Salient 10, 2013 - Budget

E I L N A T S

forbes top 42 Editors: Stella Blake-Kelly & Molly McCarthy editor@salient.org.nz Designer: Laura Burns designer@salient.org.nz News Editor: Chris McIntyre news@salient.org.nz Chief Reporter: Phillipa Webb News Interns: Sophie Boot & Alex Lewin

1938

An Organ of Student Opinion Since 1938

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When I got home, I sat on the couch and had a bit of a scratch and found out I’d won $100,000."

"

Contributor of the Week: Wilbur Town$end Advertising Contact: Ali Allen Phone: 04 463 6982 Email: sales@vuwsa.org.nz

What Would You Do? - page 30

Contact Level 2, Student Union Building Victoria University P.O. Box 600. Wellington Phone: 04 463 6766 Email: editor@salient.org.nz Website: salient.org.nz Twitter: @salientmagazine Facebook: facebook.com/salientmagazine About us Salient is produced by independent student journalists, employed by, but editorially independent from, the Victoria University of Wellington Students' Association (VUWSA).

Salient is a member of, syndicated and supported by the Aoteroa Student Press Association (ASPA). Salient is funded by Victoria Univeristy of Wellington students, through the Student Services Levy. It is printed by APN Print of Hastings. Opinions expressed are not necessarily representative of ASPA, VUWSA, APN Print, treasury, studylink, but we of Salient are proud of our beliefs and take full responsibility for them.

Contents Weekly COntent 3

EDItorial

4

vuwsa

6

news

14

politics

16

campus digest

Features

Other Subscriptions: Too lazy to walk to uni to pick up a copy of your favourite mag? We can post them out to you for a nominal fee. $40 for Vic Students. $55 for everyone else.

Please send and email containing your contact details with ‘subscription’ in the subject line to editor@salient.org.nz

Intergenerational Debt Problem 38 salient's guide 39 to get rich quick schemes arts JUST How much is a song worth?

37

secret diary

28

A dollar a day...

38

games

30

what would you do?

39

film

40

VISUAL ARTS

41

books

24

26

Columns

demystifying the budget

32

20

Party Now, Pay Later: New Zealand’s

things that go bump in the night

33

fixing your life {because ours are written off} hoopin' and hollerin'

34 our future earning potential

food/drink

MUSIC

salient <3 You

18

This issue is dedicated to:

weekly rant

42

PUZZLES

44

LETTERS

46

NOTICES

47

VBC GIG GUIDE

 editorial

Editorial nd $70 Spe Bil l n io ug

h ts

On rt

top ten

ho

to

ca

rlo

salizzo

u lo -@

d

e

10

Hookers and blow

9

Telling people about The Wire

8

Star Trek DVDs

Budgeditorial Money was a pretty simple concept when we were young. We knew how many 5 cent pieces we had to assemble to buy our favourite lolly mix from the dairy.

We knew how many jobs we had to do to earn those 5 cent pieces. We knew what we were worth.

Sure, when you’re only earning $5 or so pocket money a week and have significant sour lolly output expenditure it can take a while to save up for the things you really want, but we knew that one day, when we were older and had a ‘real’ job, money would be no object.

How wrong we were... with mo’ money, simply came mo’ problems.

Once we left school and came to university, many of us had access to more money than we could previously fathom. $150-plus per week?! Sign us up! $1000, no questions asked?! Yes please! The perks of our interest-free student loan scheme can seem pretty attractive when the repayment date is so far away that you can barely even imagine it. But just because we’re not thinking about it right now, our loans aren’t just going to go away.

We students are stuck awkwardly in the middle of two groups that the Government lends a helping hand to: children and the elderly. We’ve already left

the comforts of childhood, where we enjoyed plush financial support from both our parents and the state.

And while the Government continues to support us at the moment, it’s a half-hearted kind of support. As living costs stay stuck below the average cost of living, and this Government makes cuts to allowances with every new year that passes, many of us are forced to find employment to make ends meet on top of the weekly debt we’re racking up with StudyLink.

Most of us are still a long way off retirement, but our parents, who fall within the class of ‘Baby Boomers’, aren’t. And despite the fact that many of these people will be able to work well past the retirement age, and that there are more of them to support than there are of us to support them, all of these Baby Boomers will be entitled to superannuation from the day they turn 65. Who will fund such a generous welfare scheme?

We will. One day, once we’ve finished university, gotten older, and have those ‘real’ jobs we always dreamed of.

Money is a pretty complex concept. It can be scary, overwhelming, even impossible to fathom the amount of debt our future selves will have. Between paying off our degrees that were meant to earn us more, and using those higher earnings to fund the ageing population, things are looking pretty grim.

But it ain’t all bad. For the moment, at least, there’s always Course Related Costs when you’re in a pickle...

7

Batting coaching for the Black Caps

6

Vajazzling

5

Building more Judith Collinses

4

Bringing back Firefly

3

Building more Judith Collinses

2

Elaborate pranks on Australia

1

The pokies

Molly & Stella 3

VUWSA 

YOUR STUDENTS’

ASSOCIATION

your students' association

THE McCOURT REPORT VUWSA President Rory McCourt

Many will praise the Government’s fifth budget as balanced and unexpectedly generous; others will decry it for leaving a generation of our most vulnerable behind. The truth, like in most things, is somewhere in the middle. Here I take a brief look at the good, the bad and the disappointing from a student perspective.

First the good. National’s changes to housing could have a positive impact for students in a few areas. The changes will allow nongovernmental organisations to benefit from the subsidies Housing Corporation gets for low-income tenants, directly benefiting any students and their families who qualify. But the larger impact will be if there is an increase in the housing stock -which will lead to lower rent prices. The Government is also exploring a rental warrant of fitness.

The announcement of this in the Budget is an important next step along the road to lifting the quality of the flats we all live in.

Now the bad. National’s fifth budget brings no new funding to our University. The student-achievement component (SAC) of the funding universities like ours receive hasn’t increased in five years. Despite the welcomed increases in the STEM (science, engineering and mathematics subjects) funding, stagnating core SAC funding has meant cuts in real terms, putting more pressure on our fees and undermining critical teaching and learning programmes. National is short-changing our University, and long-term, that will have an impact on the quality of education, like whether your course has a tutorial or not, or the staff-tostudent ratio in your lecture. Let’s hope Budget 2014 begins to address this festering funding shortfall.

policy has the real danger of turning these students off. Unlike a fresh young 18-year-old deciding whether to study, it can be a bit harder for a mature student. You’ve got to balance up the benefits of getting a degree (and maybe those extra cash monies), with the risks of failing, being able to set aside the time between other commitments such as work or the kids, and the real risk of taking on all this debt for no material gain. National’s changes, which strip 40-plus students of 80 weeks of Allowance, could be the tipping point at which these prospective students stay away from places like Victoria, leaving all their extra talent untapped. If that happens, then I would worry for our economy and the future of our skills sector.

Students shouldn’t be pleased with this Budget, but they shouldn’t be too angry either. They should, however, be disappointed. This Government could unlock all the research, innovation and creative power of the tertiary-education sector to help achieve its oft-hailed brighter future.

Instead, it has chosen to back cows and extractive mineral industries, to starve our unis of funding and our students of support. This approach is clearly not good for students, but it’s a damn sight worse for New Zealand’s long-term future. We can do better.

Rory

"Budget 2013 also includes some nasty surprises..."

Finally, the disappointing. As you might have seen, Budget 2013 also includes a couple of nasty surprises for Student-Allowance recipients.

We know for a fact that there are advisers within Government who think a loan is the same as an allowance. You might think you don’t have much in common with a Student-Allowance recipient in their 40s, that the fact they now have to take on about $13,600 in debt and miss out on over $16,000 of Allowance is a consequence of being a student. But you do. We all do.

It might not be immediately obvious, but we are all interdependent and rely on those 40-plus students, often returning or entering uni from the workforce as lifelong learners. It is these students who fill the graduation rows as nurses, midwives, accountants and teachers. It was a pleasure to see many of them graduate last week at Vic’s largest ever graduation. But the problem is that the National-led Government’s

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(This is what happens when the McCourt Report is too short.)

 VUWSA

Clubs & Activities Officer

By Ramon Quitales

Salutations, For those readers who are familiar with Salient, yes—it’s that time of the year again. This is supposed to be the annual column where the VUWSA Clubs Officer harps on about why you cool cats should join a club on campus (for those of you expecting a piece about the Budget, please look elsewhere in this fine publication– the entire issue is dedicated to it).

One day outside the library, I was having a rather spirited conversation with a friend. The topic being discussed at hand was fairly intellectual–i.e. how our weekends went. Like most straight males his age, he very quickly changed the subject and proceeded to tell me about this “hot chick” he met at a stall on Clubs Day. As fate would have it, at that very moment that same girl walked over and greeted us. As my friend rudely gawked at her with eyes the size of potato crisps, I decided to make things less awkward by politely asking her about the club she was so diligently promoting earlier on.

A name–AIESEC Victoria–was mentioned. Curiously, she was never quite able to fully explain what it was or what it did exactly.

Mentions of “student leadership” and “development” were made and I was intrigued.

And so, I attended their first meeting. And thus began a journey where I learned a great deal more about love, life and friendship than any course of study at university could ever offer me (and yes-I did eventually find out that this group’s purpose was to send people away on volunteer projects and professional internships).

The year or so that I was a part of that group was one of the most challenging, eventful and lively periods of my life. The people I met there were some of the most interesting and passionate people I’ve ever come across–many of whom I still consider to be some of my closest and dearest friends. And I participated in things that were quite unlike anything I had ever done before. This little club on campus gave me a lot.

Obviously, there are other ways to meet friends and gain life experience at the same time. However, the numerous clubs on campus make it so very easy for students to get out of the lecture theatre and do just a little bit more with their lives.

NGAI TAUIRA

NGĀI TAUIRA SGM - THIS FRIDAY 24 MAY Kia ora anō koutou, I te tuatahi, ka mihi ki a koutou i eke ki te taumata i tērā wiki, ka mau te wehi! Big congratulations to all the tauira who crossed the graduation stage last week. An extra shout-out to those who attended Te Hui Whakapumau and joined Toihuarewa at the Michael Fowler Centre on Tuesday night.

The Annual General Meeting of Ngāi Tauira scheduled on Friday 10 May was inquorate. Therefore, an SGM has been called this Friday 24 May, 5 pm at the new Ngāi Tauira offices, Room 102, 42 Kelburn Pde. This meeting has been called to receive the financial report for 2012-2013, an executive report, and to elect a new executive for this academic year.

Nomination packs for elections are available from the Ngāi Tauira office. Kai and refreshments will be provided following the formalities.

If you have any queries please email ngaitauira@vuw.ac.nz.

PASIFIKA STUDENTS' COUNCIL WORDS OF DEATH You came at a sudden glimpse like the speed of a tear running from a cheek invisible but clear of pain and distraught the invincible thief of destruction You came at a sudden touch silent but revengeful a touch once soft and happy forever changing from smiles to frowns and it continues and continues and continues...

You came with the cold swiftly passing like the wind touching over the summer’s warmth of this natural earth's scent you knock and knock always afraid of opening what was destined to be... what my eyes are blinded to accept what my heart is to still to feel what my tears realistically represent.

Written by Moemoe To’omaga Nanai Inspired by T. S. Eliot, my Gran, and, most importantly, Uncle Fa.

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NEWS





NEWs 

Allocate more of your resources towards the news: email news@salient.org.nz with tips, stories, and financial surpluses.

CLEANER WATCHED STUDENTS SHOWERING Dirty cleaner banned from University property Chris McIntyre

An alleged sexual predator working for a cleaning company contracted by the University has been banned from Victoria University premises after being found watching at least three Hall-of-Residence students in the shower.

The man, a cleaner at the Cumberland Hall of Residence, also attempted to gain access to residents’ rooms. He was removed from duties after residents expressed concerns to Hall management, who then raised the matter with the cleaning contractor.

Victoria University awards contracts for cleaning services to private providers. Associate Director of Student Accommodation Nick Merrett said that the University was not responsible for dealing with the incidents under this arrangement, despite operating the Hall in which the alleged offending took place.

“It is the contractor’s responsibility to investigate the allegations that have been made,” said Merrett.

“The contractor has advised the University that on Saturday 4 May, the cleaner was removed from cleaning duties at all Victoria residential halls and instructed not to return to any University sites.”

Despite the instruction not to return to University property, one of the victims sighted the man at the Kelburn campus following her incident.

“You’d think they’d get rid of him completely.

I can’t believe they’re still employing him at all, to be honest. It’s quite crazy.”

The man watched at least three students at Cumberland through a 2 cm gap where the door to a shower room does not quite meet the wall. Salient spoke to a female Cumberland resident, one of the three students watched through the gap by the man, who said he had 6

been “creepy” to her before. “[He had previously] told me I was pretty and stuff, and I just brushed it off … I went to have a shower one day, and he saw me as he was waiting for the lift, and I walked past and heard the lift go and so I thought, ‘He’s gone, I’ll be fine’—I’d heard about [him watching another person] looking through the gap.

“So I was about to get changed, and I could see him right there, leaning in. He’d obviously left the lift and was pretending to clean around the door. I froze, and got really scared, and was like ‘Can you go away?’… and hid in the shower for ten minutes before I could do anything again.”

The student talked to her RA, who called Residential Life Manager Ben Pereira, arranging a meeting that night. An hour later, the student was told the man would be barred entry to Cumberland and have his swipe cards revoked.

Another Cumberland resident who spoke to Salient had been approached in her room by the man.

“He just came and knocked on my door, and he had ten cents, and he asked if it was mine and it wasn’t. He’s done that to a couple of other girls too.

“He asked me what my name was, and went to shake my hand and then started stroking it and stuff, saying that I was really beautiful. Then he gave me all his hours, and told me I should go and talk to him [when he was working],” she said.

A third student reported the man knocked on a girl’s door and “told her she had nice legs”.

All students spoken to praised the Hall management’s handling of the situation, with the first student being reassured the man would not be at Cumberland any longer, and offered an RA escort to and from her room.

“They took it seriously, which was good,” she said.

VUWSA Equity Officer Matthew Ellison described the alleged behaviour of the man as “abhorrent”, and was pleased with accounts of the actions taken by Hall management.

“Such behaviour … is of particular concern when it's from someone who had access to the buildings where these students live,” said Ellison.

Ellison hoped the employee’s barring from Cumberland would also result in a termination of employment at any Victoria property. He encouraged students not to stay silent on such issues.

“If students have similar complaints ... report it to an RA. If it's not followed up or dealt with properly VUWSA will advocate for students who are being harassed, abused or treated unfairly,” said Ellison.

Helen Sullivan, General Manager of the Sexual Abuse Help Foundation, encouraged students affected by this or similar incidents not to “shrug off ” such events, as patterns of abuse are likely to continue unless someone speaks up.

“It is not uncommon for people to... think it is just creepy or gross but not worth making a fuss about, so they don't tell anyone. However, as in this instance, such behaviour may not be an isolated event so speaking to someone who can take it further is really helpful.

“More could be done to ensure that student accommodation is safer for the students living there,” said Sullivan.

Cumberland Hall is situated on upper Willis St and houses 227 students. Previously under the management of uStay, this is the first year the Hall has been under University management.

The Sexual Abuse Help Foundation can be contacted through their website, wellingtonhelp.org.nz.

 NEWS

CHEATERS SPOTTED, BUT NOT FAST Authorities slow to act on assignment-order service; Vic in the clear (say Vic) Sophie Boot

A group has been established by the University to investigate whether the cheating service uncovered last week is operating at Victoria.

The Sunday Star-Times (SST) broke the story of an anonymous whistleblower who came forward to reveal that the website assignment4u.co.nz was more than just the “academic counselling” service it claimed to be.

The whistleblower, a former employee of the company, claimed that Assignment4u sells essays to international students with poor English for up to $600 per assignment.

While the company is based in Auckland, at least one person claiming to be from Victoria has advertised on the website, and a downloadable assignment for Victoria’s International Marketing course is for sale on the site.

The University maintains there is no current evidence that Victoria students have been involved in the service. Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic) Professor Penny Boumelha said there would be serious consequences for any students caught cheating.

“Victoria… has severe penalties in place for those who attempt to take credit for work this is not their own.”

Victoria had 814 international students at the start of the 2012 academic year.

The SST was able to buy an essay from the company for $270, which a media lecturer at the University of Canterbury graded at a B-plus level.

NZQA has since asked the SST to share their information, as during its own investigation in 2009 it could not find enough evidence to proceed.

A second complaint via an anonymous letter in February this year was also not acted upon, as the evidence available was “too old” to provide viable evidence for prosecution.

tertiary education had forced universities to cut student support services and increase tutorial sizes, making study more difficult for international students and preventing staff from having as much contact with students.

Francey also claimed that union members had felt pressure from their institutions to pass students, as universities were having to make up funding shortfalls. ''If our members were allowed to exercise professional judgment some of these students wouldn't pass.”'

Minister for Tertiary Education Steven Joyce, who said he was “very disappointed” at not having been informed about the allegations prior to the story breaking, has dismissed the claims.

"With the greatest respect, that's a load of rubbish. The universities are very protective of their reputations," said Joyce.

The registered owner and director of Assignment4u, Steven Quan Li, has not been seen since the story broke. Pengju Chen, who owns the office where the SST collected its purchased assignment from, has also disappeared.

New Zealand actively tries to attract international students, and the Government has a stated target of $5 billion in revenue from international students by 2025, double the current level. Victoria’s tuition fees for international students range from $20,850 per year for a Bachelor of Arts degree to $58,500 per year for a Master of Marine Conservation qualification.

Dr Karen Poutasi, NZQA’s Chief Executive, said that they could not have attempted to buy an assignment from the company as this could have impeded any potential prosecution.

"We cannot be seen to be breaking the law, being party to breaking the law or encouraging others to break the law, so there is a risk of entrapment if we were to request an assignment.”

Under law changes in 2011, NZQA was granted the power to prosecute anyone advertising or providing cheating services, but has not yet done so.

NZUSA President Pete Hodkinson has appeared to downplay the allegations, urging caution as “the scale of this particular form of cheating has yet to be proved.

“We believe one of the underlying areas of risk here is that tertiary education is being under-resourced… it’s not surprising that cracks start to appear.”

Tertiary Education Union president Lesley Francey has blamed the Government, saying that National’s 20-per-cent reduction in spending on 7

budget 2013 Debt reduction was the main line pushed by National in the Budget this year—and this was no different for student loan borrowers. Though the changes weren't as drastic as last year's increase of the compulsory loan repayment rates, borrowers who have moved overseas or are on their OE will have less money in their pockets to ‘find themselves’. Those who are attempting to escape their loans altogether may even be stopped at the border, as Government departments step up their information sharing. Allowance eligibility was again cut, this time restricted for those over 40 and completely removed for those over 65. Treasury documents have a lot of numbers and can be quite confusing, but to help you make sense of it all, here is Salient’s Budget breakdown for 2013.

$82.8 billion total budget spend

≈

$215 per second $32.50 per new zealander, per week

By Chris McIntyre Additional reporting by Sophie Boot and Ashleigh Hume

$130m borrowed per week

Bill gates' net worth

government budget spend vs. government debt over the past decade $80 billion

Labour National

Budget spend

$70 billion

actual forecast

$60 billion

$50 billion

$40 billion

Government debt as % of GDP

2004

2007

2010

2013

2016

20%

Labour forecasting from Michael Cullen's last Budget in 2008. National

40%

forecasts from Bill English Budget 2013.

8

budget 2013 WHAT IT MEANS FOR STUDENTS The defining message to students from the 2013 Budget is to stay in New Zealand, and don’t be old, with a number of changes to crack down on overseas borrowers and mature students.

Overseas borrowers will face fixed repayment obligations, stricter repayment thresholds, and sanctions for serious defaulters (including border arrest for the worst offenders). In addition, the Student Loan and Allowance stand-down period will be increased for permanent residents and Australian citizens, meaning they must have lived in New Zealand for three years before receiving an allowance or loan. The previous period was two years.

Further, information-sharing between government departments will see contact details from passport applications shared with the IRD to track down loan defaulters. The changes are expected to save $106 million in total.

Older students will receive less Government support, with $30 million to be saved from the Student Allowance Scheme through cuts to the eligibility of older borrowers. Over-40s will only

be able to claim the allowance for a maximum of three years, saving an expected $9.3 million over four years. Over the same time period, $7.9 million will be saved by making over-65s ineligible for a Student Allowance. The total cost of the Student Allowance Scheme is budgeted for $574 million in 2013.

It’s not all bad news, with Science and Engineering students likely to see slightly cheaper course fees after a two-per-cent increase in funding to those subjects. This is in line with a Government focus on subject areas expected to yield the highest economic benefits. In total, $27.2 million went to Science and Engineering ($17.3 and $9.3 million, respectively).

Overall, the Government budgeted an extra $52 million towards Student Loans, due to the average cost of each borrower’s loan growing.

This increase in average loan cost can be attributed to the extra borrowing students are doing as a result of cuts to allowances under the National Government. The average cost per loan is expected to increase, although it is unclear by how much.

As a whole, fewer people are taking loans out each year. Loan numbers peaked in 2010 as a response to the recession, when more people entered study as the employment market soured.

A greater proportion of students now get loans than used to—79 per cent of students got a loan in 2008, and the proportion peaked at 88 per cent in 2011 before beginning to decline. It is now 83 per cent, and is expected to fall a further five per cent in the next four years.

The introduction of Voluntary Student Membership has saved the Government $8.8 million per year, and will continue do so each year. However, this cost is not ‘saved’ so much as moved somewhere else, as the costs of union membership have been absorbed into Student Services Levies in many cases, which most people pay through borrowing from the Student Loan Scheme anyway.

Finally, money for Government-funded scholarships increased by 10.5 per cent to $12.8 million, which older students are sure to be eyeing keenly.

WHAT IT MEANS FOR INSTITUTIONS Institutions in the tertiary-education sector fared better than students in this year’s Budget, with increases of funding to a number of key areas, and no major cuts.

The total spend on tertiary education was up 2.6 per cent from 2012, and is now $2.9 billion. $130 million dollars of new, reprioritised funding has been allocated to target a number of key focus areas within and across institutions. This excludes the Student Loan and Allowance Schemes, which come under Social Development spending.

The Performance-Based Research Fund (PBRF) has seen a 4.9-per-cent boost. The value of the fund is now $269 million, and Steven Joyce has indicated this will continue to rise over the coming years. Universities

compete for a share of the $269 million from the PBRF based on the quality of their research, which is evaluated every six years.

for, this is a 0.1-per-cent increase. The low SAC allocation may mean students paying more for things like course fees, or some courses being cut.

As mentioned in the student section above, the Government has provided two per cent extra funding to Science and Engineering programmes.

Universities with strong Science and Engineering faculties stand to gain from the expected increase in funding extra students will bring.

The term ‘tertiary institutions’ here does not strictly mean only universities, as it also covers polytechnics, industry training providers, wananga, and other providers—it is these institutions which will see much of this new funding. Though it is true that the benefits of extra funding handed to tertiary institutions will be passed on to students, these benefits are targeted to certain groups.

Part of universities’ funding comes under the Student Achievement Component (SAC), which is roughly based on the number of enrolments a University has, and goes towards direct teaching and learning costs. SAC funding received a very modest 0.9-per-cent increase to $2.04 billion, proportionally less than the 2.6-per-cent increase given to tertiary education as a whole. Once inflation is accounted

Training for Māori and Pasifika tradespeople has seen an increase of $7.4 million, and trades training for the Canterbury region has also seen a sizeable increase to fill the needs of the Canterbury rebuild.

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budget 2013 tertiary education spend over the past three years (data not avaliable pre-2011) 2.9 million

SAC (per student funding)

2.8 million

2.7 million

PBRF (funding based on research quality)

2.6 million

Centres for Research Excellence Grants and other

2.5 million 2011

2012

Tertiary Education

2013

PBRF funding over the past decade 300 million

PBRF Spend

250 million

GOOD DAYS CEASE; OVERSEAS DEGREE FEES TO BE SEIZED Navigating the loan scheme while you travel the world

200 million

CHLOE DAVIES

If you travel overseas for 183 consecutive days, your loan will remain interest-free. Yet, if you are going overseas for six months or more you will become an overseas-based borrower and will have different repayment obligations. Your loan will no longer be interest-free; interest will apply the day after you leave New Zealand.

150 million

labour

national

100 million 2004

2006

2008

2010

2012

what it means for your oe: Student Loan Balances

Percentage of overseas-based borrowers

$0-$20,000

51.28%

$20,000-$40,000

27.32%

$40,000-$50,000

7.48%

$50,000-$70,000

7.81%

$70,000+

6.11%

10 

Loan Balance

Amount due per year

<$1000

The whole balance

>$1000 & <$15,000

$1000

>$15,000 & <$30,000

$2000

>$30,000 & <$45,000

$3000

>$45,000 & <$60,000

$4000

>$60,000

$5000

You can apply for a repayment holiday for the maximum time of one year—which decreases from three years on 1 April 2012—by completing a form. You will need to supply your departure date, how long you intend to be away, and any repayment information to the IRD. If you are paying tax in New Zealand while overseas, payments will still be deducted from your income.

As of 1 April 2014, two new loan-balance divisions have been introduced. If your loan balance is between $30,000 and $45,000 you must pay $3000 towards your loan each year, between $45,000 and $60,000 the amount due is $4000, and for those earning over $60,000 the amount due per year is $5000.

budget 2013 “This budget is a rerun of the government’s cost cutting approach to education. The squeeze on eligibility for student support has tightened with the message being sent to those over 40 years that the government will not back them to retrain.

“Over the last five years, National has restricted access to tertiary education through cuts to student loans and allowances in successive budgets, and 2013 is no exception,”

Holly Walker, Green Tertiary Education Spokesperson

“National’s strangling of student allowances will see student numbers fall and student debt grow, as older New Zealanders are forced to borrow more to live while they study.

“Moves to crack down on overseas borrowers are also unfair and unnecessarily punitive.

Megan Woods, Labour Tertiary Education Spokesperson

“These changes ... make it more likely that students will move overseas to study, and less likely that they will want to return to live in New Zealand.”

“We have been determined to achieve a sustainable level of student support, while maintaining interest-free student loans and targeting additional support to students who need it most.”

Steven Joyce, Minister for Tertiary Education

“New Zealand continues to have one of the most generous student support systems in the world, with students having access to interestfree student loans and, for many, student allowances as well,”

“This government is stripping money away from students, both directly through their loans, allowances, and higher fees, and indirectly by attacking the quality of their education.

Sharn Riggs, TEU National Secretary

“Sadly this budget has missed the opportunity to invest properly in tertiary education and students. Instead, it tells individuals and businesses not to retrain and head back to uni or polytech.

VUWSA President Rory McCourt

Bill English,

“Students of all ages will continue to have access to the interest-free student loan scheme.”

Minister of Finance

“The Government is getting pretty aggressive about collecting debt from students overseas.

“Joyce said he wanted to 'dampen demand' for tertiary education. Sadly he is succeeding. and pushing grads away too.”

Grant Robertson,

“Instead it is subsidising $29 million to private education companies to help them make a profit rather than investing in local communities’ public education institutions.

“The Government is also reining in big rises in student allowance costs by focusing on younger learners and on people studying for their first degrees.

“Budgets are about priorities. We think investing in tertiary education and students should be this Government's priority.

“What we'll see is less mature students taking up study. It makes much less financial sense to become a nurse or a doctor with a huge student loan when you're older than 40. Many will say ‘nah, I'll leave it’.”

“There’s no encouragement of graduates to stay in NZ. Just the opposite––put this year’s changes to policing student loan repayments for overseas borrowers together with last year’s reduction in the repayment holiday, and I fear many educated and skilled people will simply leave for their OE, develop their careers and find it too difficult to come home.

Still no investment approach to tertiary education from National.”

Keith Ng, Journalist & blogger at Public Address

“It's a little horrifying in terms of its aggressiveness, but I also think it makes sense in a lot of ways. Aside from raising the amount of money which is collected, it'll also make it less attractive to try to flee your student loan debt, “It's a big, hideous stick, but I guess good policy doesn't have to be all carrots.”

Deputy Labour Party leader

 11

NEWS



Celebrations in varying degrees New Graduates in Caps, Gowns, and Parades About Town Phillipa Webb

Although Victoria had its biggest graduation last week, with more than 2100 students in caps and gowns, a recent report shows that over a third of all students are still not finishing their degrees.

Provisional data in the 2012 Annual Report released by Victoria University shows that only 66.6 per cent of all students have successfully completed their degrees, while only 58.2 per cent of Māori and 52.7 per cent of Pasifika students have ticked the graduated box.

But in the last year, there has been a push from the Government to improve student outcomes.

At the beginning of 2012, Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment Steven Joyce announced that the Government would contribute $115 million annually to Student Achievement Component funding (SAC) to tertiary institutions for the direct cost of teaching and learning.

However, tertiary institutions’ access to funding relies on their levels of student performance; for example, the number of students who successfully complete courses and EFTS units.

VUWSA President Rory McCourt acknowledged that there was room for improvement, but said the University had

increased its rates of study completion over the last few years and was performing better than other institutions around the country.

McCourt said the students' association is “really proud” of the continual increases in Victoria’s completion rates, especially among Māori and Pasifika students.

“There's always more we can do to lift the numbers of students who make it through, like building strong support services and the University embracing feedback from our 700plus Class Reps,” he said.

Vice-Chancellor Pat Walsh was also celebrating the outgoing graduates’ success, saying that graduation was a time to “celebrate the culmination of months, or years, of study, dedication and effort.”

“With their diverse range of skills and attributes, our graduates make a valuable contribution to New Zealand’s economy and society, and I wish them every success for their future endeavours,” he said.

Despite poor achievement rates, most students who graduated enjoyed the satisfaction of graduating last week.

Five ceremonies were held at the Michael Fowler Centre last week along with two traditional street parades of staff and

graduands who walked from Lambton Quay to Civic Square where they were given the thumbs-up by Mayor Celia Wade-Brown.

The graduation saw 35 PhDs along with 2415 degrees, diplomas and certificates awarded.

For new graduate and Weir House Assistant Head of Hall Rayleen Hirini, graduation was the end of seven years of juggling study, work and motherhood. Seven years ago, Rayleen, 45, had a meeting with the Kaiwaowao (Māori Liasion Officer) who encouraged her in her pursuit to study the Māori language and a Bachelor of Arts in Māori Resource Management.

“It took me seven years’ part-time study while working, and the last four years have been working full-time as Night Manager at Weir House while continuing to study.”

Rayleen plans to continue working at Weir House and then use her degree when she is ready.

Another graduate, 22, who has completed his Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Media Studies, said the graduation process was great.

“But the University could offer more than one free drink, I guess.”

The next graduation ceremony will be held in December.

KNOW YA ACADEMICALS Academic dress generally includes a gown with a separate hood, and usually a square academic cap, tam, or bonnet.

Academic hoods originated in the Middle Ages when leaders sat close to fires, while the plebs sat further away and wore fur. Hence, hoods for undergraduate degrees have fur, while postgraduate degrees have no fur.

As for the crème de la crème of robes, a Doctoral graduate wears the same as a graduate receiving a Masters, except the gown is completely silk, either black or scarlet, with the option to wear a cloth gown.

12 

 NEWS

THE FORCE IS STRONG IN THIS ONE The Labour Force in this quarter, that is.

Nick Truebridge

Young people are either finding work or flocking to study, according to recent figures showing an improvement in the youth labour market.

The release of the latest Household Labour Force Survey by Statistics New Zealand shows the unemployment rate for 20- to 24-year-olds dropped by 4.1 per cent to 10.9 per cent from December 2012 to the March 2013. This is the lowest rate since September 2009.

The survey also shows that 8800 more 20- to 24-year-olds have entered study, and that 11,200 more student-age New Zealanders found employment in the year to March.

Statistics New Zealand’s industry and labour statistics manager Diane Ramsay suggested the overall improvement in labour market conditions experienced was different to previous years.

“We usually see actual unemployment rise in March quarters as a result of seasonal factors, such as students entering the job market. We didn't see this happen this quarter,” Ramsay said.

The positive trends have not reached students, with VUWSA Vice-President (Welfare) Simon

LOL NEWS CHROFLIS MCLOLNTYRE

XXX-TIANITY A North Carolina family walked down the street naked last week, after the Lord told them— you guessed it—to get naked and walk down the street. Local authorities evaluated them physically and mentally, and concluded that “they didn’t have any problems, short of [not having] any clothes on”. Salient salutes the family for providing the first religious experience we can really get behind.

THAT’S WHY THEY CALL IT A WAKE Brighton Dama Zanthe, a 34-year-old Zimbabwean man, surprised friends and family last week when he woke up the day before his

Tapp reporting “unprecedented hardship”.

stay classy, world The Nigerian President has placed three states in a state of emergency, after deadly attacks by Islamic militants, providing proof that trouble is Nig-h after all.

“The Hardship Committee has given out nearly $20,000 more in the first few months of the year than it did for the same time last year, VUWSA's Free Bread service is attracting queues before it even opens,” said Tapp.

The FBI is investigating the US Inland Revenue Service for illegally targeting conservative political groups. Tea Partiers are said to be spitting tax.

Students spoken to by Salient still felt it was difficult to find work at all, let alone work with flexible hours. One third-year Film student would like to work, but felt VUWSA and the University should be doing more to assist individuals who were struggling to find jobs.

A German man has taken successful legal action against Google after the search engine’s autocomplete linked his name with ‘scientology’ and ‘fraud’. While the man’s name is unknown, Salient feels for all the other Tom Cruises and John Travoltas of the world.

“You are competing with so many students in the same situation... one of the biggest problems is finding a job that works around University.

“Some of us aren’t eligible for allowances and would rather work part-time then add more money to our mounting student loan,” she said.

The survey also showed a rise in the national employment rate from 62.7 per cent in the December 2012 quarter to 63.7 per cent in the March 2013 quarter.

funeral—just in time for his presumed-to-be-dead body to be transported to the hospital, rather than the funeral parlour. Zanthe was put on life support for two days, after which he left, apparently fine.

This is not the first such event in Zimbabwe: earlier this year, a woman thought to have died during sex woke up screaming after she was placed into a coffin, apparently preferring to fake her own death over faking an orgasm.

WARTS AND ALL In nearby Swaziland, a new law bans witches from flying or hovering over 150 metres in the air. The law was put into place after a man was caught flying a toy helicopter rigged with a video camera.

“A witch on a broomstick should not fly above the [150-metre] limit,” said Sabelo Dlamini of the country’s civil aviation authority. Many Swazi people believe in the power of black magic, which Salient has learnt is different to the NZL-32 which won the 1995 America’s Cup.

Iraqi drinkers have beer-ed the cost of their failings under Islam’s moral code, with 12 dead after a row of alcohol stores in Baghdad were attacked by gunmen. Salient prefers the normal way of doing shots.

A prominent sportsperson has earned publicity after doing something outside the sporting arena. Media figures are rapidly paring down their estimations of the player’s character after a thorough evaluation based on athleticism and hand-eye coordination proved inaccurate.

headlines that weren't New Conservative Party policy would outlaw “spelling ‘come’ the sexy way”, says Craig Generous prostitute works pro boner Young Wellington male doesn’t roll up chinos Sausage declared “wursttasting” at competition Postie has change of courier  13

POLITICS 

left Budget

P O L I

By Carla Marks As the dulcet tones of Bill English rang out through the halls of Parliament last Thursday, we heard precisely how the Government would tinker with the economic levers for the next 12 months.

Bill believes that overseas investment, a growing economy and healthy competition will allow economic goodness to trickle down over all of us (and I apologise mentioning Bill and trickling in the same sentence). Not only is he wrong, but he’s missing the point of being in government.

Since Bill and John took over in 2008, the things that are likely to have affected you have been the rise in GST, the cuts to postgrad student allowances, the freezing of the Student Allowance threshold, and the re-implementation of youth rates. They are all examples of a Government using its power to create change, but it isn’t change for the better. People are still leaving to Australia in droves, and we still have tens of thousands of children living in poverty. In real terms, we aren’t getting better.

Bill and John can talk about improving business confidence all they please, they can say that selling our assets reduces gross national debt, but that doesn’t help you. It doesn’t help me.

Government is about helping the people of our country. How has this Government helped you?

Left-wing rhetoric in New Zealand is increasingly becoming focussed on the idea of ‘hands-on government’, about using the power of government to help you, in real terms, get ahead. The NZ Power announcement is a good example. So is KiwiBuild.

So is the Greens’ rent-to-buy policy. While the Government continues to talk in abstract terms about reaching the promised “brighter future” through growth and investment, the opposition are proposing policies that don’t rely on any invisible hand; they just get in there and do the work.

There is potential for the next government to break the prevailing neoliberal dialogue that has dominated economic management in New Zealand, Australia and the UK for generations. To step away from third-way politics, to escape the invisible hand, and to implement policies that make a real difference.

So, as Bill vigorously uses an invisible hand to create his own trickle-down over this Budget, the opposition is hard at work devising hands-on policy that will make things better. Come 2014, prepare for Budgets that put you back at the heart of Government policy.

14 

NOTES FROM THE FOURTH ESTATE

By Gatrick Sower

Budget day highlighted what a sorry state national student representation is in, with various students’ associations wanting to roll the President of the National Union of Students’ Associations (NZUSA), but coming up short when it came to find a successor.

President Pete Hodkinson first won the candidacy of NZUSA in 2012, taking the reigns of it in the first year of Voluntary Student Membership.

He was the first President from the Polytech sector in a long time, with the role usually being tossed between ex-VUWSA and University of Auckland student presidents.

NZUSA was restructured in 2011 to help cope with the reduced revenue that students’ associations were able to contribute without compulsory membership. This saw polytech students’ associations having more power, despite contributing significantly less financially than their university counterparts.

In the post-VSM environment, NZUSA performed... Well, how do you really judge the value or success of their performance in 2012? If you’re reading this and don’t know anything about them, probably pretty badly? And if you don’t know who the President is? Well, that’s probably forgivable. But what if at the end of your term as the main student advocate in New Zealand, the Minister of Tertiary Education didn’t know who you were when they

met you at the Press Gallery Christmas party? :/ When it came time to elect the President for 2013, it transpired to be not only a job that no one else wanted—but also a President no one wanted. In the first round of voting Hodkinson lost to no-confidence.

Following a tearful plea, and no doubt a ‘we can’t just not have a President’ discussion amongst the students’ associations, Hodkinson won the second round.

In an attempt to rectify NZUSA’s presence amongst students and the media, and mobilise its ‘student membership’ a central campaign committee was set up. VUWSA sits on this alongside AUSA and OUSA, and has budgeted to contribute $5,000 on top of its annual $45,000 fee for NZUSA membership.

VUWSA President Rory McCourt frankly said the committee had achieved “to date, not a lot.” When asked whether students deserved better than that, he said “yes”.

Under the National Government’s watch there have been, and will continue to be, a number of drastic budget changes that affect students in a big way. If students want this situation to change, they need to let the Government know, but without a united and strong voice to stand behind, they’ll be drowned out by Joyce's savvy press team.

 POLITICS

T I C S

RIGHT Steady As She Goes

By Freddie Hayek

caption me!

Send us your best caption for this picture to editor@salient. org.nz, subject line: 'Caption Contest', by 5 pm Thursday.

Best caption wins a free coffee at:

Last week's winner: "Who is he?"

WINNER: Congratulations ALASTAIR! We'll be in touch about that coffee.

they said what!? @jacindaardern You know you're about to have one of those Wellington landings when the pilot tells you to fasten your seatbelt not once, but three times.. @tauhenare @JetVapour Bro, democracy is we won and I will bet money that we will again. To keep you interested $50 says we will. @winstonpeters The punters got it wrong, again. I wasn't the first, or the second to be kicked out of the House by this Speaker. @richardboock @JudithCollinsMP are you a parody account? @JudithCollinsMP @richardboock Not at all. Just enjoying my work and my opponents.

Normally I have all week to write my column, but I decided to see what came out of the Budget, and write about that instead.

I need not have bothered. Midterm budgets are always boring in our three-year-term parliamentary system. The Budget after an election is usually taken up with legislating new bribes for the electorate, the Budget just before election is taken up with the promises of new, grander bribes for the electorate, with your own money. The poor budget in the middle year of the electoral cycle is loved by no one.

So any big changes for students? Not really. If you are over 40, you are now limited to a maximum of 120 weeks (about four years of full-time study) of Student Allowance. Those over 65 will no longer receive Student Allowance at all. Labour in the few hours after the Budget has already starting spinning this as an attack on retraining. If someone starts studying for a BA at age 65, 68 when they finish, 69 if they do Honours, how likely are they to re-enter the workforce? I will let you answer that one. You may think I am a heartless bastard who doesn’t want your gran studying Classics as their retirement time-filler, but somebody has to be.

Bill English delivered the Budget in a sober, understated way.

In what was a fairly forgettable budget, there were a few highlights (read, new spending), that the Government wants you to notice. There is a package to makes houses more affordable, action on child poverty (though never enough for the Greens), and rule changes for banks. Not exactly super-exciting stuff. The IRD will also be clamping down on dodgy property practices. The major bribe is that ACC levies will be reduced by 40 per cent, reducing costs for small- to medium-sized enterprises. Anything that reduces costs on business is an excellent measure. For me, it is the actual highlight of the budget.

David Shearer then got up in the house, and proceeded to make a whole bunch of terrible casino- and gambling-related jokes. The Prime Minister then wiped the floor with him, as expected. Russel Norman then made some good points about government debt. Then Winston Peters got up and began to play with a toy mouse in a small miniature treadmill. I am not joking.* I turned off the TV at this point.

Sometimes Parliament can lapse into farce. Budget day was one of those days. *http://inthehouse.co.nz/node/18628

 15

CAMPUS DIGEST



CAMPUS DIGEST Campus Diary

2000 reasons to get out of bed How many cans of Red Bull does it take to fill an 8 am lecture?

Red Bull gave students every reason to get out of bed last Monday, ‘airdropping’ a crate filled with over 2000 cans outside the Hub just in time for the first lectures of the day.

The picture of the crate posted on Overheard @ Vic soon got the attention of students, receiving 457 likes and a stream of comments.

“I am currently going for thirds getting at least 7 at a time, today is defs a good day!”

With a number of opportunistic students making return trips to 16 

the crate, filling backpacks, and stockpiling the cans on the Library overbridge, the large crate was completely emptied by 10 am.

As the crate emptied, the posts on the picture soon devolved into debate as to which types of students were more worthy of the free cans after one student accused BA students of filling their otherwise empty bags with the goods.

“Nah dude, us BA students aren't at Uni this early. We're all sitting at home doing absolutely no work ever, or so the rest of Uni tells us,” posted one miffed undergrad.

“Leaf uss BA poeplez alon3, wE tryiin tuu wriite oua 500-wurd asiignmEnntz maaaan”.

A night at the pictures Warm your winter nights with a little culture at very little cost. The Evening Flix series, co-presented by the Adam Art Gallery, Salient and the VBC, continues this week, with another screening at the Memorial Theatre this Wednesday at 6 pm.

On show this week is Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis, a portrait of artist and filmmaker Smith (whose work is currently showing at the Adam’s Beautiful Creatures exhibition), and an insight into the New York underground art scene of the 60s, 70s and 80s.

Tickets are $5 (an absolute bargain) and include the cost of refreshments offered in the Adam Art Gallery from 5 pm.

 CAMPUS DIGEST

get amongst "the best"

GOING UP

Overheard @ Vic:

Overshare on Facebook. Bet you’re glad you know that cousin Nigel’s feeling “sexy”, huh?

Zachary Oliver Overheard@vic: Kients STILL smoking at Vic, stop killing yourself in public its a bad look.

James Griffin Heard somebody around university today say "Girlfriends are like sponsor kids, you spend so much on them and you get little back" Sarah Shuttleworth CHAOS at all the library printers 15 minutes before an obviously important 100 level paper is due.

Troy Harris Overheard in HUB bathroom: Bro when you work you should make a habbit to take a dump once a day. becuase if you get paid 60000 a year if you take a 10 min dump a day you will get paid 2000 a year just for taking a dump.

Graduation Envy. No more pictures of caps being thrown, please.

Anthony Lim This stray cat is lucky enough to be feed by a Vic student. Student allowance spent well.

Twitter: Tarryn @Taz_nz Vic info evening really cleared stuff up. first year uni next year..... scary but exciting thought :) Emily Edmanson @officialemsky My sister graduating today! So proud! #vic #uni #2013 #graduation #BA #proud KMEREDITH. @TheCLASSYKiddo At Vic Uni's Pasifika Graduation. Phat congratulations to all the graduands :-)

ask the magic 8 ball Will the babe at VicBooks notice me this week?

Better not tell you now

Micheale Duguid Seriously what is with my lectures today, I'm surrounded by crazy

Your flat’s internet data usage— Arrested Development’s back on Sunday!

GOING DOWN The price of lunch—sushi half price at Maki Mono after 5pm!

Health tip #

10

Get Your Heart an apple a day Checked!

Or if you are too young tell someone you love to get theirs checked!

Every day in New Zealand 16 people die of cardiovascular disease (heart attacks and strokes). People often die way too early even before they retire leaving behind lots of sad

1) Bitcoins

family members and friends.

Cardiovascular checks are available at medical centres

SALIENT RATES: ALTERNATIVES TO NZD:

2) Monopoly money 3) Chocolate coins

including the Student Health Service. They are simple and provide valuable information about a person's risk of having a heart attack or stroke in the next five years. If you know your risk we can work with you to reduce it so you can live a longer and healthier life.

4) Nigerian billions

To find out more contact the Student Health Service and visit these websites www.knowyournumbers.co.nz and

5) IOUs

www.oneheartmanylives.co.nz

 17

FEATURES • ϟ

Demystifying the

Politicians and political hacks like to pretend they know much more about the world than you do. They use a whole lot of wanky jargon, hoping you think they are smarter than they really are. Luckily, Salient is here to fix that. Welcome to our guide to decoding the budget.

By wilbur townsend

“Rebalancing the economy” The economy isn’t a gymnast, so it’s a bit weird that everyone talks about ‘balancing’ it. The idea is that there are some things you only want a bit of in the economy – you need some for people to be happy, but too much is unsustainable.

One of those things is debt. It’s okay for the Government to take on more debt during a recession, because they can pay it off when the economy picks up. During recessions, Governments have unusually high expenses: people are out of work, so they have to pay more unemployment benefits. Further, in a recession people are earning less and spending less, so there’s less tax revenue.

Recessions are normally caused by people not spending enough, and reducing Government spending can make that worse.

However, you don’t want the Government to be borrowing too much. Debt has to

18 

be paid back sooner or later, and the Government’s debt is already costing us $3.6 billion in interest every year.

Debt isn’t just a problem for Government.

On an individual level, there’s a feeling that New Zealanders spend too much and save too little. This is, of course, bad for those individuals – nobody wants to live their lives drowning under mortgage payments. It’s also bad for the New Zealand economy as a whole, as it means we have less capital to invest in local businesses. That means less growth for the economy as a whole.

Our saving problems are compounded in the international field. In part, that too is a problem of imbalances: balancing the ‘tradables’ and ‘non-tradables’. The tradable sector is the part of the economy which produces things that can be traded internationally, like condoms and porn.

The non-tradable sector is the part which

produces services, like prostitution, which can’t be traded internationally. If our tradable sector shrinks, we’ll have to import more and export less.

We’re already spending more than we earn. In order to bridge the gap, we have to borrow the difference from overseas. This is the ‘current-account deficit’. Most Western countries run current-account deficits, but ours is much bigger than average (five per cent, versus an average of one per cent).

The current-account deficit is, in many ways, an aggregate of the private and public borrowing problems in the economy.

To the extent that New Zealanders’ saving problems aren’t being met by other New Zealanders, we have to go offshore.

When Bill English first became Minister of Finance, he talked a lot about rebalancing the economy. That’s one reason he increased GST to 15 per cent – he wanted to discourage people from spending, so that they would save more. He didn’t have much luck. It’s pretty hard to shift people’s behaviour: saving is fine until the family has to cut its annual trip to Rarotonga. The structure of our economy is a difficult thing to meddle with – new industries don’t pop up as easily as we’d like. A report released earlier this week suggested that, if anything, our economy is becoming less balanced.

Despite the rhetoric, our ‘economic imbalances’ are here to stay.

ϟ • FEATURES

“Housing bubble” You’d freak out if the floor of your house started bubbling molten-lava-style. Similarly, economists freak out about ‘housing bubbles’. House prices are often the result of speculation – when people think that houses will become more expensive in the future, they buy quickly. This increase in demand makes houses even more expensive, fueling a self-fulfilling cycle. Eventually, like all bubbles, housing bubbles pop. This can devastate the broader economy, as we saw with the ‘sub-prime mortgage crisis’ in the United States, which was one of the main causes of the current recession. In New Zealand, with our cultural craving to ‘get onto the property ladder’, this is worth worrying about.

The risk of a bubble is one of the reasons why all political parties want to lower house prices. There is also a strong cultural push for lower house prices – we want the classic quarter-acre section to be realistic for most families.

This Budget has tried to control house prices in two ways. One is by controlling ‘loan-to-value ratios’ – the size of the deposit required before a bank will give you a mortgage. By requiring a larger deposit, you discourage people from buying houses, reducing demand and thus reducing prices. The trade-off is that people who might struggle to raise a deposit will have a harder time getting their first house. The second way the Budget aims to reduce house prices is by giving the Government the ability to override councils’ planning processes.

National has tended to blame high house prices on an under-supply of land, caused by city councils forbidding building in certain areas. By allowing more land to be built on, the cost of land will go down, reducing the cost of housing. Again, this comes with a trade-off: more land released means more ‘urban sprawl’ – less-compact cities which are spread over a bigger area.

“BEFU” The BEFU—pronounced “beef-you”, for those of us geeky enough to use the word in day-to-day conversation—stands for the ‘Budget Economic and Fiscal Update’.

It’s a Government report on the economy which is released at the same time as the

Budget. The Government has a team of economists at the Treasury who focus on economic forecasts: what will happen to GDP, unemployment and wages over the coming years.

This BEFU contained a lot of good news.

The Christchurch rebuild will be sucking up much of the economy’s spare capacity, and the Reserve Bank, which sets monetary policy, is keeping interest rates low to encourage businesses to invest. The means that the real economy should grow by about two per cent over each of the next few years, in turn reducing unemployment to about six per cent. That’s pretty neat.

Unfortunately, it’s not all good news on the horizon. The BEFU outlined last summer’s drought as potentially devastating, and the international dimension is risky. While many of the economies which buy our stuff are growing (which means they’re likely to buy more of our stuff), our high interest rate will reduce the value of those exports.

Further, there’s a risk that the Eurozone crisis will blow up, with global ramifications.

Every year, New Zealand dollars are worth less than they were the previous year. Most things get more expensive over time, which is why you can’t buy $1 lolly mixtures anymore.

“The Government is increasing the health budget by $400 million” This means that the Government is increasing the health budget by $180 million. Or decreasing it by $150 million.

Or, really, all of the above.

Every year, New Zealand dollars are worth less than they were the previous year. Most things get more expensive over time, which is why you can’t buy $1 lolly mixtures anymore. This is inflation, and it’s a bit shit, but it’s not worth worrying about too much. Even though everything becomes

more expensive, people’s wages increase at the same time, leaving people no worse off. For the Government, inflation makes everything more expensive (so they have to spend more money) while also increasing their tax revenues (so they have more money to spend). Inflation shouldn’t make a big change either way to the Government’s books.

Not all prices rise in exactly the same way at exactly the same time. For example, peak oil has increased the price of petrol at a rate much higher than most other things. Similarly, healthcare costs tend to increase much more quickly than average inflation. It’s debatable whether governments should increase funding to cover that sort of increase in costs.

If something is getting more expensive, it might be less value for money, and so unworthy of further spending. Of course, that argument loses popular appeal when it means less support for cancer victims and heart-disease patients.

Every year, New Zealand’s population grows because of immigration and new babies. All else the same, an increase in population will increase both the Government’s tax revenue and costs.

Unfortunately population growth is a bit more complicated, because not all new population is the same – kids require more education spending but won’t give us new tax revenues for a couple of decades (child labour tends to be frowned upon). Conversely, adult migrants increase tax revenue without increasing the Government’s costs very much. While New Zealand’s overall population grew by 0.7 per cent, the overall aging of our population means that different parts of the Budget need to react in different ways.

When trying to account for both population growth and inflation, the end result is incredibly subjective. The Budget’s dollar increase to the health spend was about $400 million, but controlling for inflation and population growth makes the increase more like $180 million. The accelerating effects of healthcare inflation and the changing population structure mean that the Budget is $150 million less in real terms. The number you use is more a function of your politics than of the evidence.

 19

FEATURES • ϟ

Party Now, Pay Later: New Zealand’s Intergenerational Debt Problem New Zealand borrows at a rate of $214 per second. This all has to be paid back in the future. But by who? It won’t be today’s crop of taxpayers; they’ll all be retired or dead.

The intergenerational debt burden will be shouldered by us and our children.

By Cam Price & Duncan McLachlan

Consider the slogans of our political parties last election: National: a brighter future.

Labour: a fairer future.

Green: a sustainable future.

We sense a non-partisan riff: the future matters. Green Party advertisements told us to vote for them so that children could grow up playing in rivers, not sewerage, and the Greens received more votes than they ever had. A majority voted National over Labour because more people bought shonky John Key’s plan for the future than they did Phil Goof ’s.

20 

But amidst the rhetoric and sloganeering of ‘deficit reduction’ and caring about the next generation, governments globally have done very little to stave off the debt problem. To paraphrase an old, warmongering British Prime Minister, democracy is not that great.

It creates a culture of spending without cost, where reckless policies are paid for by the future generation.

The general feeling is that we are living in a society of austerity. Governments globally are cutting back on crucial social services in order to respond to the comical quantities of debt they have burdened themselves with. Government

is shrinking. Welfare is being cut. Jobs are being lost. Margarine is being bought instead of butter. But this perception is misguided.

In actuality, governments today are spending more than they ever have. Despite claims that the National government has engaged in a programme of slashing spending, the truth is that they have spent, and continue to spend, more than the nine years of “reckless” Labour spending before it. Under Helen Clark in 2004, government spending equated to 29 per cent of GDP. Today, that figure is 42 per cent.

But didn’t Bill English just say that we would return to surplus next year? Well, yes. But

ϟ • FEATURES

the fact that this Government is approaching surplus does not mean we are out of debt.

All it means is that we have enough money to make the necessary debt repayments.

Think of it like this: if you have $100 in your pocket at the end of the week, then you are operating at a surplus. But that doesn’t change the fact that you still owe tens of thousands of dollars on your credit card or on your student loan. You’re happy because you can buy yourself something nice now, but future-you is still going to be poor as hell.

Our current penchant for partying now and hoping

Around the world, a similar story is being played out. In America, both Congress and President Obama are constantly being criticised for gutting public spending. David Cameron’s Tory government is facing the same criticism. The truth is that the only thing being cut is the rate at which spending is increasing. Say the Government promises that they will provide $10 million of additional education funding, but then only increase the education budget by $5 million.

The Government is still spending more money, just not as much as they’d promised.

There is no spending cut. Consider also the fact that on the supposedly austere continent of Europe, every single government continues to spend more money than they earn in revenue, and it’s clear that austerity is a myth.

You would be hard-pressed to characterise our political climate as austere: as the Iron Lady’s wet dream; what Ronald thought about when Nancy was out.

It is particularly dangerous when we consider that governments are typically pretty bad at spending money. When you spend your own money on something for yourself, you generally spend it very carefully. If you buy yourself a shitty lemon instead of a sweet orange, you’ll be pretty sour because it’s you who has to eat it. Governments spend other people’s money buying things for other people, so aren’t faced with the same pressure to buy good things. This is why government programmes are generally less efficient than private ones; if a company is wasteful, then they will go bankrupt. If government programmes are inefficient, it can always just borrow more money.

Which is odd given what we noted earlier, which is that politics has become obsessed with controlling debt, with being economically ‘sustainable’, thinking about the children. Yet amidst all that, very little has changed, even when it would be politically savvy to do so. Why? Firstly, although voters like the concept of voting selflessly to preserve our future, we like other things as well. We like Working for Families. We like early retirement. We like interest-free student loans. We like America’s Cup yachts. Especially when we don’t have to pay for them. The public want these services and so are happy not scrutinise the real efforts made by governments to tackle debt as closely.

Further, governments are able to hide the fact that they are not confronting the debt problem. Debt is a complex issue. Most

someone else will pay later needs fixing. It is too easy to live in our interest-free opulence and hope someone else born later in a better time will do something about it. people don’t really get it. Where does it come from? What is the ‘right’ amount of debt?

How do you measure the amount of debt a country has? What is a low-yield governmentbond security? We just don’t know. This makes it easy for government to spout fiscally responsible rhetoric, knowing the whole time that people don’t understand it. They probably don’t understand debt either.

We can’t lay the blame squarely on evil politicians for our inability to understand government policy however. If we really wanted to, we could go to the Treasury website and learn all about Core Crown Expenditure. We could take a course in Public Finance at uni. But why would we? What’s the benefit to us? We might learn all about fiscal policy and vote accordingly, but it’s likely most of our peers are doing less nerdy things with their spare time. They’ll continue to vote as they always have and nothing will change. For the hours of work we put in, the reward is zero. The truth is, although we say we care about future generations, we don’t care about them enough to go out of our way to learn how to save them.

What does debt mean for us?

Debt leads to reckless spending. Governments are traditionally stuck between a rock and a hard place: on the one hand, they want to lower your taxes so that you vote for them.

On the other, they want to give you heaps of benefits and free stuff so that you vote for them. Obviously, these two ends can’t be reconciled conventionally; it has to be one or the other. But governments are nothing if not crafty, and this is where debt comes in. By borrowing money, John Key and Bill English are able to have their cake and eat it too: tax cuts and spending increases for everyone. The problem is that in order to do this, they are binding future generations who must shoulder the cost of the debt, with interest. Taking

candy from unborn babies is pretty low, even for those two.

It is also expensive. Borrowing requires service payments: the interest payments on debt. As ACT Party leader John Banks told Salient, “...[w]hen a Government spends more than it raises in revenue it has to borrow, and serving that debt often comes at a high price.” In the United Kingdom, £2000 from every household goes just to servicing debt.

Minister of Finance Bill English noted in his Budget Speech last Thursday that servicing our debt costs the equivalent of funding the police, early-childhood education and the Unemployment Benefit combined. That is an egregious waste which people should be able to spend making their own lives better.

Finally, a pattern of increased spending on new programmes and initiatives is nigh on impossible to reverse. ‘Entitlement’ can sometimes be a dirty word in politics, but it is pertinent here. We get used to the nice things government provides us with. It’s nice not to have to pay interest on our student loans. It’s nice that people over 65 get money from the government, regardless of whether they’re a millionaire or not. It’s nice to have a Families

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Commission, even though nobody knows quite what it does. It would be political suicide for a party to cut any of these things because the public has become accustomed to them.

Take superannuation for example. It is an indictment on our country that nearly 13 per cent of the total budget is spent on superannuation. Despite the fact that people are living and working longer than when the scheme was introduced, and the reality that it is financially unsustainable, John Key has said he would rather resign than implement sensible changes such as adding a meanstesting element and gradually raising the retirement age. Reform is impossible because of our status-quo bias; people expect to be supported as soon as they turn 65 because it’s what they are used to. A new policy places on the next government an obligation to continue it. It is politically easy to create programmes, but downright impossible to stop them.

Meanwhile, the borrowing continues.

What does that mean for those in the future?

We are committing grave moral, democratic and governmental sins against our progeny.

First off, we are stealing money from future New Zealanders to cover our own decadence.

There is some debate about whether tax is theft (given the fact the police will shoot you if you resist arrest for failure to pay taxes, it may well be), but there can be no mistaking that leaving our descendants to pay for loans that we took out is daylight robbery.

Intergenerational debt represents a serious threat to democracy. When a majority of people vote for National, it means that they are consenting to their tax dollars being spent on the things National campaigned on during the election. Without this authorisation from taxpayers, a government has no mandate to spend. In the case of long-term debt, the people who have to ultimately pay for repayments are either not of voting age or are not yet born. The end result is that future people will have to pay for policies which they could not and would not have voted for.

The practical effect of intergenerational debt is preventing our grandkids from realising their potential. How’s this? Well, it means that all subsequent governments are bound to repay their

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debtors. The money they are forced to spend paying off interest on a debt they never agreed to can’t now be spent on health or education or the police or tax cuts. Our descendants can’t choose how to spend their money.

The problem with debt is that eventually you run out of future people’s money.

Greece, Cyprus, Portugal and Italy all attest to this. The debt reaches a boiling point, where something has to be done. It places nations in a position where the debt becomes unsustainable, where they are unable to even service the debt and are forced to make cuts.

Look no further than the savage demonisation of Thatcher’s Britain for evidence of such a reality. After her death, people hurled abuse at her and her memory, finding her culpable for the suffering of the 80s. But let’s scrutinise that. She arrived in a Government where even liberal Liverpudlians were writing songs against the Tax Man who took over 95 per cent of their money, where government spending was bloated and people felt entitled to their cushy unionised existence. Where subsidies for the wealthy were rife and paid for by the poor and the future. Thatcher confronted that reality.

Roger Douglas did the same here.

Bastards, you say. The scoundrels of a neoliberal agenda. Fervent evangelicals of Friedman and Hayek. Wrong. They are merely symptoms of a wider malaise. They were forced to respond to a governmental system that incentivises debt-piling. Where government after government have spent what they did not have. To put it simply: members of unions who lost their jobs under Thatcher are wrong to only hate Thatcher.

Their fury should focus on those before her: the Labour leaders they loved.

Philosophy This debt culture seems wrong. Derek Parfit, a British philosopher, disagrees. He describes what is known as the identity problem: The Government introduces a policy to support new mothers. They borrow to do so.

Intuitively, we think that that is wrong because we are harming (financially) those in the future

for our benefit. It is akin to theft. Not so, declares Parfit. For there is no person in the future that we are harming. They do not exist and further there is no certainty that they will exist. Given that even a tiny change in the time at which you have sex will alter who is created (lots of sperm etc.), then policies that are implemented by governments also will change who is created. Our actions to ‘help’ or ‘hurt’ the future change who it is we are hurting or helping and thus make it illogical to say that we are actually harming anyone. The policy may be worse for future generations, but it also changes who the future generation is. They are not helped or hurt. They are merely created.

So maybe we should conclude: fuck deficit reduction; fuck climate change. I want my Gatsby existence. Gimme my fossil fuels and lower taxes. And free champagne too.

This theory seems intuitively wrong. Parfit himself found it “repugnant”. Perhaps the response is that we do not need to know specifically who we are transgressing in order to do wrong. We just need to know that there are people that we will do wrong to. Their names are not so key.

So, what is the cure for this debt malaise?

A preventative cure?

Salient asked politicians whether they would support a law that limited the amount of government debt by implementing a cap on borrowing. The Right Honourable John Banks suggested a cap on spending would work better. “Requiring the Government to tell Parliament just why they have had a blowout in spending will make it less likely to occur. Debt is simply a result of not controlling spending. Reining in spending is where we must focus our efforts.” In theory, a cap on spending sounds like a very good way of limiting borrowing, but in reality it is unlikely that a cap would be effective, as a simple majority in the House would allow the Government to ignore the cap.

No more democracy?

Malcolm Bull, who teaches at Oxford, argued

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in the London Review of Books that trustees should be appointed to represent the future, as a means for tackling climate change. These trustees would have the power to override the legislature to prevent them from passing laws which would have bad consequences for future generations. Democracy is put on the back burner. The interests of the unborn future and dead past may both be represented in some form of aristocracy.

However, Bull himself doubts the ability of these trustees to do what is in the interests of those they are representing. Further, it may lead to more fundamental issues over the exercise of that power: how would the people be appointed, and what legitimacy would their decisions have if not supported by popular will? Bull’s conception of government may help solve the problem of intergenerational debt but brings with it bigger problems.

Reducing the voting age?

The voting age may be reduced to allow youth to have a say in the society they will grow up into. From a rights perspective, this seems sensible, but in terms of solving debt, its efficacy is limited. It is unclear that 16 year olds, if they were to come out and vote, would have a more long-term focus than other members of society.

Lengthening the election cycle?

We could extend the electoral term from three to four years. This may lead to calmer, more rational budgets. The temptation to promise expensive novel programs for short-term political gain would be lessened as governments would have longer for their fiscal policies to take effect. Although the theory seems plausible, evidence suggests debt continues to grow. The United Kingdom has a five-year cycle, Brazil six: both have large reserves of debt.

Generational accounting?

A future commission?

As noted earlier, politicians are able to purport to be resolving the debt issue because it is so complex.

Generational accounting places debt firmly on the agenda. It works by placing less importance on statistics such as debt-to-GDP ratios, and uses other demographic features to help guide policy. For instance, if the projected birth rate in a country is set to fall, there will be fewer taxpayers in the future, meaning policies will have to be scaled down to respond to that fact.

In characteristic Scandinavian fashion, Norway has a progressive alternative.

There, they have a Future Commission, not dissimilar to a Select Committee in New Zealand. When a Bill is being debated in Parliament, the Future Commission will submit as to whether the Bill is likely to be good for future generations. This makes debt and climate change more of a live political

How does a government borrow money?

- Poor nations generally borrow from the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund.

- Most nations don’t use banks however.

$70 billion new zealand's total debt

$130 million $15,000 added to total debt each week

per new zealander

issue, and would likely nudge the public slightly more towards intergenerationally just policies. However, New Zealand is generally apathetic to such Committee submissions.

Attorney-General reports that highlight breaches of the Bill of Rights seem to go almost unnoticed by the public. Perhaps the same would occur for this Committee.

It seems clear that there are many options available to governments to address this moral and social issue. Simply doing nothing is intellectually lazy. Our current penchant for partying now and hoping someone else will pay later needs fixing. It is too easy to live in our interest-free opulence and hope someone else born later in a better time will do something about it. Get off the couch. Malcolm Bull, writing on climate change, discerned: “The current generation is in danger of becoming the squeezed middle—a victim of the careless excess of the past, yet still obliged to save all its resources for the needs of those to come.”

Perhaps he is right. But past failure does not justify continuing inertia. The fact that history books tell of governments implementing reckless policies should not be a barrier to creating a more sustainable future, whether that be financially, as we have argued, or environmentally. Let us be the “squeezed middle”. And be proud of it.

- When a Government wants to borrow, it produces Government Bonds.

- Government Bonds are pieces of paper which other nations and institutions purchase.

- The Bonds are a promise to pay back the buyer the amount they paid for the Bond, plus interest, on a certain date.

INTERNATIONAL DEBT (% of gdp) japan:

220%

united states of america:

104%

united kingdom:

88.7%

australia:

26.9%

greece:

161%

New zealand:

44%  23

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salient's guide to

$

get rich quick schemes us trust

$

rks! lly wo a e r this

If you’ve ever sat in the Hub, tearfully transferring 71 cents to your cheque account in order to buy a $1.90 can of Diet Coke, you’ll know how poor being a student can feel. But never fear! There are plenty of ways to get rich quickly, without resorting to putting Google ads on your One-Direction-themed tumblr.

By Chloe Davies and Alexandra Hollis

Stripping:

StudyLink/Accommodation Benefit:

Pawn all your belongings:

Wellington has a plethora of strip clubs that would be willing to take yo’ fine ass on. They’re always advertising, and if you succeed, customers will place actual cash on your body.

As previously reported in Salient, there are already a number of Vic students funding their way to wearing graduation robes by taking theirs off.

There are a multitude of ways you can acquire money from the Government.

An easy way to gain start-up capital for your future money-making ventures is ‘course-related’ costs. If you know anything about apps, you could create one or blackmail someone into giving you the intellectual property to one.

You could also use your course-related costs to invest in the stock market or property: buy up all the shares from the Government’s asset sales.

Sometimes money is better than material possessions. Of course, due to the city’s draconian anti-streaking laws, you may have to spend some of that money on new material possessions.

Spam emailing: Create a spam email and send it out to as many people as you can. If you email two million people a certain percentage is going to HAVE to fall for it.

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Cut off a finger: “ACC allegedly has a healthy payout.” – says a bleakly certain Salient co-editor.

Living costs: If you’re living at home, save it up and put in a short-term investment. Take it out again when you go flatting and learn what being poor really feels like.

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Claim your tax back:

Stripping:

Become a fortune teller:

Tax-e-for-me.

Wellington has a plethora of strip clubs that would be willing to take yo’ fine ass on. They’re always advertising, and if you succeed, customers will place actual cash on your body.

As previously reported in Salient, there are already a number of Vic students funding their way to wearing graduation robes by taking theirs off.

All you need is a half-convincing Romanian accent, some crystals, silk scarves, and a gullible/ironic audience.

Try folk fairs or music festivals.

Steal from the University: The Uni has multitudes of stuff to steal and sell. Try hawking the free VUWSA bread to people in Aro Valley—they’ll buy it if you tell them it’s organic, vegan, and gluten-free. The library has far too many books to be useful: you can make a tidy sum by selling them off at Arty Bees or online. Next Open Day or O-Week, steal a bunch of pens/ lollies/Post-it notes/beach balls/bottle openers, and set up a black market (online or off) to profit from your stock.

Sue a big company: 1. Bring a clump of hair next time you go to McDonald’s. 2. Place it in your soft-serve. 3. Contact the media.

Get into online poker: In cyberspace, no one can hear you scream (in delight at pocket aces).

Unlike other forms of gambling, in poker you’re playing against others, not the house, so it is possible to consistently win. That said, because it’s primarily a game of skill, luck will only take you so far, especially against Swedish kid-geniuses. There are plenty of websites where you can practice playing with fake money before graduating to the real thing: definitely try this first.

Charge people to join your club: You know the Hypothetical Government Club? How much better would it be if everyone paid $20 to get their own mini fez? People go mad for that shit. Spend the profits on matches, to burn all fezzes.

Sell food to stoners during munchies hour: À la Ross’ plan in Friends. Shouldn’t be much of a problem at Vic.

Sell things online: Become the favourite grandchild: Grandparents are known for being generous, and they are also most likely going to die before you do. Go figure.

Write a memoir talking about drugs and sex: In 2003 James Frey wrote an autobiography titled A Million Little Pieces discussing his past of drug abuse, alcoholism and crime. He sold over a million copies. It was later revealed most of the events in the book were false and the book was hailed as “A Million Little Lies”, but he still made a ton of money. You could do this; people love reading about others’ dramatic/ drug-addled/tragic/sex-filled lives/lies.

Invest in some fake iPhones and put them on Walk in Wardrobe: the law around this is murky. The worst you’ll get if caught is getting banned from the group; that ain’t no thang if you make fake Facebooks though. Also popular are charms, iPhone cases, fake designer wear and those colourful keyboard covers. A more legitimate way to make some money online is to start a store on a website like Etsy. Etsy kids love dream-catchers, jerseys with woodland creatures on them, Simpsons paraphernalia, crocheted blankets, and stickers of Kanye’s tweets. If you can loot your grandparents’ house and sell off their old books, silver, picture frames, teacups and teapots, and embroidered cushions, you’ll make a mint.

Adopt a new health-food fad: Maybe all those hemp-wearing, unwashed hippies in Aro Valley have it right. Go to Commonsense Organics and bulk-buy their latest grain/juice/ herbal remedy, then hang around Aro Valley looking happy and healthy, yet also wan and anti-establishment. The local residents are so weakened by their kale and chia-centric diets that convincing them of its magic (and the heavily inflated price) won’t be too hard, as long as you use buzzwords like environment, earth, natural, and society.

Pretend to be a Sheikh from the UAE: A modern twist on the classic Nigerian Prince. It won’t fool your friends, but might catch out a few Gerrys, and let’s face it, it’s what they deserve.

Become the next big ‘entrepreneurial socialite’: Invest time and money in creating and maintaining a personal brand: change your name to something quirky and distinctive, which strongly implies a connection to a hotel magnate—’Sally Trump’, anyone?

Channel the Kardashians, Paris Hilton, or the Ridges for a local inspiration. Try dating a famous sports player—you can get married and divorced, or just use them to get a reality TV show.

Either way, soon you’ll have enough capital to start up a clothing line and get a signature fragrance.

Start a free student magazine: (disclaimer: results may vary).

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JUST How much is a song worth?

Every douchebag in the world has some variation of “music is my life” adorning their Facebook, but we can probably all agree that music, and culture in general, is a pretty essential part of modern life. But how essential? $12.99 essential? Taxpayer-funded essential? Well.

BY HENRY COOKE

On iTunes, you’ll pay either $1.80 or $2.40. If you opt for a plain old CD, you will probably pay around $1.40, but you’ll have to buy the whole album. If you are willing to sit through a

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‘youth-targeted’ ad, you can listen to a song for free on YouTube. If you go to a reasonably large gig, you’ll pay around $5 a song. On some sites, you’ll pay with your email address. On Spotify

you’ll pay either nothing or a few cents. If you pirate the song, it could be free—or around 12 grand in court. It’s up to you.

Culture and capitalism have always had their differences. Pricing material goods isn’t necessarily easy, but it isn’t that hard either. Say you designed a T-shirt to sell. You work out how much money each shirt costs you to make and sell—materials, construction, transportation, sales tax etc.—you add a profit margin, and boom, $24.99.

Music, and art in general, lacks much of these constants. A digital music file costs almost nothing to transfer across the world, but recording it can cost thousands, or almost

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nothing. Some songs take years to write, some songs are hastily assembled in the booth. Some people would pay thousands of dollars for the new Daft Punk album, while others can barely be bothered streaming it. Trying to work out the amount of money that went into designing a tangible product can be pretty difficult—the

if music is free or near-free we consume a whole lot more of it formula for a new drug might cost millions in research, while the pill itself costs less than a dollar to produce—but once that is worked out you can sell the same formula over and over and over. Furthermore, a new pill is something of an objective product—we can all agree that it has a certain value. There is no consensus in culture.

Most of us seem to enjoy The Beatles, but not to a consistent degree—some of us might think Revolver is the pinnacle of rock music, while the rest of us might only know Help. You can’t assume anything.

Traditionally, the music industry got around all this by exploiting the monopoly they had on each song. As economist Paul Romer wrote in 2002, without file sharing, “the substantial markup of price over marginal cost made possible by effective copyright creates deadweight losses.” Basically, you could sell these goods for a huge profit—because you were the only ones selling them. One couldn't just pick a cheaper version of the Nirvana album they wanted. Cultural goods are what consumer researchers call “experiential”—we don’t consume them for any practical purpose—so practical budgeting measures don’t really apply to how we buy them. Paying for a physical item like a vinyl or CD feels pretty okay, especially if that item provides hours of entertainment.

Then the internet happened.

No industry has felt the internet’s effects quite like the music industry. “The explosion in music and video sharing since 1999 suggests that the demand for music is very responsive to price”,

writes Romer—if music is free or near-free we consume a whole lot more of it. Buying an album from every artist on the average user’s Last.fm account (a service that tracks what music you listen to) would cost around $30,000.

“I don't think most artists expect people to pay for all their music any more,” claims Wellington bedroom-musician Skymning.

“I've even seen interviews with musicians like Rick Ross who say they don't really care if people download their music ‘cos they'll still be coming to the shows.” Skymning distributes his music through the website Bandcamp, either for free or on a ‘pay-what-you-want’ basis. “I really dislike the idea of forced payment on digital files,” he says, echoing much of his generation—but he doesn’t believe all songs are created equal. “I put my music up for pay-what-you-want because it didn't cost me anything to make, as opposed to, for instance, a rap album where you've gotta pay the producers of each track, pay for studio time etc.”

Singles have always functioned as advertising— for themselves, for their artist, for the album they came from—but only to a point. We couldn’t replay them over and over again; that was what we bought the album for. Are albums themselves now just ads for concerts?

Musician Derek Webb sees an album purchase as a one-time transaction, which only nets hims around a dollar, while at a live show “I make approximately $10 back [per fan], and twice that if they visit the merch table.” Webb swaps his music for the personal information of his fans. They get his album for free; he gets to email them when he’s touring in their town.

Our personal data is already the price we pay to use Facebook and Google ad nauseum, would it be so bad if we could pay for music with it too?

Perhaps we are looking at music in the wrong way. Despite existing as an ‘experience’ rather than an object, music is generally sold as a product, that one ‘owns’. Most of us consume fine art, television and films as experiences— we pay to enjoy them once or twice, not over and over again, like a song. Music is explicitly designed to be listened to repeatedly, so ‘owning’ it feels like the easiest solution. When one could build vast shelved music collections, this ownership felt very romantic—much like it does with books—but it can feel ill-suited to a

world where ‘owning’ a song just means another row on your iTunes. Spotify attempts to address this issue, transforming music from a product into a service. It allows you to stream any music from its gigantic library for free, with ads, or uninterrupted for less than $8 a month— cheaper than an album on iTunes. It can feel like a win-win, but it’s really the fair-trade coffee of the music business: you might feel a bit better, but you aren’t really helping anyone out, as most artists only see a miniscule fraction of a cent per stream.

Our personal data is already the price we pay to use Facebook and Google ad nauseum, would it be so bad if we could pay for music with it toO? Some of the world’s most accomplished works of art were assembled for cash. Michelangelo didn’t paint the Sistine Chapel for free, Dostoyevsky wrote Crime and Punishment in serialised form in order to pay his debts.

Still, attempting to fit culture too neatly into capitalism will never really work. There is no perfect price for a cultural object, no way of valuing art that isn’t problematic. Musicians are making less money than they used to, sure, but there are more of them than ever before.

“I think the last decade of music has been the most innovative since the advent of the piano,” proclaims Skymning, citing the explosion of sample culture. The current mess of different ways in which we can buy music resembles the complexity of the culture itself. A song is worth whatever you want it to be worth. And, trust me, this dubstep remix of ‘Chain Hang Low’ should be at least $10.

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It's impossible to walk down Lambton

A dollar a day...

Quay without being confronted with rattling collection buckets for the world's poorest. As the world's privileged, do we have a duty to donate?

BY PATRICK HUNN

Charity, we are told, is a virtue. Today, in a world where we are well aware of the problems faced in the poorest parts of the world, this virtue becomes a little trickier to put into practice. Helping someone in your immediate community is an entirely different exercise to handing money over to someone else in the hope that someone in Uganda might benefit from it. It often seems like some charities are more oriented to satisfying our guilt than others.

Are we bound, if we can, to donate to charities?

Is it possible to say ‘no’ and still maintain something resembling the moral high ground?

Are some charities more deserving than others?

At my high school we were forbidden from doing the 40 Hour Famine. If you are unfamiliar with the idea, famine events involve fasting in some way for a certain period of time

28 

in order to raise funds for a charitable cause.

In most cases, this is World Vision, and in most countries they only go for 30 hours. We do 40 in New Zealand because we’re hard. As an alternative, my school ran a bizarre runathon, where groups of press-ganged 13-year-olds ran around the Basin Reserve in full view of State Highway 1 to solve world hunger. This act of defiance on the part of the school makes an awful lot of sense because, when you consider it, the act of ‘starving’ yourself for two days seems not only ridiculous but plainly offensive.

Advertisements for the event have started airing again recently. The people on the television are super-duper-keen to start not eating. This is slightly galling when we are routinely told that huge swathes of New Zealand children are routinely going hungry anyway. I have a lot of

feelings about the 40 Hour Famine, and almost none of them are good.

Then again, picking on teenagers who probably have their hearts in the right place seems a little mean. The Famine probably isn’t vitally important for World Vision, which is something of a charitable colossus. The idea, one imagines, is to cultivate a generation of people who understand the importance of helping those in need. Charitable giving is, after all, something we should encourage. Isn’t it?

Australian moral philosopher Peter Singer certainly thinks so, at least in principle, saying that, “...if you are living comfortably while others are hungry or dying from easily preventable diseases, and you are doing nothing about it, there is something wrong with your behaviour.”

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That is not something you can argue against.

Not really. If you disagree with Singer on this, it probably means you are either a philosopher or you leave comments on YouTube. The question we should ask ourselves, however, is whether or not the $20 a month you were pressed into pledging to UNICEF by those very happy young people in the teal anoraks is enough to pay off Singer’s karmic debt. My gut reaction is to say that no, it isn’t.

Charity has always involved a sort of tense relationship between the organisation itself and those it solicits donations from. The charity, whether it wants to or not, occupies a space that projects a moral imperative that can make people behave quite strangely. A fun pastime is to situate yourself near someone on the street asking for money and observe the uneasy dance that many people seem to do when they move past them. I know that when I am confronted with a grim-faced lady wielding a bucket, I either make a donation or my thoughts go into a sort of moral overdrive, generally along the lines of one of the following: 1) I quite literally have no money. This makes me want to stop and show them my bank statement and make this perfectly clear to them, lest they think me unkind.

2) I don’t like the cause. In this case I want to stop and tell them that I am not giving them money because I do not approve of their organisation, and make it absolutely clear that I am actually a generous and kind and empathic and generally wonderful person.

3) I just don’t want to. Usually this is because it is cold, or I am unhappy about something. When I see people doing ‘the right thing’ when I am in a bad mood I want to nail the bucket to their forehead.

largest ‘charity’ in the country in terms of assets and income combined. What is clear, however, is that we place an importance on groups working for others. A local charity that works for the benefit of an immediate community is

people give money as a way of divorcing themselves from things they find uncomfortable: the problem might not go away, but you did your bit. more open to scrutiny and we can gauge the effects ourselves. The more insidious types of giving, as far as I can see, are the ones where your money is spirited away to a global HQ. You can’t say with any certainty what they will do with it, and the best you can do is hope that someone, somewhere, will benefit from it.

The thing about charitable giving is that you are addressing a problem by giving money to a third party that only really answers to you and other people like you—the person wealthy enough to give them the cash. Which means, I would say, that very few of us are actually all that invested in fixing the problem. It seems at times as if people give money as a way of divorcing themselves from things they find uncomfortable: the problem might not go away, but you did your bit. Even though the intentions behind any given donation might be perfectly saintly, we aren’t necessarily interested in knowing exactly what the money goes into. Many of the larger multinational AIDS NGOs have enormous media budgets, for instance. This is, in itself, a larger cause for concern.

The 40 Hour Famine seems ridiculous when we are routinely told that huge swathes of New Zealand children are routinely going hungry anyway.

There are approximately 25,000 charities registered in New Zealand. A ‘charity’ is widely defined for a variety of reasons, and the largest of these don’t actually deal with those in need.

The University of Auckland, is, for instance, the

countries consider to be important. When you make a donation that purports to help soothe Glamorous Issue A in African Country X, you aren’t necessarily making an informed decision.

The activities of the Bill and Melinda Gates

The need to appeal to people in the developed world for charity is flawed in an absurd number of ways. Prime among these is the way in which the activities of these groups is driven by what those in wealthy donor

Foundation, which has an endowment of approximately US$37 billion has been quite fairly criticised for its handling of its AIDS programmes.

The fixation on AIDS, which is the most glamorous of all diseases, led to the Foundation pouring millions into treatment and research. This has led to something of a brain drain, as the best resources, doctors and other healthcare workers have been pulled away from the treatment and prevention of other killers. The result in some communities that the Foundation has been active in has been AIDS clinics that are well-resourced, with staff that are well-paid, and a weakened local healthcare system that can’t handle those other, less-famous diseases that take many more lives.

Nobody would argue that HIV and AIDS do not deserve attention. What is plain, though, is that charity can harm those it seeks to help, because it is fuelled by the view of the world held by those who have resources.

I can’t offer an alternative, though. If you feel strongly about the global poor and you aren’t the reigning Queen of All Civilisation, then you don’t have a huge number of options. I still think that most charitable giving by the grand majority of the population is the equivalent of a moral palate-cleanser. But hey; it might make someone’s life somewhere a tiny bit better. What is important, though, is to understand that the only mandate any charitable organisation has to help those in need is cash. This means that, apparently, the solution to any number of things is driven by the wallets of people on the other side of the world.

It's tricky, because most of us do recognise that we probably can help in some small way. It's galling that what should be a simple moral imperative is so muddied and unclear.

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FEATURES • ϟ

What Would You Do?

By Phillipa Webb

Since leaving high school three years ago, 19-year-old Ben* has worked full-time at a café in Lower Hutt, struggling to pay off his car and living “off the skin of his arse”. But two weeks ago, Ben bought a couple of $5 Space Invader scratchies and his life

high-school friends haven’t made contact with me since they’ve found out. No one has really become my friend because of it. But I have been really paranoid about that.

Have people asked you for money?

changed forever. Salient Chief Reporter Phillipa Webb spoke to Ben about the ups and downs of winning $100,000...

When did you buy the ticket?

I was at Lower Hutt New World two weeks ago, and I needed $20 cash out and a $5 note to give to a friend. So I thought, “Aw stuff it, I’ll go buy a couple of scratchies”. So I bought a couple of the new Space Invader scratchies and when I got home, I sat on the couch and had a bit of a scratch and found out I’d won $100,000.

to ten days to go into my account but it took literally 36 hours. So I just decided to check my account a few days later and it was there.

How did you feel when you saw the money in your account?

I just slammed my laptop shut and just walked away—I didn’t want to see it.

Do you usually buy tickets, or was it a one-off?

What did the Lotteries Commission tell you to do?

Yeah I usually do, maybe one or two every two weeks.

They were lovely. I had a talk to them when I first won and then a week later I got this little care package thing that had a book on how to deal with winning Lotto. It just talks about the decisions you’re now faced with, and they offer some advice like investing in a house, encouraging you to go travelling and enrol in tertiary study—stuff like that. Rather than just blow it on a Lamborghini.

How did you react when you found out?

I was completely speechless. I yelled to my flatmate while he was on the phone to his mum and I was like, “Hey man I think I just won”. Then he asked where I’d bought it from, thinking I’d bought it from some dodgy guy on the street.

What have people’s reactions been; has anyone been bitter or angry?

Did you tell anyone?

Once I figured out what I was roughly doing with it, I just told whoever I wanted and didn’t really care. But the first couple of days I kept it pretty d-low.

What did you do with the money once you got it?

The Lotto guy told me it would take seven

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Well my stepmum was like, “Well we’ve been playing bloody scratchie tickets for years”, so she was pretty cut up about it. But apart from that everyone else has been pretty happy for me.

Since people found out, have you got more attention?

I haven’t noticed it, to be honest. But I really hope that doesn’t change. Put it this way—old

Nah not at all. I was quite selective about the different people that I told.

Did you give any to charity?

No I haven’t. I’ve thought about it, but I’m still settling in and don’t quite believe it’s all happened yet.

Has it felt different to how you imagined?

Yeah definitely. I’ve sat there and done scratchies before and thought to myself, “Yeah if I won I’d go and do this”, but then as soon as I won, it wasn’t like that at all. I was more freaked out than anything.

Were you overwhelmed?

Yes, very. It’s such a large sum of money.

Before, I was living on the bones of my arse pretty much, and to suddenly be given that, it’s quite overwhelming.

Did it change the way you felt about money?

I’d like to say no, but in real subtle ways it does. For example I take price tags for granted—I needed to buy a new jersey and instead of going, ‘Oh shit that’s $100’ it was like, ‘Meh that’s $100’. But I don’t really want to have that attitude at all.

Has it changed your life plans?

I’m still working it out. I’m taking a couple of months off work and I’m going to look into tertiary study and maybe overseas travelling.

ϟ • FEATURES

Have you got out wads of cash and thrown it in the air?

Haha, not really. I joked with my mum that I’d change the money into ten-cent pieces so I’d technically be a millionaire in ten-cent pieces and fill my house with them. She said, “Don’t be a dick”.

What was your mum’s reaction to the win?

She was pretty happy, but the first proper thing she said was, ‘Oh yus it’s Mother’s Day in two weeks’. But I got her an iPad for Mother’s Day which was quite nice.

Do you still buy Lotto tickets?

I bought an Instant Kiwi just for the hell of it and won nothing on it, so I was just like, “Nah my luck's run out”.

What would you be doing now if you hadn’t won?

Still paying off the $600 I owed on my car.

But I mean I’m still doing the exact same

thing I was two weeks ago, it’s just it’s a lot less stressful knowing that I’ve paid off the bills that I had, and can pay back the people that I owe.

Had you already imagined what you’d do if you won? Did you end up doing that?

Not really. As I said, you think you’ll go out and buy a car or something, but it’s actually quite eye-opening. I’m a generally sensible person but this has just made me realise how sensible I can be with money. I’ve set up a term-deposit account so I’ve locked most of it away so I can’t really blow it. So I just left myself with a smaller amount to blow.

How much of the original win do you have left?

A good 95 per cent if you wanna do the math.

But after that, not really; I’ve thought about investing in a house but that might be in the next couple of years.

After winning such a big sum, do you have any budget ?

It’s a bit here-and-there at the moment. I’ve set up all these different accounts and I’m not being frugal but I’m not being crazy. I’m still working so I’ve still got that income, so I’m still living off what I was except I’ve got a six-figure sum sitting in my back account.

But I still try and shop smart and look for the deals—I still use my Onecard at Countdown.

Do you have a message to future Lotto winners?

It’s not what it’s cracked up to be and it’s never gonna be how you imagined it to be. *Name has been changed for privacy

What do you plan to do with it?

All pretty vague at the moment. I’d like to take my girlfriend over to Rarotonga in the next couple of months, so that’s on the cards.

RHYTHM GROUP ENTERTAINMENT PRESENT

WAIOHIKA ESTATE, GISBORNE - 29, 30, 31 DECEMBER 2013

TICKETS ON SALE 9AM 29TH MAY rhythmandvines.co.nz  31

COLUMNS 

things that go bump in the night My partner and I have been having sex for a few months and he wants to try introducing toys, but I'm not sure I want to.

It kind of feels like we'd be cheating, you know? Shouldn't we be able to have the best time with just us and no extra help?

First off, I’d suggest sitting down and having a conversation with your boy. Why does he want to use toys? Perhaps there’s something specific he wants to try out, or maybe he wants you to have the best time possible. Or perhaps he’s just curious and wants to explore! Communication is essential when trying new sexual things, and being on the same page beforehand will make things a lot easier when you’re actually doing it.

One thing I can promise though – sex toys are not a way of cheating to get the sexual high score. Toys are a way to expand on the chemistry the two of you already have, and can open doors you never even knew existed. Positions on the Orgasmic HighScore Board are up for grabs, and there are no rules about how you get there.

To start with, try using a toy of your own by yourself. There are lots of options! A masturbation sleeve like a fleshlight (if you have a dick), a dildo or a vibrator (vaginally or anally), a butt plug, a prostate massager, or a vibrating wand (everyone seems to recommend the Hitachi one) are the main ones. You can always get more exotic later – my collection is ever-expanding.

If you have a clitoris, you might want to investigate rabbit vibrators. Different people prefer different things, but intense, direct clitoral stimulation can be pretty phenomenal.

If you have a prostate, then butt toys are a fun thing to try (protip: straight boys can enjoy their prostates too). Prostate stimulators come in a variety of forms: some vibrate, some don’t, some are

32 

angled to hit just the right spot, and some are meant to be guided more manually.

But where will you get toys from? I highly recommend the internet. You’ll find toys cheapest online with a bigger selection, as well as reviews. Plus, every online sex-toy shop I’ve ever encountered will ship the goods in plain packages, though shipping to New Zealand can occasionally be a pain. Online shopping is also good if you’re not comfortable walking into D.VICE in broad daylight.

The key points for any toys you’re putting inside yourself are to use plenty of lube and to go slowly. It’s a different, new thing, and especially if you’re using them anally it’s important to play it safe and go slow.

You can use all of these with someone else too of course, and it’s up to both of you to experiment and find new ways to use them! There are toys meant to be used as a couple, like double-ended dildos, strap-ons, and feeldoes (strapless strap-ons), and these are hopefully pretty self-explanatory.

Maybe you’d like to try pegging, where you fuck a dude with a strap-on! I know a few straight boys who are super into it, and it’s becoming more common. There’s also bondage toys, if you feel like experimenting further, but there’s enough material there for several more columns!

It’s also important to think about the materials your toys are made of. Different people will have preferences, and I like metal or glass ones, because they’re easy to sterilise, will last forever, and you can do interesting things with changing their temperature. Don’t freak out about the glass breaking or anything – it’s similar to Pyrex, which is virtually indestructible. Some cheaper toys will be made of lower-quality material, so always try to find reviews and see what other people thought of them.

Water-based lube, which you can get at the supermarket, will be safe with all your

with

OUR SEYM TTS BU

toys, as well as condoms, though it will eventually dry out. It washes out of sheets too, which is practical. Silicone lube is slipperier, and lasts for much longer, so if you were planning on doing something interesting like having a butt plug in while you go about your day, or just banging your toys for ages, it can be a good option. Please please please never use silicone lube with silicone toys! It will ruin them. Likewise, if you have more than one silicone toy, store them separately as the material can interact weirdly.

If you’re using toys with more than one person, use a condom on them, unless it’s a glass or metal toy that you can sterilise.

Other materials may be slightly porous and it’s not worth the risk. You should always wash your toys before and after use too; soap and warm water is fine.

Infections are gross, and easy to avoid with good toy hygiene!

Best of luck with your explorations! I hope things go well for you. x Seymour

Lux Lisbon has a new sidekick! Salient proudly presents Seymour Butts, our new resident sex columnist for 2013. Ask anonymously about bumps, sex and relationships at ask.fm/ LuxAndSeymour

Lux Lisbon is our resident sex columnist for 2013.

If there is anything in your life they could help shed a little light on, or a topic you want them to cover, go right ahead and send a little inbox love to luxatsalient@gmail.com.

If you have issues or concerns that you wish to discuss privately and confidentially with a professional, rather than

Lux Lisbon, the Student Counselling Service can provide a safe place to explore such aspects of your life. The service is free and confidential. Phone (04) 463 5310. Email counselling-service@vuw.ac.nz. Visit Mauri Ora, Level 1, Student Union Building.

 COLUMNS

e f i L r u o Y g n i x i F

[BECAUSE OURS ARE WRITTEN OFF]

I have an essay due tomorrow that I haven’t started. What do I do? *manic sigh*, Everyone

Janet Oh, mates, I know how you feel: I have a column due today that I haven’t started, either. Let’s crack on. I hate to make it all about methodology, but this one’s for all the Tipping J* fans out there.

ONE. Consider handing it in late: this works if the extra quality would outweigh any grade deductions. Then again, perhaps you don’t feel like that is an option. Maybe it is better to stay up late writing something average and miss enough class the next day to ensure that you’re behind in everything else too.

TWO. Vow to be better next time. This is an important step before starting any assignment.

It sets the tone as one of a broken spirit (which you have) and confirms a resigned attitude of your own mediocrity (which abounds).

THREE. Go on Facebook to see what everyone else is doing. Start a conversation with a friend that you haven’t talked to in a few months. Comment on some threads expressing your disgust at the National government or at someone’s mother’s Consumer Guarantees Act issue. Find and destroy Kony (or at least, someone with Kony as their Bejewelled Blitz username).

FOUR. Offer to cook dinner for your flatmates. Insist upon it. Really wring that tea towel of procrastination. Tell them about your essay. They’ll sympathise by saying things like “I study stuff that I love, but it’s great that you’ll have a job after uni.” Narrow your eyes.

FIVE. While writing, cast your mind elsewhere. Feel a stirring of passion for a social-justice issue that you feel the National government is ignoring. Tweet disparagingly at firms that try to flout consumer-protection legislation. Wonder if you could have done more (or indeed, anything) to catch Kony.

things get, the lower your acceptable standard becomes. Why else do you think the questions we’re answering have been getting shorter and more general as time goes by? We just lack the personal drive to make the effort required to give good, specific advice.

SIX. Watch three episodes of Parks and Rec when unable to sleep at 3 am. Decide that you want to work in local government one day and that Hillary Clinton really is all that.

Anyone can just throw out platitudes, you see. It’s a snap of the fingers to say stuff like ‘communicate more’ and ‘just get over yourself’. Hell, I might as well be writing horoscopes here. In 2010, that happened.

Uther Dean wrote a horoscopes column in this very magazine. Eventually even he succumbed to the trials of long service and procrastination, and it descended into farce, routinely thrown together at the last minute in whatever way his mind saw fit. That said, I had no insight into his creative process and that last bit was pure speculation. Moving on.

SEVEN. Get up early the next morning to edit what you’ve written. Discover that it’s complete shit and that you’re capable of something much better. Rue your footnoting the night before, which has a series of ibids below something that disappointingly reads “find someone arguing this”. Traipse to uni, with your bag riding up your skirt to display the pair of togs you are wearing as underwear. Hand it in.

EIGHT. Repeat with whatever else is due the next day.

Truly, madly, deeply, Janet. * The Kanye West of New Zealand case law. (Ima need to see your fucking Hansen at the concert.)

I really enjoy being this niche.

Have I descended into farce? Is this nothing more than dull navel-gazing? What about the fact that roughly 90 per cent of these columns begin with “Look,”. I don’t know what I’m doing here. That’s why I’m playing Temple Run right now, with one hand on my forehead and the other hand wiping pizza crumbs from the corner of my mouth.

Look, you’re probably just trapped in that endless cycle of procrastination and repression that haunts us all. You’ve been there before and you’ll be there again. Let that thought comfort you as you realise: you will get there. Keep on keepin’ on, ya feel?

If in any way the above process is typical of yours, then congratulations. You’re a student.

Essays are stupid things that don’t mean anything outside of the academic world, or maybe the New Yorker—which is pretty much the academic world anyway. Take it easy, you’ll do great, kid. Get a B. Repeat these words to yourself as you rock back and forth on the end of your bed, weeping only for show as you contemplate the deeper and sadder reality that you wish your degree was a Doctorate of floristry.

I, for one, love to procrastinate, and I know that Janet is the same. And then, the later

Stay cool shawtay, Hector.

Hector Buenos días,

Janet and Hector are our resident advice

If you have issues or concerns that you wish to discuss privately and confidentially with a

columnists for 2013. If you've got a problem you'd

professional, rather than Hector and Janet, Student Counselling Service can provide a safe

like them to solve, send your queries through to

place to explore such aspects of your life. The service is free and confidential. Phone (04) 463

editor@salient.org.nz, subject: 'ADVICE'.

5310. Email counselling-service@vuw.ac.nz. Visit Mauri Ora, Level 1, Student Union Building.

 33

COLUMNS 

Hoopin' and Hollerin' Round five: Hey, It’s That Guy!

By Carlo Salizzo Over the last two years I have come closer and closer to the disheartening revelation that I can no longer make it as a professional sportsman. Oh sure, as a 19-year-old I could have devoted three years of my life to exhaustive strength and conditioning training, buttering up my club’s management and forgoing any kind of higher education. But I didn’t, and now it’s too late.

The truth is that nowadays, in the really competitive sports at least, if you’re going to make it at all, you will be on track by age 18. There are exceptions, but chances are, we aren’t them. And so I find myself relegated to the bar leaner, telling my mates over a jug of Export that I could have been a footy great. Just kidding; I have a little more perspective than that.

That said, it’s not uncommon for me to be settled in watching domestic sport when all of a sudden a name will pop up that I recognise. Someone I played with at school, or faced in age-grade representative stuff. It’s usually the big-name players who dominated from under-12s to under-18s, but often it’s not. Either way, it’s kind of weird to see somebody cleaning out Jesse Ryder’s stumps when only five years ago we were sitting in French class together.

Thanks to New Zealand’s tiny population and high rate of sporting participation, most of us sporting folk have either played with or against somebody who has gone on to higher honours. At least we might know someone who knows someone who faced Tim Southee once. That provides us with ample opportunity when watching Super Rugby to explain to our University friends that we once scored a Lomu-like try, running over the now-replacement utility back for the Highlanders. I also have a pet theory about cricket, which holds that you can trace any New Zealand cricketer of any level to Chris Harris in six steps or less.

While it’s a shame that we use this statistical quirk for such selfish purposes as bragging to our friends, it’s also a testament to how tight the top band of success in sport can be. Yes, there are always those freaks who were streets ahead of everyone else from the very beginning, but it’s also comforting to know that yes, at one stage, we could have been sporting superstars if we’d really wanted to. We just valued boozing a lot more than that.

For those keeping score, my Harris number is 2, there exists footage of me cleaning out Steven Luatua of the Blues, and I taught up-andcoming fast bowler Matthew Quinn everything he knows—about French.

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secret diary of officious first-year Assessment In case you weren’t aware, LAWS121 assignments were due recently. Although I got hard-done-by in the test, the assignment should be easy. I know I’ve got lovely prose—my POLS tutor said so. I’m also a Politics student, so anything to do with the legislative process is right up my alley. I might send the essay to some of the big commercial firms like Chen Palmer, actually. I'm sure they would love to have me on board.

Anyway, I want to tell you about an experience I had when I went to hand in my assignment.

Approximately 22 minutes before the deadline, I thundered downstairs at Weir, armed with all-important USB drive. To my horror, the computer room was packed with Science students on Facebook, and a long line of other disorganised Law students waiting to print their assignments. Some twat with the organisational skills of a marshmallow was prodding the paper-feed button, while the fucked printer spat out pages of Wingdings like there was no tomorrow. Some other imbecilic no-hoper (I think he does Commerce or something) was milling around cutting up flashcards—what a waste of space.

I wish people would realise that Commerce degrees are a waste of time since all the good jobs are in the civil service, where compassion and social justice are more important than just adding up numbers.

This was hopeless. I gave up and sprinted down to Pip—the Law School must surely have had a printer. On the way, I met a couple of really friendly men on Lambton Quay who distracted me for a while. One was juggling tennis balls, and his friend was playing a violin-thing. Apparently they haven't got much money, which is probably because postgraduate student allowances have been cut lately. We engaged in a bit of friendly banter, before I realised I better hurry up or I'd miss my deadline.

Arriving at Law School, I shot in the front door and went straight for the stairs. Soon I was lost in a maze of strange staircases.

Ever tried finding your way into the library in that bloody building? Impossible. Luckily for me I bumped into Grant Morris, who I know pretty well because I'm in the front row of his lectures. He pointed me in the direction of the computers. Once I’d got that fiasco sussed, I printed the thing and jumped in the queue. I nearly shat myself worrying about whether the queue was moving fast enough, but luckily I made it to the counter with five seconds to go. Even better, the bastard in the queue behind me missed it. Serves him right for being so disorganised.

Moral of the story—the Law Library could do with way more signage. Probably should be in the Government's budget, but I bet it won't be because the Government hates students and stuff. Even Rory said so.

Find me on Twitter - @GMo4Lyf

 COLUMNS

ant

ly R k e e W

A RANT

BY HILARY BEATTIE AND OLLIE NEAS

I spend much of my time wallowing about how all my aspirations of worldly greatness are delusional and that I will amount to nothing and that when I die I will be forgotten more quickly than it will take for my body to rot, which will not be very long because I have small breasts and barely any collagen in my bones.

I have been told that this is stupid and selfobsessive. People tell me that, if I would only just cheer up, I could do anything. My opportunities are endless. The world is my oyster. Impossible is nothing.

Please, allow me to bluster on through this desert of self-flagellation and justify my wallowing to you, undeserving reader. What goes unacknowledged, by those who tell me that “I am my own harshest critic”, is that impossible is something.

There are seven billion people on this planet. A lot of them are geniuses with insightful and powerful brains which see the world in ways that I cannot imagine. There are those who have bodies that allow them to win medals of gold, silver and mahogany, and carry moderate-to-large-sized boxes, and run when the rapture comes. I am not one of these people, and that’s not selfwallowing: it’s an undeniable fact. Even thinking about these marvels of the mind and body is enough to make me recline and stare into middle distance, angsting about my future as someone who is no-one.

Robbie Williams said, in the tragically underappreciated ‘Something Beautiful’, that “You can’t manufacture a miracle”. It’s the truth. I have used up most of my luck on the accident of birth, so all I can really hope for is to work hard enough to acquire a car that tells me where to go without looking, and a house that has built-in vacuum cleaners beneath the sink unit and is large enough that when I speak to myself in between meals I can hear my own voice echo back to me off the shiny, shiny marble.

The point is, I’m not special, and even if I was, after a little Malthusian maths I would see that special is not particularly special.

(Did you know that we all die and are all forgotten about in the (theoretically) neverending depths of time and space (and that there are more stars and galaxies and reasons to be scared than there are grains of sand in the Sahara?)).

Did you know that there are more stars and galaxies and reasons to be scared than there are grains of sand in the Sahara?

So there, look; my indulgent wallowing and privileged anguish is totally justified.

I just proved it. But before you all expire from nausea, give me a chance to redeem myself. I too agree that self-wallowers like me are as stupid as sheeps—but for a different reason.

I’m not stupid because I’m wrong. I’m stupid because I’m misguided.

The reason that I aspire as I do is because I want to succeed, and living in a society with a population of +1, success means what everyone else says it does. But when I actually bother to stop and ask myself why I want to succeed, the moment I manage to push through the success-is-goodbecause-good-is-success dogma, I get to a series of reasons which all mean pretty much the same thing. I want to feel valued.

I want to have purpose. I want my life to mean something.

The fact is—and I don’t know why I’m saying this because we all know it—‘success’ and living a meaningful life are different. My life—and your life, for that matter—is not made worthwhile or meaningful or valuable because of anyone else.

It’s valuable because it’s mine, and I’m the one living it, and it’s the only thing I’ve got.

When people get old (as they have a tendency to do), it’s never all like, “things turned out different than I thought, so fuck, I’ve failed.” Sure they suffer from bad knees, hypertension, dementia, incontinence, Alzheimer’s, osteoporosis, children, glaucoma, racial intolerance, thin-totransparent skin, vulnerability to get-rich-quick finance schemes, impotence and perpetual dehydration (not to mention Country Road Home’s infamous product recall of its winter 2003 Merino colostomy bags), but they’re okay. Maybe it seems like an anticlimax, but when you’re old, it’s not about climaxing. The things that matter change as you do. One day I’ll probably find that having some pals down at the bowls club and a daughter that talks to me on Christmas will make me happy in a way that I can’t really understand right now. So there’s no point me worrying about whether I’ll ‘make it’, because when I’m 70 ‘it’ will be quite different.

Maybe. I don’t know.

If you’re reading this, and thinking “this is a braindump about being mediocre and it is laughably mediocre”, then—well—you walked right into that one, didn’t you? I know that this is clichéd and you’ve heard it all before. In trying to write it down, I quickly became overly sentimental, so you’d be forgiven for inferring these ‘dreams’ I speak of as being a job at Hallmark, and thinking “no no, it’s in the bag.” The biggest cliché of all, though, is the one where I, like everyone else, am determined to eschew clichés just because they’re clichés, and in doing so, stay miserable. If I just took a step back and gave looking on the bright side of these smelly roses 110 per cent, these clichés would do me a world of lemonade. After all, you only live a molehill.

Once more, for good measure: selfwallowing is stupid.

'Weekly Rant' is a space for one-off opinion pieces.

Want to write your own? Contact editor@salient.org. nz to run riot.

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COLUMNS 

The Sweet Scoop I was planning to wait until mid-year to start sharing winter-pudding recipes, but it's been so cold I can't resist. I feel like for the last week I've been permanently freezing, wearing enough merino to coat four sheep, and penguin-huddling people.

Much as I hate winter, one of the few really great things about it is all of the delicious puddings you can eat.

I've said an awful lot of rude things about classic English desserts. About the fact that no matter how many you put in, raisins and sultanas just aren't that exciting. About the fact that no dish should ever be called ‘rock cake’ or ‘spotted dick’. Or contain suet. However, I've had to gradually abandon my prejudices. And although I'm still not at the stage where I'd call jam a bold culinary addition, I've got to the point where I think it's just, well, nice.

Bacchus knows best

Rice Pudding

Julia Wells

serves four

One of these developments is that I really really like rice puddings. Some people write odes to Grecian urns, but I'd write one to rice pudding – hot, sticky, creamy and sweet. The rice pudding has somehow gained a pretty dire reputation, largely through an unfortunate combination of school dinners and canned creamed rice.

When a rice pudding is made properly, it is quite astoundingly lovely. After more than an hour of cooking on low heat, the milk becomes very sticky and rich, taking on a faintly caramelised flavour. It is hot, cosy and simple, a perfect comfort food. It is also extremely easy, with only five minutes preparation and just three ingredients. All you need is a little advance preparation, because of the long cooking time. It isn't something you can whip up quickly, but is totally worth the wait.

50 g white rice 600 mL milk 2.5 tablespoons white sugar Jam (optional, for serving) Preheat the oven to 150°C. Combine all ingredients (except jam) in an oven-proof dish. Bake for an hour and a half, until there is a thick brown skin over the top and the rice has completely absorbed the milk. Remove from the oven, sit for a minute, then serve hot or cold. This is also great with a spoonful of jam on top.

LIQUID MONEY

By Bacchus Social lubricant; consciousnessexpanding nectar; plonk; what you bring to a BYO at Café Istanbul. These are some of the things most of us think about when talking about wine, but to others, wine means dollar signs and investment commodities. In our part of the world there are only really a handful of wines that pull this off, with the main rockstar being Penfolds Grange, which sells in New Zealand at $750 for its current 2008 vintage.

Why am I telling you, poor students, this? Well, for the future lawyers, doctors and ballers out there, it’s the perfect wine they say—100/100 points.

Which is all well and good, except it’s not going to be ready to drink for probably another 20 years, in which time it will probably be about $3000 if not more, so actually not a bad investment. And given that in 20 years 36 

it will be just about the time y’all will be makin’ it rain, just remember who sparked your love of all things vino and invite me around for a glass.

But if you’ve already blown your course-related costs on something other than the Penfolds Grange 2008, you’re probably looking a little lower on the shelf when it comes to shopping for wine. With that in mind I thought I would see how a cask of wine would go over the week, two glasses a night while cooking dinner…

Even though it’s the only one I tasted, I could tell straight away that the Yalumba 2012 Shiraz ($19.99 for 2 L) was going to be vastly superior to its contemporaries on the shelves of New World Chaffers. It bears the name of a real and reputable producer, and has an alcohol level about two per cent higher

than the rest—not only does this get you where you want to be when you’re drinking cask wine (i.e. drunk), but the extra alcohol also adds structure and body to the wine itself.

Day 1: Okay, so this stuff was surprisingly good; red cherries, vanilla and some soft tannins made it extremely quaffable. At a comparable price of $7.68 for 750 mL it would be worth a look against some of the $8.99 New Zealand cabernet/merlot blends on offer in the bottle.

Day 5: I think by this point it had lost the freshness that the back of the box promised, but up until Day 3 it had been going down really well. I’ve also found myself getting slightly bored of the same tipple every night, but for a flat of three or four, have this with a pizza night and you’re good to go!

S

ART

 ARTS

MUSIC 

LUCKLESS An interview with Luckless INTERVIEW

Elise Munden

It’s already common knowledge amongst my flatmates that I giggle like a three-year-old watching Finding Nemo when I’m around cool people that I want to be friends with. It was thus no surprise to them that my interview with Ivy Rossiter, a.k.a. Luckless, consisted mainly of me being a dweeb and emerging from the process with a massive girl-crush on one of the most dedicated songwriters I’ve ever had the pleasure of embarrassing myself in front of.

Luckless is currently traversing the country for her Ballads and Badlands tour, which she is co-headlining with Nadia Reid. The name of the tour reveals much about the music you can expect to hear from the artists. “We both write and will be performing relatively mellow sets this time around. Ballads can be not necessarily sad songs, but the slower, more reflective side of writing,” says Ivy. And as for ‘Badlands’?

“There’s that feeling you get sometimes when you’re on tour and you’re driving through these vast expanses of countryside... When you’re driving through the Desert Road or you’re driving across the Lindis Pass there’s this sense of emptiness and openness and space. And besides, it just sounded really good with ‘Ballads’.”

By my own estimations, the name of the tour is a pertinent summation of Luckless’ music.

The melancholy of her songs sometimes begs the question “Who made Ivy so sad and where do they live so I can say mean things to them?!”

Fortunately, Miss Rossiter reassured me that her songs aren’t necessarily based on factual events: “Some of them are autobiographical, but not all of them. When I say ‘autobiographical’,

I mean they start from one idea that’s come out of something recent that’s happened and then I build the song around it… and then there are others which have absolutely nothing to do with my life and are from a completely different scenario. There’s one on my record called ‘Fermina Daza’ which is entirely about a character in a book by Gabriel García Márquez called Love in the Time of Cholera.”

Considering some of my own experiences (Rockquest 2010 hollaaa), I was intrigued to find out how Luckless handles the challenges of performing such personal material in what are often very intimate settings. It seems she has managed to successfully internalise the 2012 mantra of Keep Calm and Carry On, reasoning that “It’s much better in an intimate setting. It’s really difficult if you’re in a bar full of people who want to party and have a good time and drink, and I’m just really not what they’re interested in at all… We’ve got some really cool venues, including The Moorings in Wellington which is one of the best spaces because everyone’s so in awe of the room itself; they’re automatically more inclined to be quiet and be listening. I hate the idea of demanding that an audience just sits there and listens, so I try at the same time to do my very best to give them something that they might actually want to listen to.” Wise, wise words.

McSweeney’s Law I: Bandcamp + Soundcloud = Profit

ARTICLE

PHILIP MCSWEENEY

Has the passing of the latest Budget left YOU tearfully clutching your wallet? Compulsively checking your (ever-dwindling) bank balance?

And do YOU want to be able to obtain music without it costing an arm and a leg? WELL. Here is a compilation of choice Bandcamp and Soundcloud selections for the discerning and thrifty student. <3 Brains – Constant Love Forever. Punk rawk, Kiwi pride. Pick your price.

Empire! Empire! (I Was a Lonely Estate) – What it Takes to Move Forward. Emo, sad-bastard music, cryalone-in-the-dark-with-a-pottle-of-Vaseline-core. $5.

Four Tet – 0181. Electronica. FREE .

Kayo Dot – Choirs of the Eye. Metal (?), neoclassical (?), experimental (), 3deep5u. $7.

Kitty Pryde – haha i’m sorry. Cloud-rap. Follow her on tumblr while you’re at it. $1.

Lontalius – The Same EP. Indie, shoegaze. Pick your price.

ScotDrakula – BURNER. Surf-punk endorsed by Henry Cooke. $2.

Tommy Ill – Fearless Bueller. Hip-hop for the upper-middle-class white crowd; read Edward Saïd’s Orientalism instead. I hate it but you might not. Pick your price.

On that note, I wanted to know one great reason why us Wellingtonians should check out the Ballads and Badlands tour. Ivy’s response was that “We’ve got a really strong show overall.”

But to be honest, she didn’t need to convince me in the first place. The depth of thought and passion that goes into crafting her music is what the majority of artists hope to impart to their listeners, and it is entirely salient with Luckless.

 37

ARTS 

GAMES 

Video Game Violence

ARTICLE

PATRICK lIndsay

I hate video-game violence.

Now, I know that seems to be a pretty blanket statement, and also a slightly stupid one to come from an article about video games. Give me a second to explain before sending us an email in disgust.

I'm not talking about the face-stabby, guy-shooty, puppy-kicky day-to-day violence within video games. Rather, I'm talking about 'video-game violence' as a topic thrown around by media, or American politicians looking to appeal to overly concerned voters, usually directly following whatever shooting, bombing or other heartwrenchingly catastrophic event has happened most recently.

These soap-boxers lack any real evidence to back up a relationship between violent games and violent activity, besides the fact that the latest teenage shooter happened to own Doom or Counter-Strike. Coincidentally, millions of other people who don't turn up to class with weapons also own these games. Correlation is not causation, whichever way you look at it.

There are a range of studies that suggest playing video games leads to increased short-term aggression. 2011 Brock University and 2012 Texas A&M studies show that, among other things, competitive play increases aggression and

cooperative play increases cooperation. These same results are gained from activities other than video games, such as physical sports. Video games are simply not the sole cause of outbreaks of excessive violence.

Violence is part of our wider society, and video games reflect that—they don't create it. Movies, TV shows, comics, even music all reflect the fascination our society has with fighting and violence. However, I haven't heard anyone yet suggest that watching Die Hard will turn our teenagers into unbalanced individuals.

It seems to me that 'video games' as a whole get a whole lot of flak for being violent, and that this mainly comes from people who have either never played a video game or seem to think shooters are the only type ever made. Sure, a lot of games do include violence—conflict is a pretty normal expression in any medium—but for almost every Call of Duty-esque shooter there's a sports game or an Angry Birds.

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START THE ADVENTURE 38 

COME AND SEE THE TEAM AT STA TRAVEL TODAY! Shop E3, Easterfield Building, Kelburn Campus P 04 499 5032 E vicuni@statravel.co.nz

 ARTS

FILM 

Rialto Channel 48HOURS Contest INTERVIEW

Q: What was the idea behind your film from last year’s competition?

gerald lee

Every year, thousands of eager filmmakers compete in what is arguably the most hectic filmproduction contest known to mankind. Many sacrifice sleep and sanity in an effort to produce innovative films within the measly timeframe of 48 hours. Salient Film Editor Gerald Lee sat down with student filmmaker Michelle Kan to discuss the competition and its appeal.

Q: Are there any particular types of film or genres that excite you as a filmmaker?

A: I like making short films mostly. A lot of people are like “Yeah, feature films!” but I really like trying to make short films. I like experimenting with in-camera effects and doing a lot of things that you mightn’t do if you had big special-effects programmes. I really like using low-budget effects. I mean, I haven’t made many of them at the moment, but I’d like to make some short films about the relationships between friends and things like that.

Q: How do you begin to plan out your film once you are given the basic setup?

A: Well, what we did last year is that on the Friday night we all sat around and took about ten minutes to try and think of an idea. We then pooled them all together and decided which one was the best, and also mixed together elements from them all until we got something that we quite liked. Then we went to bed early, so we could get at least one night of sleep. On Saturday we filmed pretty much all day, and then just started editing until we had a rough cut done by about noon on the Sunday.

A: Well, we got ‘Inspirational’ as our genre, and I think it was new to the competition. It was very strange; my friend punched the couch when we found out. We ended up making a seven-minute film about an android who was built to replay music but wants to create music.

Q: How do the prizes and recognition that you can attain incentivise you?

A: For me, it’s never really about the prizes.

I just want to make a really good film. I was interviewing Dan Slevin for my Film Honours project the other day—he runs the Wellington division of 48HOURS—and he was saying that most people are really just interested in seeing their films on the big screen. That’s the most appealing part to me as well.

Q: How do you find the time constraints? Does it encourage you to think and work innovatively?

A: I think it does. When you have so little time and you have to think on your feet and then you’re being given things like an “unlucky character” or an “ex-bully”, it helps to inspire people. You have to be really out-there crazy, because you can’t sit and stew about it for a couple of days like you would if you were trying to do a creative project for uni.

Q: Do you find the special rules regarding props etc. limiting, or do they actually help focus your creative energies?

A: I think they do help you focus. It’s kind of like when you study French and someone tells you “Say something in French” and you don’t know what to say. It’s kind of like that. If I’m being given carte blanche, and I find this a lot when writing stories, then it’ll take me days to think of something. However, if someone gives me a prompt then it gives me something to work off and it does help a lot. So, last year our prop was a leaf, and some people would just shoot their film and shoehorn it into it, but sometimes teams try and include it as an element of their story and that helps funnel your efforts.

Q: Do you have any advice for aspiring filmmakers or others looking to get involved in the competition?

A: In regards to aspiring filmmakers, just get out there and make something. It doesn’t have to be good because you learn by failure. You don’t have to have the best equipment or even know what you’re doing, but if you just get a camera and try and do something then that’s a good first step.

What’s On The Hangover Part III: The Wolfpack return (again) for another two hours of drunken antics that you’ve already seen twice before.

Talk about taking a mildly amusing idea and running it into the ground.

West of Memphis: This documentary tracks the West Memphis Three, a trio of men who were unjustly accused of the murder of three children. Seems a little redundant seeing as we already have the excellent Paradise Lost film from 1996, but probably still worth a look due to the new insights into how the police botched the investigation.

 39

ARTS 

VISUAL ARTS 

THE PRICE OF ART ARTICLE

SHARON LAM

Think of the most valuable item you own— perhaps a vehicle or a piece of jewellery. Now think of the most valuable piece of art you own.

That is, if you are actually in the minority of people that have ever paid for an original art piece. For most of us, art never makes it to the StudyLink-funded shopping list, and whenever the media reports on another famous painting being auctioned off for millions, it comes across as not just incomprehensible, but ridiculous. So what makes people spend their fortunes on a piece of canvas, and is any piece of art really worth it?

The top ten most expensive paintings in the world, painted by the likes of Renoir, Van Gogh and Picasso, together hold a monetary value of just over $1.6 billion. Cézanne’s The Card Players tops the list, being the current most expensive painting in the world at $250 million. Considering that these works are, essentially, merely paint upon canvas, art can be thought of as the world’s most expensive commodity by weight.

By buying a renowned piece of art, the buyer also buys the satisfaction of owning an archetypal object of wealth, not dissimilar to the more socially acceptable splurge on a piece of diamond jewellery, flashy car or even a particular clothing brand. Of course, a couple of million is much different to a couple of thousand, but what elevates art is the originality and cultural history behind it. Van Gogh shot himself and will never paint again. Lamborghini died too—but his factories will keep churning out vehicles with

his name. Knowing that you alone, and no one else, owns a masterpiece of the whole of art history is an enticing concept, and has proven to be a competitive driving force in art auctions.

Furthermore, for better or for worse, the modern world equates monetary worth with importance, and the fact that art can continue to hold sevenfigure values allows truly exceptional works to be preserved and respected.

The value of art is not just seemingly ridiculous in terms of private ownership, but more sentimentally, in terms of preservation. Where there is a demand there must be a supply, and this has given rise to an estimated billion-dollar underground black market of stolen art. While it may seem that no one would be foolish enough to buy and then possess a known piece of stolen art, it seems that the private enjoyment of a piece is enough for some to secretly spend millions on a painting or sculpture—and there are even romantic subtleties to this concept!

However, while the black-market purchasers may be individually lavishing their love upon an artist’s work, it does deprive the public of that piece, with many works being stolen not from private collections but from museums. The largest art heist, and also the largest property crime in history, was in 1990 when 13 pieces, together worth $1.2 million, were stolen from Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

The pieces remain relevant—in an effort to bring back the pieces for the public, the museum announced in March this year a $5 million reward for any useful information for their return. Millions of dollars to personally own

a piece and millions of dollars to keep them available for the public—the money shows the double-sided demand for art.

Art can be very, very expensive, and sometimes it seems senselessly so. It is fair enough to judge someone for spending a fortune upon a painting, but only if you also equally judge someone for spending a smaller fortune on a Karen Walker ring. The lucrativeness of the art world validates and preserves it, and underneath all the thefts and the dropping of millions, there is an undeniable sentiment of genuine affection for pieces of art.

Art around town: • Vic design student Sebastian Petravic has created a handy online map archiving street art around Wellington, searchable both by piece and location, at www. wellingtonstreetart.com • New exhibits along Cuba at both Matchbox Studios (166 Cuba St) and Orchard Studios (170 Cuba St) • The City Gallery and Toi Pōneke Arts Centre are offering gold-coin entries and special events on Sunday 26 May as part of Wellington Open Day!

wellingtonstreetart.com

40 

 ARTS

BOOKS 

How to be a Woman

by Caitlin Moran review

Gabrielle Beran

A book for any gender and any stage of adult life (read: men, this is for you too), How to Be a Woman is a modern feminist track-cum-memoir.

Caitlin Moran, an award-winning columnist for The Times, is a skilful narrator who tackles with abundant humour the most perplexing question to plague the modern woman: how to be one. Or, more precisely, how, in this world of loose morals and tight undies, can we navigate through life under the glass ceiling and come out the other side laughing?

With the first 11 chapters boasting exclamation marks in their titles, including “I Don’t Know What to Call My Breasts!” and “I Go LapDancing!”, readers are well warned about Moran’s characteristic exuberance. It charts the rise of Moran’s sexuality, from the first whiff of puberty to procreating. In the mix of these life events are musings and conversational yarns about the state of womanhood these days and in those days (the late 80s and early 90s get plenty of exercise). The wry humour and wit that accompany the first chapters sets Moran up to deal with some of womankind’s more pressing social and moral issues towards the end.

Her ruminations, rants, and moments of despair range from obvious questions surrounding feminism, to the more inconspicuous topics. She deals with Brazilians, strip clubs, tiny underwear, being fat, and being bitchy; as well as subtle sexism, the pros and cons for childbearing and rearing, and what is happening to our role models, eloquently discussing Scarlett Johansson’s breasts, masturbation, and the (scary) truth about women’s thought processes.

This is a woman who has done her homework.

Wage-gap statistics sit comfortably beside a lifetime of experience. Her arguments are smart and well rounded, arriving at clear, but often ignored, conclusions. Her myriad of experiences, including run-ins with drugs, that time she got drunk with Lady Gaga in a German sex club, and an abortion, give authenticity to her reasoning on contentious issues.

The book is full of syntactical gems illustrating apt truths, as if they were simply waiting for Moran to reveal them. “At 18, I am discovering

what generations of women have long known: that the natural ally of the straight woman is the gay man. Because they are ‘other’…too.” She understands the power of words; she doesn’t ask that women become feminists: she assumes that they already are, encouraging us to reclaim the label “strident feminist”. She queries how it ever went out of fashion to be into equal rights: “What part of ‘liberation for women’ is not for you? … Or were you just DRUNK AT THE TIME OF SURVEY?” She goes beyond the interesting but dry world of social criticism and feminism to a laugh-outloud, incredibly relatable, and important read for women. And men too. Moran makes it clear that more men should “stand up on [their] chairs” and proclaim that “I AM A FEMINIST! …[as] a male feminist is one of the most glorious endproducts of evolution.”

While Moran despairs at the status quo, she is an optimist who has created a toolbox of rhetoric for all women to take themselves and their cunts (not that this is requisite to womanhood) to a position of greater self-awareness and wellearned respect. It’s a wonder that there hasn’t been a Government initiative giving everyone a copy on their 16th birthday.

5 Ways to Get Books On The Cheap: 1. Hang around the School of English, Film, Theatre, and Media

NEW MENU

STARTS MONDAY

More burgers. more pizzas. great deals.

EAT IN OR TAKEAWAY

Studies, or the International Institute of Modern Letters at the end of the year.

2. Borrow them from friends, then move overseas.

3. Download free digital copies from Project Gutenberg (or gen.lib.rus.ec).

4. Write your own.

5. Libraries!

Also

check out our hot counter food

from $5  41

PUZZLES 

PUZZLES 'Introduction to Literature' - DIFFICULTY: MEDIUM 41. Lever (open) 42. Greek goddess of chaos 43. He often comes with three hos 44. Sight or taste 46. Saw to 47. It might have attachments 50. Divots are made of it 51. Yelp 52. 'Herman Melville: an Introduction'?

57. Lo-fat 58. Not in a harbour 59. It might connect a chain 62. Without attrib.

63. Not naked 64. Top dog, or main star?

65. Button on some surge protectors 66. “___ we go again” 67. Button on some surge protectors

ACROSS 1. Imitating 6. Wild party 10. Palindromic band with the palindromic hit 'SOS' 14. Giver of blood, e.g.

15. Pretentious, perhaps 16. 'Shake, Rattle and ___' (Bill Haley hit) 17. Princess until 1997 18. Financial support may be judged on this 19. High point at the opera

20. 'Ian Fleming: a Technical Introduction'?

23. ___ Lanka 25. God, in Genoa 26. Unconventionally sexy 27. Started leaning 29. 'Aliens in the ___' (kids' movie) 32. Dying word of Thisbe, in a Shakespeare play 33. Trouble with a TV channel 34. ___ Majesty, the Queen 37. 'Edgar Rice Burroughs: an Introduction'?

DOWN 1. Recipe instruction 2. Part of a Maori dance 3. Lack of talent 4. Taboo 5. Delusions of _____ 6. Mumford & Sons instrument 7. Zone 8. Control (a flow) 9. Jekyll's counterpart 10. Like the numerals in this crossword 11. The fifth element 12. ___-182 (pop-rock band) 13. 'Luck Be _____' ('Guys and Dolls' song) 21. Accomplished 22. Do half a biathlon 23. Philatelist's purchase

LAST WEEK'S SOLUTION

Quiz

YEAR LONG PUZZLE:

1. What is the name of Woody Allen’s first feature film, released in 1965?

7. Which American state legalised same-sex marriage last week?

2. Why was Angelina Jolie in the news last week?

8. Who is the leader of the Pakistan Tehreek-eInsaf (PTI), the political party which came third in Pakistan’s recent general election?

3. Which country is the only one in Africa which has Spanish as an official language?

4. True or false: the ghost pepper (Bhut Jolokia) is officially the hottest chili pepper in the world.

5. Where in New Zealand would you find a giant statue of a carrot?

10. Rearrange CLARET WINES into something you might read on Stuff (4,7)

9. Which disgraced ex-Governor recently beat Elizabeth Colbert Busch, Stephen Colbert’s sister, in a South Carolina congressional race?

10. Which two football teams are facing each other in the UEFA Champions League final this weekend?

6. Who said “Babe, I’m coming home” last week?

Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund. even hotter in 2012). 5. Ohakune. 6. Aaron Gilmore. 7. Minnesota. 8. Imran Khan. 9. Mark Sanford. 10.

Equatorial Guinea. 4. False (it was until the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion was recognised as being ANSWERS: 1. What’s New Pussycat? 2. She had a double mastectomy (both breasts removed). 3.

variety puzzles & CROSSWORD by puck — ANSWERS NEXT ISSUE

42 

24. One on public transport 28. Oolong or pu-erh 29. 'Tomorrow' musical 30. Characters in a Pixar trilogy 31. 'Birds in the bush' number 33. Disease scare of 2002 34. Sounds from 'Under the Bambushes' 35. Key with an arrow on it 36. All set 38. Buddhist sect 39. Drove 40. First mo.

44. Totally muted 45. Street in a horror franchise 46. Hardy that played Bane 47. Brilliant success 48. Only U.S. state with one syllable in its name 49. They're higher than tenors 50. Relief from the sun 53. 'To ___ his own' 54. Caribbean spot 55. Cauterise 56. Model Macpherson 60. The woman in question 61. Vic vice-chancellor Walsh

ď ? PUZZLES

Target

e c m

o c o i n s

Target rating guide: 0-15 words: do you even go here?

16-25 words: alright

Money-Back Guarantee Difficulty: Easy

The words on the left can be completed by filling in the names of currencies. The countries that use these currencies are listed in brackets. Once you've completed the words, you can match them to the definitions on the right.

26-45 words: decent 46-60 words: PRO 60+ words: free drink

C O M _ _ _ _ _ _

Remove the votes from.

(Gibraltar, Isle of Man) T E _ _ _ I N E S I S

Math function represented by !

(Albania) O R _ _ _ _ _Y

Tiny segment of an angle.

(Iraq, Tunisia) N _ _ _ _ L O G Y

Power to move objects.

(Italy, Luxembourg) D I S E N _ _ _ _ _ H I S E

'Laughing' animal.

(Cameroon, Switzerland) S E M I _ _ _ _ _

Not following any pattern.

(Costa Rica, El Salvador) F A C T O _ _ _ _

Nervous system science.

(Iran, Oman) H _ _ _ A

Made by putting two things together

(Japan) _ _ _ _ O M

Not special in any way

(South Africa, Lesotho) M I L _ _ _ _D I AN

Punctuation mark

(Turkey)

Sudoku difficulty: easy

difficulty: medium

difficulty: hard

ď ˘ 43

LETTERS 

letters WHEN I DID THAT COURSE, WE HAD TO DO ESSAYS Letter of the

week

win a $10 voucher for the hunter lounge

There's a somewhat remarkable TED video, that I'd advise anyone to watch if they have the time. It's about a woman who helped her community through reclaiming the use of a public space and making it into a forum where her community could write their hopes and

well, that's awkward

dreams under the heading " If I could do 1 thing in my life, I would...?"

Dearest Salient, Your article Our Year With Karyn suggests

to put up a board at uni with the question " If I

card will, in the future, "be found by our

could do 1 thing in my life for equality, I would...?"

ancestors".

I think that it's a great idea. We in tutorial discussed our answers to this question, and as

sick do you have to be to think that our

Development Studies majors, it's probably no

descendants in the future will also be our

surprise that a lot of people brought up the idea

ancestors? Incest is always pretty gross, but

of human rights.

this is a million times worse. I don't even

That's what I want to talk about today.

understand how it would work -- perhaps

Human rights. We seem to be pretty fascinated

our grandchildren mating with clones of our

by them as students. You have your Amnesty

grandparents? Urgh! Gross!

International, your VicIDS. The question of

I should note that under the Films, Videos,

human rights seems to fascinate many of us.

and Publications Classification Act 1993,

Here's another question about human rights..

any person who publishes material which

when do they begin? As well as the GEOG312

promotes criminal acts (such as cloning and

board sometime in the future, there'll also be

incest), promotes sexual coercion (which

a board up at uni this Monday and Tuesday

incest inevitably is) or promotes "sexual

asking that question. It's a silent debate run by

conduct with or upon the body of a dead

LifeChoice Victoria, asking students to ponder

person" is liable for a prison sentence of

one of the fundamental questions of human

up to ten years. I'll be sure to make the

rights. If you want to contribute we'd love to

Department of Internal Affairs aware of your

hear your thoughts. This is no evangelistic plug,

heinous assault upon the public morality. I

there will be no scary censors... just you,a board

suspect that they will be making contact with

of paper and the chance for you to interact with

you shortly.

the student body on this topic. Why not give it

All the best, The Voice Of Decency

gymnastics • People who give a shit about jewelery • Radio personalities • Sigur Ros fans • People who “love” Morgan Freeman’s voice • Instagram users • People who don’t like cats • People who write lists Warm regards, Josh

The class of GEOG312- Race, Gender and Development has taken up that idea and aims

that an amusingly Photoshopped business

You guys are fucking discussing. How

• Parents and trainers involved in elite

a try?

Yours sincerely, Important Issues Guide

SEE YOU BY THE COFFEE GRINDER I was going to buy you a delicious coffee from VicBooks but the advice from VUWSA’s treasurer in the last issue has made me very confused. He says instant is fine and cheaper but “want to get an instant coffee sometime?” just doesn’t seem to work as well in my endeavours to pursue potential companions.

He thinks we should bring our own lunch to uni because it’s cheaper, but because I’m smart I get every 10th pack of sushi free. Free! Nothing’s cheaper than free. The calming glow of the apple logos that greet me when I walk into lecture means that I am now taking far less anxiety meds than when the deafening rustle of dead trees filled my ears, or worse those blue screens of death that happen on those inferior products. But what really confused me is that he says all tax is theft. This must mean he’s one of those right wing rednecks. If that’s the case then surely he believes we should be contributing to the holy economy. From what the aristocrats tell me it’s not doing that great and we must buy things to fix it. Being frugal with flat whites would surely contradict that.

Confused cafine addict p.s. Want to go on a date sometime? If

DID OUsA APPROVE THIS MESSAGE?

LISTEN UP Dear Salient,

Dear Salient, You are better at producing a magazine than hosting a radio show. We'll give you that.

• Self-described ‘foodies’ • Conservatives

"Shitic"

• New-age people • People who comment on news stories online • Australians • People who chew with their mouths open • People who say “irregardless”

Puffer jackets are not OK, ever.

• Slutshamers

Yours, Still Got Dignity.

• People who hoot in an audience • Children • People who don’t like elite gymnastics

44 

goreng is cheap and can be made fancy with an egg on top.

The following is a list of the worst people: • Rollerbladers

xoxo,

FEATHER DINNER

restaurants aren’t your thing I hear that mi-

DOES SHE EVEN GO HERE Dear Salient, I really hope that box of Indomie Mi Goreng noodles under the editor's desk is empty and I hope you ate only noodles for dinner for an entire week (a dinner serving is two packets of noodles, one packet just constitutes a snack).

It's annoying they're not noodles in a cup, because they are far easier to prepare with the limited kitchen implements VUWSA provides Salient. Noodles in a cup require fewer dishes

 LETTERS

letters (they come in a cup and a weird fold-out fork

BOURGIE PIE

thing is usually included, no need to tamper with the giant pile of dirty dishes stacked on the bench). Also, you don't need to put them in the inevitably unclean microwave (health hazard).

A word of advice though, don't eat noodles for dinner for too long. You'll begin to develop vitamin deficiencies. Make sure your diet includes a healthy amount of caffeine (but not of the Red Bull variety, that just makes you more anxious). Purchase a bag of fruit jubes every week to consume on Thursdays. Also fruit bursts.

Fuck bringing back the $1 Georgie pies which are no longer a dollar! Bring back the $1 Lift +

Love

PS I plugged the 1998 price into an inflation calculator and, adjusted for inflation, the pie price should only by $1.80 or some shit. They're rorting us at $4.50!

Every Wednesday, as I trudge up Ohiro Rd to my abode, ideas flow through my mind as to what I could write here. Things that are relevant.

Amusing, even.

And yet, as I walk in the door and whip out my trusty laptop, I draw a blank.

Fuck man, I just want to keep the letters section amusing (not that it isn't usually).

The irony here, I suppose, is that this letter is shit, and it needs more dragons.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that letters that I send are not thought out, and a previous letter of mine which you filed under "Hate Mail" in the issue following the religious one, was not intended to be hate mail. Like, seriously. It might have come out sounding a little harsh, but a comparison to Mario Kart is ALWAYS a compliment.

Take it easy, A mildly avid reader.

P.S. Dragons.

KEATS 'EM CUMMING

wrote a poem.

Here it is.

A True Story

Listen up. I Miss You but For the First Time, I Can’t Take No More so I’m Leaving, you Sexy Lil’ Thug.

I would Rather Die Young from Poison than have you Lay Up Under Me again.

But After All Is Said and Done, All I Could Do Is Cry but If you Fake Your Way To The Top, it’ll always be Hard to Say Goodbye to your Ego. Stop That.

It’s time to Disappear.

Your Suga Mama, Beyoncé Knowles.

I’ve heard a lot recently about how NZ’s education system under NCEA is in a state of decline, and I wondered why that is? What

didn’t see any problem. Then I visited Google and started to type, “Can I Get a Witness” (a song by Marvin Gaye from 1963; I like vint pop). But before I finished my query the first suggested search in the drop-down list appeared: “Can I get pregnant from a dog?”

Now I know.

Regards, High School Survivor

From far and wide you've travelled

COME VOLUNTEER! 6 PM THURSDAYS

and through many times you've grown.

So much has been experienced but eyes have never known.

Exploded, frozen, pulverized but never quite destroyed, all the bits that make you you, the you you should enjoy.

You've been the stars, the clouds the trees, the earth you walk upon, and the fish and birds, though it sounds absurd; you've been here all along.

Things seem changed but rearranged is all you really are, an aggregate of molecules descended from the stars.

And now you stand with feet and hands

YOU'RE IRREPLACABLE

Dear Salient

properly? I mean, I came out of school fine, I

I thought about what I was thinking... And then I

Dear Salient,

well can u?!

is it about NCEA that isn’t educating people

thinking. I was thinking then I stopped and then

YOU'RE DRAGON ME DOWN

you'll be here when you're gone.

Showing my age

hello editor! I'm an ecology student and I was

Rarah

and how you treat it matters;

Kind regards

Have you got a toothbrush and toothpaste in here in winter.

share this earth you're on,

cans in the Student Union buidling!

Throw them at people (they'll love you for it). your drawer? Maybe a blanket? It gets cold up

All you see around you

and eyes to see the world, behind those eyes a consciousness

Deer Horrerbal Gramar-lient It has cumb to my atenshun dat da gramar in ur magazeen is absoluteli disgraseful. Ur editers shuld be ashamed of themselfs. We r a universaty of sum repoot, and owr magazeen shuld therefour only inclued things dat haf been editered to perfaction. How kan we call ourselfs da best of da best when owr magazeen's kontent has such pore gramar?

It sadens me too rite dis, but sumthing must bee dun too make surr da peepel r aware of dis sitooashun. We must fix dis befour it is two late!

Yours sinseerly Anoyed Gramar Nazi

through which your thoughts are hurled.

And hurled they are so thick and fast at times it seems so daunting, but don't forget it's up to you where your thoughts go jaunting.

But mind is matter, don't you know? and matter is your home.

Matter's one thing we all share you're not so all alone.

LOOKS LIKE SOMEONE HAS A-FEZTED INTEREST Hi "Fez Guy" I'd just like to start off by saying that you can feel free to retort but you won't get a reply as I don't want to make this a thing and then move on to make a formal apology. I am very sorry that you thought I was taking a swing at your letter. That was wrong. I was actually aiming for

 45

notices 

NOTICES

your personality.

Yours,

of oil as we know it and we are turning to ever more extreme and risky forms of oil production to maintain our addiction. At the same time, it is

Still Bitter, Still Alone, Increasingly Angsty

6. TALKING IN THE BLUE zone You wanted to know what really grinds my gears? Where do I start?

1. The fact that we can't provide an ash tray on the edges of campus so the grounds and

Vaiaso o le Gagana Samoa.

also very possible that we could turn the corner

The week of 27 – 31 May is Samoan Language

 A presentation and Q&A, hosted by Greens@Vic

Week. This year’s theme is “Fafaga fanau i upu ma

 Wednesday 22nd May 1 pm

tala. Tautala i lau gagana” – “Feed the children on

 Student Union Building Room 218

words. Speak your language.” Afio mai, Maliu mai, Susu mai, ma tala mai a’ao. Help the Library and

2. Progressive taxing, stop bitching about twice as much training why the fuck should I pay extra taxes just to support your bad choices?

3. People who find Dane Cook or Alan Carr funny... Enough said 4. Students who wear camouflage to uni...

Just walk out into the ocean... All of you.

5. People who ride their bikes down the

STUDY OPTIONS, CAREERS AND JOBS

Va’aomanu Pasifika celebrate Samoan Language Week by coming along to one of the events:

 Unsure of what to study/do with your degree?  Need help with your CV/Interviews?

paths are constantly covered in butts. earning fuck all, if I work twice as long and have

towards a clean energy revolution.

Aso Lua 28 Me | Tuesday 28 May

… visit Vic Careers or book an appointment with

O Faiva alofilima a Samoa e ala i le lalaga. Samoan

a Careers Consultant

language and Creative Arts. (Weaving: seminar and workshop). Facilitator: Afioga Misa Emma Kesha  12 - 2 pm Alan MacDiarmid Building, Room 101

MiniLies.co.nz

Aso Lulu 29 Me | Wednesday 29 May

 MiniLies.co.nz is a Media, Sports and Politics

Gagana Samoa ma Faafiafiaga e ala i musika.

website that has just been launched and features

Samoan language in a musical concert

a number of writers from our very own Victoria

 Performers: NZ School of Music

University. Check it out, like it on Facebook,

 5.30 – 8 pm Hunter Council Chamber

and become one of the first readers of this new

overly crowded footpaths at uni... Wait the five

website that includes informed opinion and Aso Tofi 30 Me | Thursday 30 May

intelligent journalism on a range of subjects.

Gagana Samoan i ona lotoifale. (Samoan

 If you are interested in becoming a contributor

from a Gandhi-like character to the kind of guy

Language in the Community)

to this website, you can emailjono@minilies.co.nz.

who is going to walk into Rankine Brown one

 12 – 2 pm Hugh MacKenzie Building, Room 101

day with a fully loaded automatic assault rifle

Speakers: Afioga Afamasaga (CEO Samoan Capital

minutes to get on it you collossal cunt.

The above things are slowly transforming me

and unload my anger into you.

Radio) and Shana Muaiva (Naenae College)

LIFECHOICE VICTORIA LifeChoice Victoria Bi-Weekly Lunch Meeting.

Yours sincerely, Pissed off

ALO-HARD DONE BY

Aso Faraile 31 Me | Friday 31 May

1 pm Wednesday in SU217. Whatever your views

Gagana Samoa i le Iunivesite o Vitoria. Samoan

on the abortion issue, please feel free to come

Language in VUW. (Debate & Poem Competition)

along to a simple presentation on reasons for the

Competitors: Students of Samoan Studies

prolife point of view and creating a culture of life.

 12 – 2 pm Hunter Building, Hunter Lecture Theatre 119

CAREERS AND JOBS

Vic OE – Vic Student Exchange Programme

Details on CareerHub: careerhub.victoria.ac.nz

warmly embraced by the joyous Luau that is

 Earn Vic credit, get Studylink & grants, explore

Organisations

Closing

‘Hawaiian Breeze’ then I would recommend a

the world! A must do while at Vic!

serious reconsideration of your life decisions.

 Upcoming Deadline for Tri 1, 2014 exchanges:

Honeywell

20 May

Dear Toilet Spray-lient, I speak now directly to Keegan Platten. If you would rather be bombarded by the allergy-

Applications closing soon:

inducing horror of ‘Suddenly Spring’ than be

JULY 16th! (University of California May 28)

Yours 'suddenly', The other flatmate in question.

SPAM Email Mr Allen now.

VUW Language Ball We are proud to present to you the VUW

Salient welcomes, encourages, and thrives on public debate – be it serious or otherwise – through its letters pages.

Write about anything you like: Beyoncé, puppies, or the metaphysics of space-time. Send us love mail, send us hate mail, send us party invites. We want it all. Letters must be received before 12pm on the Wednesday for publication the next week. Letters must be no longer than 250 words.

Pseudonyms are fine, but all letters must include your real name, address and telephone number, these will not be printed. Please note that letters will not be corrected for spelling or grammar.The Editor reserves the right to edit, abridge or decline any letters without explanation.

Letters can be sent to: Email: letters@salient.org.nz Post: Salient, c/- Victoria University of Wellington Hand-delivered: the Salient office, Level 3, Student Union Building (behind the Hunter Lounge)

Chapman Tripp

22 May

Tonkin & Taylor

24 May

AIESEC

25 May

Language Ball for 2013. This is for all language

Henderson Reeves Connell Rishworth

27 May

students, partners, and friends!

Intergen

30 May

 When: Saturday 8 June, 7.30 to 11.30 pm.  Where: D4, 143 Featherston St Wellington.

SALIENT LETTERS POLICY 2013

AIESEC (China, Brazil, Czech Republic)

Scott Technology

 Tickets: $40 each. Your ticket will provide

NZICA

you with: 1 complimentary drink, nibbles, a

Xero

professional photographer, a professional DJ.

Palantir Technologies

 Tickets go on sale Wednesday 1 May at the LLC

31 May

Transpower

1 June

There are limited numbers so get in quickly!

AECOM New Zealand

3 June

 Please note: the dress code is formal and you must

Opus

(level 0 Von Zedlitz). Cash payments at the LLC.

be 18 or over to attend (bring certified ID with you).  For more information you can visit our Facebook event page. Just search for 'VUW Language Ball'.

Extreme Energy - MP Gareth Hughes

Transfield Worley

7 June

New Zealand Steel

9 June

Fisher & Paykel

17 June

AIESEC (Argentina)

22 June

Notices Policy: Salient provides a free notice service for all VIctoria

Where will we turn for energy in the post-peak

students, VUWSA-affiliated clubs not-for-profit organisations. Notices should

oil world? Gareth believes we are seeing the end

be received by 5pm Tuesday the week before publication. Notices must be fewer than 100 words. For-profit organisations will be charged $15 per notice.

Send notices to editor@salient.org.nz with 'Notice' in the subject line.

46 

SALIENT 'S YOU

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sat 25

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Stolen Cocktail Club  47