Salient Issue 19 - Volume 89

as you can see, i have the full support of my party...

ISSUE 19 31 August 2026 Volume 89

IN THIS WEEK’S ISSUE:

. Politicians and Their Extensive CVs . Survive The Corridors of Power . A History of Joke Candidates in NZ

ISSUE #19 31 August 2026 Volume 89 Editor Phoebe Robertson Designer & Cartoonist Jim Higgs Sub-Editor Holly Rowsell News Writers Dan Moskovitz Martha Schenk Otis Whinney Ali Cook Columnist Guy van Egmond Critic-at-large Jackson McCarthy Comic Artists Grace Elzenheimer Jack Graham Contributing Writers Tamanna Amin Zia Ravenscroft Christopher Curtis Ryan Cleland Social Media Manager Will Tickner Photographer Sophie Spencer Centrefold Artist Hamish O'Connor Advertising advertising@vuwsa.org.nz Read Online salient.org.nz issuu.com/salientmagazine Follow Us @salientgram

Want to get published?

To contribute to Salient, you can submit poetry, creative writing, artwork, comics, puzzles, features, and other ideas. Feature articles must be pitched to the Editor before writing; send pitches to editor@salient.org.nz. Artwork should be sent to designer@salient.org.nz. Creative writing submissions are accepted through the form on our website. All other contributions, including puzzles and general ideas, should be emailed to the Editor. Submissions are welcome from first-time and returning contributors.

scan here to find out more!

Phoebe Robertson This is for sure the part of the year where the going gets tough. And when the tough gets going, what’s better to do than make fan art? This week, Will Tickner drew me in the style of Grace Elzenheimer as a Kelburn Cats girl and I thought it was so beautiful it is now taking up the majority of this editorial space; you’re all welcome.

But in all seriousness, this week kicks off our election coverage. Instead of putting it all in one single issue, you can expect Salient to have increased coverage for the last six issues of the year.

Dan Moskovitz is on his campaign interviewing all of our Parties about issues related to students. The first interview, with none other than NZ First, is published in this issue to start the trend off.

The real MVP of our issue is Achim Hanne, who you may recall from his previous feature all about whether delivery driving is a worthwhile way to make money for students. Well, in this issue he gives us both a history of joke political candidates, and looks into the CV’s of our current politicians.

Right now, according to the electoral commission, only 53.89 percent of 18-24 year olds are registered to vote, which is pretty shocking. So come on, tap your friends on the back and get them to enroll. It’s an easy process and you must be enrolled to vote prior to voting day this year. If you can get one friend enrolled after reading this, I’ll give you a gold star.

The New Zealand general election will take place on 7 November 2026. Eligible voters must enrol no later than 25 October, enrol via vote.nz.

About the centrefold artist - Hamish O'Connor Hi, I’m Hamish, a Wellington local studying a Bachelor of Politics here at Te Herenga Waka. My artwork symbolises the normalisation of the increasing political violence currently occurring in the United States. The subject is an aged Uncle Sam, surrounded by an enveloping darkness – representing the increasing political violence. The effects of this invading darkness can already be seen on his torso and left hand, but Uncle Sam isn’t alarmed by this – as can be seen in his composure. His lack of alarm towards the invading darkness shows a normalisation of the increasing political violence in the United States today.

Go to the centrefold on page 20, rip it out and put it on your wall!

02

Editorial

03

Letters

04

Gig Guide

05

News

09

Strictly 4 The Islands

11

Know Your Stuff

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Our Parliamentary CV

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A Laughing Matter: History of Joke Candidates

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The Corridors of Power

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Dear editor, I feel the need to express my deep fear of Will Tickner. I have been photographed by him during stalker mondays on six different occasions!

At first it was funny, he snuck up behind me, snapped a picture and kindly tapped on my shoulder. I gave him permission to post and thought to myself “Well that was that,” I was wrong. Three more instances of being caught by Tickner, salient in hand, made me grow paranoid. How did I never see him coming??? It it almost a ritual now to inform the group chat that Will has caught me once again.

Today I walked in through The Hub at 9:30, grabbed my salient and headed to the library, as usual. I opened issue 18 and began reading, jumping at every figure to pass me. I honestly felt like I was playing fnaf checking the cameras for a furry animatronic.

By 11:00am Ticker was nowhere to be seen. I felt safe. I gently tucked my salient into my bag and began working on my laptop. Then!!! To my surprise!!! WILL TICKNER APPEARED! He recognised me, demanding where my salient copy was, phone in hand. I tried to protest I was in the middle of a Zoom workshop but he would not back down. I pulled my salient copy out of my bag and Tickner got his shot.

I hope you’re happy.

- @r4tsrc00l

WINNER

Dear Salient, I write to you this morning in a state of distress. This morning, after waking up to a sore throat like many this time of year, I walked downstairs to the sunday brunch at Victoria House just to find the one thing. The only thing that could help. And it was absent. The peaches failed to prepare themselves on this day. I am devastated. Seat Eat has disappointed me disappointed me for the last time.

Saddest regards, Chloe Carter, VH resident.

Centrefold

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Creative Writing

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Comic Corner

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Arts + Culture

28

Munch

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Ciph's Cabinet

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Critic-at-Large

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Oh Yes! Oh No!

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Puzzles

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Horoscopes

Dear Creators of Salient,

Kia ora,

My name is Isa, I am not a student (and actually an American dropout) so my opinion of your issues may be less consequential than others but I just wanted to express my appreciation for what you guys do with this amazing piece of art. I moved to Wellington less than 2 months ago and I am here for 2 more months on a working holiday visa. My partner has a job here so I went with her thinking I would be able to make a life for myself here for a bit but it has actually been very hard. I’ve been bartending on Cuba St, so before my shifts I often go to the architecture library to be around people and the highlight of my week is finding a new issue of Salient near the entrance. It is one thing to produce a creative, diverse and community driven piece of art once- it is a heck of a lot more to produce that regularly and without compromising on quality or thoughtfulness.

As someone visiting from an individualistic culture that is growing further and further from the importance of physical media, moments of beauty, and a general connection with the world around us, the existence of Salient brings me so much hope and joy and has shown me what rich and amazing people make up Wellington. Thank you.

I really appreciate the article written regarding Arie Joe's campaign for the university council.

I think it's really important voters remained informed on candidates, and some of that information isn't readily available at first glance when looking at a candidate.

Even small things like acknowledging the similarities to Mamdani's campaign material (which is something I actually noticed when seeing the banner up on campus) despite opposing political views.

I understand a candidate wanting to use branding that they've seen as successful but as stated it can be confusing.

I also feel highly uncomfortable regarding the use of analyst software to find students email addresses, so am glad that was also discussed in the article.

With Love, An Appreciative Visitor

Thanks for providing a platform for discussions like this.

I know it's not the biggest issue facing students right now, but why do the pipes in the 6th floor post-grad/staff study room make such a banging, rattling, endless racket? Is it a ghost? If so, is it a friendly ghost like Casper or a malevolent ghost like Casper's three uncles? Does VUW have a plan to deal with potential hauntings? If said hauntings impact our ability to focus while studying, will VUW take that into account come exam time? Is it sad or admirable that I had to google whether they were Casper's uncles or cousins, brothers, etc?

Cheers, Sam.

Salient is published by, but remains editorially independent from, the Victoria University of Wellington Students Association (VUWSA). Salient is funded in part by VUWSA through the Student Services Levy.

Salient is a member of the Aotearoa Student Press Association (ASPA) and the New Zealand Media Council.

Complaints regarding the material published in Salient should first be brought to the VUWSA CEO in writing (ceo@vuwsa.org.nz). If not satisfied by the response, complaints should be directed to the Media Council (info@mediacouncil.org.nz).

Week of August 31 - September 6, 2026 Wed 2/9 Eyegum Free Wednesday Featuring Gift Horse, Banjo Ben & The Breeze, and She/They - 8pm @ San Fran Thurs 3/9 Siren Indie Rock 7pm @ The Undercurrent Fri 4/9 The Night Before Featuring Bone Chapel, Boyband, Bug Michigan, Dale Kerrigan, Dillon Jo, Elly Mae, Felix Bird, Girls Factory, Nameless and Brainless, Re: Ruby, The Muscle, And Yawner 7pm multi venue festival in Newtown.

Fri 4/9 Our House, Deep House with Live Violin - Deep House, Electronic 8pm @ Cuba St Tavern Sat 5/9 Pur Techno Night 011 Techno, Electronic 10pm @ Afters

Sat 5/9 Great Sounds Great - Featuring Amamelia, Beastwars, Bic Runga, Bri Louise, Chris Tse, Crook, Cruelly, Dani Yourukova, Deathro ( JPN), Dream Chambers, Fazed on a Pony, Groove Council, Hemi Hemingway, Hihi & The Stitchbirds, Hunter Jackson, In Good Company, Jackson McCarthy, JELL, Ludus b2b Rizzo, MĀ, Mauri Aura, mHz, Mokotron, More Blue Noise, Naakz

Gig guide and photography

by Sophie Spencer

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Gig Guide

Siren is a four piece indie-rock band from Wellington's south coast. Their key influences include The Last Dinner Party, Fleetwood Mac, and Sharon Van Etten.

They recently had their debut show at Moon, supported by the established Wellington band Adonye. Siren's next gig is coming up on September 3 at The Undercurrent.

This will be an EP release show for their first release titled 'Born Anew.'

AI is for Act Immediately!

Martha Schenk

[OPINION]

Aotearoa flaunts some of the world’s most unique and captivating landscapes, with its rolling greenery, dramatic fjords, golden beaches, and striking mountain ranges. The scenery brings only one idea to mind: what a perfect place to build a 78,000 square meter data centre.

That is presumably what Singapore based company Datagrid said when they submitted their proposal to build exactly that in Makarewa, just North of Invercargill. The 3.5-billiondollar project has gained approval to draw 604,800 litres of groundwater a day (that’s seven litres per second!), discharge air contaminants from up to 84 diesel back-up generators, remove a 2400 square meter local wetland, and discharge up to 5000 litres of treated wastewater a day.

As the second largest energy consumer in New Zealand, the centre will use a whopping 6 percent of the country’s total electricity.

The project will create an estimated 50-80 permanent employment positions once the initial construction is completed in 2028. How many jobs AI is currently nullifying is a discussion for another day.

If this sounds anything like the plot of the Lorax to you, if ‘How Bad Can I Be?’ is now stuck in your head and the Once-ler comes to mind, you shouldn’t be surprised. The New Zealand government is committed to fast-tracking AI adoption because that’s where the money is—and it's currently estimated that AI could add $76 billion to GDP by 2038.

land instead of relying on existing technology-neutral laws like the Privacy, Fair Trading, or Human Rights Acts to apply to this modern and alien concept.

Let’s take the example of social media, which first became popular in 2004. This year, the government is finally pushing for a social media ban for under 16s, having taken over 22 years to discover the negative effects that social platforms have on young people’s wellbeing.

If we take 22 years to find that data centres are indeed negatively impacting the health of nearby communities, causing environmental issues, and driving energy supply to economic collapse, the damage to our country might be well beyond repair. This time, we have to be faster. We cannot take the same take-it-as-it-comes approach that we have applied to discovering smoking is bad for you or asbestos isn't a great housing material. The current government's “common sense” rules aren’t going to cut it, and the Green Party’s one-year moratorium on consents is good, but it won’t be enough.

If we want to ensure a future that is sustainable, we have to put time and effort into developing AI relevant legislation now, rather than blindly investing in a tomorrow that isn’t promised. If AI in New Zealand is indeed inevitable, we need to figure out where to draw the line, and quick.

As the Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment so succinctly put it in their July 2025 digital policy AI Strategy, “the future is AI powered.” Or take the Public Service AI Work Programme, which lays out a 2-year plan of AI initiatives to “improve public services and modernise government for New Zealanders.” The programme itself was written with heavy use of GenAI for research and drafting, as well as “to generate ideas and enhance readability,” freely disclosed to prove a point. So, we’re asking AI to write strategies about its own domination. Is that not one step away from a complete robot uprising?

Jokes aside, New Zealand is so infatuated with jumping into the bright AI future and taking the lead in international data infrastructure that issues of environmental degradation, community wellbeing, energy demand, foreign ownership, and noise pollution are falling to the wayside. We need to act fast to develop AI policies that protect our people and our

Kawepūrongo | News

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Tech Bros Stink (of blood)

Cybersecurity Company With Deep Links to Israel Visits the Hub Mantis Toboggan, M.D.

[OPINION]

It’s week two of the mid trimester break at Kelburn campus.

The library is sparsely populated, but the hub is a hive of smart-casual clothes, caterers running around with canapés and coffees, and the grating chatter of tech bros.

The Tertiary ICT Conference 2026 is being hosted in The Hub at Kelburn Campus, with the theme of “Imagine | Empower | Belong.” Major brands like PB Tech, Microsoft, and HP are plying their wares to the university.

There are robots that move uncannily and an alarming number of cybersecurity firms looking for contracts that will offer attendees protection from the impending AI apocalypse.

Around the necks of these shmoozing nerds are lanyards bearing the name of the event’s “GOLD + NAMEBADGES & LANYARDS” sponsor, Palo Alto Networks (PANW).

Their stall is modest and their name raises eyebrows, sounding startlingly like everyone’s favourite company, run by New Zealand’s favourite son, Palantir and Peter Thiel. A quick google search reveals Palo Alto is an American cybersecurity company that offers cloud space, firewalls and…cyber warfare systems for the IDF. Its founder Nir Zuk was a software developer for Unit 8200, one of Israel’s premier military intelligence, cyberwarfare, counterintelligence arms. Unit 8200 conducts Orwellian surveillance on Palestinians and uses the AI missile system “lavender” to immolate Gazans. PANW is worth $133 billion (with a b) on the Israeli stock-exchange and has signed a $250 million dollar contract with the Netanyahu genocide-ocracy.

On 23 September 2025, the Te Herenga Waka academic board passed a resounding motion for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions against Israel for their brutal ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people.

I smell an inconsistency here; I smell the blood of an entire nation, in fact. So, I put it to you, Te Herenga Waka: why are you opening your doors to a killing machine when your academic board openly rejected this sort of carry-on?

Otago University has already seen controversy after a PANW came knocking earlier this year, where a partnership between the two was proposed for setting up a new Master’s program at their Queenstown campus.

Critic reported in May of this year that the partnership was “under review” by Vice-Chancellor Grant Robertson’s team, with all the platitudes you’d expect about their “concern” with “the situation in Gaza.” Critic then wrote in July that the review found “no substantive evidence” that would lead Otago to cancel the contract. Ending the partnership would mean Otago would be “ending its commitment to academic neutrality.” Who could’ve seen that coming? Long live academic freedom and long live the Israeli war machine, awesome!

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News | Kawepūrongo

Could Te Herenga Waka possibly think of having a similar relationship with PANW? The point of this expo, from what I can tell, is for the companies in the hub to sell their nerdy shit to one another and VUW (this is pure speculation, I’m not an AI nerd, nor a banal administrator—I like to drink beer and enjoy my life). But there’s another funky smell wafting from this cesspit.

The expo is going on during the mid-tri break, where there is less likely to be a stir or attention raised by VUW’s humane student body, who, funnily enough, don’t support the sniping of children, the murder of journalists, and the erasure of an ancient indigenous culture.

The reason is likely due to the need for space—there would be a crowding issue and lots of missing canapés, I imagine, if there were more students in the hub. But the timing is very convenient, nevertheless. It would be an awful look for our principled students and academic staff to openly object to PANW’s presence and sponsorship of the event.

What is most scary is the banality of it all: the lovely catering, the polite conversation, the smiles and suits that are window-dressing for these purveyors of mass murder. VUW, there are other cybersecurity firms out there, do not make a deal with this speccy devil.

Israeli Embassy’s Planned Wellington Move Draws Concern from Tenants and Protesters Zara Boon The Israeli embassy in Wellington is reportedly preparing to move from its Brandon Street offices to the Fisher Funds building at 20 Ballance Street, following more than a year of regular pro-Palestinian protests outside its current location.

The planned relocation was reported by The Post in May. The Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA), citing that report, said only some occupants of the 13-storey Ballance Street building had been told that the embassy was moving in.

However, the embassy’s own website and New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) have continued to list Level 13, 36 Brandon Street as the embassy’s official Wellington address. It is therefore unclear whether the relocation has been completed or when the new premises will formally open.

The Ballance Street building is part of the portfolio of Primeproperty Group, led by Wellington property developer Eyal Aharoni. Aharoni is a former Israeli army major who moved to New Zealand in 1988. He has since become one of Wellington’s most prominent commercial property owners; the New Zealand Herald reported earlier this year that the NBR Rich List valued his net worth at $550 million.

The proposed move has become a new focus for Occupy Brandon Street, a Wellington-based pro-Palestinian protest group formed in early 2025. Members have regularly demonstrated outside the existing embassy, distributing material about the genocide in Gaza, and calling for the New Zealand Government to sanction Israel. The group has indicated it intends to continue protesting if the embassy relocates to Ballance Street.

In response, New Zealand imposed a series of diplomatic restrictions. High-level visits between the two countries were suspended, Israeli officials travelling to New Zealand in an official capacity were required to obtain visas, planned foreign ministry consultations were put on hold, and approval of a new Israeli ambassador was delayed.

The episode is sometimes described by campaigners as New Zealand having broken off diplomatic relations with Israel.

Official government records, however, describe the measures as restrictions on official contact rather than a complete severing of diplomatic relations.

In June 2005, Israel formally apologised for the involvement of its citizens in the passport affair and committed to preventing a recurrence. Clark accepted the apology, the restrictions were lifted, and normal diplomatic contact resumed.

The New Zealand Government maintained that it had strong grounds for believing the two men had been acting for an Israeli intelligence agency, although Israel’s apology did not explicitly acknowledge that allegation.

More than two decades later, the reported embassy relocation has again made Israel’s diplomatic presence in Wellington a focus of political protest. For now, however, the embassy has not publicly updated its official address, leaving the timing and status of its move to Ballance Street uncertain.

PSNA has also opposed the relocation and has called on the Government to expel the Israeli ambassador. In May, the organisation said the reported move had caused concern among other tenants of the Fisher Funds building. Its claims about tenants’ views and the circumstances surrounding the embassy’s previous lease have not all been independently verified.

The controversy comes against the backdrop of a sometimes strained diplomatic relationship between New Zealand and Israel.

In 2004, Israeli citizens Eli Cara and Uriel Kelman were convicted after attempting to fraudulently obtain a New Zealand passport. The Helen Clark Government said there were “very strong reasons” to believe the pair were acting on behalf of Israeli intelligence services.

Kawepūrongo | News

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Dan Moskovitz

election interviews

In the run-up to the 2026 election, Salient is interviewing all of the major parties to understand their responses to the issues students face. Here, Keegan Langeveld, young New Zealand First chairman and candidate for Auckland’s Maungakiekie electorate, pitches NZ First.

course fee increases have come as final-year fees-free was Why Should You Vote NZ First? These removed; is this something NZ First would return?

What is the biggest challenge facing students in New Zealand in 2026?

Cost of living, but more specifically power prices. Daily fixed charges have skyrocketed in the last few years, and that's where most students will be hit the hardest.

So what is NZ First proposing to support students?

Regarding power prices, we want to break up the gentailer power companies, so the companies producing and retailing the power are different. Currently they make their own energy and sell it to themselves, which has led to unaffordable prices. In the same vein, we also want to break up the supermarket duopoly to tackle grocery affordability.

We’ll also invest in different areas of energy such as geothermal and nuclear energy to transform the market and bring down bills.

Those two things will help everyone, but students will benefit disproportionately with their comparatively reduced income.

Students are currently the only beneficiary group not eligible for the winter energy payment. Is this something NZ First would change?

NZ First was a champion of the winter energy payment when we were previously in government in 2017 and 2020, and looking at reforming it is always on the peripheral, but NZ First can only do so much. With more New Zealand First MPs we can expand the topics we negotiate on, but we have no specific policy on it currently.

In 2023, a two-zone trip on Metlink cost a tertiary student $1.13 at peak time. Currently it costs $2.63, an increase of 132 percent. 50 percent of students get to Vic by public transport; how will NZ First reduce this financial burden?

We’re not in favour of free public transport because most people who use public transport can afford it. I know students are a unique case, but we’re more about making transport more available rather than more affordable, because regardless of the cost, no one can ride an overloaded bus.

Between 2014 and 2024, the amount course fees could rise each year was between 2 and 2.8 percent. In 2025 and 2026, course fees were allowed to rise by 6 percent. If elected, what would your policy on course fees be?

The best path forward would be to sit down with all of the student unions and look at what kind of fixes are available from a government standpoint. We want tertiary education to be affordable, and unless universities are expanding the services they are offering, a 6 percent fee rise each year is unreasonable.

In our coalition agreement, we protected the fees-free scheme for an extra two years. If we weren’t in government, it would have been scrapped in 2023, so students have benefitted from us being in government in that respect.

But ultimately fees-free did not work. Its purpose was to increase participation from disadvantaged communities, but it didn’t.

The evidence says most students would have gone to university anyway.

In the past three elections, NZ First has had a policy where, for every two years you work in New Zealand in a critical area like teaching, health and engineering, the government will wipe a year off your debt.

We campaigned on this in 2017, 2020, and 2023. It hasn’t been announced whether or not we’ll campaign on it this election, but even if we don’t, NZ First’s youth wing will still be pushing for it.

Wellington’s unemployment rate is at 6.3 percent, but for those aged between 15 and 24 it is 8.4 percent. There are ten thousand fewer jobs in Wellington than there were last election, and the government is looking to remove 8700 public sector jobs, which would disproportionately affect Wellington. Right now, what incentive is there for a graduate to stay in Wellington?

Fair question.

Not every career has to be in the public service, so we’re trying to diversify Wellington’s economy, as in my anecdotal experience, the public service is an ageing cohort which tends not to bring in many young people anyway. We have to put something else on the table, things like research and development. For example, we funded nuclear research in Lower Hutt, and without 60 million from the New Zealand First Regional Infrastructure Fund, that company would have gone overseas. So by investing in similar companies, we can give graduates an alternative.

Access to mental health addiction services for young people has declined-there are 5000 fewer people receiving care than five years ago. How would NZ First address the gap between demand for mental health care and the services available?

It’s our ethos that communities know best how to look after themselves, so one of the things we guaranteed in our coalition agreement was funding Gumboot Friday, a mental health foundation which has delivered 40 thousand free counselling sessions for young people. So NZ First will seek to ensure frontline services like Gumboot Friday are funded and are utilised to reduce the load on the public system. That reduced demand might improve the public system, while still giving people the help they need.

Thank you for your time, Keegan.

No worries.

NEXT WEEK: 8

News | Kawepūrongo

Why should you vote Labour?

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STRICTLY THE ISLANDS Weekly Pacific Politics with Otis Whinney The Election Special We still have quite some time before November 7, our beautiful election date, and yet I am already sick to death of polls and surveys. I don’t know how many times I can see a series of numbers and percentages that tell me no one is happy before I consider disengaging from politics and picking up a new hobby like fly fishing or crocheting.

But I would miss Christopher Luxon’s exceptional oratory skills too much to ever do that. One survey, however, caught my attention. The PMN News-Horizon Research Pacific Issues Election Survey, released July 14, has attempted to portray a clear overview of what issues matter most to the Pacific community of Aotearoa as we prepare to choose our next government, and the results are not all that shocking.

The survey indicates that the issues at the forefront of Pacific minds are not too far off from what everyone else is thinking, and if anything it shows just how important these issues are to Aotearoa at large. When asked what matters when deciding how to vote, the cost of living was an answer for 90 percent of respondents, with jobs and wages the second most common answer with 75 percent.

The survey also reinforces a long-running trend for Pacific voters being consistent Labour supporters, with 50 percent of respondents indicating that they intend to give them their vote. Labour has always been able to rely on the broad support of Pacific people, with Pacific-strong electorates like Māngere and Manurewa being shoe-ins for the party most election seasons. National’s infamous legacy amongst these communities regarding their overtly racist policies targeting Pacific migrants in the late 70s and 80s probably doesn’t help.

National has always struggled to win over this side of the country, and has struggled to shake their reputation as a party who don’t care about Pacific people. Despite the hiring of a few Pacific MPs over the years, I think it's safe to say that National’s priorities are elsewhere at this point. The party is in a bit of a crisis of support, with even their traditional allies in the business world turning their eyes to other options. As Luxon hosts his regular confidence votes (as any strong leader does) and his

numbers tumble, it’s only natural for the party to focus on keeping their core audience if they want to retain the seat of power. I guess that's why the task of running the Ministry for Pacific Peoples has been dumped on Paul Goldsmith’s doorstep, along with ten other portfolios. While Luxon tries desperately to win the hearts and minds of the loyal tax payers of middle New Zealand, Goldsmith can display his boundless cultural acumen amongst our Pacific diaspora in between meetings with veterans, astronauts, RNZ, and several aggrieved iwi and hapū. A winning strategy if I've ever seen one.

Labour shouldn’t get complacent, however. The fact that Chris Hipkins is campaigning against the political mastermind of Christopher Luxon and still cannot swing public opinion to his side is more than enough proof of that. The 2023 election should have also been ringing some alarm bells for Labour. A piece by Madeline Chapman in The Spinoff released after the election revealed that, while Pacific voters have yet to turn to a separate party en masse, the last election saw voter turnout in Pacific-majority electorates go down. And while those who voted for other parties remained steady in their numbers, the Labour vote took the biggest hit. Whatever good will Labour has built up, it has been waning, and it contributed to their loss last time around. Labour has announced policies aimed at tackling the cost of living crisis, which remains as the most reported issue in the survey, and yet there doesn’t seem to be any indication that anything their doing is making a real difference for the voting public. If last time is anything to go by, Labour may be saying a slow, disappointing goodbye to another one of their key bases of support.

It's not irrelevant to ask why they should even attempt to win the hearts and minds of Pacific people anyway. And most parties have also made the calculated decision that it actually isn't worth it. ACT, for example, can’t really publicly campaign for specific ethnic groups without disregarding their entire platform regarding ‘race-based decision making.’ Despite whatever inequities Pacific people (or any other racial/cultural group) may be facing, ACT will remain committed to removing this consideration from the equation when it comes to targeted assistance. They have also previously campaigned on disestablishing the Ministry for Pacific Peoples, a move that probably wouldn’t play

Article continues on next page.

Kawepūrongo | News

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well to the people that ministry is supposed to benefit (regardless of how effective you may think that ministry has been in the past). Indeed, with ACT’s poll numbers struggling to reach the level of support they enjoyed in our last election, they have to be smart about who they want to appeal to, so obviously a group they’ve never tried to win isn’t going to stay high on that list.

The Opportunity Party is in a similar situation.

Opportunity has become the hot topic for politics nerds across the country ever since they got a fresh new leader in Qiulae Wong and a burst of publicity soon after. The fact that a party other than NZF could become the ‘kingmaker’ and decide our future government just goes to show how unprecedented these times really are. But Opportunity has a specific appeal, being a ‘centrist’ party, and isn't going to break into the big leagues any time soon.

As mentioned prior, Pacific people have tended to remain strong Labour supporters, leaving little room for a minor party to saddle in and change that without some intense targeted campaigning, and Opportunity still has to justify themselves to the New Zealand public at large before they can consider expanding their supporter base like that.

Qiulae seems to be running a campaign built on recognising how disaffected people are with our current establishment parties without presenting themselves as too radical, as to avoid getting lumped in with the cookers and the communists.

Aiming for as wide a reach as possible as opposed to targeting specific communities would make sense on that front.

Te Pāti Māori is a unique case. Māori and Pacific people are often found at the negative end of many of the same statistics, whether it’s health outcomes, poverty or incarceration. The groups are a natural pair, and Te Pāti Māori’s advocacy for rectifying these uneven outcomes for Māori usually also includes how they will affect Pacific people as well. Their foreign policy, while unlikely to see the light of day, also explicitly mentions their focus on Pacific/indigenous global connections and military neutrality, which aligns with the ‘ocean of peace’ rhetoric many Pacific nations use when describing their vision for the moana in the modern world.

But anyone who's been paying attention has seen the turmoil that Te Pāti Māori has gone through, and in their current form they have abandoned the party vote and turned their attention to getting their candidates in the Māori electorates into parliament. Like other parties facing a crisis of support, it seems like Te Pāti Māori are aiming to retain their core audience more than anything.

10 News | Kawepūrongo

Which leaves us with New Zealand First and the Greens. A few weeks back I wrote about NZF’s electoral strategy in South Auckland; mobilising a series of Pacific MPs who are deadset on appealing to Pacific voter’s faith and conservative values to realign them away from Labour and towards NZF. The Greens are also battling it out in this arena. Fresh candidate Michel Mulipola (or ‘Bloody Sāmoan’ as he’s known on the internet), for example, is vying for the electorate of Māngere, going up against NZF’s Vicky Hau. Others like the Green Ōtāhuhu candidate Te Whatanui Skipwith have made their presence known in the area through attending local events and meeting Pacific voters on their terms, turning South Auckland into a bit of an ideological battleground between competing visions for the future of our Pacific community.

The draw of religious conservatism should not be underestimated, as the Church has always played a hugely important role in the Pacific communities of Aotearoa since their inception. But Winston Peters and his consistent attacks on immigrants could potentially hurt the chances of NZF gaining this audience. NZF and the Greens both have diametrically opposed solutions to our cost of living crisis, with the Greens advocating for taxes on the wealthier and a turn to renewables, while NZF want to buy back the BNZ and start drilling for more oil. Whether either of these approaches appeal to South Auckland remains to be seen.

More than anything, this survey reveals that the wants and needs of Pacific people have not moved much since the last election. For a group already suffering through disproportionately high rates of poverty and hardship in several areas, this government’s track record of high unemployment and outdated justice policies can only serve to keep it that way. The only through line I can find amongst these electoral strategies is that there really isn’t any single option that can speak directly to the Pacific community at large. You could argue this is reflected in the general public as well. As election day slowly marches towards us, it seems no one is able to provide a platform or movement people can get behind, so it seems we’re walking into another messy coalition agreement. And it seems the Pacific community will remain at the back of the major party’s minds, leaving the door open for the small ones to possibly pick up what’s been left behind.

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International Overdose Awareness Day International Overdose Awareness Day is on August 31. It’s a global day of remembrance, giving space for those of us who have lost people to drug overdose to take a minute and miss our loved ones.

Accidental drug overdose is the reason KnowYourStuffNZ began.

In the beginning...

Before drug checking, people had to trust that their substances were what they were meant to be, and deal with the consequences as they happened. This didn’t always work out.

Sometimes their substances were something inert, like milk powder or creatine, and their dealer had ripped them off.

Sometimes their substances were something high risk that put them in hospital.

Giving people the ability to know what they’d bought before they took it was a game-changer because, if something turned out to be high risk, people would choose not to take their substance. Wild, right? Absolutely shocking.

Some of you might remember 2020-2021’s “Summer of Eutylone” where 30 percent of samples tested were not as presumed. People were going to hospital after taking “MDMA” up and down the country and it was pretty damn messy. Most of those samples were MDMA that had either been swapped for or cut with eutylone. Our testing results for that year showed 68 percent of people said they wouldn’t take their drugs when their sample came back as something unexpected.

12 years ago a batch of “MDMA” was being sold that was definitely not MDMA. It put a bunch of people in hospital, which at the time was considered normal and an acceptable consequence of taking drugs. FA, FO. Nobody in charge was going to do anything to change this. In their minds, if people wanted to avoid drug harm they could simply not take drugs. Ezpz.

Except people do take drugs. People have been taking drugs since prehistoric times, and that’s not going to change anytime soon. Pretending that drug prohibition is an effective form of drug harm reduction has been getting people killed since the 1970s. With this new high risk drug on the market back in 2015, it was only a matter of time before somebody wound up in hospital or the morgue. The choices in front of us were: 1.

2.

Maintain the status quo: continue waiting for more compassionate and effective drug legislation, and let people die in the mean time.

Do something.

If you want something done right, do it yourself Weirdly enough, letting people die just because they were breaking the law felt like a cop-out. Our founder (and Victoria University alumna) Wendy Allison set up a tent with a table and a set of reagents in the back paddock at KiwiBurn 2015, and KnowYourStuffNZ was born.

The thing to keep in mind is that, before those people had gotten their MDMAybe tested, they were 110 percent going to take their drugs. They’d spent the money and they’d broken the law and made that active choice. When they found their MDMA was actually eutylone, they changed their behaviour and chose not to take it. Anyone who’s heard of the sunk cost fallacy knows how hard that is to break.

Only 20 percent of the drugs checked in the summer of 20142015 were what they were meant to be. Summer 2015-2016 was a little bit better with 40 percent of people’s drugs being what they were meant to be.

We’ve been drug checking in Aotearoa for eleven years now, and it’s become pretty normal, which is awesome! Other places aren’t so lucky and we’re incredibly grateful that we can provide people legal protection while using drug checking services—and that people trust us with their safety.

The NZ Drug Foundation heard what we were doing and thought it was brilliant. They lent us a spectrometer for the 2016-2017 season and our checking capabilities levelled up. The annual reports on the substances we’d found over the years gave us the evidence we needed to amend the Misuse of Drugs Act and make drug checking explicitly, permanently legal in 2021.

We love a responsible hedonist, and the world is a much better place with you in it. We’ve got a special drug checking clinic happening for International Overdose Awareness Day at VUWSA HQ, Kelburn campus. We’d love it if you came and said hi.

Drug checking prevents accidental overdose Drug checking is a pretty simple process. People bring us their substances, we do science to find out what’s in their substances, then give them advice on reducing their risks based on what we find including dosage, risky interactions, comedown and hangover maintenance, and so on.

Clinic details When: 10 a.m. - 2 p.m., August 31 Where: The Board Room, VUWSA Building, Kelburn Campus

Tīwae | Columns

11

Our Parliamentary

CV

Parliament by the Numbers The most common jobs in the data were ‘political employee’ (party researchers, staff, and MP’s parliamentary employees), lawyer, and local-government representative. Their prevalence varies by party; almost 20 percent of National MPs in my data have a political background, while more than 25 percent of Labour MPs are former lawyers. Three Green MPs and two NZ First MPs have local-government experience, including Celia Wade-Brown (Green—List) and Andy Foster (NZ First—List) who are both former Wellington mayors.

Another common background is in the public sector. Among the 12 former ministry or commission advisers I identified are Marama Davidson (Green—List), who worked at the Human Rights Commission; Nicola Grigg (National— Selwyn), who worked at New Zealand Trade and Enterprise; and Barbara Edmonds (Labour—Mana), who worked at Inland Revenue.

Achim Hanne This may be obvious, but the role of an MP is fundamentally different to a typical job. You work weird hours, commute across the country, and risk losing your job every three years.

Even if you make it through selection and become a party’s candidate, your employer is not some manager or company, but the voters that put you there—many of whom may look no further than the party logo beside your name. For that reason, MPs’ work histories rarely receive much attention unless they are being used to defend their credentials or attack their experience. Yet, in a country where MPs are often seen as out of touch, should we be paying more attention to what careers our elected representatives come from?

Spoiler alert: I did. This year, with the help of a friend (thanks, Duncan!) I researched every Member of Parliament, compiling their publicly available job histories and noting common careers and trends.

The first thing I realised was how hard it is to place certain jobs into neat boxes. Parliamentary press secretaries, for example, are ostensibly employed by parliament—making them public servants—but because they work for a specific MP they have more in common with political staff than someone working in a ministry. Likewise, whilst police officers and other frontline roles sit within the public sector, the experience of a corrections officer is very different to a policy analyst.

The second thing I learned was how hard it is to assemble an accurate work history for every MP. Some report every job they’ve had—Christopher Luxon’s LinkedIn contains everything from Prime Minister to his year as a newspaper deliverer in 1982—while others have barely two sentences on a party profile. For that reason, my data should be treated as incomplete, although it still provides some useful insights.

12 Features | Ahuatanga

That tally is matched by Parliament’s farmers, where Labour’s Damien O’Connor (List) stands alone beside 11 coalition MPs. Likewise, of Parliament’s seven MP’s with military backgrounds, only former NZ Army Officer Dan Rosewarne (Labour—List) comes from outside the National party. Tim Costley (National—Ōtaki) and recently sacked former Defence Minister Chris Penk (National—Kaipara ki Mahurangi) provide the Air Force and Navy representation respectively, with the rest coming from the NZ Army or Army Reserve.

The ACT Party may be excited to have broadcaster Paul Henry running for election this year, but he is merely the latest in a long line of journalists and broadcasters entering politics.

Twelve current MPs come from this background, spanning National, Labour, the Greens, NZ First, and Te Pāti Māori.

Many MPs also come from business backgrounds. While it is difficult to determine exactly how many MPs directed or founded their own business, notable individuals include Scott Simpson (National—Coromandel), former chief executive of Make-A-Wish NZ, and Chlöe Swarbrick (Green— Auckland Central), who ran a fashion design label.

I counted roughly nine former teachers, eight emergency-service workers, three doctors, and three medical researchers. The list goes on, and at some point just becomes background noise. So rather than give an itemised list of every career represented in parliament, let’s look at a few more in detail.

Cabinet Within Christopher Luxon’s cabinet, lobbyists are particularly well represented. Finance Minister and National Deputy Nicola Willis (List) was formerly a Government Affairs Manager at Fonterra, while Attorney-General Chris Bishop (National—Hutt South) worked for tobacco company Philip Morris. Casey Costello (NZ First—List), Nicole Mckee (ACT— List), and Brooke Van Velden (ACT—Tāmaki) all have worked as lobbyists in the past as well.

Among Paul Goldsmith’s (National—List) eleven portfolios is Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations, fitting for a former Waitangi Tribunal Historian. Practising doctor Shane Reti

(National—Whangārei) was replaced as Health Minister in 2025 by Manurewa Board Member and banker Simeon Brown (National—Pakuranga).

Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones (NZ First—List) is a former chair of Sealord, while Deputy Prime Minister David Seymour (ACT—Epsom) was previously an engineer and think-tank analyst. There is a long-standing and lively debate over whether ministers should have professional experience in the areas they oversee, but the 2026 cabinet does not seem to care one way or the other.

University Parliament contains a surprisingly large number of former university lecturers, covering a wide range of academic fields. Labour’s Health Spokesperson Ayesha Verrall (List) is a former pathology lecturer, whilst Shane Jones appears once more as a former lecturer in Māori studies.

The most left-field specialisation for an MP is Lawrence Xu-Nan (Green—List), a former Egyptologist at the University of Auckland. Perhaps he feels a little more at home in the pyramid-style architecture of the Beehive?

Good news for Aidan Donoghue: nine former student-union presidents sit in the current parliament. These include former VUWSA presidents Tamatha Paul (Green—Wellington Central) who held the role in 2019, and Leader of the Opposition Chris Hipkins (Labour—Remutaka) who served from 2000 to 2001. The other seven are spread across universities and polytechnics around the country.

Hang in there Aidan—you’ll get your chance.

But parliament is not all lawyers, lobbyists, and public servants. Some MPs merit mentioning purely because they did something interesting before becoming an MP.

Outliers and Trailblazers Steve Abel (Green—List) was a campaigner with Greenpeace in the years leading up to Parliament, but when he wasn’t working to save the planet he also enjoyed a very successful music career, winning the 2009 ‘Saddest Song in the World’ competition. Meanwhile, Kahurangi Carter (Green—List) has worked as a banker, Ministry for the Environment advisor, and actor.

Andrew Bayly (National—Port Waikato) appears to have a reasonably standard CV for a National MP, with experience in finance, the private sector, and serving as an NZ Army Officer. But a quick look at his party profile reveals a former British parachutist who has visited both poles and ridden camels throughout Jordan while studying T. E. Lawrence.

Before becoming a Marlborough District Councillor, NZ First’s Jamie Arbuckle (List) made his living selling asparagus at the Redwoodtown Market.

What does this mean?

Writing a CV is something that almost every New Zealander older than 15 has probably done at some point. Maybe it was at high school, for a summer job, or at the beginning of a professional career. You’ve probably used—or deliberately avoided—the detailed LinkedIn history or the Canva template. So has your MP. Yet one thing that kept striking me as I researched this piece was that very few MPs seem to draw much attention to those work histories when making a case for election. The other thing I found myself wondering was whether that matters at all.

In the era of political factionalism and party politics, it is unlikely that an individual candidate’s qualifications will sway your vote one way or the other. We do not have a Parliament of independents. Crossing the floor is rare in New Zealand, and MPs will vote with their party on nearly every decision, regardless of their personal background.

Yet those backgrounds can still do good work behind the scenes. Kieran McAnulty has spent his time in Parliament trying to improve compensation for fellow firefighters injured in the line of duty, while Tim Costley has drawn on his RNZAF experience to seek recognition for New Zealanders deployed in humanitarian-aid and disaster relief scenarios. They are not headline party policies, but they show how personal experiences can help MPs identify problems that otherwise might be missed.

The unfortunate takeaway of the 2026 Parliament is that its work histories do not resemble the New Zealand workforce particularly well. There are very few tradespeople, IT specialists, or nurses in the chamber, while jobs such as truck driver are completely unrepresented. This leaves gaps in Parliament’s collective experience of the issues faced by large parts of the population.

There is no cut-and-dry solution to those gaps. At the end of the day, it is easy to see why a lawyer or public servant will have more interest in legislation than the average Kiwi, and employment is only one lens through which to see parliamentarians' experience.

What matters most is that our MPs, whatever their backgrounds, look for the problems that matter to New Zealanders and work publically and behind the scenes to make life in this country easier, safer, and happier. And hey, a little more information about their work histories would be nice too.

The New Zealand general election will be held on 7 November 2026. Eligible voters MUST enrol by 25 October.

From the Labour benches comes Georgie Dansey, a former teacher who ran a gym before entering Parliament and occasionally performs as wild-haired, overall-clad drag king Peter Pansy. She is joined by Shadow Leader of the House Kieran McAnulty (Labour—List), whose CV includes working as a WINZ manager, TAB bookmaker, and volunteer firefighter— an unusual combination within his party’s caucus.

Ahuatanga | Features

13

New Zealand’s History of Joke Candidates Achim Hanne If you have paid any attention to international media over the past few weeks, one British by-election may have caught your eye. Nigel Farage, leader of the far-right Reform UK Party and MP for Clacton since 2024, resigned his seat amid parliamentary scrutiny of his finances including an investigation into an undeclared £5 million ($11.54 million NZD) gift. He immediately announced that he would stand again in the resulting by-election, casting the contest as a chance to take on the establishment and demonstrate the strength of Reform at the polls. Instead, Farage spent the following month as an international laughing stock, facing not the Labour or Conservative parties but a far more powerful opponent: Count Binface.

Count Binface, decked out in a Darth Vader-style suit and cape, and wearing a silver bin-shaped helmet, describes himself as an intergalactic space warrior and leader of the ‘Recyclons,’ an alien race from the Planet Sigma IX. Behind the bin is British comedian and writer Jon Harvey, who first entered electoral politics in 2017 under a different name: Lord Buckethead. Harvey stood as the sci-fi villain against then-Prime Minister Theresa May, but a subsequent copyright dispute with the character’s creator forced him to retire the persona. After what Binface himself calls an unfortunate “battle on the planet Copyright,” Harvey re-emerged as Count Binface, standing against Boris Johnson in the 2019 general election and going on to contest a string of high-profile elections across the UK. His policies are similarly extraterrestrial. They have included nationalising the singer Adele, holding a referendum on whether Pluto should regain its status as a planet, and promising to build ‘at least one’ affordable house. In his free time, he claims to enjoy invading star systems and dominating inferior species (us?). He is also, perhaps unbelievably, a ‘joke candidate.’

Joke candidates have been a fixture of British elections for decades. One of the best-known pioneers was David Sutch, a rock musician better known as ‘Screaming Lord Sutch,’ who first stood for Parliament in 1963 and went on to contest dozens of elections under a succession of deliberately ridiculous party names. In 1982, Sutch and fellow eccentric politician Alan ‘Howling Laud’ Hope founded the Official Monster Raving Loony Party, which combined absurd policies, elaborate costumes, and political satire to poke fun at the seriousness of conventional

14 Features | Ahuatanga

election campaigns. Over the following decades, Sutch and other novelty candidates became familiar fixtures of British elections, offering voters everything from comic relief to a particularly conspicuous protest vote. But Britain does not have a monopoly on electoral absurdity: New Zealand has its own long history of political pranksters.

The Great Leap Backwards New Zealand's best-known joke party was the McGillicuddy Serious Party, which contested general, local, and student association elections from 1984 to 1999, promising a ‘great leap backwards’ to a de-industrialised society. It fielded a menagerie of weird and wonderful candidates, each bringing their own policy platform.

Tania Smeaton, the “bitch-goddess of Hamilton East,” for example, proposed sorting the male population into breeding stock and lifting stock. Other policies—including wiping New Zealand from every map in the world (a stunning success!), replacing money with chocolate fish, and banning electricity—came directly from the party leadership.

The McGillicuddies’ greatest electoral triumph came in the 1993 Tauranga by-election, triggered when Winston Peters resigned from both the National Party and Parliament before standing again as an independent. In an eerie preview of Farage’s recent clash with Count Binface, the major parties boycotted the contest, leaving McGillicuddy candidate Greg Pittams to finish a very distant second behind Peters.

The party never achieved genuine electoral success, and in 2000 its founder, Graeme Cairns, wound down the movement and submitted himself for punishment. Wearing little more than sackcloth and a giant LIAR sign, he was locked in stocks, pelted with rotten fruit, and lashed with silverbeet, rhubarb, and a cato’-nine-tails before entering self-imposed exile in Waikato.

McGillicuddy alumni would, however, eventually make it into Parliament. Metiria Turei, who had stood for the party in 1993 and 1999, entered parliament as a Green MP in 2002, and eventually served as co-leader from 2009 to her retirement from politics in 2017.

Street Fights and Silly Hats When Ian Brackenbury Channell—‘the Wizard of New Zealand’— moved to Canterbury from Australia in 1974, one of his stranger creations had already beaten him across the Tasman. Channell had founded ALF’s Imperial Army at the University of Melbourne in 1972, sending an officer ahead to establish its first Canterbury regiment the following year.

Wearing red British imperial uniforms, ALF’s practised “non-serious warfare,” clashing with a variety of rivals using flour bombs, porridge, and paper swords. Past opponents have included Young Labour, the Greens, ‘The Cthulhu Cultists,’ and the McGillicuddy Highland Army—the armed wing of the same McGillicuddy clan that formed the Serious Party. Branches of ALF’s Imperial Army still exist today.

These activities overlapped with another of the Wizard’s political projects: the Imperial British Conservative Party. Established in New Zealand in 1974, it stood for British imperialism “in the face of capitalism, globalisation and the distinct lack of culture in Christchurch,” and fielded candidates into the 1980s before largely disappearing from collective memory.

Now 93, the Wizard has largely faded from public view. After 23 years under contract to Christchurch City Council for “acts of wizardry and other wizard-like services,” his contract was ended in 2021 amid controversy over remarks he had made about women, although the council did not say those comments were the reason.

In 2008, the Bill and Ben Party contested the general election with a two-person ticket: television hosts Peter ‘Bill’ Linehan and Ben Boyce. Their central promise was to “promise to promise nothing,” in a response to mainstream parties that overpromised and delivered too little.

Placing ninth out of 19 parties in the nationwide party vote, neither entered Parliament. They did, however, claim the potentially greater honour of annoying Winston Peters, who reportedly took issue with one of their billboards: “Come on, you voted Winston in.” Somehow, this is already the second time Winston Peters has appeared in an article about joke parties.

The Bill and Ben Party has long since been deregistered, but Boyce remains active in New Zealand media, currently co-hosting The Hits Breakfast with Jono Pryor and Megan Papas.

In 2013, Ben Uffindell—founder of the satirical newspaper The Civilian—announced plans for the Civilian Party, partly poking fun at United Future after it temporarily fell below the 500-member threshold required for party registration. Once the Civilian Party itself secured enough members, however, the joke expanded. It was formally registered in 2014.

The party promised to declare New Zealand’s independence from Hamilton, replace the national anthem with the Space Jam theme, and land the first Australasian on the moon: “not to explore it, just someone we don’t like.” It came under fire after it received $33,000 in funding from the electoral commission, though Uffindell pointed out that, given the party had asked for $1 million, $33,000 was a pretty good deal.

Among Harford’s competitors was William Pennywize the Rewilding Clown, who pledged to revitalise public transport using giant tuna and revived moa. The Silly Hat Party is not registered to contest the party vote in the 2026 election, and Hardord has since left its umbrella altogether. He is now standing as the Alliance Party candidate in Wellington North.

The Punchline Nigel Farage won the recent Clacton by-election with over 60 percent of the vote, beating 33 other candidates in a record field of 34. But more than 9,000 people—26.9 percent of voters—still cast their ballots for Count Binface.

It may rank among the most embarrassing victories in British political history, with Farage rubbished (sorry) across the political spectrum and around the world. He did not even appear at the declaration, where he would have otherwise shared the stage with Binface, Nick the Incredible Flying Brick, and all the other toontown representatives. He may have won, but his clash with the tin can clearly left Nigel rattled.

It can be tempting to read this history and write joke candidates off as a sideshow. To a larger extent, their job is simply to inject something amusing into an otherwise boring process. But these figures can also play a meaningful role in our political system.

In the royal court, it was the fool’s job to satirise and critique the rich and powerful. Today, some part of that solemn responsibility has passed to the joke candidate. Because no matter how powerful an MP, a mayor, or a student union leader thinks they are, few things are better at puncturing political self-importance than forcing them to compete on exactly the same ballot as some joker with a silly hat and nothing better to do.

And there are two very important elections still to come this year. No obvious joke party has made it onto the registered-party list for the general election, but nominations for the 2027 VUWSA executive are about to open.

Like any election, both will hopefully be dynamic, spirited competitions between different visions for our communities. The candidates will have ideas about how to make this a better place for all of us, and they will compete for our hearts, our minds, and—most importantly—our votes.

But if all else fails? I’m sure you can find a tin-can wearing titan through whom to demonstrate your dissatisfaction.

Who knows? It may even be you.

Nominations for the VUWSA 2027 executive open 31 August at 9 a.m. and close 8 September at 4 p.m. Voting opens at 9 a.m. on 21 September, and closes at 11.30 a.m. on 24 September.

More recently, the Silly Hat Party (‘for a highly serious future’) contested the 2025 local elections in both Wellington and Dunedin. Party Consort and Wellington mayoral candidate Josh Harford promised ‘less jesting and more Joshing,’ a Courtney Place lazy river, and large sails to help de-wind Wellington. Like the McGillicuddies before them—whose jester branding the Silly Hats may have been inspired—they also promised to replace the New Zealand dollar with chocolate fish.

Ahuatanga | Features

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CASIMIR PULASKI DAY Elio Mikoi

remember being the caged birds that sing at first, he looked at the huge yew tree in my family's backyard the winter is coming, he must cut the branches now he remembered looking at the window and seeing the tree that used to have a lot of branches and now a few.

Whose fault is that? i don't know. that winter, he tried becoming a waiter at a breakfast place there was an attempt to serve plates, set tables, fix the chairs, bring out eggs and sausages, what do you want?

I really don't know. He doesn't know what to do with his hands but he liked the feeling of serving coffee and accidentally touching the hot coffee pots just to feel something. More than you like cutting the branches with careless effort using your gloved hands?

Yes, maybe, I don't know. He liked flipping the pancakes, the bacon, flipping the chairs, and watching the place fill with hungry people yet to calm their minds with coffee. He liked the orange juice and whitewashed window sills and waxed floors gleaming against the lights.

I wanted to be delicate and empathetic.

That sounds overly something like a monk or a priest would do.

Like a penance or a confession. Father, Mother, I have sinned, please forgive me. And my hands, these hands what have they done?

His hands kept on becoming birds and flying away from me and he remained as the lonely goldfinch behind the cage his father placed on that yew tree. Him being you. You are him. And the birds are still you but who are you to them?

The threeness of things. do you love who you are today? yes, no, maybe so. he doesn't have to answer that but it should matter. he has a body, he has a face, he has the beauty that men and women alike envied- it doesn't matter. there were clean sheets on top of his bed, there were soft cottony pillows that held the mass of his head, it doesn't matter. it was during the day he lamented his melancholy whores. wearing the little black dress from his mother's cabinet, stealing the black veil his sister wore in every Sunday church service he looked at the mirror and he liked what he saw, it doesn't matter. he wore his father's too-big-suit with a black hand-me-down necktie he looked at the mirror and he still liked what he saw, it doesn't matter. you missed the point: the mirror is a little judas and the face in the mirror is still a little traitor, the pale body and the languid face were the reflections of a naked hostage wanting to be out but no one can tell which room he was staying in. he was still inside the cage. he wanted to be in, he wanted to be outside, he wanted to fly around and follow his birds, he wanted the key. he stood in front of the mirror with the key in one hand and the cage in the other acting as a scale of justice- his eyes were covered with white silk acting like a blindfold. he wanted to move forward when the moon rose from her sleep because that was the only choice to be free. perhaps everyone in this cage got here somehow and maybe someday everyone will have to leave. everyone being him. so what's left? to celebrate the day when the suicide society of poets was tasked to sing about the cage he was in? only he knew why the caged goldfinch sings. the voice of the bird wanted to be heard as much as he wanted to be a hand and the hand wanted to do something artistic that would challenge the greatest minds.

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Creative Writing

but what did you really want? someone to pass time with me. i know you wanted more i want to have what everyone has and wants and needs he raised his head to see the moon looking at his begging eyes cue the lyres of the angels dancing gracefully on the fallen ground, and the violins played by the street performers. that's what they are for. and yes, he craned his swan-like neck to bask the dramatic warmth of the city lights acting as the moon.

To whom does the moon beautifully belong? no one really.

Is there anybody else? maybe the boy with the shepherd curls who is now standing in the middle of the artists' park with me. right-hand lies, left-hand truths, any way the wind still blows but it doesn't really matter now, does it? the wind makes noises like the pangs of a drummer boy on his soft-skinned drums. just like how pains make noises and so does a cry when no one can help are you sure there's no one else? the boy holding my hand responded as my beloved twin he aches what my heart aches and speaks to me in a language that only the two of us can understand his dark curls mixed with the mess of my own as i shuddered in tears against his shoulder. in the morning when the sun goes up and the light passed directly to our bodies sleeping on the park bench, coloring the naked shoulders his hands caught the birds of my hands and freed the goldfinch behind the cage that was holding me barred the birds that used to fly and run away from me. that was when i realized that eventually, all birds must land. this reality is someone else's fiction. the world is not for boys like us.

Creative Writing

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24 Comic Corner | Kōmeke

ny o ma e's s how Ther ! ns optio ossibly ip can e... decid

and what the hell is this party...

this party is completely out of touch...

GO BACK TO YOUR OWN COUNTRY!!! well, what i'd say to you is...

i have no idea what this party even stands for... in a distant dystopian TIMELINE... his ? t is t wha z' party n e d g l n u a o h c 'c bad how ey be? th

Kōmeke | Comic Corner 25

CHRISTOPHER NOLAN’S THE ODYSSEY AND HIS CANONIC T R E AT M E N T O F F E M A L E C H A R A C T E R Z A R A LY N E The Odyssey: I’m sure you’ve heard of it, because everyone everywhere seems to be talking about it! Each day, thousands of people flock to their local cinemas to see Christopher Nolan’s newest spectacle. The threehour Greek epic currently sits at a 4.4 on Letterboxd and has become the fastest film in history to reach one million views on their app. I’m sure many of you have also heard about the purpose-built 70mm IMAX camera it was shot on, the mirrors and brand-new sound system designed to make it possible, and the star-studded cast. So yes, it is quite a big deal. If we ignore Nolan playing fast and loose with Homer’s original text and some of the questionable dialogue, Matt Damon, Tom Holland, and Robert Pattinson shine as strong, masculine characters, driving the plot forward and delivering the most forefront performances as The Odyssey’s central figures.

The actresses are wonderful too, I’m sure we can all agree. Anne Hathaway, Lupita Nyong'o, Zendaya, and Samantha Morton really commit to their roles, yet their characters did not drive the film’s plot forward as much as the male characters did. In fact, it seems that every female character in The Odyssey is secondary to or defined by a male counterpart. Instead of functioning as individual, intelligent beings, Penelope, Athena, Melantho, Calypso, Helen, and others are minimised in order to support or yearn for the men around them. They remain stagnant and seem to desire nothing more than peace between men, romantic love, or motherhood. These may be lovely things

26 Arts + Culture | Ahurea

to desire, but why is this all they are destined for? As a modern and highly decorated filmmaker, is it not rather shocking that Nolan chooses to portray female characters in this way, using them as plot props?

Maybe it is unfair to comment on gender politics in The Odyssey. The story was written nearly 2700 years ago in Ancient Greece, where women were considered far from warriors unless they were Goddesses.

Perhaps Nolan was solely staying true to Homer’s text and representing female characters in the way the author intended. In order to know for sure whether The Odyssey is an outlier, we have to dive into Nolan’s filmography. Take Tenet, for example. The story follows the main character, aptly named Protagonist, and the mysterious organisation he is a part of. Protagonist, with the help of his friend Neil, learns to manipulate the current of time in order to stop Sator from ending the world. Another very male-centric story, Tenet gives all of its starring roles to men. Kat is the only notable woman in the film. At first, we are invited to view her as mildly clever and slightly haughty. Yet, as the story unfolds, Kat becomes a liability. She loses her tough exterior and is revealed to be pathetic, helplessly in love, overly emotional, and seemingly unable to desire much beyond motherhood. She does not drive or help the plot in any way other than being a love interest for Protagonist. Kat is used as a prop to aid her male counterpart in showing his softer and more impressive side, because next to Kat, anyone seems impressive.

Oppenheimer—one half of the Barbenheimer phenomenon that had us all in a chokehold back in 2023—is also very revealing about the way that Nolan writes women. Kitty, whose real-life counterpart was known to be very intelligent, is introduced to us as a cheating, drunken mess. Her identity is built around her affairs, divorces, and barely acknowledged post-natal depression. Kitty is given one brief moment to shine in the entire three-hour film, but is quickly put back in her box as Oppenheimer’s amenable wife. Jean, Oppenheimer’s lover, is not treated with any more dignity. A brilliant psychoanalyst in real life, Jean is given limited screentime, which is used to portray her as a nymphomaniac. She is almost always naked and then is killed off almost as quickly as she comes onto the screen. Both women serve as sexual and domestic fantasies for the film’s male lead, causing their intelligence and personalities to be sidelined.

We can also look at Interstellar, in my opinion Nolan’s best work. We see a visually and emotionally captivating movie which broadens your mind and breaks your heart, but we also see female characters that work to serve men and reject logic as soon as they feel the spark of love. In Batman Begins, Rachel Dawes is totally unmemorable and exists as a desperate, weak love interest to give Bruce something to lose. In Memento, the female characters are either saintly homemakers or whorish devils. Regardless of which category they fall into, they are totally one-dimensional. And, if we want to go to the extreme, we can look at Dunkirk, which does not even have any female characters. Not even one! Many of Nolan’s films are littered with dead wives and lovers, damsels in distress, or yearning harlots, as though the suffering of a woman makes a male lead more manly. All of these examples and more recur uncomfortably often throughout his films.

There is clearly an issue here.

I’d like to be clear in stating that male-centric stories are not inherently bad simply because they follow men. The Lord of The Rings is one of the best trilogies ever made, and it BARELY passes the Bechdel Test.

Some male writers or filmmakers may choose to only write or show male characters because they want to draw from their own experiences, just as some female writers and filmmakers only tell stories from female perspectives. This is not intrinsically bad. However, an issue arises when female characters are only used as devices to frame male characters; an issue arises when these female characters are not given desires, opinions, strengths, or autonomy beyond that of very harmful and outdated stereotypes. Just because a story is male-focused it does not mean a female character is automatically destined to be soleless and ambitionless.

In the 21st century, where women are apparently as equal to men as they ever have been, this style of writing still appears to be acceptable. In fact, it is the standard in most Hollywood blockbusters.

grows from poorly represented female characters.

Unfortunately, life does indeed imitate art. At least three million people have already seen The Odyssey, meaning that at least three million people have understood and accepted its female characters being defined by male characters. I include myself in this as someone who enjoyed the movie before critically engaging with its gendered ramifications.

When a man like Nolan—with such a grasp over his audience and of cinema as a tool to create and influence—writes modern films with the steadfast desire to use women as devices to explain and promote men, then we start to learn from his art.

Subconsciously, we start to accept that this is okay. We start to understand that a woman’s place on the screen is either to support her man, to fall in love, to ruin things with her emotions, or to raise her family. How damaging is that for the way we view real women in our societies? This doesn't occur only in Nolan’s films, either. Thousands of films decentre women and do not give them the same volition as men, sometimes even adding women solely to tick the diversity box or to provide a sex symbol. More often than not, this does not go the other way.

This subtle misogyny is not just a side effect of filmmaking and screenwriting: it is a choice. Stories like Little Women and The Hunger Games display excellent female leads. They too fall in love, want families, and support the men around them, but those are the least interesting things about them. So, surprise surprise, it is possible to write well-rounded and compelling female characters if you choose to. Unfortunately, writers like Nolan are choosing not to. If these filmic platforms are already given mostly to men, and most of these men write stories that take away female autonomy and identity, then we are living in a world where art does not serve or adequately represent 50 percent of the population. I cannot understand this to be acceptable, even in a spectacular film like The Odyssey.

Nolan’s treatment of female characters certainly does not invalidate the rest of his artistic genius. I also don’t agree that he is a hardcore misogynist, as others may suggest. Instead, his films subtly display the intergenerational, longstanding idea that a woman’s place is beside, or defined by, her male counterpart.

And when we watch a film like The Odyssey and do not pick up on or call this out, we allow ourselves to be swept into this stereotype as well, causing it to spiral onwards into future generations and perpetuating the view that women are secondary to men. We become part of the problem which de-centres women and subconsciously drives a wedge through the society we rely upon.

So why is this a problem if films aren’t real? I think the main issue—though art imitating real-life gender imbalance is still a valid concern—lies less in that imitation and more in the sense of anti-mimesis that

Ahurea | Arts + Culture 27

A FEED FOR F*CK ALL guy van egmond

Caffe L’Affare What: Get Smashed burger Price: $10.00 Remarkable price, unremarkable burger.

At $17 below this year’s average burger price, the Get Smashed from Caffe L’Affare was off to a good start. Plenty of other people agreed: the line for a table here was out the door when I arrived at lunchtime. Inside, the kitchen was churning out burgers; a long row of white-and-red-checked paper trays was lined up on the counter for service. Certainly a quantity-based approach to the festival.

If the gingham serviettes weren’t a giveaway, this burger was pretty classic. A shiny brioche bun and a thin, charred beef patty, with some squares of orange cheese on top and a tangy red sauce, plus salty shoestring fries. However, the burger was advertised as also having pickles and a creamy housemade burger sauce, which were both missing.

Instead, L’Affare walked a worst-of-both-worlds line. They tried to sell a fastfood cheeseburger out of a gourmet kitchen, creating a demand that they couldn’t meet. At the same time, it was also meant to be a unique festival burger, except its only bell or whistle was being cheaper than (almost) everyone else.

This left everything resting on the quality production of its few ingredients, which, at the same time, had to be produced in great quantities…

But, credit where credit is due, L’Affare were by far the cheapest true burger. I hope the festival was lucrative for them, and that they might have started a new race-to-the-bottom competition for the best affordable Burger Wellington.

Lucky 8 What: Hao Good gua bao Price: $8.88 Coming up from the bottom with a hefty punch of flavour.

Lucky 8 has always struck me as a bit of a fad: trying to be edgy and affordable with dishes for $8.88, of which you then need to order at least four to make a meal. Granted, I’d never been.

Not until they released their Burger Wellington, which took out the top of the festival’s price list (the top, at least, when you sort by price low-to-high). I was ready to be catfished, to be served a single morsel put together with tweezers and be left with just a fleeting memory to review. Pleasantly, this was not the case.

Photo by Guy van Egmond

Also missing was any sort of backbone to the bun. As soon as I picked it up, the bread deflated and the burger sagged in height by half, to be not much taller than a hefty sandwich. The patty itself was very thin and aggressively overseasoned, the red sauce too sharp and the thin slices of cheese vanished amongst it all. It didn’t seem like the kitchen was well set up for the demand that this bargain burger had created and were rushing to get them out. Neither prepared, it seemed, were the front of house, who were brusque and curt as they raced around the cafe. Had the Get Smashed been part of a meal, maybe in the form of a couple sliders or simply a cheaper burger, this kind of quality would have been excusable. Or, if they had gone the other way and charged, say, $13 for something made with more care or design, it might also have worked.

28 Columns | Tīwae

Photo by Sophie Spencer

The Hao Good gua bao was the size of a small bread roll, the ones that come in packs of twelve from the supermarket.

Already better than expected. The milk bao dough was springy and soft, contrasting delightfully with the fried spring-rollstyle parcel that filled it, which shattered as I bit through it.

Inside this was a delicious, rich wagyu brisket with gouda cheese, while the rest of the filling was comprised of a chunky

mango chutney, lettuce and arugula, and—though it wasn’t on the menu—I swear that there was some sort of kaffir leaf mayonnaise as well.

Buoy slider wasn’t some secretly great-value deal; it was in line with the rest of their menu, with beautiful ingredients served in a very small portion.

Regardless, it was divine. The silky kaffir sauce wafted around you even before you bit down and was the first flavour on the palate, pairing surprisingly well with the deeply savoury, meaty brisket. Here and there would be a pop of sweetness as you bit through cubes of jammy mango, while the pillowy bao and brittle fried pastry kept things texturally interesting.

It was an excellent play of contrasts, with very individually strong flavours that paired together brilliantly.

Photo by Sophie Spencer

Photo by Sophie Spencer

It was—as mini burgers go—quite filling, the steamed dough being more dense than an ordinary bread bun and having a reasonably-sized portion of meat filling. I was very happy to be surprised here, and will have to conclude that this was my favourite burger this year.

Graze Wine Bar What: Yea Buoy Slider Price: $15.00 A nice Filet-o-Fish at nouvelle value.

Kelburn’s Graze Wine Bar is not a contender that I would expect to appear on the Munch Burger Wellington list. They’re the kind of place that sells oysters and gets Michelin commendations. They work with small-scale, local providers to produce a menu of small sharing dishes that will cost you around $25–$30 a plate.

But they also offered the third cheapest burger of this year’s WOAP season at $15 (tied with the Interislander Ferry, whose Ferry Tale burger I wasn’t able to get to). That said, their Yea

The slider was less than the size of a soda can and dwarfed by the glass fish dish that it came on. The full-sized knife and fork I was given was a good gag too, as if I’d need to cut this slider down into manageable pieces. Size aside, it was a tidy looking burger. The potato pretzel bun had a glossy sheen to it, and the steel skewer through the middle was hard at work keeping all the contents of this tall slider together. In no particular order, there was: a patty of butterfish and octopus chorizo, a mussel fritter, butterfish skin crackling, cured pāua, a smoked kina and tomato custard, smoked gouda, and a slice of pickle.

Not that I would have been able to distinguish all those flavours on their own; I couldn’t do so despite knowing what I was supposed to be tasting. Theoretically, I was looking forward to a kind of smoky, rich but sharp, tomato-seafood paella experience. In practice, it was just a nice fish burger.

The bun was malty and a little dense, but springy like a good pretzel should be. The mix of fish and shellfish meat was well balanced, being light and flavourful: buttery with a hint of smoke and brine. This was well supported by the smoked gouda and the tomato custard, adding a smooth richness, while the tomato and the pickle cut through this for a note of brightness. The butterfish crackling was overpowered in this medley and went soft quickly; I would have served a couple of those separately instead, like an avant-garde side of chips.

To no one’s great surprise, the high-end Kelburn wine bar did not, in fact, offer a secretly-great-value burger for students, but a tasty, gastronomic side dish to go with a half-dozen oysters and a bottle of riesling.

Did you try the Interislander Ferry Tale? Were the Puku Pies burgers secretly incredible value? Or are you an offended die-hard L’Affare fan? Send me something to chew on at: guy@salient.org.nz

Christopher Curtis Three more Ciph’s Cabinets to go, and as we head towards that final push of the end of the year, I figured I'd cover various pick-up-and-play titles to help you pace and break up the study grind.

With that said, I’m not terribly big on visual novels or puzzle games. There are a couple exceptions, but generally they feel a little too monotonous or repetitive to hold my interest. So imagine my surprise when Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective came out of nowhere with a fast pace, downright enthralling story, and… okay, not the most in-depth puzzles, but clever enough to make you feel accomplished chapter after chapter.

Right from the jump, Ghost Trick captures your interest. The initial concept of being a ghost able to jump from object to object and manipulate them in various ways is simple on the surface, but the way the story utilises this simple mechanic is ingenious.

What initially starts as a journey to uncover protagonist Sissel’s ‘mystery of me’—who he was, who killed him, and why he was killed—quickly gave way to a much grander mystery that kept me coming back constantly. On this journey you will become involved in the stories of several colourful characters, many of whom start out dead, but with his titular ‘Ghost Tricks,’ Sissel can travel back in time and use his powers to possess and manipulate things to alter their fates. They’re fairly intuitive puzzles, and I doubt many players would be stuck on them for long, but they always do a good job of making you feel clever with some of the elaborate contraptions you concoct.

It’s a good thing we save these characters, too. While, personally, the gameplay is just alright, the people are the real joy of this experience. From reckless detective Lynne to Cabanela,

30 Columns | Tīwae

the police inspector who couldn’t move without glamour if he tried, there’s not a single character who wasn’t at least interesting. Every one of them, major or minor, has an important role to play, and traveling through telephone lines (yes, telephone lines) you will gradually uncover more and more about these people, Sissel’s mystery, and the conspiracy deeply linked to them all. It takes about 12 hours, roughly the same amount of in-universe time as the real time spent to see this story through to the end. It’s paced across 18 chapters, making it pretty breezy to wind down after a long day of study. Got me through some pretty long weeks at the start of this semester.

This week's game:

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective

Let me not wrap up without mentioning the game’s style, either. From start to finish, the aesthetic is on point; stunningly animated sprites originally rendered in 3D, thick outlined mugshots, and a soundtrack that just does not stop firing on all cylinders. Even if the game doesn’t sound like your thing, I implore you, please, give its soundtrack a listen. But also, like, totally check it out. It surprised me with the many directions its plot went and subverted my expectations of its genres constantly.

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective is available on PC, Xbox One and Series X/S, PlayStation 4 and 5, Nintendo Switch and Switch 2, and originally, Nintendo DS.

CHOOSE YOUR CHARACTER!

Gameplay: 5/10 Writing: 10/10 Aesthetic: 9/10

into a massive instrumental wash in what I can only describe as a musical jumpscare. It’s brilliant, though, for how this change-up is seeded earlier, in the chorus’ “incomplete” lyrics. “This is gonna kill me / Wait” is the refrain, and it's exactly where Bridgers was about to say “Wait” one last time that we’re dropped into new sonic territory and we find out what really awaits us: “Let’s go missing,” she commands.

Jackson McCarthy is Salient's Criticat-Large. His first book of poetry, Portrait, is out now with Auckland University Press. want to get in touch, tip me off, or rage at me electronically? jackson@salient.org.nz

Phoebe Bridgers: Lost Weekend An extremely moving, deeply impressive work of musical design from one of our most important living songwriters “Crying in a suit and tie / But you should see the other guy / One more time for old time’s sake / I’ll watch him get carried away.” There’s the formal attire, then the dad joke, then the adage; by the fourth line, we know we’re at the funeral. Gentle synths drone far back in the mix, a quiet needle drop sounds as though underwater or in slow motion; the vocal comes in, through an intense vocoder processor, up close—the soundstage is massive. As the verse continues—“Fist through the dry wall / I’m frozen in place / But not afraid”—the vocal starts to emerge from its electronic backing in a seriously impressive piece of sonic design, and by the chorus, we have our strongest sense yet of that particular feathery timbre, that instantly-recognisable voice. But, as this voice liberates itself from the machine, the couplet it sings is in many ways its most devastating yet: “When I am on the outside, watching / I am on the outside, watching.” It’s a beautifully redundant turn of phrase, which for me evokes something of “If I could give you the moon / I would give you the moon” from 2020’s Punisher, and evokes too a sense of speaking before thinking, emotion running its course ahead of syllogistic tautness.

So begins Lost Weekend, and so proceeds Lost Weekend.

Floating free from embodied experience, watching oneself from the outside, disaffection, violence, remembering and forgetting—these have been the domain of Phoebe Bridgers’ inimitable songbook since the start. But what marks Lost Weekend as a new turn in her art is the sheer looseness in her language here. Plenty of verses make sense at the local level, but coalesce rather impressionistically at the macro level. Lead single “Lost Boys,” for instance, seems full of cryptic meaning that Bridgers intentionally wards off speculation about. “This machine is killing me / I pretended it was make believe // Lost boys / Never grow up, never go home” goes the pre-chorus as it spills its truncated 6-bar phrase into an anthemic chorus. But you ask yourself, what machine? That aforementioned motorbike of the first verse? And what do lost boys have to do with it? Still, it’s anthemic, indeed—“Lost Boys” is about as far as Bridgers indulges her (considerable) skill for hook writing on this album; backed by a trumpet counter melody, the song too is conventionally structured. And so, as a lead single, it’s perhaps a bit of a misleading one. It finds a perfect antonym, structurally speaking, in the track that follows, “Kill Me,” which sets out as a guitar-led number trading verses and choruses, and then swerves

A doubleness of meaning marks all of the love songs on this album, and there are a pleasant many love songs. Love looks good on Bridgers, largely because it also looks terrifying—“Let’s go missing” is both a death wish and a suggestion of a secret little rendezvous. Later, on the exalting rocker “Bobby,” whose lyrics are shot through with violent imagery, she knows both that “This could be the end of wanting” and that “This could be the end,” full stop. We say we “fall” in love, after all, and the ensuing shock is what she captures on Lost Weekend. The musical material is similarly shocking, eclectic, large in scope. I’ve already mentioned the sudden changes in texture and dynamic (see “Kill Me,” “Lost Weekend”) and the clever way that instrumentals are recorded and mixed to evoke a massive space whose depth seems to be constantly changing (see “The Outside,” “Still Standing,” “I Can’t Wait”). And while this album is probably the most impressive musical construction that will be released this year on a sheer technical level, made by the best of the best on the finest of digital equipment, for me the overall effect is almost analogue, like switching channels on a TV or tuning a radio.

The other channel streaming parallel to boyfriend Bobby concerns Bridgers’ father. Boys are a major subject on the record, as the thread of love songs suggests, but the real lost boy is the one who’s no longer with us. He gets the finest song, “Still Standing,” which is harrowing and extremely moving as it recounts childhood memories of domestic violence and of feeling misunderstood. Like any good child of a difficult parent, Bridgers knows to “Thank [him] for everything” in the song’s final turn—and we know all too well by this point what that “everything” includes. But, crucially, we also know it to include Bridgers’ stubbornness, her backbone, her strong sense of self: she stood up to her father, and that made her who she is today.

The chorus comes as a dependent clause, attaching itself to all which came before; the guitar slides in, warm and capable—“But I am still standing / At the top of the stairs, turning red / Pound for pound in a prom dress.” The melody encircles itself, self-confident and easily tuneful—but with a missing downbeat in each measure. Its compelling mix of strutting and stumbling make this song one of Bridgers’ best.

The only thing missing on Lost Weekend, for me, is a more sustained meditation on the father figure.

“Panorama” begins with a long instrumental and then a short vocoder verse: it seems to introduce a kind of “second act” to the album for how it mirrors the opener, “The Outside.” But as this second half goes on, the love songs creep back in. It’s almost disconcerting—Bridgers is so known as contemporary music’s “indie sad girl”—and the other song that deals with her father, “As Above,” perhaps suffers from a touch more of that impressionistic style than is effective. That song’s set on an aeroplane as Bridgers travels (presumably) to her father’s funeral, and it swings between addressing Father and Boyfriend rather interchangeably (think less Sigmund Freud; more Lady Gaga’s “Speechless”).

Bridgers arrives at a powerful bridge in a full belt—“You won’t have to believe in magic / Leave it to me, and I’ll make it happen”—but the song thus far has not necessarily earned this climax by accumulation of tiny details or by sustained musical drive as she

so masterfully did on 2020’s “I Know The End.” Nonetheless, the sudden changes in temperature and elevation seem to be Bridgers’ point—the song’s literally set on an aeroplane—and Dad still haunts everything here on Lost Weekend; the album is dedicated to him, and its blown-out energy seems to orbit his ghostly presence.

Now I shall rattle off a list of names: Jack Antonoff, Alex G, and Ethan Gruska bring exceptional production work; Rob Moose is back with his sinewy and elegant string writing; Caroline Shaw contributes stunning vocal arrangements that teeter on the edge of cheesy in a way that only she can; Christian Lee Hutson plays an array of guitars beautifully. This is how I imagine Marvel fans felt going to see Avengers: Endgame. And on the namedropping note, there’s clearly a few lyrics here that reference Bridgers’ high-profile breakup with actor Paul Mescal and his new relationship with fellow songwriter Gracie Abrams. “She can pretend to be me / Since she took my place in my bed on that stage / I have not lost any sleep” are the lines in question. With their lack of ensuing or preceding explanation, they might be the first time that a Phoebe Bridgers lyric has needed a gloss, and are one of the few spots on this album where Bridgers’ cryptic approach doesn’t quite work. Of course, Bridgers has written before in dream-like imagery about real-life scenarios, but a song such as 2017’s “Motion Sickness” is a damn good piece of work whether or not you know or care that it’s about Ryan Adams.

So I should confess that it has taken me quite literally weeks to accept Lost Weekend for what it is: when you know Bridgers to be the kind of formal genius that can stir up a cup of tea until it brews a storm, it might take you a moment to permit her to do something different as she does on this album. These are deceptively simple songs dissolved into larger instrumental washes, and they purposefully ward off the kind of speculation that their often-cryptic lyrics seem to invite. It’s a tough line to tow for a songwriter because it risks dispelling its drooling, eager audience—but Bridgers pulls it off (there are lyrics here for us poets to enviously gawk at for years). There’ll be many surprises on the first listen to this impressive record, but what surprised me most was the faint but steady note of hope, “Never going back again” to when someone now-gone was still alive, and “Never going back again” too to where one suffered, was misunderstood, or detached from feeling. This lost weekend was only a lost weekend, and time pulls in one direction—until the music pulls us back.

Tīwae | Columns

31

Oh Yes, Oh No is where sex stories go to be judged. Was it hot? Was it a disaster? You decide.

All stories are submitted by readers, published anonymously, and guaranteed to make you say 'oh yes' or 'oh no'. Scan the QR code to submit your own and see if it makes the cut.

SALIENT

A D V IS O RENYT EXPLICIT CONT

After a really shitty day I went to the cemetery to have a cig then realised I forgot my lighter so I asked this random guy for his, but I was having trouble getting it to work cuz my hands were so cold and shaky so he closed his own hands around mine to steady me and honestly that was more intimate than like half my sexual encounters. submitted by anonmous

In my first year of Uni I was in the middle of a toxic hoe phase after splitting from an ex that cheated on me. It was a rough and messy era filled with tears. Until one night I was invited to go out clubbing with my cousin and her friends. When I arrived my cousin introduced me to this cute guy, I didn't think much of him until we were left alone and had a conversation. We ended up getting along really well and he invited me to smoke weed with him before going out. The rest of the night there was tension between us but none of us made the move. It wasn't until the next day he messaged and invited me to join him for lunch. We went to get sushi and headed back to his room to eat... it didn't take long till we were both butt naked going at it on his bed. It was the best sex I ever had. Now we have been together for almost 2 years and I love him so much. submitted by anonmous

Okay, folks, this is the story of how I lost my virginity (this year). First, a little about me is that I am AroAce. Now, you may be wondering to yourself, why is someone like you writing in the sex stories? All I have to say to that is god forbid a guy be drunk and horny. Anyway, this story starts like any good story, at the "after party cigarette", I decide to open my phone and scroll through the little orange and black app, and start talking to this dude who seems nice enough, and bc I had a little confidence boost from a fun plant, we agreed to pick me up and take me to his house. now was this extremely stupid, yes, but guess what, I'm still alive, so who cares. After a very silent car ride, we arrive at his place and start making out. He then starts to F**k me (although I did say yes when he asked me, it fricken hurt (which I was not expecting, thanks to my very bad High school sex ed), so it was not fun at all, but ya boy faked it like a champ). He c*ms, and then he just stops everything and orders me an Uber, not letting me c*m or anything (which, fricken rude). So for my first a**l experience, it was shit, but many firsts are ig. oh do you wanna know the worst part? 1) he was 15 years older than me and 2) he kept hitting his vape as we were f**king submitted by anonmous

Tīwae | Columns

33

general election ACROSS

DOWN

1 Brunch cocktail (6) 4 Like an election debate, or online message board (5) 8 Friend or buddy (3) 9 Go public with (3) 10 ___ and downs (3) 11 Plant firmly (5) 12 Popular condiment (5) 13 Uncooked or unprocessed (3) 14 Te Pātaka Toi Adam ___ Gallery (3) 16 The Iron _____, political metaphor from the 20th century (7) 17 Alpine cousin of the kākā (3) 18 Notable meeting between National and Act labelled "The ___ Tape Scandal" in 2011 (3) 21 Small digital icon or picture used in text messages (5) 23 44th US president (5) 24 Woman with a habit? (3) 25 Zip/zero/zilch (3) 26 Like political billboards, in brief (3) 27 Air BnB alternative (5) 28 Assignments (6)

1 With 2 & 8 down, NZ's voting system (5, 6, 12) 2 See 1 down 3 Luxon's Governmentin-waiting (6, 7) 4 Polling ups-anddowns (12) 5 Meddlers in foreign elections, like Prigozhin's 'Internet Research Agency' (7, 6) 6 What a waiter might give you (4) 7 First or last name of Wellington Central winner in 2024 (7) 8 See 1 down 15 Pink-ish colour found in the ACT party logo (7) 19 Home of Sarah Palin, who may have seen part of 5-down from her house? (6) 20 2024 Olympic Host City (5) 22 Swearing in (4) “General Election” Crossword Author is Nil Originally published in Salient, 2024

Comic by Hamish O'Connor

34 Puzzles | Panga

ladies only ACROSS

DOWN

1 Mouth organ (9) 5 Word that can precede cut, crust or jaw (5) 8 The Atacama and others; abandons (7) 10 Broad, tree-lined streets (7) 11 Where you'd find 23-Across (5,7) 14 1999 hit song featuring the women in the shaded squares (5,6,4) 16 California setting of a Netflix series that featured a zombie Drew Barrymore (5,7) 20 Cargo for a train (7) 21 See 19-Down 22 Raises; elevates (5) 23 Country whose capital translates to 'fair winds' (9)

1 Greek underworld, or the deity that dwells there (5) 2 Winfrey who interviewed Harry and Meghan in 2021 (5) 3 "___ not looking good..." (3) 4 Surviving without oxygen, like a microbe (9) 5 Second-hand item bought on a lot (4,3) 6 Come down in torrents (4) 7 Set aside; nature park (7) 9 Filmy, like stagnant water (6) 12 Sicilian volcano where, myth says, Vulcan's forge is (5,4) 13 Digging for gold or coal (6) 14 Aware, maybe while doing some colouring (7) 15 Particular citrus fruits (7) 17 1980 sci-fi classic featuring the Xenomorph (5) 18 Sailing; completely lost (2,3) 19 With 21-Across, star of 'The Big Lebowski' (4,7) 21 Massive (3)

“Ladies Only”Crossword Author is Puck

Panga | Puzzles

35

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COOKIECUTTER BAKINGTRAY ROLLINGPIN CHEESECAKE SPONGECAKE SHORTBREAD SPRINKLES CHOCOLATE LEMONZEST CROISSANT BREADLOAF PIECRUST FROSTING MERINGUE SPATULA CUPCAKE BROWNIE GANACHE VANILLA BRIOCHE PAVLOVA CARAMEL BUTTER MUFFIN PASTRY TOFFE FLOUR SUGAR CREAM DOUGH WHISK EGGS OVEN TART

mini tea time

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If you have a story, confession, or experience you’d like to share—whether it’s an anonymous crush, workplace drama, or something else entirely—you may submit it 08)),1 :+,6. using the QR code below.

3$675< 0,;(5 So 72))(( what's the tea this7,0(5 week? )/285 6/,&( 68*$5 There’s this guy that I ,&,1* see all the time on campus. He’s REALLY HOT. And he is always walking past me. I follow &5($0 (**6 him on instagram and we had each others snaps for a <($67 29(1 bit but he unadded me :( the conversation just wasn’t '28*+ 7$57 flowing, but I blame myself for that cause I become such an awkward person when I think someone is attractive.

I really want to add him again on snap but I don’t know if that’s weird or not… BUT HES SO PRETTY. - anonymous

would&UHDWHG XVLQJ WKH :RUG 6HDUFK *HQHUDWRU RQ you rather?

6XSHU 7HDFKHU :RUNVKHHWV ZZZ VXSHUWHDFKHUZRUNVKHHWV FRPLast weeks results:

VOTE

as the 1. Have a Chris r?

Prime Ministe

OR e else as 2. Have anyon r?

Prime Ministe

36 Puzzles | Panga

1. Never read Salient again?

85% 2. Never watch a movie again?

NOW!

15%

sign of the week Welcome to the puzzle page from Puzzhead, your resident Puzzler.

These puzzles are provided to be fun and challenging. The Salient team and our contributors aim for accuracy, but occasional errors may occur. If you notice an error, you may write to editor@salient.org.nz. Please note that our puzzlers and contributors are doing their best, and none are professionals or working on these puzzles full time. For the word find, words may appear diagonally and backwards. To access solutions for the crosswords and connections puzzles, scan the QR code next to Puzzhead.

set square x

= 73

6 = 9

N

x

x

N

= 32 x

+ x

D

= 6

To solve a Set Square, use arithmetic and logical reasoning. You are given a grid containing six sums: three reading across and three reading down. The arithmetic operations (division, multiplication, addition, and subtraction) are shown between the grid spaces. Place each of the numbers 1 to 9 exactly once into the grid so that all six sums are correct. Note that calculations are carried out in left-to-right order, not according to BEDMAS.

Y O

U

S = 12

= 59

Notes:

word wheel +

x

follow me · whai mai

U L

To solve Word Wheels, form words of four letters or more using the letters in the nineletter wheel. Every word must include the central letter. Each letter may be used only as many times as it appears in the wheel.

The aim is to find as many valid words as possible from the target word list, including the nine-letter word that uses all the letters.

21 possible words

connections To solve connections, group the sixteen words into four sets of four based on a shared connection. Each word belongs in only one group.

Continue until all four groups are identified. On our website, the groupings are uploaded one at a time, so if you get stuck, you can view the answer for a single connection without revealing the full solution.

TRIGGER

CHANNEL

ROUTE

BOUNDARY

TIP

COPING

DRAFT

STREAM

PROTOTYPE

MODEL

POINT

ATTACHMENT

EDGE

PIPE

CORNER

CUT Panga | Puzzles

37

aries

taurus

Your campaign is gaining momentum.

Pick one promise, back yourself loudly, and stop wasting airtime debating people committed to misunderstanding.

Stability is your strongest policy. Protect your peace, count your resources, and ignore anyone selling turmoil as political challenge.

Do: reproduce, pen, opinion Don’t: whip, escape, accident

Do: trainer, funny, recognize Don’t: innocent, protest, laboratory

leo

virgo

You have the room, candidate. Give the speech, work the crowd, but remember charisma without substance is just campaign merchandise destined for the landfill.

Audit your promises before making more.

Clean messaging, deadlines, and quietly fixing your messes will win tomorrow's confidence vote.

Do: punch, football, race Don’t: deer, output, pressure

Do: drawing, stumble, rotten Don’t: broccoli, abolish, process

sagittarius The campaign bus is leaving. Chase the constituency, pitch the idea you care about, and avoid making promises you cannot deliver.

Do: colleague, muscle, register Don’t: trouser, wave, owe

38

Horoscopes

capricorn Build your cabinet carefully. Competence beats applause, longterm thinking beats slogans, and boring groundwork remains annoyingly effective at finishing what you’ve started.

Do: wrap, uniform, hotdog Don’t: arrest, trip, theory

Strange travellers from distant constellations have beamed you up to the Mothership to deliver some good news and hard truths.

Consider the gravity of their words (or don't).

gemini

cancer

Two manifestos are circulating in your head.

Hear both sides, factcheck the gossip, then vote for whichever future feels more reasonable.

Policy dominates your ballot. Back the people who respect your boundaries, invest in your comfort, and stop being afraid to say you care.

Do: steep, spray, royalty Don’t: grief, shere, uncle

Do: visual, interest, barrel Don’t: narrow, deposit, biology

libra

scorpio

Coalition talks are underway in your heart.

Compromise, hold bottom lines, and stop commissioning polls before choosing yourself at this time.

Your opposition research is excellent today. Trust your instincts, question motives, and remember not every silence needs a public justification.

Do: field, manufacturer, cellar Don’t: row, lie, dive

Do: feign, copper, reject Don’t: debut, module, facade

aquarius Your weirdest policy might have legs.

Challenge stale ideas, organise those thoughts, and campaign for ideas that you believe in.

Do: car, throne, reproduction Don’t: cattle, recycle, advice

pisces Your polling is emotional, unscientific, and useful.

Ignore outrage, trust compassion, and work toward the future that is offering you hope.

Do: apathy, steel, scream Don’t: restoration, observer, admit

Current constellation

VIRGO August 23 September 22

Horoscopes

39

2026 Passionate about student issues and want to create change in your community?

Nominate yourself for the 2026 2025 Student Exec

202

6

! !

Y Y L L !!

P P Y Y PP L L A AP P P P A A

Nominations close at 8th September 4pm 10th

2026

For nominations and election info, head online to: vuwsa.org.nz/vuwsa-elections