New Zealand Listener digital subscription

Weary of politicians As a Wellingtonian, I disagree with Michele Hewitson’s view that Andrew Little is a shoo-in as next mayor of Wellington (“Steady as he goes”, June 28). Many of us are tired of political representation on our council and are looking for non-political representatives. We have several mayoral candidates including a successful Wellington businessman, a local ice-cream-maker, a business-focused environmentalist and ward candidates, including a Pasifika lawyer and several other candidates from different ethnic backgrounds, all with strong community experience. We now have a group called Vision for Wellington which includes architects, previous mayors and many more well-known Wellingtonians. This non-political group is drawing large crowds by running workshops on how Wellington can get its mojo back, with discussion groups on infrastructure, liveability, creativity and business, which includes…

In Emily Perkins’ novel Lioness, the story turns on an allegation of cronyism and conflicts of interest between a property developer and a Wellington city councillor – a plot that makes sense in nearly every democracy in the world except New Zealand. We like to do things differently, ie, badly, and our local government dysfunction runs in the opposite direction. Our councillors don’t have enough power to be crooked. They have little-to-no say about the operational decisions made by the agencies they allegedly govern. Their officials are largely autonomous; what meagre authority mayors and councillors wield can be overruled by central government at a whim. Now the Prime Minister is musing about abolishing regional councils entirely. This is an election year for local bodies. Nominations open in mid-July. If you…

Back-slapping bonhomie was always a feature when Australia’s prime ministers met US presidents. To George W Bush, John Howard was the man of steel. After Bob Hawke met Ronald Reagan in 1983, an effusive Hawke wrote: “The President and Prime Minister were Ron and Bob.” But none topped the rapport between President Lyndon Johnson and the Australian prime minister Harold Holt who, before he vanished in the sea near Melbourne in 1967, told his wife of LBJ: “Wait until you meet him. I’ve never met a nicer, warmer, straighter or better fellow in my life.” It was therefore startling to many Australians last month when Donald Trump ghosted Anthony Albanese when the pair were to meet at the G7 leaders’ meeting in Canada. Trump abruptly departed, citing escalating tensions in…

When Medsafe announced last month it had granted approval to an application to prescribe psilocybin – the active compound in “magic” mushrooms – the public response was notable for its lack of consternation. Psilocybin is, after all, a class A controlled drug, meaning, according to the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975, it poses “a very high risk of harm”. Yet some of the reaction assumed the approval went further than it did. You are not about to be able to pop down to a dispensary and pick up some ’shrooms for the weekend. The approval – the first outside a research environment – was granted to one practising psychiatrist to administer psilocybin in the context of intensive psychotherapy for patients with treatment-resistant depression. These are people for whom conventional therapies…

That old Frank Sinatra song High Hopes, in which a plucky lone ant moves a rubber tree plant, no longer seems quite so jolly. In Europe’s latest insect insurgency, ants in Germany have caused power cuts and extensively damaged public infrastructure. Insects terrorising humans was a common theme of 1950s sci-fi movies but the modern reality here, while less scary, is literal devastation. There’s something both Hitchcockian and karmically dystopian about insects destroying human habitats rather than the other way round. Germany’s ant immigrants are 4mm Tapinoma magnum, until recently found closer to the Mediterranean and North Africa. Germany has found them remarkably cold-tolerant settlers. Their mass-infiltration of building cavities and electrical circuitry boxes caused power cuts and wrecked a playground in the city of Kehl recently, and underground-dwelling colonies…

Typically, the New Zealand Parliament has 120 seats but after the 2023 election the number of MPs rose to 123. This is because of what is referred to as the “overhang” which can occur when a party wins more electorate seats than its share of the party vote entitles it to. This is one of the vagaries of our MMP electoral system. In the current Parliament 72 MPs from six parties represent 65 electorates and seven Māori seats. The other 51 MPs are from party lists. Voters have a say as to the person who represents them in their electorates. They do not have a say about who list MPs are, other than voting for the party list. The individuals on the list are chosen by the party and are…

Shane Jones has always been enamoured with himself. But his sheer arrogance has been sprouting up all over the show since he came into government on the back of New Zealand First’s 6% of the party vote. The way Jones talks you’d think NZ First got 60%. He thought he could tell Kīngi Tūheitia to stay out of politics when he called a hui at Tūrangawaewae. He fired insults at Tariana Turia’s whānau because they decided to run her tangi in te reo Māori. Now he’s telling Ngāpuhi he’s going to force them into settling their treaty claims by legislating that the settlement has to be with a single entity rather than with several hapū groupings. Jones (Te Aupōuri, Ngāi Takoto) is treating Ngāpuhi like they’re slaves he can boss…

THRILLS & CHILLS Some first-class Kiwi thrillers have been a hallmark of 2025. In Rachel Paris’s Sydney-set See How They Fall, homicide squad detective Mei O’Connor investigates a poisoning at the grand estate of the Turner dynasty. Jennifer Trevelyan’s A Beautiful Family finds a family on a long summer holiday, in which the youngest, Alix, pairs up with a boy named Kahu to find a girl who disappeared in the area a couple of years back. In Michael Bennett’s Carved in Blood, set during Matariki, retired detective Hana Westerman is faced with a new case and lots of twisty surprises. Gareth and Louise Ward’s Bookshop Detectives are going strong with the second in their cosy-crime series, Tea and Cake and Death, and Liam McIlvanney is back with missing-child chiller The…

The rule holds true: Kiwis will hand over hard cash for a memoir they really want to read. Jacinda Ardern’s A Different Kind of Power has sold the most copies of any New Zealand-published book so far this year, despite being released only on June 3. At least 10,000 copies have sold in New Zealand in just three weeks – impressive for a $60 hardback, a form in which local biographies are rarely sold these days. According to NielsenIQ BookScan NZ ( which doesn’t cover all booksellers ‒ Whitcoulls and Unity Books are among exceptions), that’s three times as many copies as The Book of Guilt, Catherine Chidgey’s dystopian novel published in May, and nearly three times that of the next nonfiction title, Everyday Comfort Food. In its first week,…