SALIENT
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25 SEPTEMBER 2017
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An introduction to the field of psychology, bringing a scientific perspective to social issues. The course addresses topics that are covered in the media, as well as enduring myths about human and animal behaviour.
Gain an understanding in a broad range of contemporary scientific concepts relevant to everyday life. The course will integrate social, cultural and historical perspectives around the scientific concepts presented in the course.
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Editors — Tuioleloto Laura Toailoa and Tim Manktelow
Contact — editor@salient.org.nz 04 463 6766 Level 2, Student Union Building Victoria University of Wellington PO Box 600, Wellington
Designers — Eun Sun Jeong and Ellyse Randrup News Editor — Brigid Quirke News Reporters — Angus Shaw, Harry Clatworthy, Laura Toailoa, Matt Currill, Sofia Roberts Feature Writers — Brigid Quirke, Dan Kelly, Jack Foster, Liam Kennedy Chief Sub-Editor — Georgia Lockie Distributor — Darren Chin Arts Editor — Cameron Gray Section Editors — Annelise Bos (Podcast), Cameron Gray (Games), Emilie Hope (Theatre), Finn Holland and Mathew Watkins (Film), Hanahiva Rose (Visual Art), Katie Meadows (Television), Kimberley McIvor (Books), Olly Clifton and Lauren Spring (Music) Contributors — Aidan Kelly, Niamh Hollis-Locke, Rory Lenihan-Ikin, Lauren Daroux-Greig, Ngāi Tauira, Jasmine Koria, UniQ, Josh Brian, Joe Morris, Alex Feinson, Miriama Te One, Shariff Burke, Puck, Aubergine Advertising — Grace Gollan grace.gollan@vuwsa.org.nz 04 463 6982
Printing — Service Printers 258 Taranaki Street, Wellington Paper — Sun 90gsm Salient is printed on environmentally sustainable paper, with vegetable ink, and is completely FSC approved. Typefaces — Wedge by Bruce Rotherham, Adobe Caslon Pro by Carol Twombly About Us — Salient staff are employed by, but editorially independent from, the Victoria University of Wellington Students’ Association (VUWSA). Salient is a member of, syndicated, and supported by the Aotearoa Student Press Association (ASPA). Salient is partially funded by Victoria University students, through the student levy. Opinions expressed are not necessarily representative of those of VUWSA, ASPA, Service Printers, or the editorial staff. Complaints — Please email editor@ salient.org.nz and if not satisfied with response contact VUWSA. Salient — 25 September, 2017 Volume 80, Issue 21
CONTRIBUTORS & COLOPHON
CONTENTS Editors’ Letter......................................8 Letters..................................................9 Notices..................................................9 News General News.....................................11 Local artists complain of late payments and poor communication....................14 Politics
Political Round-Up.............................16 The Party Line....................................17 Opinion Christchurch and the Mental Health Crisis...................................... 23 — Niamh Hollis-Locke Columns Presidential Address............................24 VUWSA.............................................24 Te Ara Tauira......................................25 One Ocean..........................................25 The Queer Agenda..............................26 Postgrad Informer...............................26 From within the fallout zone..............27 Features “It was dope, and I killed it”: Six months of the VUWSA Executive............................18 — Salient
I’m not sure how I feel: Disillusionment with elections.....................................28 — Brigid Quirke The Fury of [our] own Momentum: Twin Peaks, Protest, and the Bomb............................................34 — Dan Kelly
The trauma of the non-voter...............40 — Jack Foster What’s so special about special housing areas?..........................46 — Liam Kennedy Arts Poem..................................................51 Film....................................................52 Books..................................................53 Games................................................54 Television...........................................55 Music..................................................56 Visual Art...........................................57 Food...................................................60 Podcast...............................................61 Puzzles................................................62 Horoscope..........................................63
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Editors’ letter The spectacle looms | simultaneously recedes into the thankful distance of the rearview mirror pre- | postWriting a conjuncture, that’s where we are with this issue. We’re not going to make any predictions, prophesise beyond the veil, yet there’s an encounter here between a pre-election subjectivity with the state of reading post- …all we can point to from the thick of it is the need to consider what just transpired. What did we just participate in? That is perhaps the question that underwrites this issue — what just transpired? It’s a question that extends backward to the early morning sands of New Mexico, July 16, 1945. Trinity | and what follows The world split in two and the sky lit up and an observer, Ralph Carlisle Smith, describes the bomb: “The light intensity fell rapidly, hence did not blind my left eye but it was still amazingly bright. It turned yellow, then red, and then beautiful purple.” pre- | postHere we are again, but this time firmly post- …the name of first tear in the fabric of our space, Trinity, oddly apt; spiritual, but also any combination or set of three forming a unity. It seems indicative of the problems of its own writing. A subject, an event, a representation — infinite distance but an undeniable unity. We live post-bomb, but in a world that seems still unable to make sense of the rupture — What just transpired? — Tuioleloto Laura Toailoa and Tim Manktelow
9 If you don’t want to write for us — write to us! Salient welcomes, encourages, and thrives on public debate. Send us your honest feedback, be it praise or polemics.
LETTERS
Thank you :) It was nice to see a fellow passenger on the bus reading Salient, but what a huge − surprise as he turned the pages that I saw my father’s typeface, Churchward Te Ma ori popping up from the pages. The typeface looks awesome, and what an appropriate time to use the font. I really like the little tribute to him. He would have loved it and would have said it was ‘terrific’ for the ‘university’ to use his font. Thank you so much. I have sent it out electronically to my family and friends. Keep up the awesome work.
Marianna
Letter is set in TYPEFACE Churchward Newstype and Chruchward Marianna.
NOTICES EMPLOYER PRESENTATIONS COMING UP IN SEPTEMBER! •
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27th: Public Sector and Margaritas (pizza, that is) — for all students
To find out more about these events (plus many more!), go to: www.victoria.ac.nz/careerhub
VIC FOLK : TUNEFEST, SEPTEMBER 29 TO OCTOBER 1
Gillian Boucher and Bob McNeil in concert; Canadian and Scottish tunes and songs. Support from local youngsters Buíon: Friday, September 29, 7.30pm. Ceilidh with Vic Folk — guaranteed good night out with high energy live
music and the easiest dancing you’ll ever do… Saturday, September 30, 7.00pm. Aro Valley Community Centre, 48 Aro St Cheap student tickets, even cheaper online. www.vicfolktunefest.wordpress.com
CALLING ALL TERTIARY STUDENTS!
The Sustainable Development Goals are a huge part in achieving equality and wellbeing through global partnership. We believe that youth have a key role in seeing these goals achieved for the good of our generation and the many to come, especially in Aotearoa. Come along to this day workshop where we will break down the goals and what they mean for youth, hear from a panel of expert speakers, and draft a youth declaration of action we want to see happen in New Zealand that takes steps to achieve these goals. An event not to be missed — from complete SDG beginners to veterans! Register on Eventbrite today: https://www. eventbrite.co.nz/e/vuw-sustainable-development-goalsworkshop-registration-37631990296 Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ events/344288079366269 This free workshop will be held at VUW in room SU229 (Student Union Building) from 10:00–15:00, October 5.
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NEWS ELECTORAL COMMISSION MISINFORMS MA¯ORI VOTERS HER LEGACY PORIRUA RALLY FOR POVERTY MARSHALL ISLANDS DELIBERATE WHETHER TO BAN NUCLEAR WEAPONS POLICY TO IMPROVE RENTING CONDITIONS A RARE SIGHTING OF GOOD NEWS: SNOW LEOPARDS NO LONGER ENDANGERED LOCAL ARTISTS COMPLAIN OF LATE PAYMENTS AND POOR COMMUNICATION
POLITICS POLITICAL ROUND-UP THE PARTY LINE
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ELECTORAL COMMISSION MISINFORMS MA¯ORI VOTERS The Electoral Commission has been criticised for undermining the rights of Māori voters, following nationwide complaints about the conduct of electoral staff. Some of the complaints received by the Electoral Commission included staff being unaware of the Māori roll and insisting those enrolled on the Māori roll are unregistered; staff being unable to locate Māori names on the Māori roll; staff giving incorrect information about Māori electorates, areas, and where voters can be enrolled; and electors being told by staff that they are unable to vote for a “Māori party” if they are not on the Māori roll. This lead to confusion and instances of non-voting. Veronica Tawhai, a Māori Politics lecturer at Massey University, publically condemned the Electoral Commission in a press statement released on September 16, which made several demands of the Commission, after she received numerous complaints from Māori voters. She stated that the “ignorance of the officials is completely unacceptable and something the Electoral Commission needs to rectify immediately.” Tawhai demanded that an expert in Māori electorates be instated at each polling booth, alongside a review of the background knowledge and training practices for electoral staff. She also noted that an earlier request to the Electoral Commission to send an immediate memo to all staff to ensure accurate information was being provided was ignored. Tawhai told Salient that the Electoral Commission had since responded to her statement, saying that they were “devastated by their
conduct” and they acknowledged that staff have been giving misinformation. The Chief Electoral Officer, Alicia Wright, told Salient they “are taking this matter very seriously” and, following the reports of the misconduct, have “since sent a reminder of the processes to our voting place staff.” Wright claimed that “all of the 15,000 electoral staff receive training, including on the Māori and general roll.” Wright noted that they have been in touch with Tawhai to “assure [her that] the matters she has raised will be followed up.” Clare Pasley, also from the Electoral Commission, told Salient that the Commission “is always looking to improve services for voters, and every effort is made to ensure voting place staff are drawn from and reflect the local community.” However, the Electoral Commission appear yet to meet all of Tawhai’s demands in time for the close of polling on September 23. — Harry Clatworthy
HER LEGACY The Teresia Teaiwa Memorial Scholarship Fund will launch on September 26. Associate Professor Teresia Teaiwa, who passed away in March 2017, had been working for two years to launch a scholarship fund to support Pasifika students in their academic pursuits in the field of Pacific Studies. Acting Director of Va’aomanū Pasifika April Henderson told Salient that since it was established in 2000, the Pacific Studies program has produced “an extraordinary network of successful graduates working across Aotearoa New Zealand, across
Oceania, and across the world.” The launch is largely organised by the Pacific Studies Alumni Association, including Alexa Masina, Jenny Taotua, Rachel Pahulu, Tupe Lualua, and Mandy Rawiri. Henderson told Radio New Zealand that “quite generous” donations have already been made, and would currently be enough to fund three years of undergraduate study. Henderson confirmed with Salient that one such donation, of over $1000, came from the proceeds from the show Purple Onion, directed by Lualua, that was a part of the Kia Mau Festival in June. The Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences has also donated $5000 towards the fund. The details of the eligibility for the scholarship are yet to be confirmed, but the university “hopes” to offer one undergraduate and one PhD scholarship each year from 2019 onwards. —Laura Toailoa
PORIRUA RALLY FOR POVERTY Members of the Porirua and Wellington communities came together at Cannons Creek School on September 19 for a rally against poverty. Chaired by Porirua Mayor Mike Tana, the event involved conversations, questions, and a performance by Virtuoso Strings Youth Orchestra. The evening was framed by storytelling. After an opening address by Tana, Green Party Spokesperson for Social Development Jan Logie began with an anecdote about a woman who approached her when she first came into parliament. She had been struggling to pay for her studies and support her family following government cuts to the training incentive allowance for sole parents.
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“The only way that she could ness of the current welfare system. possessing nuclear arms from signwork out to be able to do that, and Turei and the audience discussed ex- ing the treaty. Marshall Islands President, Hilmake sure that her kids were looked periences of individuals being punafter, was to do sex work; and she ished for offering assistance to their da Heine, told Radio New Zealand didn’t want to do that.” whanau — one individual was evict- that while the Marshall Islands The woman sought advice from ed from their Housing New Zealand do not want any nation to ever use Logie about going to the media, as a home after housing their homeless nuclear arms, her government was means of holding the government to grandmother; another had part of “considering” whether or not to sign account for the decisions that affect- her benefit cut after receiving the treaty. “The big question is, how ed her and her family. some birthday money from a does the world effectively eliminate this threat. It’s actually pretty com“She went ahead with it, and family member. then the government misrepresented “Being kind to our loved ones plicated. This treaty deserves due time for consideration and consulher. They made out that she was puts them at financial risk.” on the benefit earning more than While many of the solutions dis- tation.” Acting director of Pacific Stud$40,000 a year. She was marginalised cussed by Turei and Logie focused in her community. And I felt respon- on party policies, they stressed that ies at VUW, April Henderson, told sible, because we hadn’t been able to a discussion on poverty was about Salient that, as the Marshall Islands defend her against the government’s more than the election. “It’s about have always been at the forefront of misrepresentation.” changing the way we do politics,” support for nuclear disarmament, their reluctance to sign the treaty Logie expressed concern that this Logie remarked. woman’s experience, of having pri“This is about putting communi- may come as a surprise. “As the site of 67 nuclear tests vate information released, was one ties first.” shared by many. — Brigid Quirke conducted by the US between 1946 and 1958, and inheritors of the “So, that’s made my job really devastating human and environhard, because we change the world mental consequences of those tests, through stories, through underMARSHALL ISLANDS the Marshall Islands have wieldstanding each other’s situations. But DELIBERATE WHETHER ed considerable moral authority on when people are too scared to come this issue.” forward, other people don’t know TO BAN NUCLEAR “I have no doubt that the Marwhat they’re experiencing, and it WEAPONS shall Islands support the spirit and becomes harder for them to empathise and realise how urgent this The world’s first legally-binding intent of the treaty, but their close political and economic relationship change is.” treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons Following Logie’s address, for- opened for signature last week, with with the United States — their former Green Party co-leader Metiria a number of Pacific Island nations mer administrator as part of the Turei spoke of how her own story- signing — however, the Marshall Is- Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, and their major leaseholder and telling, in regard to her experiences lands may not join them. funder — could mean that it is imas a beneficiary, came at a cost. Palau, Fiji, Samoa, Tuvalu, Sol“It’s been a bit of a rough ride,” omon Islands, Kiribati, and Vanuatu politic to actually sign it.” In July, during the treaty’s deshe reflected. “I told my story be- were confirmed as signatories on the cause I needed the country to under- United Nations Treaty on the Prohi- velopment stage, 122 countries apstand that the safety net our grand- bition of Nuclear Weapons, along- proved the treaty’s proposed terms. parents built for us has been torn side 43 other countries, including It will enter into force after 90 days. to shreds. [...] There is something New Zealand. However, the Mardeeply wrong with the way our wel- shall Islands had not confirmed their — Angus Shaw fare system treats the people who are formal support of the treaty at the part of it.” time of print. However, she remained posiThe treaty opened for signatures POLICY TO IMPROVE tive in her call for change. “I can tell on September 20, and will bind sigRENTING CONDITIONS you now, the cost has been worth it. natories not to “develop, test, proIt has been the right thing to do. duce, manufacture, otherwise acWhen we tell our truths we can quire, possess or stockpile nuclear The Green Party’s proposed Resichange the world.” weapons,” in addition to banning the dential Tenancies (Safe and Secure One of the major criticisms in threat of use of any nuclear weapons. Rentals) Amendment Bill seeks to the discussion was of the punitive- This disallows any country currently “make life better for the thousands
13 of New Zealanders who rent their homes” through changes to housing quality, tenancy advocacy, and rent security. The Greens’ ten point policy outlines a dismal situation for renters, stressing three key problems: poor quality rental houses, lack of tenancy security, and an unbalanced relationship between landlords and tenants. “Having a decent house to live in is not much to ask for, in fact it is a human right. Yet our rental laws in New Zealand are causing people to get sick all over the country because houses are cold, mouldy, and frankly just crap,” said VUWSA President Rory Lenihan-Ikin. “We’ve been pushing for a mandatory rental WOF and an overhaul to tenancy regulation through the Student Friendly Wellington campaign, but there is only so much that can be done by local government. [...] We really need cross-party support for decent rental standards, particularly as home ownership is now not an option for most young people.” At a community rally on poverty held in Porirua on September 19, the Greens’ Spokesperson for Social Development, Jan Logie, said “Rental properties should not just be treated as an investment opportunity for landlords.” “They are your homes, and your home should be a home for life.” The Bill would end letting fees, restrict rent increases to one per year, and introduce a landlord’s bond. The introduction of this new bond, Logie explained, “would actually allow you to maintain your home,” because necessary maintenance organised by the tenant could be refunded through the bond. The Bill also includes the introduction of a housing warrant of fitness, and FlatMates, a tenancy advocacy office accessible to all renting tenants. In addition to providing help and support to tenants, FlatMates would also contribute
News to funding public advocacy campaigns to make renters aware of their rights, and landlords of their responsibilities. The Green Party announcement follows an ongoing conversation this election surrounding housing standards and renting rights. — Sofia Roberts
A RARE SIGHTING OF GOOD NEWS: SNOW LEOPARDS NO LONGER ENDANGERED Snow leopards are no longer considered an endangered species, having been reclassified for the first time in 45 years. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has moved the species into the less urgent “vulnerable” category after a three year assessment period by five international experts. IUCN estimate the global snow leopard population to number more than 2,500 but fewer than 10,000, with a projected decline of 10% over three generations. It noted that population figures are partly speculative due to the difficulty of obtaining hard data on the secretive species in their remote habitat of the Himalayas. Significant conservation measures have been implemented to mitigate threats posed to the wild population. New protected areas have been established in snow leopard range, and local initiatives to control conflict over livestock losses are helping to protect the cats from retaliatory killings. Tom McCarthy, executive director of wild cat conservation group Panthera, said that the reclassification did not mean that snow leopards are now “safe.” The species is still likely declining — “just not at the rate previously thought.” Snow leopards remain at threat from poaching for fur and bones,
used in traditional medicine, and a loss of prey and habitat from overgrazing and meteorological events. Climate change threatens two-thirds of the snow leopard’s habitat. Communications Manager for the Snow Leopard Trust, Matthias Fietcher, warned that the term endangered “means something very different to the general public than it does to the IUCN and conservation experts.” He told Salient that although the new listing says the numbers are higher than previously thought, “it does not assume things have really improved” since the previous assessment. — Matt Currill
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LOCAL ARTISTS COMPLAIN OF LATE PAYMENTS AND POOR COMMUNICATION
A Wellington gallery marketing itself as “emphasising collaboration and community” has been subject to multiple complaints from artists regarding poor communication and late payments. Matchbox Studios is a gallery and gift shop that hosts regular themed exhibitions, showing the works of a variety of local artists. “Matchbox is the first place I exhibited with because it was so accessible and affordable, especially for younger students,” Sam*, an artist and student, reflected. Artists pay an upfront cost of around $180 in order to exhibit, and on the conclusion of each exhibition, artists are sent an invoice outlining the sales made and the total profits, less a commission fee. Invoices for the exhibition Monochrome were distributed on June 25, stating that payment would be made on July 25. Invoices for the Pet Project exhibition were distributed on July 16, stating payment would be made August 20. However, at least five artists who were involved in the two exhibitions complained of not being paid by the invoice due dates, and attempts to follow up or enquire about the late payments were “stonewalled” by Matchbox Studios. Collectively, the artists had more than $1100 owing in overdue payments. Monochrome was Alice’s* first exhibition in Wellington. “I was quite excited about it,” she told Salient. “The space was lovely, and the exhibition itself was good — but having to not only chase up the gallery, but also be being studiously ignored, kind of takes the shine off.” On August 25, five days after the due date for Pet Project payments and a month after the due date for Monochrome payments, a collective email was sent to Matchbox Studios by four of the artists, complaining of the lack of payment and response. Prior to this, the artists had not received any response from the gallery owner, Cherry Holohan, who was in the UK at the time of invoicing.
The email states: “Other artists (and I) have all emailed Cherry multiple times about this issue, but she has made no effort to reply and we feel that she’s just ignoring the problem. One artist told me that she went into Matchbox to ask about this directly and was told that Cherry is overseas at the moment, which could explain the ‘delay’ in her response. But if she knew she was going to be unable to respond to emails and pay her artists, why didn’t she designate someone to do so in her stead?” “We feel that this is incredibly unprofessional and irresponsible behaviour from Matchbox. We had a great time exhibiting with you, but this turn of events is really taking the shine off.” The artists received responses to the collective email, sent by a Matchbox Studios staff member, apologising for the delay in payment but stating that they did not have any control over the payments. “Cherry Holahan, the owner of Matchbox, is the only person who can issue funds, so if you have any questions in regard to payment please contact her directly.” “Unfortunately we are running a little behind with gallery payments currently while Cherry is away on business, as she has limited access to internet. Please note that payments will start being processed again from September 3 onwards. I appreciate your patience regarding this matter, but please know that we are a small business and are doing the very best we can to get back on top of things.” None of the artists had received payments by September 10. “This excuse, that they are a small business and doing their best, is quite frankly a bit rude,” Sam said. “Individual artists are the smallest business you can get [...] Some of the artists were relying on that money to pay their own bills.” Alice agreed. While the amount owed to her “wasn’t significant,” she said “the principal is.” “The idea that a gallery reliant on the time and
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talent of artists and their work would then not only fail to pay them but actively avoid contacting them is unacceptable.” Salient contacted Matchbox Studios and Holohan about the delayed payments on September 11. Salient received an immediate response from Holohan, who was in the UK at the time. Outstanding payments were made to artists the following day, and all artists received an email apologising for the delay. For Alice and Kate*, another artist, this was the first email response received from Holohan. Following her return to New Zealand on September 18, Holohan explained to Salient that her trip had not been for business, but for unexpected personal reasons. Holohan was “extremely sorry” for the miscommunication, which she said was due to an employee statement. “There were a couple of crossed wires with dates [...] I think there was a bit of confusion where artists thought they were going to be paid on the September 3, but the message I left was that I’d be back in reception, not making payments, on September 3.” Holohan said that, as a small business, Matchbox sometimes struggled to make payments within the required time, although “[we] do always try to communicate with people on that.” “It’s been a really tough year, so we’ve been behind on certain things [...] but we’ve been working really hard to turn that around.” Salient asked Holohan how the overdue payments were dependant on cash flow, when what was owed were the direct proceeds from the sale of artworks. “I can see how it looks that simple, it’s just the reality is more complex.” “From a business point of view, we don’t pay artists until the following month after the exhibition, and in the meanwhile we have [a number of payments] to make [...] What is really common with small businesses is that that money goes elsewhere, and you kind of just hope that in the
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meanwhile we have a good month and can pay everything. When cash flow is really tight, something bears the brunt of that.” Holohan was confident that the issues in communication were due to her personal trip, which would not be an issue now that she had returned. However, when asked about an incident involving poor communication with another artist between 2013–2016, she said it was “hard to comment on that without knowing who it was in particular.” Matchbox Studios had agreed to stock some of Jane’s* prints and cards in 2013. She said that, over a three year period, she had to “chase Matchbox up” multiple times to see if things had been sold and to organise payment. “There were many times Cherry failed to reply to emails, then I found out she’d been overseas, but I would’ve thought whoever was running the shop in her absence should be at least replying saying she’s away.” Although the artists from the 2017 exhibitions have since been paid, they remained “deeply unhappy” with the way the process has been handled. Holohan said that, while it was not financially viable offer the artists monetary compensation, she was “looking into” other options; such as making the gallery space available to the artists to set up stalls to sell their artworks directly to the public. However, Alice explained, the gesture would not assist those who had already had a negative relationship with Matchbox Studios. “The real value in this will be that everyone is paid, and the artists exhibiting with Matchbox in the future have their payment agreements honoured on time.” “I certainly won’t be working with Matchbox, under its current management, again.” — Brigid Quirke * Not their real names.
16 16 English had “brought us out of the Global Financial Crisis” in 2008 was often repeated to good effect. Labour began 2017 in an unenElection Campaign Performance Fourth terms are hard to win; the viable position, polling in the midlast time a party gained a fourth term 20s. By September, it had resurged, was when National won the 1969 with much of its new-found support general election. But while the well- arising out of its leadership change known adage that “oppositions don’t on August 1. New leader Jacinda win elections, incumbents lose them” Ardern did well in galvanising youth has been true for a number of New support for the party by talking of Zealand elections, 2017 was never “generational change.” Labour ran what Ardern called going to offer an easy victory. National was in an awkward a “relentlessly positive” campaign, in position, having to convince vot- doing so influencing voters who were ers that it could fix New Zealand’s getting tired of a third term governproblems, while maintaining that ment. Ardern’s charismatic personalthe problems which did exist were ity was a political force which saved not its fault. On housing, National the party from the electoral ruin it lost political points to Labour when had appeared to be heading towards. But Labour could not rely on the latter promised to build 100,000 houses in its Kiwibuild policy, com- personality politics forever. For pared to National’s 34,000 new weeks they had been secretive about tax, saying that a “working group” houses in Auckland. But National did well to high- would decide tax policy during their light its economic record during first term. After near constant atthe campaign. During the first tacks from National on Labour’s TVNZ leaders’ debate on August vague policy, Ardern belatedly decid31, Labour leader Jacinda Ardern ed to rule out any tax changes until was asked whether she thought the 2020. The U-turn made Labour look economy under National was doing indecisive on economic matters. NZ First, which has been flitwell: she agreed that it was in “good shape.” While National suffered set- ting between National and Labour backs, like when Steven Joyce’s re- since the 1990s, erected election mark that Labour’s fiscal plan had billboards this year with the slogan a “$11 billion hole” was debunked “Had Enough?” in an attempt to by economists, its constant attacks appeal to anti-establishment senon Labour’s vague taxation policies timents. In an RNZ interview on ensured they were seen by voters as September 14, Winston Peters railed against “the economic revolution strong on economic policy. The “Jacinda Effect” certain- [which] turn[ed] this country uply would have taken some votes off side down,” describing the current National based on personality pol- neoliberal economic order as “stupid” itics alone, but National did well and “ridiculous.” While for much of to make up for its leader’s “Boring the campaign Peters was labelled by Bill” nickname by focusing on his news media as the Kingmaker who achievements in office as Minister would decide which party forms the of Finance from 2008–16. When next government, the uncertainty Labour’s deputy leader Kelvin Da- around which way he would go put vis described English as having some voters off. Gareth Morgan of The Oppor“the personality of a rock” on August 6, National attempted to turn it tunities Party (TOP) also tried to around, saying that English had run harness voters’ anger over the current a “rockstar” economy. The line that economic system. When he launched
POLITICAL ROUND-UP
News POLITICS the party in August last year, Morgan said TOP would “light a fuse” beneath Parliament to solve the inequality crisis which “establishment parties and career politicians” had ignored. Morgan donated $500,000 to finance TOP’s campaign, reminiscent of Colin Craig’s Conservatives in 2014. However, TOP suffered under the rules of the TVNZ multi-party debates, which required parties to have a seat in Parliament or be polling at 3% to participate. TOP’s signature taxation policy, where a 30% tax cut for wage earners was offset by an asset tax on all houses, was never going to sit particularly well with voters clearly averse to the idea of a capital gains tax on the family home. Despite its relatively radical policy, TOP managed to get its message heard, consistently polling at round 2% — at some points more than ACT, United Future, and the Māori Party combined. The Greens, smarting from Metiria Turei’s electoral and benefit fraud controversy earlier in the year, continued to stand by its former leader; James Shaw said repeatedly that, despite lower polling rates, he did not regret Turei’s disclosures, because they highlighted the issue of child poverty. Despite the Memorandum of Understanding between the Greens and Labour, the Greens’ credibility as a stable coalition partner was damaged twice by Labour, first when Jacinda Ardern ruled out a ministerial role for Turei in a potential Labour government before her resignation, and again when Labour Party president Nigel Haworth denied on September 13 that a vote for Greens was a vote for Labour and Ardern. After its leadership change, Labour also commandeered two of the Greens’ key policies. At a rally on August 20, Ardern said that global warming was “[her] generation’s nuclear-free moment,” sucking the oxygen from the Greens’ campaigning on climate change. The Greens’
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core policy of cleaning up New Zealand’s waterways was also “stolen” by Labour when Ardern announced a water tax to considerable media attention, and when Labour’s television ads constantly featured a commitment to “cleaning up our rivers.” The Māori Party had a fight on its hands. Co-leader Te Ururoa Flavell had a tight race in his Waiariki electorate against Labour’s Tamati Coffey, and co-leader Marama Fox gave strong performances in the televised multi-party leaders’ debates. The Māori Party hinted throughout the campaign that it could work with a potential Labour-led government, assuaging the misgivings of some party members about working with National again. With the housing crisis weighing on voters’ minds, ACT offered solutions to fix it, focusing on regulatory reform and house building. At his book launch on August 6, leader David Seymour said that by scrapping regulatory restrictions 600,000 homes could be built in Auckland alone. ACT tried to change its image to become a “millennial party” by campaigning for “intergenerational fairness.” Number three on its party list, Brooke van Velden, was described by Seymour as a “Chlöe Swarbrick with an economics degree.” ACT’s chance of capturing the attention of young voters was strained, competing against a number of politicians trying to court the youth vote and offering some policies against the interests of students, for example the reintroduction of interest on student loans. When Jacinda Ardern took over the Labour leadership, she became the second millennial party leader in Parliament — a title Seymour once had solely for himself. The eighth MMP election was far from boring, and it bodes well for New Zealand’s democracy that so many parties were able to passionately articulate their policies in the lead up to September 23. — Aidan Kelly
Politics
THE PARTY LINE According to the Department of Corrections, the prison population was 10,260 in June — of which 50.4% are Māori, 32.0% are Pākehā, 11.1% are Pasifika, 4.7% are “Other (incl. Asian)”, and 1.8% are unknown. The Electoral (Disqualification of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill passed in 2010 — prisoners sentenced after December 16, 2010, are unable to vote and have been removed from the electoral roll. Prisoners incarcerated but on remand, and those sentenced before 2010 (unless serving a sentence of life imprisonment, preventive detention, or imprisonment of three years or more), are able to vote. In a conversation with Salient the director of JustSpeak, Dr Katie Bruce, described prisoner disenfranchisement in New Zealand as “racialised” due to the high percentage of Māori and Pasifika in prison. The general election was just held on September 23 — should prisoners have been able to vote? Greens at Vic Yes. Voting is a right, not a privilege. Prisoner disenfranchisement is an attack on those in society who are already marginalised. We cannot expect positive outcomes from a corrections system guided by punishment and fear. By taking away the right of prisoners to vote we are further excluding them from society and further entrenching New Zealand’s racial divide. Addressing real drivers of crime, such as substance addiction, mental health issues, and socio-economic disadvantage, would be far more effective in deterring crime than encroaching on human rights. If New Zealand is to be an inclusive and just society, our corrections system must instead be guided by principles of rehabilitation and reintegration. — Kayden Briskie
Young Nats The Young Nats stand by the government’s policy on this issue. The National Government has made it a matter of importance to invest in prisoner rehabilitation and schemes to keep high risk individuals away from jail, primarily driven by the social investment approach. These schemes see funds invested in local communities and organisations that have proven track records in supporting those around them. This approach has been a cornerstone in the National Government’s approach to tackling social issues, and revolves around the theme that a community knows how best to support itself, as opposed to bureaucrats in Wellington. — Sam Stead Vic Labour New Zealand’s Bill of Rights Act 1990 states that every citizen or permanent resident over the age of 18 is eligible to enrol and participate in our democratic system. This includes prisoners. Everyone deserves to have their human rights respected and upheld. We need to acknowledge who is in our prisons. New Zealand has hit its highest incarceration rate, at 10,000. New Zealand’s prison system is an incredibly discriminatory institution: • Over 50% of the penal population is Māori, whilst only making up 14% of the general population. • 91% of inmates have suffered from mental illness or substance abuse during their lifetime. • 53% of women in prison suffer from PTSD from victimisation. Punitive deterrence does not work, due to the main driver of criminality being social deprivation. Prisoners should have a right to choose, through the ability to vote, between justice policies which prioritise rehabilitation and reintegration or harsh punishments which do not address the reasons for crime.
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“IT WAS DOPE, AND I KILLED IT”:
SIX MONTHS OF THE VUWSA EXECUTIVE
Each of the ten executive members (including nine people who aren’t Rory) wrote about their first six months on the job, and we present but a snapshot of them. We received their mid-year reports late, then it was the mid-trimester holidays, and then there was Te Ao Mārama and a general election, and finally, here they are, half-year reports in Spring — a season less conducive to reading tomes. Reporting on the reports written by the VUWSA Executive seems an endeavour trapped between their dry technocratic language and the satirical (but really, humourless) attempts at personalisation our predecessors tried in their reportage… we have hardly done any better. If you don’t trust our summary and would like to peruse them yourself, you can find them online: http://www.vuwsa.org.nz/half-year-reports. (Also, to the executive members reading these: the hours required on each of your reports are weird? Are they supposed to be so different? Also, Rory, much love, truly.)
*
Treasurer-Secretary: Thomas Rackley
Hours Worked: 301.5 Hours Required: 291.5 (10 per week) Full disclosure, Thomas is a time-traveller, or an old-hand very late with submitting his report. The period covered, January 1 to June 30 2015, sounds good though… The Treasurer-Secretary is responsible, among other things, for overseeing VUWSA’s finances: they develop the annual VUWSA budget (alongside the President and CEO), chair the Audit and Finance, Executive Reporting, and Student Media Committees, and are an “ex-officio” member of the VUWSA Trust. They’re supposed to operate as the secretary too, but aspects of the role are covered by the permanent Association Secretary Joseph Hapgood.
Feature Early in the report Thomas recounts stubbing his toe on the proverbial stonewall of someone responsible for VUWSA’s finances, coming to the inevitable conclusion that: “reliance on our current forms of income is unsustainable and in order to enhance ourselves and become a truly strong and independent association we must find alternative revenue streams.” This is the fault of Voluntary Student Membership (VSM), introduced by MP Heather Roy (from the despicable ACT Party — fuck ’em seriously) and passed in 2011, which changed the funding model of student associations across New Zealand. Associations now have to negotiate with the university to receive a piece of the cake that is the Student Services Levy (some associations like Otago’s did pretty well; others like VUWSA…). Despite these constraints, the 2017 executive managed to get remuneration for the VUWSA Officers passed at the mid-year IGM with considerable support from students; they increased the $2000 honorarium to minimum wage for constitutional hours. However, as Thomas points outs, this wasn’t without difficulty for VUWSA’s finances. “Significant” unaccounted for costs and lowered income forecasts discovered after the IGM, plus the remunerations, meant that the 2017 Budget was cast into major deficit. Thomas “tightened up our ship” and negotiated a one-off grant from the VUWSA Trust to offset the deficit — VUWSA revealed a small surplus of $205 at the AGM on August 10. To add to this impressive achievement, Thomas also initiated a successful constitutional review process and all proposed amendments were passed. Intriguingly, he admits to being an earthly missionary for the Prince of Darkness — “On the executive I have in many cases assumed the role of devil’s advocate” — but that’s points from us; if one had to criticise the 2017 executive, it’d probably be that they’re too wholesome. Rating systems are uncomfortably capitalist for our taste… but in this case, 666. Most exuberant (luxuriantly fertile or prolific; abundantly productive) statement: “Cheese toastie duty was crazy on toga night.”
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“It was dope, and I killed it”: Six months of the VUWSA Executive
Academic Vice-President: Isabella Lenihan-Ikin
Hours Worked: 620 Hours Required: 480 (20 per week) The cooler of the two Lenihan-Ikins on the executive… controversial, but we said it (sorry Rory, but you’ve got your fanbase #badmemes), Isabella is the Academic Vice-President and has priority goals “to ensure that the university provides the best teaching and learning, research opportunities, assessment and training to students” and “to promote equity for disadvantaged students in access to and within the university.”
Most exuberant statement: “The purpose of this research is to explore the inclusion of high impact pedagogies into different courses, and connects with international research.”
Engagement Vice-President: Nathaniel Manning Hours Worked: 598.5 Hours Required: 520 (20 per week)
To quote a previous Salient editor describing the role: “The Academic Vice-President is basically tasked with slamming his or her head repeatedly against the brick wall that is the steady defunding, creeping managerialism, and academic wateringdown of VUW.”
Alongside Rory, Nathaniel is the longest serving member of the 2017 executive, having started his VUWSA career as Campaigns Officer in 2015. His position as Engagement Vice-President is to ensure there is strong communication and opportunities for involvement between VUWSA, its members, and the broader student population; and to “support sporting, social, and cultural activities for and by students; primarily through clubs and representative groups.”
Isabella describes hitting this wall in her involvement in “the most well organised and successful Class Representative system in the country,” detailing how representatives from a 100-level course informed her of concerns surrounding lecture space and technology usage, which “sparked a greater, university-wide conversation, about overflow rooms and lecture recordings.”
Nathaniel describes work behind the scenes coordinating O-Week and Arts Week, and working with UniQ to organise VUWSA’s participation in the Wellington Pride Parade. He helped carry the 50m flag sewed by the surviving partners of victims of the HIV/AIDs epidemic: “The flag contained a huge amount of mana, and it was an honour, as the future of our communities, to have been the ones invited to carry it.”
She is the convener of the Student Academic Committee which meets four times over the year, and she has introduced a theme to each board meeting. In an example of the technocratic delirium that comes, probably, from sitting on too many university boards, the theme of the first was how to be an effective board member. A board meeting about board meetings, we’re swimming.
A big part of Nathaniel’s role has been coordinating with NZUSA as part of their We Have Power campaign, which aimed to get 100% of students to vote this election. His report was written before the launch of the campaign, but Nathaniel had faith: “With the right campaign, we believe this to be possible.” Unfortunately we are writing this four days before the election, so who knows who is correct, but someone really needs to point out, better late than never, that “100s of volunteers talking to fellow students, encouraging them to be enrolled and being active participants in our political processes” doesn’t necessarily translate into a voting subject (and is the non-voting subject truly so bad?) — Oh yeah Tony m8, go vote eh. Why? Just do it eh. Oh yeah thanks m8, wasn’t going to before but you really convinced me.
Isabella also got to go Canada as part of her involvement with the Students as Partners project, which includes working on Victoria Values, a program to introduce civics education and participation into undergraduate study. As part of expanding accessibility, she has worked with Ngāi Tauira to translate the Class Representative Handbook into te reo Māori.
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Feature
No shade on Nathaniel though (and VUWSA for that matter); we’re sure he did a great job organising on campus. Also, Nathaniel is responsible for bringing puppies and kittens to campus during Stress Free Study Week — a hero! Most exuberant statement: “While many of the work that I’ve mentioned above can cross over and go toward this constitutional job, such as helping out in our Orientation Safe Room, the main project I’ve helped out on the meets this goal is for Stress Free Study Week.” [We didn’t doctor this, we swear.]
Welfare Vice-President: Anya Maule
Hours Worked: 678 Hours Required: 520 (20 per week) As the name suggests, Anya’s position is responsible for leading and contributing to projects for the wellbeing of students at VUW, and particularly “to advocate for adequate financial support, income, and welfare for students in order to remove barriers to education” and “to promote equity for disadvantaged students in access to and within the university.” This has seen Anya take a lead role in organising Stress Free Study Week, roping in a coffee deal from Supreme; the free flu vaccinations on campus, of which 1394 were given out; and a five tip flatting guide to help students with the (ongoing) rental crisis at the start of the year (the equivalent of a bucket of water on a flat fire). — REVEALED — Shockingly, in reading Anya’s report, we discovered information that VUW had refused to disclose despite being repeatedly asked. The compulsory Student Services Levy (SSL), paid by all students to fund essential services, entered 2017 with a deficit of $351,483, leading to rumours that a greater than usual fee rise was on the cards. From 2016 to 2017 the SSL increased by only 1.74%. As stated in Anya’s report, as part of her role on the Advisory Committee on the Student Services Levy: “President Rory LenihanIkin and myself also successfully negotiated the University’s proposed 8% levy increase down to 4% in addition to increased service provision.” The SSL
was $730.50 in 2017; a 4% increase brings it up to $759.72 for 2018. Digression aside, a huge success of Anya’s has been to get VUWSA to provide free toiletries and menstrual products for students. At the time she wrote her report these initiatives hadn’t been rolled out, but she highlights the urgent need for the products, citing reports of “some students not being able to come to class as they cannot afford pads and tampons during menstruation.” Anya’s report was by the far the longest of the lot (20 pages) and she’s done a lot of extra things, including preparing the groundwork for a community garden at Kelburn opposite the VUWSA office. Most exuberant statement: “It’s difficult to write about one’s strengths (and indeed, write this entire report) without coming across as selfcongratulatory.”
Wellbeing and Sustainability Officer: Beth Paterson Hours Worked: 320 Hours Required: 250 (10 per week)
Beth’s role largely involves supporting the Welfare Vice-President. Beth’s report includes topics such as waste, housing, suicide, food, menstrual products, and trees. Though not all are discussed in equal amounts, it indicates how wide the umbrella of “wellbeing and sustainability” is. Beth helped plan the Make a Meal in May event with Marlon and Raven, helped Anya facilitate the free flu shots, and planted trees with some graduates. This year Beth is on the Wellbeing Symposium Committee, Sustainability Committee, the VUWSA Policy Committee, the VUWSA Revenue and Venture Committee, and the university-wide Wellbeing Network. There isn’t much elaboration on what these committees do. One of the long-term projects Beth has been working on this year is establishing a VUWSA Food Network: a central hub for all the information on the various free and cheap food services available for students, here at university. Results from a survey in May showed that many students weren’t aware
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“It was dope, and I killed it”: Six months of the VUWSA Executive
of the food services that VUWSA provided and would’ve used such services had they known before. Being Wellbeing and Sustainability Officer did not mean being immune to the stresses of the commitments of full-time study, part-time work, as well being on VUWSA. However Beth writes, “I have tried to be mindful of my limitations and accept that I can only do so much.” An apt reminder for all to check their own oxygen mask is still on when trying to help others put on theirs. Most exuberant statement: “I like coming up with new schemes that I think will improve student life.”
Equity Officer: Tamatha Paul
Hours Worked: 232.5 Hours Required: 260 (10 per week) Tamatha re-established the Student Equity and Diversity Committee, which was “largely inactive” in 2016. Among the 15 representative groups recognised by VUWSA, five of them are equity groups and sit on this committee: Pasifika Students’ Council, UniQ at Victoria, Victoria International Students’ Association, Victoria University Feminist Organisation, and Can Do at Victoria. Ngāi Tauira have a Memorandum of Understanding with VUWSA and, as Tamatha writes in her report, “transcend the representative group structure and are recognised as our Treaty Partners as per Te Tiriti o Waitangi.” The Student Equity and Diversity Committee acts a platform for the equity representative student groups to discuss issues pertinent to their student bodies, critique the university, and keep VUWSA accountable for the effects of their decisions. “Extensive minutes” are kept so that those who cannot make meetings due to “exceptional circumstances” are kept informed about what is discussed. One of the main projects Tamatha is struggling to complete is the Rep Group Manual, a resource for representative groups that clearly outlines their relationship with VUWSA and aids with the turnover of their executives each year. Tamatha is also part of the Māori and Pacific
Island Interventions Governance Group whose job is to assess current initiatives that target Māori and Pasifika students to see if there needs to be a change of funding “in order to strengthen successful initiatives and scrap others in favour of stronger or newer interventions.” Most exuberant statement: “It isn’t good enough to just hold these meetings.”
Education Officer: Lauren Daroux-Grieg
Hours Worked: 220 Hours Required: 234.5 (10 per week) Lauren’s role works closely with the Academic Vice-President to ensure the equitable access to and quality of education here at university is maintained. The Class Representatives system is the initiative facilitated by VUWSA to help ensure that students’ feedback regarding the quality of teaching they’re receiving has an easy channel of communication to the course coordinators themselves and to VUWSA. Lauren and Isabella are in charge of running class rep training sessions in trimester two, and Lauren sends fortnightly newsletters to the class reps. One of the Lauren’s election promises was to “encourage the use of te reo Māori at university.” There were discussions held with the Education Team and the Centre for Academic Development about what resources and incentives there were for academic staff to use te reo in their teaching. It is a goal of Lauren’s to work more closely with the “Māori Students’ Society” [Ngāi Tauira??] to devise a faculty-specific resource for staff to use. In the first trimester Lauren took four papers, was head tutor for LAWS301 (Property Law), and worked ten hours a week as a researcher for LexisNexis — the reason why the hours worked are lower than the hours required — but reassured us in her report that she’s only taking three Arts papers in the second trimester, “which will give [her] a lot more time to dedicate hours to VUWSA.” Most exuberant statement: “I think VUWSA absolutely killed it in terms of running safe but really fun events.”
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Features
Clubs and Activities Officer: Marlon Drake
Campaigns Officer: Raven Maeder
Hours Worked: 339.5 Hours Required: 260 (10 per week)
Hours Worked: 197.5 Hours Required: 160 (10 per week)
Marlon is the Clubs and Activities Officer and has done a “good job” — it’s in writing, not going to dispute that. The Clubs and Activities Officer has a constitutional goal to “support sporting, social, and cultural activities for and by students; primarily through clubs and representative groups.” They work with Recreation Services — another legacy of VSM, as clubs at VUW aren’t under the umbrella of VUWSA as they were in the past — to ensure that clubs on campus are well supported and have access to facilities and resources. (Not so fun fact/digression: there’s a ProLife club on campus… are they deserving of resources? Is this the appropriate time to be asking that question, probably not…). Marlon has been involved in the Clubs Council, and used their meetings at the start of the year to create working groups to address aspects of VUWSA engagement with clubs: training, constitutional review, and a Clubs Manual. The manual is the first of its kind and was released recently.
Raven is a contender with Marlon for the most openly smiley and positive executive member. When we read Raven’s report about how “really fun and rewarding” it was to be a part of O-Week that gave students an “awesome experience,” that “engaging with students at the Newtown Festival was another awesome experience,” and that “Stress Free Study Week was another awesome experience,” we really do believe that relentless positivity.
Marlon also seems to be involved in everything — probably part of the social and cultural requirements of the role. He’s helped with the Living Wage, VUW Athletics Club Relays, Fairer Fares, O-Week, Wellington Student Volunteer Army, Stress Free Study Week, Thursdays in Black, Make a Meal in May… and more. “It has been a crazy semester already…” — this was in June, but he’s still standing tall, having tended “the flames of student politics” and “danced around the edges of burnout” to “some lit tunes.” [Fire emoji]. (It’s amazing what you can do with a little quote trimming). Most exuberant statement: “I attended the PSC Orientation Event, and sung some Nesian Mystik on karaoke. It was dope, and I killed it.”
One of the key projects for Raven this year is Fairer Fares — rallying students to make submissions, coordinating those who presented oral submissions to the Greater Wellington Regional Council, organising a video for the campaign, plus celebrations for the milestones achieved in this marathon. The other big campaign Raven worked on this year, with Nathaniel, is We Have Power. Raven was part of the National Campaign Team, “which is the group that oversees the running of the campaign at a national level” and was the main communicator between VUWSA and NZUSA. We find out this week whether the 100% target was met. Most exuberant statement: “…sitting on this national team is an important opportunity to really strengthen student voice nationally.”
President: Rory Lenihan-Ikin
Hours Worked: 1484 Hours Required: 1040 (40 per week) Fails to submit his weekly column to us on time. Is a meme. Most exuberant statement: “There is so much going on in the President role, and it is easy to skate along on a flat surface if you don’t employ a ruthless focus.”
OPINION
OPINION OPINION OPINION OPINION OPINION
OPINION OPINION
While I’ve been trying to escape from the reality of Christchurch for so long, I find myself returning to it again and again in my writing, even when I don’t intend to. Houses are a prevalent theme; blank-eyed and empty they rot in the margins of my notebooks, crumbling in between the lines of my occasional attempts at poetry. Christchurch is something that never leaves you, and that creeping feeling of guilt has stuck with me too. As I watch my friends and family get steadily, terrifyingly worse, let down by a collapsing and underfunded system, I start to wonder whether I would be more help if I’d stayed, rather than just being a voice on the end of the phone. But this isn’t just about me. I’m sick and tired of my city and the people I care for having their needs brushed aside by a government only in it to line their own pockets, determined to deny that there’s a problem. Earlier this year National de-funded Lifeline, one of NZ’s biggest suicide prevention hotlines. This is not an isolated incident. The Canterbury DHB has suffered funding cuts multiple years in a row, even as the demand for services post-earthquake continues to increase at a phenomenal rate. Bill English maintains that, just as he claims there is no housing crisis, our mental health systems are working fine, and need no overhaul. I refuse to accept this. So, Bill English, I challenge you to look me in the eye; at the self inflicted scars on the bodies of the people I love; at the primary school kids in Christchurch unable to get help for anxiety and suicidal thoughts — and tell all of us where your “care” and “support” has been these past seven years. Can you truly say that you and your government are doing the best they can, when so many of us are being pushed to the brink? Because I don’t think you can. For the sake of the people I’ve left behind, I hope by the time this is published that there has been a change in government, because god only knows how many more of us will die if we’re stuck with another three years of a party that’s only in it for themselves. — Niamh Hollis-Locke
OPINION
CW: Suicide/self harm mentions I was struck by the article penned by Rose McIlhone discussing the suicide of her cousin (Issue 20), and the way our government ignores mental health. As a fellow ex-Christchurchian, the mention of the impact of the earthquakes, and the guilty release of escaping to another city, spoke volumes to me. I intended to write this as a letter to the editor, but the more I thought about it the angrier I got about the disregard our politicians display toward issues of mental illness in our country. The whole country is experiencing a mental health crisis, and nowhere is it more apparent than among the young people of Christchurch. According to the latest statistics, Canterbury has the highest suicide rate in the country, and the number of people seeking help for mental health issues has increased dramatically in the past seven years. So many people I know have trauma-related issues and, with the mental health system stretched past breaking point, it falls to teenagers who are struggling themselves to attempt to hold each other up. While the details of the stories may vary, too many of us have had the experience of staying up till dawn talking a friend out of suicide. Everyone has been impacted in different ways by the quakes, but there are some common themes. Rates of depression and anxiety disorders have rocketed, especially among students, and I fall into the latter category. At this point pretty much anything can cause me strife — from having to send an email, to figuring out where to sit in my lectures. Along with that is a collection of direct trauma symptoms. Turns out it’s not actually normal to be pushed to the edge of a panic attack when the wind makes the windows rattle, or to analyse the construction of every building you enter to figure out how quickly it’d collapse in a quake. That fear hasn’t abated since leaving Christchurch. The tall buildings of Lambton Quay terrify me, and on days where I’m feeling particularly anxious I struggle to go to lectures, as a large majority of the buildings that I have classes in are constructed of brick.
OPINION
OPINION
CHRISTCHURCH AND THE MENTAL HEALTH CRISIS
Opinion News
OPINION
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Columns COLUMNS
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PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS
VUWSA
As I’m writing this, I’ve got no idea what has happened at Saturday’s election. My bet is that Winston has the country foul hooked on his fishing rod and is sitting in his boat out on the Kaipara Harbour bathing in the glory before winding us all in. But there will be enough hot takes out there this week about what actually happened, so I won’t try and compete. So I’ve got some good news and some bad news for you instead. The bad news is that today marks the start of another election — yes, just when you thought you had heard that word for the last time. The time of the Orange Man is over. The time now is for the Grange Man. If you are wondering what the hell I’m on about, this week nominations are open for the VUWSA election. The good news is that this election is a short sprint in comparison to the ultra marathon that we have just experienced. The other good news is that, judging by the lack of action on any issue of importance in all levels of government, the outcome of the VUWSA election could have a greater impact on your life than the one we’ve just been through. I mean, is it going to be hawaiian or pepperoni at next year’s AGM? But seriously, whether you are feeling angry or inspired after the general election, this is a bloody good opportunity to channel that energy into something tangible. You don’t need to be mates with someone in VUWSA to run for VUWSA. And don’t feel that you are not qualified — none of us are qualified, you’re left to learn on the job. That’s the point of student associations — students representing students. This year it has been an absolute privilege to represent you. The 2017 executive have been amazing, and now we need to elect a group who can be even better. This could be you! — Rory Lenihan-Ikin
It’s THAT time in the trimester again when your workload starts piling up and you wish you had started those assignments a little earlier. Yep, this is the period when your energy levels are plummeting and blood pressure is rising. But just as an imminent test or assignment can get your stress levels pumping, you have the power to reset almost instantly. Just as we have a stress response to pressure, we also have a relaxation response, during which your breathing slows and your blood pressure decreases. We don’t really have a choice when our bodies start to feel stressed, but we do have the ability to undo its effects. On that note, here are a few quick ways to deal with stress:
Breathe Deeply Deep breaths are like little love notes to your body. It helps your body relax and relieves tension through an extra boost of oxygen. Google some simple breathing exercises and that pressure you’re feeling will be relieved in no time. Meditation I’m not the most spiritual person so whenever my dad told me to meditate when feeling anxious I never took it too seriously. However, having since read some articles online about it, I am now a strong advocate. Meditation not only gets your breathing and body relaxed, it also clears the mind. Clearing your mind of all thoughts can be really difficult so this will take practice, but it is such an important skill to learn. Meditation is great for relieving tension and teaches you how to take control of your own thoughts, not to mention it can help with anxiety! Go for a ten minute walk Going outside, moving your body, and breathing in the fresh air can work wonders for your stress levels. While any exercise will release endorphins in your body which relieves stress, you can easily fit walking into your busy schedule. Consider walking in a green space like a park, which will put your mind in a state of meditation but also allow for reflection on your day, or even just choosing to walk between campuses or home will be beneficial.
— Lauren Daroux-Greig, Education Officer
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Columns
TE ARA TAUIRA
ONE OCEAN
Ngāi Tauira is a rōpu built to represent Māori students here at university. We have a rich history in Te Whanganui a Tara, and are based across the road, next to our marae Te Herenga Waka. Ngāi Tauira runs a variety of events, academic sessions, and study groups to help you with your studies, sports and hauora based events, kapa haka, pūrangiaho, and social events among them. In order to run these events, tauira vote in an executive group. This group is chosen at our Annual General Meeting (AGM). This year, our AGM will be held on October 19 at the marae. This is when the new executive group will be chosen, and when we recap and reflect on the year that has passed. If you are interested in applying for one of these roles, read about them below:
Last week was Papua New Guinea’s 42nd Independence Day! I was at home (Samoa) during the precelebrations and my mum, being from PNG, took us with her. Listening to the speeches and examining the intricate knitting that went into the hundreds of bilums* I saw, I was reminded of how far we’ve come as a country. When decades of Australian colonisation finally ended in 1975, we took the helm of our own canoe, as numerous other Pacific states have done. As the news reports have probably reflected, we’ve had our issues. Scratch that — we’ve had LOTS OF ISSUES. Our recent elections probably came to mind when I said that. I’ve been asked, true story, how the heck we’re still independent, still a state, still… alive (yes, some people go there)? They feel sorry for us, generally. I’d be an absolute liar if I didn’t say that half the time, I end up feeling sorry for myself, and staring at the Bird of Paradise on my passport wondering why we named it that! But then, self-pitying or not, we still live. We still literally climb mountains, wade through rivers, cut through bushes, and go to work and school each day. Like any other Pacific nation with its trials and triumphs, we still fly our flag. Because, despite everything around us, we still can.
TUMUAKI TAKIRUA: The tumuaki takirua are our two presidents of Ngāi Tauira. Usually a tāne and a wahine, who will lead the waka for the year. ĀPIHA WHAKANGĀHAU: Our events officer organises events throughout the year, whether they be sports, academic, or social, as well as events during Orientation Week etc. ĀPIHA HAUORA: Our sports and wellness officer. In charge of all things that keep our tinanas in top condition while we study! POU TUARONGO: Tikanga officer may oversee events such as Kapa Haka, Noho Marae, and hui. Should definitely have a good knowledge of Te Ao Māori. KAITUHI: Our kaituhi is our secretary, and keeps everything organised in the Ngāi Tauira administration. This includes minutes during meetings, emails, and writing documents. ĀPIHA TŪMATANUI: The communications officer is involved in the media side of Ngāi Tauira. Their mahi might include managing this column, social media, and organising Te Ao Mārama. KAITIAKI PŪTEA: The trusty person in charge of all our pūtea! The treasurer makes sure our money is organised to be able to pay for things Ngāi Tauira might need, including kai. ĀPIHA MĀTAURANGA: This person is here to support tauira on their academic journey. They might organise study sessions, assist you with class issues, and meet with staff of the university.
*Traditional PNG bags — Jasmine Koria
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THE QUEER AGENDA
POSTGRAD INFORMER
Tēnā koutou katoa! We’re sure you are all absolutely, one hundred per cent sick of elections, and would be happy to never hear about voting, candidates, or democracy ever again — but it’s UniQ’s own election time! We know that elections can be tiring, and it’s easy to just tune out and disengage, but if you care about queer issues and representation at VUW, we urge you to come along — even if it’s just to eat the pizza. UniQ has done some really important and significant work over the last few years, and we want to make sure that continues, so please come along and get involved! We are holding our AGM this Thursday (that’s the 28th), at 5.00pm in SU217 (next to the Bubble, under the Hunter Lounge, in the Student Union building). We have several executive positions up for grabs, including, but not limited to: President, Secretary, Treasurer, Communications Officer, as well as a whole bunch of representative positions including Trans, Takatāpui, and Women’s Reps. We’re also voting on some constitutional amendments — and did we mention there’ll be pizza? We’ll be putting up descriptions of the executive positions on our Facebook page over the week, so check it out and give us a like (if you haven’t already). It’s the easiest way to stay on top of what we’re doing and to find out how you can be a part of the wonderful world of queer representation at Te Whare Wānanga o te Ūpoko o te Ika a Māui. We also want to get your feedback on how we’re doing — are you happy with the events we’re running? Do you feel like we’re doing a good job representing your interests? Is there something you feel like we’re missing? This is your opportunity to come along and give us your opinion, and to let the incoming executive know what you want for UniQ in 2018 and beyond. Ngā mihi nui, arohanui, and we’ll see you on Thursday!
When I was in Timor-Leste for my research, to my immense surprise I was often looked upon with pity, because I could only speak one language. To my local guide, this was a source of amazement. He himself could speak five: Tetun, Portuguese, two local village languages, and English. Being bilingual is the minimum expected (generally people can speak the language of their local village, plus the ubiquitous Tetun). I think such a norm is to be aspired to. My short experiences learning Chinese (highly useful) and Ancient Greek (somewhat less so) have enhanced not only my linguistic skills, but my appreciation and understanding of other cultures. Learning a language increases knowledge of your own language’s grammar and generally helps improve brain function. Which is why I am astonished by the continued opposition to compulsory Māori language classes in New Zealand schools. For a start, I think a second language in itself should be compulsory, for the reasons above. And for New Zealand, could there be anything more appropriate that one of our official languages, the language of the original settlers of our country? One of the objections has been that the time commitment to achieve fluency would be too large, but this is really beside the point. Language doesn’t exist in a vacuum: when you learn one, you learn about the history, the culture, and the spirituality of its speakers. With subtle (and occasionally not-so-subtle) undercurrents of division still remaining in New Zealand, Māori language provides a clear contact point for all New Zealanders to access a shared past, and encourage a shared future. Metrics of success should not be how fluent we are (though it would be awesome if everyone was), but how united we are. And to all international postgrads who may feel their English is halting or weak, just remember: the fact you are speaking a second language at all beats most of us hands down.
— <3 UniQ
— Josh Brian
Columns
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FROM WITHIN
— Joe Morris
THE FALLOUT ZONE
My day job is running a café at a community farm in East London. The job largely consists of serving cappuccinos to volunteers from big banks and insurance firms who come one day a year to shovel shit for their sins. Most of them work within central London, some earning more than the cost to run the farm each a year. I am the man with their morning caffeine, and that seems to afford them a funny degree of honesty and openness. On more than one occasion, morning small talk has posed the question: what do people do straight after a terrorist attack? The response offered is usually: “head to the nearest pub.” I have even heard one man say (disclaimer: he worked for BP) only then, sat with a warm flat pint of London Pride, would he call his loved ones. The pub provides refuge for many Londoners like no other. “The local”, or even just “the pub” — the nearest one — is a community institution in the United Kingdom. The pub here gives everything you could need upon leaving the house: coffee and breakfast, a basement with a stage and PA, or the solace you need on a Sunday. As I have learned, Sundays are a particular treat. A yorkshire pudding swimming in gravy, with a couple of session ales, is all you need to turn what should be the worst comedown of your life into the best day of the week. No wonder acolytes turned from the Church to the pub in search of Sunday prayer. And just as Jesus would have wanted, there is a pub for everyone: down the road there is a pub named the “Snooty Fox”; a little more further afield and you will find many “Workingmens’ Arms” — names signifying their patrons and their salaries all too overtly. As is the entrenchment of the class system in the United Kingdom. The small gig scene in London is thanks to the many pubs that have small venue spaces and a population interested enough to pay five quid on a Thursday evening. No doubt bands need somewhere to play before being shoved onto the O2 arena or the Roundhouse. Finally, the pub here fills the role of Wellington’s cafe. You are just as likely to find a mum juggling a coffee, baby, and work at the bar as you are a first year university student smashing jugs. Essentially, moral of the story is: stop spending all your money on fancy toast and flat whites and give the pub another go.
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I’M NOT SURE HOW I FEEL: DISILLUSIONMENT WITH ELECTIONS Written by Brigid Quirke
This post-election sentiment was written prior to the election, due to both the limitations of print and the pervasiveness of this disillusionment beyond the election’s outcome. If there was a revolution over the weekend, some of these thoughts can be disregarded.
I am a Young Person1 and, like many other Young People, I was told that the 2017 election was my opportunity to engage in politics, to make a change, to have my voice heard. I read policies and debates and forum discussions. I was told why to vote Blue or Red or Yellow or Green or something else. While reading through one party policy, I clicked on a link in the document to be met with a message — Error: this page cannot be found. A dead link. The research to justify the policy statement was lost somewhere; inaccessible and lacking legitimacy. Much like elections themselves. Our feelings towards elections are often framed in terms of outcome, limited to whether we consider it a Win or a Loss. Media outlets had their headlines planned for either outcome well in advance; Bill’s Back or Labour To Lead Us. But are our responses not more complex? We struggle to balance and mediate conflicting feelings — feelings that often come with a caveat of uncertainty or alienation. In reality, the way I feel about elections depends on who I am talking to, what I’ve read, how much sleep I’ve had.
1. “Young Person” is (ironically) used here to refer to individuals aged 18–30 in Aotearoa, as is done by the Electoral Commission. Although not a homogenous group, they (we?) are often viewed as one bloc of people, despite being from different cultural groups, communities, and socio-economic brackets.
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Brigid Quirke
I’m not sure how I feel: Disillusionment with elections
I asked those around me how they felt about elections, and found myself agreeing with all of them, in some way.
1. I feel hopeful; hopeful to hear those who are in power discuss issues that matter to me — abortion decriminalisation, tertiary education, climate change — in a way that indicates potential tangible change to the law, rather than vague ideas of societal shifts. 2. I feel interested in the prospect of change that never seems to eventuate. 3. I feel lucky to live in a country where a democratic system is upheld and implemented. 4. I feel conflicted about the role of Democracy as a colonising force which has been implemented upon indigenous cultures as a civilising mechanism, (forcefully) replacing pre-existing governance structures. 5. I feel powerless. 6. I feel helpless, looking at the list of parties and feeling alienated by all of them. 7. I feel tired from the constant strain of Stuff comments, Facebook posts, and conversation which morphs into a polarising and hateful discussion. 8. I feel angry being told that Young People don’t know anything about government, when Young People all around me are reading policies and informing themselves and asking critical questions while others vote purely based on habit. 9. I don’t know how I feel. As with many Young People, my views on elections are not fixed. While I understand how MMP and a democratic system works in the abstract, the way election campaigns and policies become tangible change is somewhat murky. It is difficult to see how two ticks on a piece of paper translate to the way decisions are made — while those ticks contribute to which parties get seats in parliament, our influence on that parliament’s actions is limited. Our “representative” democracy means that
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we leave it to parliament to make decisions for us. So, although a vote is held up as the most influential role we have in that system, it is not clear how our votes impact what policies will be prioritised, or what bills will be passed under urgency, and therefore how influential that role really is. This disjoint, between our “active role” as voters and our very inactive role in parliament’s decision making makes it difficult to place ourselves in relation to the whole. Elections often do not feel like they are for us. They relegate Young People to the periphery, involving us as an object, but not as an active subject, in discussion of policy and voting. Elections heighten this disconnect between the system and those it “represents” — politicians, from all parties on the political spectrum, trying to appeal to Young People appears, at best, false and cringeworthy. It often feels patronising. Young People are interested in tertiary education and Chlöe Swarbrick, but don’t they understand that farming is the backbone of this country? Those who come and speak to groups of Young People are quick to recall when they were at university or when they had teenage acne or when they were broke; but do not actually address what it means to be us, here, now. As Young People, the way our lives are framed by others is often inherently politicised; positioned against — Baby Boomers, homeowners, business people. The rhetoric is tiring. It lumps Young People into a voting bloc and assumes a homogeneity of views, before we have had the chance to assess how we actually are placed on different policies or perspectives. For many Young People in Aotearoa, the inherent politicisation of being a Young Person is layered with other modes of politicised oppression — racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, classism. This can further alienate individuals who do not feel represented by the parties we have to choose from, or the representative “system” itself. Part of this disillusionment comes, I think, from the systemic nature of the issues Young People witness and experience. We live in a country where layers of inequality are evident in our schools, our communities, our courts. Some of these are viscerally, uncomfortably obvious — the woman with a cardboard sign asking for change outside New World; the statistics regarding rheumatic fever. Others are more slight, but still pervasive — your male colleague’s pay rise; the Stuff article about the single mother who feeds a family of four for $100 a week. Tangible shifts to systemic inequalities are possible only through deep, fundamental change, and an avenue for that change is not readily available in our current electoral system. Inequality is perpetuated by different layers of decision making, beyond the individuals in parliament. There are the policy advisers, Treasury executives, and ministry officials who dictate the way money is spent and resources are allocated; there is a legal system that entrenches the way property and people are valued; there are norms and behaviours which negotiate “acceptable” ways of being. Our participation in elections might influence one of these layers, but it is hardly surprising that we might feel dissatisfied with one empty gesture
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Brigid Quirke
I’m not sure how I feel: Disillusionment with elections
of democracy. The idea that my two ticks are indicative of my integration and involvement in this civil society makes me uncomfortable, if that same civil society engages in the oppression of marginalised groups, incarceration, poverty, gender inequity. When asking those around me how they felt about elections, another response came from over the phone: I don’t even feel like elections affect me. My initial reaction was disbelief. Of course elections affect you, government has a majority in parliament, and parliament makes law. But peeling that statement back, I realised they meant it in a different light — not that the election would not have any impact on their life, but that a change in political leadership would not resolve the issues they cared about. Elections are confusing, because while dressed as an opportunity for change, it is unclear how there will be change to these inequalities. Budget expenditure will shift, houses will be built; but when it comes to addressing and resolving fundamental, underlying inequalities, the system cannot promise to remedy the very issues it was built on. In a discussion hosted by Paiaka in August, constitutional lawyer Moana Jackson reflected on the way decision making is framed in Aotearoa. “I get frustrated when people refer to it as The Law,” he said. “This is but one way of making decisions. There are many different ways of making decisions.” For Jackson, the system of representative democracy imported from the UK cannot remedy inequalities, because the process by which it was brought to Aotearoa, through colonisation, was violence. Effective change requires a different structure, not a different leader. So, what does this mean? Addressing inequality is not just about voting or not voting. It is about critiquing (dismantling) the system. While our parents and whanau might be entrenched in the way they view elections and politics, we do not have to be. Not knowing how to feel about elections can be hard, but it also means being alive to the prospect of an alternative. And if the alternative is a system not built on inequality, perhaps it is worth feeling uncomfortable. The election spectacle brings with it fanfare about change in one specific context, but challenging inequality and seeking systemic shifts is work to be done all of the time — not once every three years. The end of elections make me feel relieved. It means an escape from strangers asking me who I am voting for. From the amplified Facebook discussions that polarise their commenters. From the politicians who visit campus in their politically coloured ties. For me, a Young Person, the election was not a Win or a Loss, but a reminder of the inadequacy of the system it represents and perpetuates. I’m not sure how I feel.
— Teresia K. Teaiwa, 1994, “bikinis and other s/pacific n/oceans”
atmospheric bombs and continues to test underground at Moruroa and Fangataufa.”
Monte Bello, Emu, and Maralinga in Australia. Since 1966 France has tested 41
on Johnston Atoll between 1958 and 1962, and in the 1950s conducted 12 tests at
the United States, the Soviet Union, and China. Britain exploded 12 nuclear bombs
Pacific, but this figure did not include nuclear missiles launched into the Pacific by
reported that more than 200 nuclear bombs and devices had been detonated in the
phenomena and processes that affect the Pacific region. In 1980 the United Nations
“Nuclear testing is just one — albeit a most pernicious one — of the many colonial
A n d o n l y t h e n d o I fi n d t r a n q u i l i t y
W h e re i t b e c o m e s c a u g h t i n a c u r r e n t o f i m m e n s e p o w e r
My spirit leaves, drifting around and far away
Rendering me helpless and in great despair
The thought is over whelming
B e c a u s e o f m y i s l a n d a n d t h e l i f e I o n c e k n e w t h e re
N o l o n g e r c a n I re s t o n m y s l e e p i n g m a t a n d p i l l o w
No longer can I live in peace and harmony
N o l o n g e r c a n I s t a y, i t ’s t r u e
“George”, the third test of Operation Greenhouse, was conducted by the US Department of Defence at Enewetak Atoll in 1951. It was the world’s first thermonuclear explosion, yielding 225 kilotons, and one of 43 tests that bombarded the atoll between 1948 and 1958. 305 kilometres to the East is Bikini Atoll, where a further 23 bombs were exploded on the island, its reefs, the surrounding ocean and air, between 1946 and 1958 by the US. The whole of Bikini Atoll, and most of Enewetak Atoll, are uninhabitable. In 1946 the population of Bikini Atoll were relocated to the smaller Rongerik Atoll where they struggled to get enough food because it lacked the resources of their home. Moved, but stranded still, they now live on the tiny Kili Island which lacks a lagoon, unable to fish like they did. While struggling on Rongerik, one of the people from Bikini Atoll, Lore Kessibuki, wrote their anthem:
“George”, the third test of Operation Greenhouse. 1951. US Department of Defence. Sourced from The Atlantic.
Written by Dan Kelly
THE FURY OF [OUR] OWN MOMENTUM:
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— Rebecca Solnit
* In the lead in to their use in World War II, nuclear weapons were tested just once, in the desert at White Sands, New Mexico: the explosion dramatised in Twin Peaks. The bombs that fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were numbers two and three respectively —
and since? More than 2053 explosions, shared among eight nations: the United States, the USSR, France, the UK, China, India, Pakistan, and, most recently, North Korea. Of these tests, the US is by far the most prolific, with an excess of a thousand explosions, the large majority conducted at the Nevada test site, some 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas. For those of us in the southern hemisphere, the focal point has been Mururoa Atoll in French Polynesia, and the tests carried out there by France from 1966 until 1996. But for every nuclear nation there is a test site, and their stories are the same. As Rebecca Solnit explains in her book Savage Dreams, the process of obtaining the land in Nevada mirrors that of the bomb’s effect, displacing the Native Americans who lived there and casting all those who live nearby as collateral — with the areas downwind suffering from marked increases in birth defects and cancer. For nukes aren’t just an explosive force, but a radioactive one too, a fundamental reworking of the basis of
Dan Kelly
“Hope was for me the belief in the unknowability of the future, the sense that its outcome was not fixed (and that we might intervene in it)… an argument for the wildness of the world, for its unpredictability.”
The world is a funny place. In what is perhaps the most experimental (read: weird) episode of the latest season of Twin Peaks, visionary-auteur David Lynch’s extended exploration of trauma, viewers are presented with an atomic explosion, ostensibly the world’s first and the literal schism responsible for the creation of evil known in the Twin Peaks universe as BOB. The scene that follows is excruciating, both for its length and apparent pointlessness. We watch, growing increasingly bored and confused, as the camera shakes and the explosion crackles, tracking along and into its core — for a gargantuan eleven minutes. In more than one sense, there is no escape. The music set to the bomb is that of Krzysztof Penderecki, “Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima”, a fraught, tension-filled piece — and as the explosion’s creations, the coalgrey, tramp-looking Woodsmen swarm a petrol station, take over a radio broadcast, and put the town to sleep (yes, Twin Peaks is weird as fuck). There is a disconcerting sense, that of which Lynch has proved himself master, time and time again, that all is not well in the world. It is not a metaphor.
35 The Fury of [our] own Momentum
Anti-nuclear opposition has a long history in New Zealand. The first protest march for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) took place in Easter 1961, when 36 people walked from Featherston to Parliament; not exactly a majority movement. However, the protesters knew that they would be filmed and televised, with their banners and slogans seeking to take advantage of the new medium — an idea that seems laughably quaint in today’s bubble-saturated environment. But the protest worked, and the ideas gained momentum. It was followed by marches in a number of different centres, an 80,000 person petition (“No Bombs South of the Line”), and, in 1972, direct action by the Greenpeace yacht Vega, sailing from New Zealand up to the Mururoa Atoll and into the test zone. Vega was soon joined by other boats, one with Matiu Rata, a sitting cabinet minister, on board, and both the New Zealand and Australian governments took France to court over the atmospheric testing. It was, as former Salient editor Roger Steele notes, “a wild time.” Steele spent two years at the helm of Salient, one as co-editor with Peter Frank in 1973, and the following year alone — although as Steele explained to me, he was far from solo: “It was an absolutely pivotal point in history. People were flouting authority and not following the traditional path of study and then job, they were taking time out and they were exploring freedom and much more… it was a time of big social change between that older generation who hadn’t really changed since colonisation to a generation that was aware of
*
life. As Oppenheimer, one of the bomb’s so-called fathers, was to say, looking back on that first explosion, its power brought to mind a passage in the Bhagavad Gita, the Hindu holy text, where Vishnu reveals his universal form, both terrifying and sublime: “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”
[a host of issues] worth supporting.” Nukes were just one piece of the puzzle. As the archived versions of Salient show, there was no shortage of news to cover. From the Vietnam war to apartheid, sexism and Māori rights, gay rights, environmental rights, and even student rights, it was a period of growing awareness of the injustice of the world, a time when the mainstream media seemed woefully silent and Salient, jokingly referred to as “one arm of the revolution,” stepped willingly into the breach. Steele describes their role as “part of the university’s tradition as critic and conscience,” but it wasn’t one limited to words: “We wore our colours on our sleeve.” The Salient team were on the front line of a number of different direct actions, gifted a van by philanthropist Dick Werry and ready to go at a moment’s notice — be it to a protest or, in the case of their work for the Tenancy Protection Association, using the van to reappropriate and transport tenants’ possessions back to the Student Union Building, where they were kept under guard overnight. It’s a sign of how far we’ve come. For just as it’s hard to imagine today’s Salient team doing the same (love you guys), it’s equally hard to imagine a landlord cancelling your lease without notice, removing your possessions, and locking you out of your flat. As Roger explained over the course of our interview, “a lot of the change has happened… but people aren’t aware of the battle it took to As Twin Peaks proceeds, and writers Frost and Lynch unpack more of the hurt from the bomb (and the war that birthed it), we come to see it as a symbol, an example of the division that defines our time. In the death of Laura Palmer, the woman around whom the show centres, is the rise of an evil — that
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achieve those rights; they just take them for granted and aren’t encouraged to look beyond the status quo to the people still missing out.” While there’s no denying that today’s students operate in a different environment to those of their ’70s forebears, I couldn’t help but think of Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History, and his episode on moral licensing: the process whereby one good action justifies future bad ones — or, in the case of society, how a period of social change and steps towards equality actually helps to entrench inequality. The logic being that we’ve made some progress — we’re not as bad as we were — and so we don’t need to stress about what’s still to come.
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Dan Kelly
Third picture of a series of the Licorne thermonuclear test in French Polynesia. 1970. The Atlantic.
37 The Fury of [our] own Momentum
* And what then, of our journey? The New Zealand of 2017 is vastly different from that of the early ’70s, but the same factors remain, here as around the world: social inequality, violence, and exclusion — products of our competition and the presumed hierarchy that drives it. To what do we owe our complacency? The number of nuclear tests has declined considerably, and with them, the threat of nuclear war — with the frantic heights of the Cuban Missile Crisis now more than 50 years in the past. But just as the horror of World War II remains — in the words of Roger Steele: “a strong shadow” — so too does the bomb, now stronger than ever. In 1996 the United Nations adopted the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban
represented in the heart of the explosion: a black ball with the face of a squinting, demonic man — the essence of which will come to possess Laura’s father, setting in motion the abuse that leads to her murder. It is this trauma to which Lynch speaks, and the metaphorical death that is required of both Laura and us: we must forget to continue on. But even as Laura seeks to deny the knowledge of her abuse, it continues to affect her. In this sense, division is only ever a coping strategy. The evil has been cast within, and in absence of confrontation, continues to spiral out, affecting all in the town where she’s from. Laura isn’t the cause of her evil, and nor is the bomb the cause of our division — but rather its apex. For as Twin Peaks shows, such escape demands a return, resolution towards a whole. In the efforts of Special Agent Dale Cooper to solve both Laura’s murder, and the larger cosmic schism of which it is representative, is the struggle we all must face, the search to be one with the world. As with the show itself, there are no easy answers: it’s the journey that matters most.
Anti-nuclear protest in Auckland. 1976. Sunday Star-Times.
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Treaty, resulting in an end to tests by the major players. However, eight states haven’t ratified the treaty, and no one has given up their nukes. On the contrary: they remain armed and ready to strike. In the rise of North Korea as a nuclear power (and the tiny-handed tweeter who would stop them) is a reminder not only of the control that America, the declining global empire, exerts, but also of the exclusion that this drives. For just as North Korea is to be sanctioned for their display of power, so too does the global corporatocracy for which America stands decide who is worthy of wealth, and who is not. New Zealand has been officially nuclear free since 1987 — but the same can’t be said for our participation in the business of which nukes are just a part: the military-industrial complex. In October Wellington will host the New Zealand Defence Industry Association’s annual Weapons Expo — in the words of Peace Action Wellington: “a gathering of major arms manufacturers and war profiteers from across the globe.” The expo is sponsored by none other than Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest arms company and manufacturers of — yup, you guessed it — nuclear weapons. Peace Action Wellington is co-ordinating a series of protests against the expo, including a blockade: “Peace Action Wellington maintain that companies profiting from the weapons trade is morally indefensible. Te Whanganuiā-Tara should not be tarnished with the business of war. We encourage the people of Wellington to stand up and show resistance to war profiteers by joining us at the protests on October 10–11.” All of a sudden it comes together. Nukes (and the military technology they represent) are about so much more than just violence. They are about the movement of our world, the model of growth, progress, and the elites its financing services — no matter the cost, or collateral. When the first free neutron War has long been a reason for protest, a direct cause that requires a direct action. In this as in all things, our scale becomes too big. The power that nuclear weapons represent, both physical and financial, is the same power that threatens our planet, the same power that
threatens us. In the fury of our momentum we have allowed power and wealth to accumulate — and the gap grows ever large. When Reverend Māori Marsden, author of The Woven Universe, returned from his service in World War II, the elders at his wānanga queried him on the bomb. In reply to his explanation — that Pākehā scientists had managed to tear the fabric of space — one of the elders asked, “But do they know how to sew (tuitui) it back together again?” In standing against power, in engaging with what Roger Steele described as that ascendant in the ’70s — “a general feeling that a communal society was better than a conflict-driven society” — in laying our fragile, human bodies against the impersonal business of bombs and guns, in engaging the solidarity and commitment such business and war deny, we come close to the very first stitch. Protests against the Weapons Expo take place on October 10–11: consider this an invitation to join.
Dan Kelly
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encounters an atom, it knocks other neutrons free, releasing their energy and sparking the chain reaction that gives rise to the explosion, a momentum of indescribable power and an easy metaphor for the process that brought them into being. Power always demands more power. For as David Graeber explains in Debt: The First 5000 Years, a debt is nothing without the threat of violence behind it. And our world of exclusion is nothing without its debts. The military-industrial complex doesn’t just produce profits: it protects them — a key tool in the preservation of our vast, unequal system. (A quick response to those who would argue on libertarian “but-it-was-earned” grounds: if hard work is the basis of wealth, then how is it that the vast volume of the rich’s fortunes accrues passively in the form of inheritance, accumulated interest, dividends and other financial services? Either the premise is wrong — and the so-called “lazy poor” are undeserving of their plight — or the premise is right, and it is the system that is wrong, leaving the rich in possession of an enormous, unearned wealth. Can you smell a reckoning?)
39 The Fury of [our] own Momentum
Voter turnout has been declining steadily in Aotearoa since the mid-1950s. Turnout spiked in 1984; this was to be the high-water mark for voter participation, with 93.7 per cent of those enrolled to vote turning out at the polls. The 2011 and 2014 elections saw official turnout — the per cent of those enrolled who voted — fall into the low 70s. Just 69.6 per cent of those eligible to vote did so in 2011, with a slight improvement in 2014 to 72.1 per cent; the lowest and second lowest turnouts in Aotearoa’s history since universal suffrage was introduced in 1893. This downturn has been a consistent trend over the last several decades throughout almost all Western democracies. This decline disturbs many. The liberals, in particular, are worried: the rising numbers of non-voters disrupts their democratic fantasy, their narrative of a harmonious democratic society. It also prompts a range of questions: why are people turning away from the polls? Who is the non-voter? What can be done about it? For the New Zealand Electoral Commission, non-voters are “not so much disillusioned with the political system as uninterested in it and disconnected from it.” For them, it is lack of interest and motivation that is seeing many neglect to enrol or cast a ballot. Non-voters come from all parts of Aotearoa, but are concentrated among the young, among Māori, Pasifika, and Asian ethnic groups, the materially poor or unemployed, and those with low levels of formal education. The response? For the Electoral Commission, “The values and culture that underpin [democracy] need to be learned and nurtured” — we must “encourage people to value their vote.” Outreach programs to increase the accessibility and attractiveness of voting have been common responses of the ElectoralCommission, along with calls for better civics education. It seems this sentiment is almost universally echoed by liberals around the world — the Gareth Morgan’s have emerged, telling us to Care. Think. Vote. *** So how are we to map the state of democracy today? A first port of call here should be the continuing fallout from the 2007 and 2008 economic crisis, or, as it’s sometimes called, the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). This pitched Western liberal democracy, and the capitalist
But such understandings of the nonvoter and the responses to turnout decline operate on a rather superficial level. They fail to look deep inside the system of liberal democratic capitalism, to consider its contradictions. They fail to think: could the non-voter perhaps represent a deeper problem in our liberal democracy, a wider failing at the heart of global capitalist society? The hype that has surrounded the 2017 election, the topsy-turvy polls, and a deluge of campaigns to get the vote out, will probably give us a slight bump in turnout this year. But the non-voter will remain, as will the inability of the liberal parliamentary system — a system subordinate to the “laws of the market,” to maintaining economic growth, and safeguarding the property of the wealthy — to represent the interests of the people in any real way. So we should reframe the issue. It is not a matter of ironing out kinks in the existing system — it is a matter of confronting the system’s internal limits, of mapping both the actuality and the potentiality of democracy today.
system at large, into a state of interregnum, characterised by instability and ongoing crisis. I like this word: interregnum — a situation in which the old is dying but the new cannot yet be born. It doesn’t just capture the political and economic situation, but the spirit of the times generally — the inability to imagine beyond our present horizon. For some, this state of interregnum indicates we are in a period of hegemonic crisis. Global capitalism currently lacks a coherent project — a dominant logic under which to organise, and a dominant set of powers to steer it. Prior to 2008, we could say that global capitalism was organised under a coherent project — that of finance, of financialising everything — and there were relatively high levels of consent for this project. But the GFC undermined the stability and legitimacy of this hegemonic formation; it revealed, when states began bailing out the banks, the hypocrisy of the free market; it stripped away the myth that everyone benefits
40 Features
Written by Jack Foster
The trauma of the nonvoter
Ship being loaded with containers. 1973. Dobbs-Wiggins McCann-Erickson Ltd
from globalisation, that everyone benefits from economic growth. Within this hegemonic crisis, a fundamental tension has been exposed. Liberal democracy has long had to balance two conflictual commitments: “government by the people” and “government for the people”, or alternatively, “representative government” and “responsible governance.” The former refers to the popular aspect of liberal democracy that supposes citizen involvement in elections and so on; the latter refers to things like the maintenance of formally equal legal rights and the safeguarding of private property. With the turn towards neoliberalism and the simultaneous globalisation of capital, the past several decades have, in the words of another, “hollowed out” the representative component of liberal democracy. We have seen the ascendency of responsible governance over representative government. While there are many factors that have contributed to this shift, here I’ll just highlight three.
41 Jack Foster The trauma of the non-voter
Democratic capitalist states must negotiate between the interests of their citizen base and those of the capitalist market at large. From 1945 to the mid 1970s, governments were generally able to strike a balance between these two sets of interests, as markets were largely contained within states and labour was able to bring collective bargaining power to bear through strong trade unions. But the onset of stagflation (falling rates of economic growth combined with high levels of inflation) across capitalist economies in the 1970s saw capital shift to the neoliberal regime to ensure continued economic growth. This development of neoliberal policy and the rapid globalisation of capital from the late 1970s has seen markets shift outside the control of national governments. This freeing up of capital via neoliberal-globalisation has meant that large corporations are able to pick and choose which states they want to invest capital in. States must now offer favourable conditions for corporate investment — they must respond to the market; they must responsibly manage the economy. This was largely achieved by reinstituting regressive tax systems and deregulating labour from the late 1970s onward. To do this, states had to borrow exorbitantly to cover their remaining fiscal spending. Later, loans were increasingly privatised, allowing
One: the interests of the market have replaced the interests of the people
and economic growth, these non-democratic institutions are able to siphon economic decision making away from popular oversight. Again, as economic policy is taken further out of their hands, states are less able to be responsive to their citizens.
For Jeffrey Winters, oligarchs are “actors who command and control massive concentrations of material resources that can be deployed to defend or enhance their personal wealth and exclusive social position.” These actors are unified by their shared interest in “the politics of wealth defence.” Lobbying groups, right wing think-tanks, large teams of lawyers, and
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Since 2008, technocratic institutions such as, in the case of the European Union, the European Central Bank (ECB), that are heavily insulated from democratic pressure, have been able to assume more control over economic policy. Because institutions such as the ECB are not subject to democratic processes, in times of crisis, when both the economy and public opinion is unstable, these institutions are able to further insulate themselves and emerge, according to one thinker, as “agents of stability.” In Europe, such institutions have managed to exert an increasing influence over the fiscal policy of sovereign states (see the shameless disregard for Greek sovereignty by the Troika and an austerity-mad Germany). At home, too, the Treasury and the Reserve Bank — both insulated from democratic accountability — wield a great deal of power. Under claims of maintaining stability
Two: power is devolving to the technocrats
So, the equation has flipped: states are now located in markets, and so responsible governance outranks representative government as the order of the day.
states to consolidate their debt. The GFC, though, forced states to bail out bankrupt financial institutions in order to stabilise the market; again, debt was socialised. But this new round of borrowing has meant that states must once again look to consolidate their debt, to ensure the financial markets that they are trustworthy borrowers. Enter austerity policy: a political commitment by states to place their obligations to creditors above all others. As is now commonly acknowledged, neoliberal-globalisation has also retrenched economic inequality both in Aotearoa and around the globe. One consequence is that, in contemporary liberal democracies, the ability of the working classes to pressure the state is increasingly limited, compared to the ability of those in the top ten per cent of earners. For instance, declining investment in the public sphere combined with the privatisation of essential services means that, because they have the material resources to do so, the middle and upper-middle classes shift toward the consumption of private services. Consequently, while declining fiscal investment negatively impacts the living standards of lower classes, it also has the effect of further entrenching middle and capitalist class demands for private sector development. As the public sector is further stripped away, the voting-bloc made up of higher-income citizens demands more private resources that the lower-income sectors of society cannot afford; as a result, governments are further incentivised to hollow out public investment. More striking, perhaps, is the power that can be brought to bear by extremely wealthy individuals — the oligarchs.
Three: the rise of inequality, the rise of oligarchy;
massive campaign donations to favourable candidates protect regressive tax policies and stonewall any attempts to impose asset taxes. While this is not nearly as entrenched at home as it is in other comparable places like the US and Britain, money still talks, and so the ability of governments to be responsive to their citizens further diminishes. These shifts that we have seen, since the onset of neoliberalism, and accelerating since 2008, tell a particular story: that of the continued insulation of economic decision making — decision making on the fundamental material conditions of existence — from democratic accountability and pressure.
43 Jack Foster The trauma of the non-voter
this has seen an erosion of democracy and democratic legitimacy, and the insulation of the economic from the political, it has also seen a return of popular discontent, a discontent that is unable to be managed by the parliamentary realm. What is particularly interesting about the present moment is that, while this enclosure of the economic from the political is more entrenched than ever, it is also increasingly visible; it is widely known that this is the case. And since 2008, the entire system appears to be at risk of imploding. So while democracy under capitalism is increasingly more of a joke, capitalism itself is looking increasingly less governable. But where there is instability there is opportunity. Those who still have faith in the current system, those who are wilfully ignorant — in a word, the liberals — rightly fear this instability. They fear what declining voter numbers could mean. But when the voters deliver the wrong outcome — when Britain votes to leave the EU, or America elects Donald Trump — liberals’ supposed love of democracy is exposed for the lie it is. They hasten to blame the ignorant underclasses and disavow the legitimacy of such results. But they fail to see their own complicity in these events, they fail to see that their own blind faith in the project of neoliberal-globalisation was only ever the dream of a middle-class weaned on the promise of a revolution that they betrayed. to politics that goes beyond the minimal levels we are currently afforded — something gestural. This all disturbs the liberals; it disrupts their fantasy of the harmonious democratic society, organised around the sensible accumulation of capital, around private property and the right of the individual to make their fortune; organised around periodically casting a vote for who you think will best manage the economy. And so, as some others write, “a world which believed it had completely insulated itself has discovered evil at its core, among its children.”
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It was never universally desired; it was never inevitable. So as this project comes apart, as fissures open up across it like so much baked mud, liberals must find a target for their scorn — they turn their fury toward those who didn’t vote or those who voted incorrectly. Of course, they’re correct: democracy is in crisis. But they look for answers in all the wrong places. They refuse to recognise that maybe capitalism, liberalism, and democracy make for one really dysfunctional threesome, a clumsy attempt at polyamory. Where, then, does the promise of the non-voter lie? Perhaps it is that their continued existence suggests there could be something more to politics than what the liberal democratic system can give us under capitalism — something more than a vote, than the reduction of one’s political being to pure opinion, to a simple choice between different strategies of management. That perhaps there is some element of the political not able to be captured by the liberal democratic apparatus, not able to be tamed and measured, to be quantified. That perhaps the political is not a system of management, of parliamentary governance; that perhaps it is the fundamental clash between different realities, between different life-forms. Even, perhaps, that politics contains some vital excess that cannot be grasped in parliament or by parliament, that there is a bodily vitality
Jack Foster
*** So where do we locate the non-voter in all of this? A first observation would be that they are perhaps not some apathetic, disinterested subject who shirks their citizen duties, but rather a symptom of a wider democratic malaise; a morbid symptom of a civilisation in which democracy has been “hollowed out.” But we should also pay attention to the present climate of crisis and hegemonic instability. While
But the fallout from the GFC has also seen a rise in social unrest, some of which has spilled into the parliamentary sphere (Corbyn and Brexit in Britain; Sanders and Trump in the US; Podemos in Spain, and so on). There are some signs, then, that parliamentary parties are having to, in the words of one commentator, “relearn what responsiveness means.” At this point, Aotearoa is yet to experience comparable unrest; so far, dissatisfaction with the current status quo has only rebirthed lukewarm social democratic policies. This has been accompanied by a fetishising of the supposed golden years of liberal democracy in the ’50s and ’60s, years where a balance of sorts was struck between capital and labour. Missing from this rosy view of the past is the acknowledgment that then we had strong trade unions and collective workers’ rights generally, very high income tax rates on the wealthy, and a national economy that was far better insulated from the whims of the global market — all properly absurd notions in today’s political common sense ( Jacinda, for instance, agrees that neoliberalism has failed, but doesn’t think monetary policy needs to be changed, and shares with Bill a distaste for strikes). So, despite the recent upheavals, it seems the spirit of interregnum remains. So far the collective response to this unpalatable present has been to simply turn our gaze back toward better times.
45 The trauma of the non-voter
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Written by Liam Kennedy
about
What’s
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Cities are ripe with the promise of equality and inclusion. As the postcolonial theorist Paul Gilroy puts it, they have the potential to become places “in which cultures, histories, and structures of feeling previously separated by enormous distances could be found in the same place, the same time: school, bus, café, cell, waiting room, or traffic jam.” This proximity may be messy and fraught but in it lies the potential for a mutual awareness and recognition that erodes prejudice. However, too often this promise of equality and inclusion is sold short, and a wealthy elite are able to shape the spaces we live in to the detriment of others. Sometimes a city’s promise of equality and inclusion evaporates the moment it is founded. Cities throughout the world, including many in New Zealand, were established through the violent eviction of indigenous peoples from their hubs and villages and the confiscation of their land. The promise then continues to be broken through practises of segregation, gentrification, and speculation which seek to make our cities the haven of a select few. Today in New Zealand, the promise of our cities is turning sour. In Auckland alone over 23,000 people are homeless. The government is perhaps the only entity with
housing
special
so
special
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What’s so Special about \× Special Housing
the resources and capacity to turn this situation around. However, a number of policies devised by local and central government in recent years look set to accelerate the rise of urban inequality and exclusion. One such exclusionary urban policy which has already had significant effects is Special Housing Areas (SHAs). SHAs are areas of rural and urban land rezoned by local government for the fast-tracked construction of housing. They are “special” because the normal rules of development don’t apply to them. Rather than applying for standard resource consent under the Resource Management Act, developers working in SHAs can go through a fast-track consenting process with limited notification of the public and reduced scope for appeals. Since they were introduced in 2013, at least 70 SHAs have been established in Auckland alone. Smaller, but still significant, numbers of SHAs have been established throughout the rest of the country. While the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Act of 2013 was initially introduced as a short-term measure, it has recently been extended until 2021. The Ministry of Business, Innovation, and Employment argues that SHAs will increase housing supply as they open up new land for housing development and let builders get to work as quickly as possible. This promised housing supply conceals the dark underside of SHAs. To see this side, you only need to travel a few minutes from the Auckland Airport to Ihumātao, South Auckland. In 2012, Fletcher Building purchased the Oruarangi Block, which runs alongside the village of Ihumātao, for a rumoured $19 million. Fletcher bought the rural land from its Pākehā owners on the condition that local and central government would accept the block as a SHA and rezone it
Liam Kennedy
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areas?
Even today, the government’s New Zealand History website ignores the event entirely, claiming that the gardens around the peninsula “fell into disuse after the early 19th century inter-tribal Musket Wars and were swallowed up by urban sprawl.” For tangata whenua, this history cannot be erased so easily. When I went up to visit Ihumātao early this year, one of the kaumatua there told me how her mother would sit on their veranda every night overlooking what was once their whenua and cry for the pain it was in. The descendants of those evicted, many of whom live in the township of Ihumātao, cannot afford fresh fruit and vegetables for their kids to eat in what was once a land of plenty. Only in 2001 was some redress achieved when the Manukau City Council bought land on the Ihumātao peninsula and made it into the Otuataua Stonefields Historic Reserve.
What’s so special about special housing areas?
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for residential development. Auckland City Council and central government complied, and in May 2014 the Oruarangi Block was made a SHA and Fletcher’s plans to build 480 houses on the it were underway. The process occurred so quickly and quietly that most in Ihumātao had no idea it was taking place. Even the councillors responsible for making the block a SHA have since admitted they had little idea about what they were signing off on in the rush of it all. The rub is that the Oruarangi Block sits on land confiscated from tangata whenua Te Wai-o-Hua. From the 12th century, Te Wai-o-Hua lived on the Ihumātao peninsula, which the Oruarangi Block is a part of, and cultivated its rich volcanic soils. The peninsula was criss-crossed with wharenui and fertile gardens which fed thousands. However, in the run up to the Waikato Wars of the 1860s, Te Wai-o-Hua was forced out of Ihumātao by the Crown to punish them for their support of the Kīngitanga, a movement formed to stop the loss of land to colonists. Te Wai-o-Hua fled south, and when they returned after the wars they found that almost all of their land, including what is now the Oruarangi Block, had been sold to Pākehā settlers. Once Pākehā were established on the peninsula, the forceful eviction of Te Wai-oHua and the confiscation of their land was promptly erased from the history books.
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The Reserve did not include the Oruarangi Block, but the Manukau City Council promised it would eventually be included. However, when the Manukau City Council was absorbed into the Auckland “Super City” Council in 2010, this promise got lost. Instead of making the Oruarangi Block part of the Historic Reserve, the Auckland City Council helped turn it into a Special Housing Area. When locals eventually got a whiff of Fletcher’s plans to build on the Oruarangi block, they launched the Save Our Unique Landscape (SOUL) campaign in 2015. A number of those leading the campaign are direct descendants of Te Wai-o-Hua, and they have been reminded once again of the menacing side of urban development. First the government confiscates their land, now they are helping multinationals build high-cost houses on it. Through a mixture of direct action and legal appeal, the SOUL campaign has prevented Fletcher Building from building a single home, and those involved won’t rest until SHA is disestablished and the block is made part of the reserve. Yet the question remains: why are tangata whenua having to undertake such a campaign in the first place? Why should the kaitiaki of this land have to struggle so hard to make their voice heard? SOUL argue that it is the SHA legislation which places Māori in this position. SHA designation removes any obligation to consult with tangata whenua about proposed development, as such violating the tino rangatiratanga of Māori over their whenua, kāinga, and taonga as affirmed in Te Tiriti o Waitangi. SOUL has filed a Waitangi Tribunal Claim to this effect, and the UN has recently recommended that the New Zealand government re-evaluate whether the SHA at Ihumātao breaches the Treaty. The failure of SHAs to honour the Treaty is enough to compromise their legitimacy by itself, but the problems do
\× What is particularly worrying is that SHAs seem to be setting the tone for urban development in New Zealand for decades to come. What were zones of exception could soon become the norm. The Auckland Unitary Plan, which became operational in 2016, follows a similar logic to the SHAs but on a much larger scale. Like the SHAs, the Plan looks to free up land for developers, often in low income areas, and lacks any requirements around housing affordability. The Plan also limits the voice of tangata
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Features of universally accessible state housing would create “a strong alternative to the exploitative private [housing] market” and in doing so drive down private housing prices and undermine landlords’ ability to charge exorbitant rents. As it stands however, no party in New Zealand is willing to undertake such a large-scale development of state housing in partnership with tangata whenua. If we want to address the growing division in our cities, and realise their potential as spaces of equality and inclusion, then we need to fight back against SHAs and their ilk. This means joining groups like SOUL in their struggle against specific instances of urban injustice. It also means building these specific struggles into broader coalitions which can force the state to put its resources and power to better use. Only through claiming ownership over the future of our cities can we hope to gain the ability to determine the kind of society we want to be. These spaces literally lay the foundations and
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Liam Kennedy
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not stop there. For one, SHAs will not, and cannot, produce genuinely affordable housing for the hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders who desperately need it. This is because the vast majority of houses in SHAs are being built by corporate developers who are allowed to sell them at market price. This is such an astonishing policy that it bears repeating. In the face of widespread homelessness and overcrowding among New Zealanders on low incomes, SHAs are simply being used to churn out more million dollar homes. Presumably drawing on an old ECON 101 textbook, Nick Smith argues that the construction of more high cost homes will increase supply and bring demand, and market prices, down. However, this equation ignores the fact that most low income New Zealanders can’t pay anything near market price for a home. Building more market price homes might make buying a new home slightly more affordable for landlords, property speculators, and young professionals, but the pressing demand of low income New Zealanders will never be met under this scheme. The news is not any better for the environment either. A study of Auckland SHAs, conducted by Nick Preval and colleagues in 2016, found that the areas will do little to curb the city’s urban sprawl or reduce carbon emissions. This is because a number of the SHAs, including the Oruarangi Block, are being built far from the city centre, disconnected from public transport, and on top of what were green spaces. Residents in these new SHAs will have no option but to hop in their cars and undertake the same long commutes that are driving emissions upwards. If we want to address climate change then smart, coordinated urban planning is crucial. SHAs are anything but that. whenua in urban development by removing the cultural impact assessments previously required for development around Māori sites of significance under the Resource Management Act. Some companies have walked away from projects involving SHAs in the belief that development under the Auckland Unitary Plan will be even more permissive and profitable. So, what’s the alternative? How can New Zealand’s housing crisis be addressed without side lining Māori rights or excluding the urban poor? The most obvious solution is a mass construction of universally accessible state houses lead by central government and tangata whenua. Unlike corporate developers, the state can construct housing on a large scale without needing to make a profit, and they have a proven track record of doing so. Between 1938–1950, for example, over 35,000 state homes were built. Unfortunately, many previous state housing schemes have excluded Māori, or looked to assimilate them, and bulldozed over wāhi tapu in the process. Any new mass construction of housing, therefore, would have to give tangata whenua a leading role in the scheme and be based around principles of kaitiakitanga (guardianship of people and land). According to Vanessa Cole, an advocate for Auckland Action Against Poverty, the mass construction
set the boundaries for what kind of lives we can lead. As David Harvey puts it in his book Rebel Cities, “the question of what kind of city we want cannot be divorced from what kind of people we want to be, what kinds of social relations we seek, what relations to nature we cherish, what style of life we desire, what aesthetic values we hold.”
What’s so special about special housing areas?
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ARTS
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Poem
Am I my skin?
Am I my skin? This tan, yellow brown, People’s colours changing from town to town, Exposure to the sun, Adaptations beginning from day one, I am seen for what you drew for me, The colours you choose confine the lines I live in. Dear White Supremacist, I see you, I see what you have done, I see what you will reproduce, Forever? Or till there is none, Pepper-potting assimilation, Of one culture into another, Forget the past, Suppress your native identity, We are one nation, Called upon by her majesty to fight. For who, Tāngata whenua, The people behind us, The future generations, How can we live when you call us one nation? — Miriama Te One
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Film
mother!
— Darren Aronofsky “I want to suck Aronofsky’s dick after that.” — Anonymous companion of critic. Aronofsky’s new f ilm mother! is the most boundary pushing, experimental, intense f ilm I’ve seen all year. It’s also the only f ilm I’ve been to in a very, very long time where people walked out. As an allegory it is uncompromising, as a drama it is riveting, and it’s wonderful to see a director who is so in command of f ilm language that they can bend the rules and play well beyond the bounds that most mainstream audiences would expect. Jennifer Lawrence plays mother (lowercase, critically) and Javier Bardem plays Him (uppercase, critically). They live a quiet life in a beautiful house that mother has been restoring to create the perfect environment for Him to write and get over his creative block, and things are peaceful. Until, of course, Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer arrive as a husband and wife who overstay their welcome. Then their children arrive, and then their extended family. The two plots at play at the f ilm’s core are a home invasion thriller and a psychological drama focused on Him and mother’s relationship. I don’t want to spoil anything, and I won’t even delve into the multitude of ways to interpret the f ilm, but I will say that its breadth and depth of content make it enigmatic and irresistible. We live in a complex world with a severe weight upon our culture and history, and as such, a f ilm that tackles existence and creation head on is a wonderful thrill. As David Lynch says: life is confusing, so f ilms should reflect this. Although my response to the f ilm was ecstatic, I won’t pretend the actual experience was entirely joyous. The f ilm is intense, and at times disturbing. The vast majority of the shots centre on Lawrence, with the camera work tightening and tightening and getting shakier and shakier, Aronofsky twisting the claustrophobia knob ’til it breaks. The sound design is also magnif icent, with sound and image misaligning in moments of hallucination — emptiness somehow being amplif ied uncomfortably. While mother and Him are alone in the house, every acoustic footfall reverberates, making the otherwise idyllic uneasy and empty. I was thinking recently about the underperformance and underappreciation of complex and challenging f ilms in recent years, and I honestly think it echoes the political landscape, but this f ilm is worth your time and money even if it disturbs and confuses you. The ideas and the presentation of them are timely and exceptional, Lawrence and Bardem are constantly fantastic, and the f ilm’s uniqueness is something to be celebrated. — Finn Holland
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Vanity Fair — W. M. Thackeray
I’m actually not all the way through this novel. It’s bloody long. But I’m a nerd for the 19th century, so here we are. Vanity is a tricky criticism to throw at someone. It seems straight forward — stop being so up yourself. It’s a Kiwi classic. But it’s not something we really believe in most of the time, I think. We applaud the grandstander, the confident, the slayer, the money-maker. Then we work to one day stand in their shoes and be applauded ourselves. Rebecca Sharp, the centre around which the chaos of Vanity Fair spins, epitomises everything we aspire to be. She’s got an answer for every question. She’s got everyone tied around her little finger. She plays the game, and she usually lands on her feet. She starts off with nothing and dedicates her life to amending this problem. What I mean is, she’s “winning”. How is this vanity? Aren’t we supposed to dream big? What’s the harm in getting what we want? Thackeray seems to think there’s a lot wrong with this argument. He’s a satirist at his core, and what he does best is poking at the splendour and the recklessness and the self-obsession of his characters until all the air comes out and we see them for the hollow costumes that they are. Becky Sharp is adept at getting what she wants, by pretending at friendship, and even love, and when Thackeray shows her off as so immensely talented, we can suddenly see how gross it all is. When George Osborne, the young, dashing love interest of Becky’s “best friend” Amelia, marries to rebel against his dad, spends all their money to impress their posh social circle, and flirts his way through the London theatres while his wife is at home, suddenly good looks, wealth, and charm don’t seem so obviously important anymore. It’s easy today (and forgive me for all this unnecessary social commentary) to think that
Books
vanity is an outdated concept. It’s easy to think that it’s just another word to condemn people who are only trying to be themselves. And tall poppy syndrome has had some pretty awful side effects. But it’s also risky to think that just because New Zealanders are supposed to be humble, we actually are. Vanity Fair will bring all these thoughts to the surface. I know this because I read the first chapter, and I was like, damn, I’m vain as hell. I saw myself in all the desperate characters Thackeray created. I spend more money on M&Ms than on services for helping homeless people in Wellington figure out a better way forward, because I’m self-obsessed as heck. Sometimes I read classical novels because I don’t want other people to think I’m not classy, even though the truth is I’m from Palmerston North. But I’m not trying to extol the virtues of self-flagellation. I just want to say that there’s a lot to be learned from a book like this, written over a hundred years ago, that is directly applicable to us now, because human beings don’t change. We were hilariously dumb then, and we’re hilariously dumb now. So, even though it really is super long, consider reading this book. Read it if you want to be enraged by the 1%. (Remember that phrase? Do people use that anymore?) Read if you don’t really “get” satire, and just like period pieces with horses and carriages and dramatic romance. Or read it if you thought you were too insecure to be vain — it’s a shock to the system, I can tell you. — Kimberley McIvor
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GAMES
Games
Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle Developer: Ubisoft Paris, Ubisoft Milan Publisher: Ubisoft Platform: Nintendo Switch Review copy supplied by publisher
Nintendo must be absolutely insane, right? I’ve mentioned their shitty business practices plenty of times before (and I probably will keep doing so, since I don’t want them to keep getting away with it), but now they’ve done the unthinkable in licensing their most beloved and well-known franchise out to a company with an even worse reputation! They even let it become a crossover with that company’s equivalent of Minions! It’s absolutely mind-boggling. What makes it even weirder is that the result is bloody fantastic. When the idea of the crossover was leaked in the months before the Switch’s release, I was sceptical that it could work — the Rabbids are just too obnoxious to be compatible with Mario, I initially thought. Yet the proof is in the pudding: Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle is not only a faithful interpretation of the Mushroom Kingdom, with the perfect amount of Rabbidsinspired insanity, but also a damn fine t-urnbased tactics game that feels right at home on the Switch. The story is simple enough: the Rabbids discover a helmet which can merge objects in the basement of an inventor who happens to be a massive Mario fan. They manage to create an interdimensional vortex which transports them to the Mushroom Kingdom, causing all sorts of chaos. Playing as Mario along with Luigi, Princess Peach, and Yoshi, as well as four Rabbids dressed as them, it’s up to you to fix everything and save the kingdom. It’s typical Mario fare, being light in character moments, but it is competently told with plenty of decent jokes at the expense of the Rabbids. But the gameplay is really what makes this project stand out. Progression requires going through a series of battles, either solo or in co-op, that can perhaps be best described as a kid-friendly XCOM: manoeuvring a squad of three around a battlefield in a turn-based fashion,
looking for cover and openings to fire at enemies, while desperately hoping that the RNG works in your favour. The system is simplified compared to XCOM, with the chances of hitting an enemy entirely dependent on your positioning, but the movement system makes up for this by allowing you to use your teammates to jump across the battlefield. Each character has their own unique weapons and abilities, making squad composition a crucial factor in your success. I love how intuitive the battle system is, as it cuts the bullshit and allows you to focus on completing the goal while maintaining a sense of tension. With each of the four worlds divided into nine battles, each lasting between five and fifteen minutes, the game is well suited for portable play, as it should be on the Switch. Exploration and puzzle-solving between levels gives the game some variety while offering plenty of collectibles to find and coins to pick up and spend on new weapons. There are also numerous secrets to be found in each world, including special battles which will push your tactical nous to the limit. You’re likely to get at least twenty hours’ worth of gameplay from the main storyline. In addition, the game’s environments look absolutely gorgeous, maintaining the classic Mario style with some incredibly creative structures and backgrounds, complete with Rabbids running around everywhere. The soundtrack is composed by the legendary Grant Kirkhope, and is a wonderful variation on classic Mario motifs that is an absolute joy to listen to. I am in disbelief about how good Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle turned out. It has no right to be as fun and exciting as it is based on the concept alone, but they actually did it, the madmen. Frankly, I think Nintendo should do stuff like this more often! — Cameron Gray
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TELEVISION
Television
American Horror Story: Cult
It’s American Horror Story time again! The most wonderful time of the year, or in the words of George Michael Bluth, “It’s a great day! For being sad.” I’ve started to thrive on the disappointment, like a Mariah Carey fan. This year’s theme is Cult and it’s about the 2016 American election, which seems a bit Banksyish but we’ll run with it. As a preface: if you are scared of clowns (coulrophobia), many tiny holes (trypophobia), or Donald Trump (normal), maybe sit this one out. Sarah Paulson’s Ally lives with her soft2 butch wife Ivy (Alison Pill) and their young and inquisitive son, Ozzy. Donald Trump’s win sends Ally’s anxiety into overdrive and her intense phobia of clowns begins to manifest into horrific real-life nightmares — in the first episode she is chased around an abandoned supermarket by maniacal clowns in a scene that evokes a Marilyn Manson music video — and after barricading herself indoors she begins to develop symptoms of agoraphobia. I’m excited about this representation for something I suffer from, which will no doubt be an extremely tasteful and accurate portrayal in a Ryan Murphy show; I, too, dare not to tread outside lest I encounter the masturbating clowns. When they look for a nanny to watch Ozzy while Ally and Ivy run their boutique butchery, they meet Winter (Billie Lourd), a hip liberal feminist who dropped out of college to work on the Clinton ’16 campaign, and hire her instantly. Unfortunately, Winter spends her time nannying showing Ozzy videos of brutal murders, and when he starts to see evil clowns she convinces his parents he’s just been reading too many comic books. Upsettingly, Evan Peters is not just evil but racist and homophobic this year, which makes his attractiveness even more problematic than before. Peters’ Kai Anderson is a Trump-voting MRA narcissist who may or may not be leading a cult of clowns, intent on provoking America
into such a state of fear and frenzy that they are desperate to be led by someone willing to “fix” it. Kai is a cross between Richard Spencer, Milo Yiannopoulos, and everyone on Reddit’s r/theredpill — when Trump is announced as president, Kai makes a face mask out of blended Cheetos and dry humps his television. Over the season Peters is set to play different cult leaders throughout history, including Charles Manson, David Koresh, and even Andy Warhol — with the latter’s would-be assassin Valerie Solanas to be played by Lena Dunham in a later episode (ugh, there’s that disappointment again). Now I get to talk about Billy Eichner! Yes, after shitting on AHS and Ryan Murphy no less than three times in Difficult People, Billy Eichner is in Cult and has been heavily hyping it over the last few months. Eichner plays Harrison Wilton, a homosexual beekeeper married to his heterosexual best friend, Meadow (did the writers use a young adult fantasy novel name generator for this show?), with whom he shares the co-presidency of the Michigan chapter of the Official Nicole Kidman Fan Club. They move into the house opposite Ally and Ivy, after the former couple living there are, yes, murdered by clowns. Meadow is played by the critically underused Leslie Grossman, who you might recognise as queen bee Mary Cherry from another Murphy show, 1999’s Popular. I’m absolutely thrilled with this duo. I’m sure Cult will end in chaos, but the real world’s looking pretty chaotic right now too; which scares you the most? — Katie Meadows
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Music
MUSIC
Interview with k2k k2k is an Auckland-based electronic musician making marvelous melodic house tunes and bestowing bangin’ DJ sets on the New Zealand public left, right, and centre. Salient sat down with her recently to discuss her music-making methods, elitism, and womanhood in a dudey industry. An extended transcript of this interview can be found on our website — salient.org.nz.
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What kind of musical influences have you experienced throughout your life that you feel really have an imprint on the music you currently make?
Growing up I listened to a lot of ’90s pop and RnB. I remember listening to the local polytech radio station in Nelson and making mix tapes, and ordering in lots of tunes I’d hear on it to my local record store. I definitely think pop sensibilities have made their impact on my tunes — I love sentimental melodies and great vocal hooks. Most of the samples I use are from ’90s RnB tracks — Aaliyah, Ashanti, Brandy, Mariah. Probably gonna get sued one day for sampling so much but every time I try to record my own vocals they sound so terrible in comparison that I just end up going with what sounds best! What kind of hardware setup do you have when you play live sets?
I don’t play live sets, I do DJ sets. My tracks are generally made over a month or so in front of a laptop and that doesn’t translate super well into a live set. I could split a track into 20 stems and trigger each stem at the appropriate time to attempt to get it sounding like the final MP3, but that doesn’t seem like too much fun to watch or play. I think at some point I’ll try to get something together, potentially singing or playing live keys, but at the moment I’m really loving DJing. I love being able to pick tracks from the last 50 years, from many genres, and mixing them together in ways that can create different feelings on the dance floor. There doesn’t seem to be a huge DJ culture here — and the one that exists is mainly DnB/EDM — but over the last few years I’ve seen the house/techno/boogie DJ scene growing quite a lot and it feels really exciting to be a part of it.
I’ve found that often, as a woman, you’re sort of assumed to be somewhat incompetent by many people (often men) and then met with surprise when you can actually do your job well, although this is definitely improving as more talented women keep emerging. Has this been similar to your experience in quite a masculine industry? Or is gender something you’re not particularly aware of?
I’m definitely aware of it as 90% of the time I’m the only female on a lineup. Promoters are increasingly aware that diversity isn’t just “nice to have”; in 2017, it’s crucial. I think I’ve benefitted from that, showwise, and I’m definitely going to take advantage of it as long as I can. Visibility is key, and if I’d seen more female DJs and producers growing up I think I would have started making music way earlier. There’s always the occasional shitty experience — being asking if I’m waitressing when I’m literally behind the DJ decks for example — but overall all the guys that I’ve worked with have been really welcoming and haven’t doubted that I know what I’m doing. What kind of issues do you think affect the electronic music scene in New Zealand at large at the moment?
As mentioned before, definitely diversity. A huge percentage of the electronic music scene are white guys, and that’s not always a super welcoming environment for people who don’t fit that mould. There’s also a financial barrier to entry — I’ve seen DJs being super elitist towards people using DJ controllers over CDJs when you’re looking at a $500 vs $3000 cost. If the whole scene was a bit more open and inclusive I think it’d benefit hugely, in the way that the indie rock/noise/shoegaze scene has flourished in NZ over the last 20 years. — Lauren Spring
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Occulture: The Dark Arts
Visual Art
“Art and the occult draw powers, rituals, and symbols from one another to re-enchant the world and refine human experience,” explains the City Gallery Wellington in introduction to the exhibition Occulture: The Dark Arts. Although the gallery does not explicitly explain what the occult might be in this instance, the works offer clues: the occult is in conversation with nature in a way contemporary society is not; the occult mixes potions from plants, consults astrological charts, embraces the night. Speculative philosophies of intersubjectivity and animacy have, as exhibited, a rich tradition in the West. They also have an often unacknowledged debt to indigenous thinkers for, as Zoe Todd writes, “their millennia of engagement with sentient environments, with cosmologies that enmesh people into complex relationships between themselves and all relations, and with climates and atmospheres as important points of organisation and action.” The occult, in the vaguest sense, refers to a power that is not necessarily our own but might be harnessed. Whatever power is present at Occulture, it keeps to its own company; anything prepossessing of influence clings to it tightly. What service can the gallery do magic, beyond canonise it’s aesthetic? “Without access to power’s hidden manifestations, visibility is tantamount to reality, a possible explanation for the authenticity of images,” writes Lynne Tillman, speaking to the difficulty I feel trying to explain how the white walls of the gallery have a tendency to dehistoricise anything they swallow. The light that envelops the works seems pertinent in an exhibition that beckons someplace darker. In Occulture, whiteness is allowed to slip from the norm only to a place with slightly more shadowy corners; which is not to say whiteness per se has ever been defined by anything but what it isn’t. I’m not speaking for the all the works — some, Fiona Pardington’s, Lorene Taurerewa’s, Yin-Ju Chen’s, speak to histories that are not strictly of a Victorian Gothic strain — but rather the vague notion of the occult, defined principally by the more historical works, which is presented as a particularly Pākehā mysticism. The Tohunga Suppression Act was passed by the New Zealand legislature in 1907. It declared that: “2. (1.) Every person who gathers Maoris around him by practising on their superstition or credulity, or who misleads or attempts to mislead any Maori by professing or pretending to profess supernatural powers in the treatment of cure of any disease, or in the foretelling of future events, or otherwise, is liable on summary conviction before a Magistrate to a fine not exceeding twentyfive pounds or to imprisonment for a period not exceeding twelve months in the case of a second or any subsequent offence against this Act.” Mamari Stephens suggests that the Act was passed less out of genuine concern for Māori health and more as a means of asserting certainty and dominance during an anxious and confusing period in our history. The stigmatisation of tohunga it encouraged remains: in 2003 Heather Roy, an ACT Member of Parliament, asked the Minister of Health in the House whether there was “any clinical evidence that such healing is effective; or is this funding just political correctness gone mad?” Occulture engages more with a mysticism that insists, as Alistair Crowley did, that “To practice black magic you have to violate every principle of science, decency, and intelligence. You must be obsessed with an insane idea of the importance of the petty object of your wretched and selfish desires,” than it does with the holism that is engaged with the history and suppression of “superstition” here and in the wider Pacific. The distinctions between what is “magic”, what is “superstition”, what is “holistic”, what is “occulture”, and so on, are interesting for their malleability — as often tied to slippery legacies of cultural dominance and subordination as any basis of fact. — Hanahiva Rose
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VUWSA E XECUTIVE NOMINATIONS
NOW OPEN
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FIND ALL THE INFORMATION YOU NEED AT WWW.VUWSA.ORG.NZ/VUWSA-ELECTIONS
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6pm, Wednesday 27 September 2017 Rutherford House Pipitea Campus 23 Lambton Quay, Wellington victoria.ac.nz/postgraduate
Capital thinking. Globally minded.
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For a creative exercise to succeed, it often requires equal parts hard work and dexterity. Add to that more than a mere suggestion of originality, and the ability to challenge the audience, without marooning them all together. This equation is close to being balanced at Taste of Home. Some of us may have noticed this distinctive shop in passing, located right across from the VUW Architecture School. This takeaway joint opened as recently as mid-July and has since developed a legion of regulars. Taste of Home serves up a cordial array of Chinese street food, and affordably too, with the most expensive item on their menu being $12. With wet shoes and my ears ringing from cold, I stepped in for the first time unsure of what was before me. With lilac walls matching warm wood, the small shop space stuck me as succinctly modern and decisively Asian (whatever that means); I was relieved and cosy inside. I ordered two Youtiaos (freshly fried bread sticks) and a glass of freshly pressed warm sweet soy milk. Dipping the long golden sticks (effectively Chinese churros) into warm milky comfort, I understood very quickly how this remains a breakfast favourite in China and beyond. The couple behind this labour of love are both chefs. Having spent enough time in commercial kitchens, both of them felt the impulse, or perhaps burden, of taking their craft to the next level. They wanted to bring something fresh to the scene that retained a clear mark of finesse. As a friend from the architecture campus explained to me, “these guys have effectively deconstructed the vibrancy of Taiwanese street food culture, and what makes it tick, and then applied it to Chinese favourites.” Hence the breadth of the menu, while drawing firmly from the Xi’an province where one of the owners originates, is in fact a reflection of the culinary ongoings throughout the country. The YouPo Mian, for example, consisting of hand pulled flat noodles, is a slippery flavour bomb nourished with bok choy and tangy chili oils. A similar classic, that is instead served cold and known as Liang Pi, is also offered, but only in small batches and is kept off the official menu — this article is the first to reveal the secret.
Taste Of Home 128a Vivian Street, Te Aro
Food
The small menu, while slightly pork-heavy for some, offers a breadth of options including crispy snacks and desserts. A particular highlight for me were the crispy squid tentacles with chili seasoning. Simply put, the juicy and crispy squid legs were undeniable. Another highlight was the dessert concoction of fried taro and kumara balls, which is dolloped with crushed peanuts and condensed milk, again undeniable. To be sure, fan favourites such as the Jianbing (Chinese crêpe) are also found on the menu and can be loaded up with many add-ons, including the above-mentioned crispy squid tentacles. Reflecting on the large line of Chinese students queuing for these favourites, the bosses suggest that this menu especially rewards those with an open mind and also a proclivity towards a subjective Asian flavour palette. This is precisely why this new joint is an important addition to the self-proclaimed “diversity” of the Wellington food scene. Fresh and relevant as ever, this typically unorthodox joint has got me on a warm buzz.
— Shariff Burke
PODCAST
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One of the most popular podcasts on the planet, My Favourite Murder, came to Auckland on September 6 for a one-night only live show, and two of my gal pals and I took a mid-week trip to attend. My Favourite Murder is hosted by comedian Karen Kilgariff and TV star Georgia Hardstark, and it is a fabulous hybrid of comedy and true crime. Each week, both hosts tell each other their “favourite” murder cases from all over the world, but also often share listener stories of hometown murders, paranormal experiences, and first responders. The three of us were in a great mood after eating a shit-ton of delicious pasta and drinking a few glasses of Pinot Gris, and joined a crowd of around 300 dedicated “murderinos” from all over the country in the Takapuna venue. At the live shows, Karen and Georgia share their favourite murders from the place they are in, and everyone was buzzing with excitement trying to guess what the cases were going to be. Georgia’s favourite murder was one of New Zealand’s classic “whodunits”, the Mark Lundy case, and found it hilarious that the “Lundy 500” race had been created (and then cancelled) because of the case. Karen’s favourite murder was an unexpected surprise, telling the story of Nancy Wake, a bad-bitch spy during WWII whose only murder was one Nazi, which got a massive cheer from the crowd. Seriously, look her up; she is so badass! After the hosts had shared, two audience members were selected from the crowd to tell their hometown murders — one was a local Wellington story about a murder at Red Rocks beach, and the other was from New York City. The best two moments of the night were when the show’s producer and fan-favourite, Steven, appeared on stage and talked about his time studying at VUW on a university exchange, and when a journalist who attended the Lundy trial was pulled out of the audience and recounted her experience covering the case. The show was hilarious from start to finish, and it was absolutely worth the trip. Although it is probably going to be a rare occurrence that a big podcast show like My Favourite Murder will come back to New Zealand for a live show, the big crowd made up of people from all over the country suggests that the love of podcasts is huge, and that podcasts are definitely part of the future of comedy. Stay Sexy and Don’t Get Murdered everyone! — Alex Feinson
Food
GIG GUIDE
MY FAVOURITE MURDER LIVE SHOW @ THE BRUCE MASON CENTRE
61 chock full with Monday: Mimicry 3 launch — Mimicry is a literary journal made by young Wellingtonians and is always bangin’ writing, art, and music! Get along to Meanwhile to guzzle some wine, read some intelligent words, and listen to some readings and live music. 5.30–7.30pm. Friday: The Crystal People’s Club Presents Glass Vaults with Zero Cool — Glass Vaults are Welly natives and these dudes are funky as hell. They released their sophomore album The New Happy earlier this year and are raring to bestow their off-kilter bangers to the Wellington public. At Meow from 8.00pm. Saturday: Disasteradio “Sweatshop” Album Release — Disasteradio is such a groovy dude and his new album is an opus of weird and wobbly ’80s tunes. Come along to Meow for a bit of wholesome and joyous jumping around, or just to see Luke’s stunning outfit choice and even more stunning moves. Be there from 9.00pm.
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62
CROSSWORD: ‘OUT OF SIGHT'
SUDOKU
ACROSS
1. With 27-Across, kind of police case... or a hint to this puzzle’s theme (7,7) 5. ‘Part of Me’ band (it technically has an asterisk) (7) 9. 1897 H. G. Wells sci-fi novel (3,9,3) 10. It affects Guy Pearce’s character in ‘Memento’ (7) 11. See 20-Across 12. Web blockers block them (3) 15. 1987 vampire movie starring Corey Feldman and Corey Haim (3,4,4) 18. “You're it!” game (3) 20. With 11-Across, 2014 David Fincher film starring Rosamund Pike (4,4) 21. Lighthouses and the like (7) 25. 1938 Alfred Hitchcock film which, at the time, was the most successful British film (3,4,8) 26. Took for granted (7) 27. See 1-Across
Sudoku difficulty: Hard
DOWN
Make as many words of three letters or more as you can. Each word must contain the letter in the central square. Target goals: Good: 17 words Great: 20 words Impressive: 23 words
LAST WEEK'S SOLUTION
TARGET
Puzzles
1. Godzilla opponent in 1964, and again in 1992 (6) 2. Go downhill in winter, maybe (4) 3. A Vic Uni one usually starts with 30 (2,6) 4. Word that can follow girl or tour (5) 5. Transport for going uphill in winter, sometimes (3,4) 6. ___ Woods, ‘Legally Blonde’ protagonist (4) 7. Least suitable for drinking with a straw (8) 8. He was president after Jimmy and before George (6) 13. Sharp ends of wasps (or brandy cocktails) (8) 14. Sharper (8) 16. Like some pirates and jacks (3-4) 17. ystery author Christie (6) 19.Spectres (6) 22. Affliction supposedly caused by swimming after eating (but it’s not true, so go nuts, I guess) (5) 23. Toasty (4) 24. U.S. state whose three largest cities all start with C (4)
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HOROSCOPE
Horoscope
Celeste is MIA this week, because Aubergine forgot to tell them that horoscopes are due, so Aubergine has to speed write these under the light of the #moon and #stars. Readers can enjoy their life in this new left wing government (#psychic) by finding out what their star sign’s summer bevvo is. — Aubergine Libra: Sep 23–Oct 22 Three cans of Garage Project beer at a party in Aro Valley You’re peaceful, you definitely voted Greens, and you have also definitely always wanted to play the acoustic guitar. Hope the bitterness of your craft beer doesn’t end up tainting your wholesome personality. Scorpio: Oct 23–Nov 21 A whole goon of Smirnoff vodka cranberry Your tough exterior is sort of like the box of the goon, while your soft sensitive inside is sort of like the goon sack. But goon sacks are useless unless they are opened and the sweet goon/emotions pour out you know what I’m saying? #metaphorical. Sagittarius: Nov 22–Dec 21 A box of those mini QF shots You’re that friend who always rocks up with a box of these bad boys because that’s just the kind of person you are. You don’t always make the most appropriate or sensible decisions, but there’s no denying that those decisions lead to you having a hell of a good time. Capricorn: Dec 22–Jan 19 Bourbon and Coke Idk man there’s just something about you that has always seemed bogan. It’s summer so grab that goat by the horns and grow the mullet of your dreams. Aquarius: Jan 20–Feb 18 A bottle and a half of Fat Bird Sauvignon Blanc You’re fun, quirky, horrible, and trashy. No matter how much people try though, they always end up crawling back when they need you/when they only have $20 and want to go to a BYO cause Chad will be there. Pisces: Feb 19–Mar 20 Jagerbomb Nothing says fun like a drink that tastes like cough syrup and the recommended sugar intake for one adult for the week. You’re intuitive, and that means that you know it’s economical to order a drink that gets you both drunk and HYPE on all that sugar/guarana.
Aries: Mar 21–Apr 19 Absinthe No one can say that spending time with you is going to be boring and/or a good idea, our Absinthe (f )A(i) ries! (niche joke for those of you well versed in liquor nicknames or Moulin Rouge). Embrace your inner courage that absinthe brings out, but for the love of god please don’t actually drink absinthe. Taurus: Apr 20–May 20 Warm Double Browns You’re best enjoyed outdoors around a barbie with the m8s, so people have space to walk away when you get just a bit too much. The whole country shouldn’t love you but there is something quintessentially comfortable about you… so bottoms up! Gemini: May 21–Jun 20 Purple Goanna 7% This one goes without saying, Geminis. Who are you, but who aren’t you? The enigma of all enigmas… the legend of legends. Cancer: Jun 21–Jul 22 Parklane Gin & Tonic You’re bubbly, you’re sweet, and you have an uncanny ability to make anyone cry in a club bathroom. Leo: Jul 23–Aug 22 Tequila shot at 3am You’re a tequila shot in Estab at 3am, but if the bar had run out of lemons and salt and so you just do the shot straight. Most people would say “Wow, don’t do that, that’s such a terrible idea,” but you always know better, don’t you? Virgo: Aug 23–Sep 22 Only port or sherry It will have just been your birthday, so you’re a year older and now can only drink things that old people drink. Like sherry and port. Just remember that life is fleeting. And pass the port to the left.
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2018
[ ] + ` { Âť * ^_ This is a paid position which begins in January and ends late October 2018. It involves collating and editing regular content, managing staff, coordinating volunteers, recommending the 2019 student media budget, overseeing Salient TV and Salient FM, and engaging with the student body.
You must have strong written communication skills and have experience in creative writing or reporting. Previous experience editing or in student media is preferable. You can apply solo, or two can apply together to co-edit.
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