New Zealand Listener

New Zealand Listener is the country’s most respected general interest magazine, bringing you a wide variety of news, stories, columns, reviews, plus TV listings, every week.

New Zealand Listener

Dangerous delay

Honouring the dead

Going into Winter

Caption competition • THIS WEEK’S PICTURE

Quips & Quotes

10 Quick Questions

Blanket coverage

Case by case

Home sweet home

Work wonders • The Government is attempting to reset immigration at a time when labour shortfalls are being felt in critical sectors of the economy.

GROUNDS for CONFLICT • Countless wars, murders and injustices have resulted from the insatiable appetite for land. Can we ever decouple land from ownership and create a fairer planet?

FRONTIER FURROW

TANGLED TREATY • The notion that the Treaty of Waitangi was a righteous act that elevates New Zealand over Australia in its treatment of native peoples is confounded by an Oz-Kiwi historian’s groundbreaking research.

The great land grab • This excerpt from Empire and the Making of Native Title traces the legally dubious purchases of Māori land that forced the Imperial Government’s hand.

GREAT COURAGE • Anever-before-published account of the 1990 Ruapehu tragedy, in which six military personnel died, reveals why three soldiers who were decorated for heroism deserve higher honours from their country.

PEDAL to the METTLE • Lizzy Grant is following in the engineering footsteps of Kiwi racing legend Bruce McLaren and making her mark at the Formula One and high-performance car company he founded.

OFF THE GUEST LIST • So-called cancel culture has claimed the Harry Potter quiz in a small New Zealand town. But as the trend grows for punishing public figures deemed out of line, where does it all end?

Mummy’s little helper • A thriving “mummy drinking culture”, which portrays alcohol as essential for problem-solving and dealing with stress, may be encouraging drinking at risky levels.

HEALTH BRIEFS

West-side story • Highly processed Western-style diets have a lot to answer for in promoting acne, but there are simple changes that can help.

NUTRITION BITES

Pass the plate • A memoir of life through the seasons on a high-country station includes trusted recipes made to feed legions of farm workers.

Smith’s dream • Aotearoa NZ Fine Wine Estates aims to “make great wines that breathe of their place”.

Gene genie • Crispr is a genetic technology that is changing the world, but is this country falling behind on exploring its possibilities?

Get to the point • The ability to construct a theory of how other people work is crucial to human development.

SCIENCE & NATURE BRIEFS

Guns for hire • Rugby in this country may be moving into alignment with American and European sport, where money rules and loyalty be damned.

Saving Grace • Andy Weir’s debut published novel, The Martian, was made into a movie starring Matt Damon and directed by Ridley Scott. He’s just released his third – about a reluctant astronaut tasked with saving a dying Earth – whose film rights were bought by Hollywood before publication. He spoke to Mark Broatch.

Bye bye XY • Men get their comeuppance and women spread their wings in a sharp work of pandemic fiction.

David Eggleton • The New Zealand poet laureate’s selected poems, THE WILDER YEARS (Otago University Press), is out this month.

Removing the mask • Kyle Mewburn grew up in 1960s Brisbane, a boy who loved to read in a house with no books. He married Marion and became an award-winning children’s writer, before eventually coming out as transgender. In this extract from Faking It, Mewburn describes the physical ordeal of undergoing...