear that the Crown is not an employer in these cases, thus removing any fiscal responsibilities for the government.

To a large audience – the public gallery was almost full – justice minister Paul Goldsmith read yet another contentious bill. His amendment to the Summary Offences Act will give police the ability to “move on… people displaying disorderly behaviour in public places”. Goldsmith includes “rough sleeping” in disorderly behaviour,  so some will have to find a new curb to call home, and  those “begging” will have to find a new method to pay off the fine they could be slapped with.

Green Party justice spokesperson Tamatha Paul, whose social media campaigning was the reason for the packed public gallery, had things to say on this later. It was a “cruel injustice to arrest and move on” homeless, especially homeless youth, and especially with such a broad view of what can actually be considered intimidation or disorderly behaviour.

“When, in our justice system, could you punish someone before they’ve even broken the law because someone looks at them and makes an assessment that they are probably going to cause harm?” she asked. The applause she received drowned out the next speaker, Act’s Simon Court, and caused assistant speaker Maureen Pugh to urge the public to “respect the process”.

After a week of copping heat, government MPs had a chance to schmooze and sip drinks on Thursday at the launch event for veteran broadcaster Barry Soper’s book, One Last Question, Prime Minister, which brought out the old boys and current big guns of parliament. With free wine swilled and Thorndon-style canapés on offer, you couldn’t help but feel that, for the most part, being an MP is a lot like winning the Lotto.

Emma Gleason reviews the first night of Marlon Williams’ Auckland double-header.

Marlon Williams is on the home stretch. His highly publicised hiatus gets closer by the day, but before that, one final tour: Tā te Manawa. The name translates to “heart at rest” and it’s a poignant title for what might be the last time he performs in a fair while. Even though his last tour, for the 2025 album Te Whare Tīwekaweka, was less than a year ago, fans packed The Civic last night for another go. (Friday night’s show has sold out completely too.)

The splendour of The Civic is a fitting location for the Lyttelton troubadour; the velvet curtains and ornate architecture suit his theatrical, nostalgic sensibility as an artist. That was all stripped back last night. He took the stage at 8.06pm, just Williams under the spotlight, opening a capella with the waiata ‘E Mawehe Anu Au’. “This is going to be a special show… It’s nice not to be promoting one record,” Williams explained. Instead we were taken on a meandering trip through his full repertoire: “I’m like a tribute artist to myself”.

Delivering a sprawling three-hour variety show, fans (of all ages) were treated to a Favourites box of songs from his catalogue alongside a medley of covers including songs by Hirini Melbourne, Björk, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and Leonard Cohen. There was another treat in store: Williams was taking requests. With the tone of a warm schoolteacher, the audience were instructed to raise their hands politely. The show was conversational in style, delivering lashings of the charisma and geniality that have won so many people over. That and his voice. The gravelly lows and velvet highs were strong as ever, showing no sign of fatigue or the tolls of the road. 

Just over a year ago we were here, in The Civic, watching the documentary Ngā Ao E Rua – Two Worlds, which traced the making of his te reo Māori album and the impact touring was having on him. It was the first public inkling that he needed time out. He’s 35 now. Last night he told us he was looking back on his career.

Many songs were ones he hadn’t played in a “long time”, like ‘Love Is a Terrible Thing’. The first half ended with audience requests, including ‘Rongomai’ by Hirini Melbourne, and My Boy’s ‘Thinking of Nina’. That one was “a bit tricky” he warned, but did it anyway, complete with the “doo-doo-doos” that pepper New Zealand musical canon. 

After 45 minutes it was time for a break. The evening was a game of two halves. After the brief intermission – long enough for a bathroom break and buying more wine – the stage was reformatted to make room for The Yarra Benders, the band Williams has played with for over a decade (and you can tell). They got straight into it, clustered around a microphone together, before dispersing to their assigned corners of the stage. Williams picked up a guitar; it was brand new, he explained, bought that day from Auckland’s Studio One Guitars: “My guitar fucked out before the gig.”

Diving into his past, they pulled out ‘The Ballad Of Minnie Dean’ and ‘I Know a Jeweller’, before getting into Williams’ special interest subject. “Breakups… are one of my favourite topics, even when I’m not going through one,” he explained, before launching into the slow, rolling heartbreak of ‘Kei Te Mārama’.

Williams wasn’t just revisiting his own past last night. Everyone in the room went with him into their own vaults of first loves and breakups. He has a gift for plumbing the deep well of emotion. ‘Can I Call You?’ is, he conceded, a “gnarly song”. It can leave you sick with familiarity if you’re not cool-headed. That was another one they hadn’t played in years. It appeared on Make Way For Love, the award-winning 2018 album that enjoyed considerable air time last night, as did the haunting ‘Come To Me’. “I’ve always loved the phrase,” Williams explained.“It just… gets me.” He loves it so much that he followed that with another version – Björk’s – to the delight of some concertgoers who appeared to be having a really, really good night out.

By this stage we hadn’t heard ‘Party Boy’ yet, or ‘Dark Child’. Promise hung in the air. Would the appeals deliver? Continuing the theme of breakups, Williams and his band cracked into a surprise, ‘The Breakup Song’, a 1978 hit by The Greg Kihn Band. For all this talk of heartbreak, The Civic felt like a joyful jukebox or a jam session – things were fun and getting funner. It was clear, even from the nosebleeds, that Williams was having a ball, so much so that during another request – ‘Bird on the Wire’!!! – he scrambled off the stage to dance with someone in the front row.

We were soon back to his own oeuvre, including a soaring rendition of ‘Korero Māori’ that had plenty of people singing along. And finally – finally! – ‘Party Boy’, an audience request that was yelled out by many (naughty!). Not every request was granted: ‘My Heart the Wormhole’ got a polite “no, no no”. He couldn’t do it. You can’t do everything. That’s why we’re all here tonight. It made the devastating ‘Nobody Gets What They Want Anymore’ hit that much harder. ‘Make Way For Love’ followed, delivering the yin to its yang.

After departing the stage, the inevitable standing ovation drew the band back for a handful more. ‘Portrait of a Man’ was the last of all. He’s ended here before. Where to next, after Wellington, Nelson and his hometown Christchurch, is not something we need to know. “Destinations aren’t my vibe,” he told us last night. “I’m more of a journeyman.”