Volume 80 | Issue 07

SALIENT

01 MAY 2017

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Editors — Tuioleloto Laura Toailoa and Tim Manktelow

Contact — editor@salient.org.nz 04 463 6766

Designers — Eun Sun Jeong and Ellyse Randrup

Level 2, Student Union Building Victoria University of Wellington PO Box 600, Wellington

News Editor — Brigid Quirke

Printing — Service Printers 258 Taranaki Street, Wellington

News Reporters — E A Tombs, Henry Juer, Sofia Roberts, Thomas Croskery, Tim Manktelow

Paper — Sun 90gsm Salient is printed on environmentally sustainable paper, with vegetable ink, and is completely FSC approved.

Feature Writers — Dan Kelly, Jasmine Koria, Geum Hye Kim

Typefaces — Wedge by Bruce Rotherham, Adobe Caslon Pro by Carol Twombly

Chief Sub-Editor — Georgia Lockie Distributor — Josephine Jelicich Section Editors — Annelise Bos (Podcast), Cameron Gray (Games), Finn Holland and Mathew Watkins (Film), Hanahiva Rose (Visual Art), Katie Meadows (Television), Kimberley McIvor (Books), Olly Clifton and Lauren Spring (Music), Sean Harbottle (Theatre) Contributors — Ben Leonard, Tessa Cullen, Alex Mark, Dani Pickering, Grace Carroll, Rory Lenihan-Ikin, Isabella Lenihan-Ikin, Pounamu Tipiwai Chambers, UniQ, Sharpay Xu, Emma Wollum, Sasha Beattie, Joe Morris, Jack Larsen, Nina Dyer, Kii and Tom, Puck, Aubergine and Celeste Advertising — Grace Gollan grace.gollan@vuwsa.org.nz 04 463 6982

About Us — Salient staff are employed by, but editorially independent from, the Victoria University of Wellington Students’ Association (VUWSA).

Salient is a member of, syndicated, and supported by the Aotearoa Student Press Association (ASPA).

Salient is partially funded by Victoria University students, through the student levy. Opinions expressed are not necessarily representative of those of VUWSA, ASPA, Service Printers, or the editorial staff.

Complaints — Please email editor@ salient.org.nz and if not satisfied with response contact VUWSA. Salient — 01 May, 2017 Volume 80, Issue 7

CONTRIBUTORS & COLOPHON

CONTENTS Editors’ Letter.......................................10 Notices..................................................7 Letters...................................................8 News Workers face hurdles to sell their services in Christchurch neighbourhood...................................12

General News.....................................14 Politics Political Round-Up.............................17 The Trump Front.................................17 The Party Line....................................18 Interview James Shaw.........................................19 Opinion Dear Mr James...................................22 — Grace Carroll Fear Not!............................................23 — Alex Mark and Dani Pickering

Columns Presidential Address............................24 VUWSA.............................................24 Te Ara Tauira......................................25 One Ocean..........................................25 Shit Chat............................................26 The Queer Agenda..............................28 Access Denied.....................................28 SWAT.................................................29 Postgrad Informer...............................29 From within the fallout zone..............30 Growth...............................................31

Features The Sun Also Rises: ANZAC and The End of the Day............................34 — Dan Kelly

Gallipoli, Magiagi, and me: Talking about the horrors of war......................38 — Jasmine Koria Not My President, But My Country..............................................43 — Geum Hye Kim

Arts Music..................................................48 Podcast...............................................51 Film....................................................52 Games................................................54 Television...........................................55 Food...................................................56 Creative Writing..................................57 Books..................................................58 Visual Art...........................................60 Puzzles................................................62 Horoscope..........................................63

NOTICES WATERSIDE KARORI AFC

Get paid to coach junior football!

Waterside Karori AFC is looking for coaches to help run trainings for its junior teams (ages 9–14). You would either lead a training or assist a parent coach, during an evening or over the weekend. We also have opportunities during the day to deliver coaching sessions at local schools, or with school holiday programmes. If you are keen on football, have experience in or are willing to learn about coaching, and are enthusiastic and enjoy engaging with kids, get in touch with us at coach@wkafc.org.nz.

VICTORIA ABROAD — STUDENT EXCHANGE OPPORTUNITIES

Why wait to go overseas after finishing your degree? GO ON EXCHANGE!Study in English, earn Victoria credit, get Studylink and grants, explore the world!

Find out more on our website: http://victoria.ac.nz/exchange Enjoy past students’ experiences and photos on Facebook: https://www. facebook.com/VictoriaAbroadNZ/ Information Sessions (resuming May 10): Every Wednesday at 12:50pm, Level Two, Easterfield Building.

Due to short staffing, office drop-in hours have been cancelled until May 9.

A listing in our notices section is free for all VUW students, VUWSA-affiliated clubs, and not-for-profit organisations. If you would like to post a notice please email editor@salient.org.nz and include NOTICE in the subject line. There is limited space in this section so notices will be prioritised at the discretion of the editors.

8

NOTICES REFUGEE BACKGROUND FOCUS GROUPS

We are a team of four postgraduate students who are conducting followup research into what support exists for refugee background students’ academic achievement at VUW. Tell the university how to best support you in your studies!

If you agree to join in our research, we promise we will do our best to make sure your voice is heard. It will be fun; you'll be able to meet other refugee background students and there will be yummy pizza!

May 10 and May 15, 12:00– 1:30pm, SU218

The research has been approved by the Victoria Human Ethics Committee. Your identity will be protected and your name will not be used in any publications arising from the research.

Wednesday, 1.00–3.00pm; Thursday & Friday, 10.30–12.00pm Website: http://victoria.ac.nz/exchange

CORRECTION

In Issue 06, we misprinted the title of the page work by Chevron Hassett.

The correct spelling is Mum with wakahuia. We’re deeply sorry for taking the mana away from such a great work with this mistake. We have changed this on Salient’s website.

A listing in our notices section is free for all VUW students, VUWSA-affiliated clubs, and not-for-profit organisations. If you would like to post a notice please email editor@salient.org.nz and include NOTICE in the subject line. There is limited space in this section so notices will be prioritised at the discretion of the editors.

If you don’t want to write for us — write to us!

Salient welcomes, encourages, and thrives on public debate. Send us your honest feedback, be it praise or polemics.

LETTERS

SUBJECT: THANKS TO CHEV! Kia ora Salient, Chevron’s photo of his mum was beautiful and has stuck with me over the break. The response from Kahu, I think, articulated why: “The interaction of Te Ao Māori and Te Ao Pākehā has a well documented conversation over many different realms of creativity. [...] As a single image, this photo is emotive, a face raised to enlightenment in Te Ao Mārama.” There is something transcendent, and something hopeful in the photo. I just wanted to say cheers for publishing it. The rest of the issue was great too!

David

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LETTERS SUBJECT: RE: VICUFO COLUMN I disagree with Cole Hutchinson's assertion that "as long as it is consenting (sic) and feels empowering to you, then it is feminist". Cole's argument would apply to many aspects of life that are harmful to the individual and society as a whole, eg smoking drugs: "I want to do it and it makes me feel great and powerful - omg I must be a feminist. Pass the bong."

Feminism is a movement advocating that women should be afforded the same legal, political and social rights as men. No more, no less. Of course women should be free to portray themselves as sexual beings, but many of the images of naked women used to sell perfume, music and so on are not promoting individualistic sexy thinking women.

It's just prurient anonymous sexualisation of the female body and promotion of an 'ideal' shape that doesn't reflect most women on the planet and may harm those who feel they don't measure up. By all means strip off to sell stuff if you want, but don't be surprised if the world focuses only on what you and your generation look like and not what you have to offer with your clothes on.

Pam

SUBJECT: YEP, THAT PAGE WAS HARD TO READ, SORRY… DIDN’T HAVE TO BE SO SAVAGE THO Dear Salient,

What the fuck. Why the fuck is your need to be arty so high that you think it’s a good idea to put black writing on a blue background. It’s unreadable. Who sits down and thinks to themselves “fuck me, know what could make salient even better this week?

No, not a decent sized, professional looking magazine you numpty, dark text over a darker background!” I get that this is Wellington and that the need to be alternative is so great that if you don’t wear pants that are at least 3 sizes too big, the urge to noose yourself is unbearable, but could you please at least make the magazine legible. Salient is only improving, but its aesthetic is so off putting that I’d rather not read it nine times out of ten. Speaking of numbers, cheers for the reminder of how to count on the cover of each magazine. I feel like were [sic] being cheated out of a good magazine by a poor designer who thinks fine art is different coloured numbers.

There’s nothing wrong with black text over white paper, honestly.

Regards,

Professor Finesser Letters must be received before 5pm on Tuesday for publication the following week. They must be 200 words or less. Pseudonyms are fine but all letters must include your real name, address, and telephone number — these will not be printed. Letters will not be corrected for spelling or grammar. However the Editors reserve the right to edit, abridge, or decline any letter without explanation.

Email: editor@salient.org.nz with “Letter to the Editor” in the subject line.

Post: Salient c/- Victoria University of Wellington Hand-delivered: Salient office, Level 3, Student Union Building (behind the Hunter Lounge).

Editors’ letter

ANZAC day was observed last Tuesday. It’s a commemoration I (Tim) am unsure how to approach. Distant family, brothers of grandparents, passed in WW2. Even more distant, unknown members passed in WW1. I never met them, they’re ghosts, absences in the family photos, the lack of a rub on the head when we rarely gathered altogether.

All dead are absent. That’s what make death profound, it is absolute.

The act of commemoration is the acknowledgement of absence but too often it feels that stone memorials are an attempt to plug the gaps, and the narratives told on the day draw cohesion to bridge the void — the larger than life figurines at Te Papa fill the place of those who passed.

But to what purpose?

The loss of human life in war or national conflict is a tragedy that I (Laura) have no immediate personal connection with. I don’t know of any family members who have died in World War battles or during the Mau Movement. War movies do a great job of eliciting empathy.

Watching a young white man be conscripted, leave his home, kiss his lover one last time, and face the horrors of death by gunshot or pneumonia is fucking heartbreaking.

When they come back with PTSD, I feel the horrible lasting effects of war.

My annoyance with these movies however stems from a frustration with the disproportionate lacking of narratives about other wars, genocides, and loss of civilian lives of non-white people. Mainstream media mention wars and atrocities around the world, but without the nuance that I’ve seen the World Wars, and indeed the Gallipoli Campaign, be treated with.

In his column, VUWSA President Rory Lenihan-Ikin insists that to truly honour the lives lost, we must look at the wider picture and causes of war to find ways to ensure we don’t repeat history’s mistakes.

— Tuioleloto Laura Toailoa and Tim Manktelow *** “Who do we honour today? Do we honour Te Puea Herangi, leader of the anti-conscription movement in the Waikato in World War One? Do we honour Rua Kenana? Do we honour the Mau, Samoa’s independence fighters gunned down by New Zealand troops?

When will we acknowledge and proclaim that white supremacy and militarism is at the heart of the NZ capitalist settler state?

When will we wake up about the historical amnesia over New Zealand's own land wars fought between 1863–64?”

— Te Ao Pritchard

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NEWS WORKERS FACE HURDLES TO SELL THEIR SERVICES IN CHRISTCHURCH NEIGHBOURHOOD GOVERNMENT KNIFES INTERNATIONAL STUDENT GRADUATES IN THE BACK UN TO RECEIVE SOUL SIGNIFICANT SUPPORT FOR FAIRER FARES CARE WORKERS WIN EQUAL PAY UPDATE: VUW FACULTY OF HEALTH PHARMAC TO NOT SUBSIDISE SANITARY ITEMS BOYCOTT RESTAURANT BRANDS; SUPPORT STRIKING WORKERS! DEATH OF WELLINGTON ICON

POLITICS POLITICAL ROUND-UP THE TRUMP FRONT THE PARTY LINE

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News

WORKERS FACE HURDLES TO SELL THEIR SERVICES IN CHRISTCHURCH NEIGHBOURHOOD

“Residents hope prostitute camera becomes permanent feature” — The Press, May 19, 2016.

“Prostitutes continue to plague Christchurch residents” — Stuff.co.nz, April 6, 2017.

“Prostitutes forcing Chch community into lockdown”

— Radio New Zealand, April 18, 2017.

The section of Manchester Street south of Bealey Avenue in Christchurch has been a well-known location for street-based sex workers for decades.

In the last five years, sex work activity has migrated to the north of Manchester Street into a more residential neighbourhood.

Since, residents have frequently complained about “disturbances” caused by sex workers and their customers.

The the Christchurch City Council Public Places bylaw prevents “commercial activity” in a public place without a council-issued permit.

This does not prevent people who offer a service, such as sex, from being present in a public place without a permit, although the actual exchange of sexual activity for money cannot take place in a public space.

Labour candidate for Christchurch Central, Duncan Webb, labelled this as “splitting hairs.”

“It’s like saying you can have an ice cream stand there on the street, advertise the ice cream there on the street, and that it’s not a commercial transaction if you go away and eat the ice cream somewhere private.”

Helen Beaumont, Head of Strategic Policy for Christchurch City Council, explained that it was less straightforward. “Mr Whippy usually has a van, with clear advertising, with a price list, in what is clearly a commercial exchange — but there are not those unambiguous cues with sex work.”

It is unclear why Webb chose the comparison of ice cream to describe sex workers, rather than more analogous provisions of services, such as labourers or tradespeople.

Webb said his concern is not about the sex work itself, but about “the byproducts of using the area for commercial use,” including littering, discarded condoms, arguments, and belligerent customers in a residential area. “It’s not St Kilda, it’s not K Road.”

He described the disturbances as “incredibly prevalent” and “really quite disruptive,” suggesting that there were incidents of varying frequencies — from a condom left on the footpath to “screaming matches at 2am” — on most days.

“These people come and go and their identities change, but it’s an ongoing problem.”

Catherine Healey from the New Zealand Prostitutes Collective (NZPC) expressed sympa-

13 thy for the residents, and acknowledged “a genuine tension” between the interests of different parties in the area. “We really encourage our girls to avoid those deeply residential areas [...] but it really is a tiny number of sex workers who are working in that area.”

She stressed that the NZPC wanted to work with the council and the community to resolve the disturbances, but suggested that media attention had “completely overplayed” the issue.

“There is a rich kind of description, a tone, used to talk about sex workers which overstates the prevalence of the disruption.”

While Webb was confident that the issues only stem from sex workers and their customers, Beaumont said that “council staff have observed drunk and disorderly conduct in those areas, from people heading home from a night out, which is just as disruptive and not necessarily tied to sex work. That is also unacceptable.”

The behaviour being complained about appears to be covered by existing legislation and bylaws, such as the Litter Act 1979, the Summary Offences Act 1981, and the Resource Management Act 1991.

Webb suggested that there was a “serious problem” with enforcement, which is why current legislation is not sufficient to prevent the disturbances. “The reality is, police do not think it is appropriate to attend callouts for these incidents in this area.”

Beaumont said that if residents were being disturbed by illegal activity the police were the appropriate avenue to pursue, and that the council is working alongside the police “to resolve enforcement issues.”

All parties agreed that part of a solution would include providing appropriate, safe, purpose built areas that are more attractive for sex workers and their customers. “The reality is that the real driver for this behaviour is the customers,” reflected Webb. In Switzerland and Germany, purpose built booths have been installed in designated areas to provide privacy and necessary amenities, such as rubbish bins and panic buttons if sex workers feel threatened.

The Public Places bylaw is currently under review, and is expected to be put out for public consultation in 2018. Beaumont said that the council was working with the community to pro-

News vide solutions, and that a range of options were being considered, including the establishment of special purpose areas. She stressed that the council’s concern is about better outcomes for “the whole community — and that community involves sex workers.”

While Webb insists that a regulatory approach preventing women from proffering their services in certain areas is necessary “as a last resort [...] which can help to protect a vulnerable group of people,” Healey is concerned that this kind of approach is a step backwards, not forwards. “We have long memories, which span decades of discrimination. When sex work was illegal [...] we saw this cycle of women being arrested, processed, discharged, paying their fines, then being back working. A regulatory approach just won’t work, in the same way now as it didn’t then.”

Webb said he was “trying to approach the issue in a value-neutral way,” although “it would be an issue of grave sadness to me, if someone I was close to was working in the sex industry.” Healey suggested that “although they say it’s not about the sex work, there is so much stigma surrounding the work we do — of course it is part of the consideration.”

The stigmatisation of sex workers is part of an ongoing battle, according to Healey. “What other sector of society would be treated in this way? We are literally treated like pieces of meat.”

“We acknowledge and agree that there is an issue here that needs to be resolved. But sex workers [...] are also facing hate, discrimination, and violence every day in these communities.”

Four street-based sex workers have been killed in Christchurch since 2008. There is no record of any resident being killed by a sex worker in Christchurch.

— Brigid Quirke

14 changes will have on international student graduates.

Graduates generally earn below $49,000, and there is “something like 100,000” international student graduates currently residing in New Zealand, and half of this figure are here due to the “pathway to resiProposed changes to immigration dence promised by the government,” law, announced on April 19, will MacLeod said.

“The politics of it are beautiful — require immigrants working in New Zealand to meet a “remuneration they have just stabbed thousands of threshold” to qualify as a “skilled international students very quietly and effectively in the back without migrant.”

Two remuneration thresholds them feeling the knife.”

An AUT graduate, originally will be introduced for Skilled Migrant Category (SMC) residence from India, disagreed with the applications, one at the median in- changes, highlighting the huge income of $48,859 for skilled jobs, vestment international students and another 1.5 times that at make through a New Zealand ed$73,299 for well-paid jobs consid- ucation, and how many graduates would fall into the lower pay bracket. ered low-skilled.

“After that, if the government is Changes will also see “lowskilled migrants” being limited to changing the rules [...] it makes it so three years living in New Zealand, difficult to settle down here.”

The graduate believed the changwith a stand-down period before apes will not help international student proval of a new visa.

Previously, Expressions of Inter- graduates gain jobs, as employers est (EOIs) from applicants were as- sometimes do not support their visessed with a point-based system ac- sas or residency bids. They called the cumulated from qualifications, work proposed changes “harsh and disapexperience, and job offers, following pointing.”

In a statement, Immigration selection from a fortnightly draw.

The SMC’s point allocation sys- New Zealand said the changes will tem for residence applications will “better manage immigration and also be rebalanced to further recog- improve the labour market contrinise skills in the 30–39 age group bution of temporary and permanent migration.” and high remuneration levels.

Public consultation on the changUnder prior arrangements, all applicants in varied age groups with es closes on May 21. a minimum of 140 points had their — Thomas Croskery EOIs selected. The government increased this to 160 points in October 2016.

UN TO RECEIVE SOUL Immigration Minister Michael Woodhouse said the government is committed to ensuring migration Members of the Save Our Unique “best supports the economy and the Landscape campaign (SOUL) have travelled to New York to seek interlabour market.”

Reasons for the changes include national recognition that a proposed the election, housing prices, and in- housing development on iwi land frastructure and transport pressures. in Auckland breaches indigenous Immigration adviser Iain Ma- people’s rights.

SOUL formed to protest Fletcher cLeod highlighted the impact the

GOVERNMENT KNIFES INTERNATIONAL STUDENT GRADUATES IN THE BACK

News NEWS Residential Limited’s plans to build 480 homes across 33 hectares at Ihuamātao, just north of Auckland airport.

Fletcher Residential gained permission to develop the land following its designation as a Special Housing Area for urban development in 2014.

For local iwi and hapū, this land, which is the oldest settlement in Auckland, has considerable wāhi tapu.

Last week, SOUL members Pania Newton and Delwyn Roberts travelled to New York to address the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) in particular to voice concerns surrounding alleged breaches of the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIPP), of which New Zealand is a full signatory.

Newton and Roberts will also be meeting with the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous People.

A representative from SOUL told Salient that “a statement from the UN acknowledging the breaches… will assist our plight to protect the land,” primarily through the “moral and political” pressure it will place on the government and the Auckland Council to act.

In particular, breaches have arisen from legislation that “fast tracks development of land [...] minimising the rights of indigenous (and other) people to object, negotiate, or disrupt” proposed development.

Addressing the UNPFII is not the final step for SOUL, who have applied to be heard at the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination forum in Geneva next month.

Local legal action continues to be pursued, including progressing a Waitangi Tribunal claim and proceedings in the Māori Land Court.

SOUL told Salient that they also intend to pursue claims in the En-

15 vironment Court and High Court, and are considering the possibility of judicial review.

“The fight continues.”

— E A Tombs

Bartlett. Bartlett argued that the sector’s low wages were due to it being a female dominated industry, and were in conflict with the Equal Pay Act. On July 1, depending on qualifications and experience, 55,000 workers across the sector will receive pay rises between 15 and 49 per cent.

SIGNIFICANT The significance of the pay rise SUPPORT FOR was explained by Health Minister FAIRER FARES Jonathan Coleman: “For the 20,000 workers currently on the minimum wage of $15.74 per hour, it means on More than 1700 submissions were July 1 they will move to at least $19 made on the Greater Wellington Re- per hour, a 21 per cent pay rise.” gional Council’s (GWRC) draft AnThe settlement includes pay rises nual Plan in support of fairer fares for workers who are above minimum for tertiary students in Wellington. wage and rewards those with qualifiVUWSA has led the campaign, cations and experience. which pushes for a 50% discount for Kristine Bartlett was encouraged tertiary students on all regional pub- to pursue the case by the E Tū Unlic transport. ion, who represent a range of indusVUWSA President Rory Leni- tries, from community support to han-Ikin described the response as engineering and mining. “overwhelming.”

Bartlett said she hoped the set“When the council has previ- tlement would help lift workers in ously shut down this idea, one of the the industry out of poverty. “I've seen reasons they used is that ratepayers them come to work sick, they haven't don’t want to subsidise one particu- been able to afford to go to doctors, lar group of users. [...] In fact, a lot I've seen them walk in the rain, I've of Wellingtonians were under the seen them come without lunch, and impression tertiary students already that's what breaks my heart. So this had access to adiscount.” will be a life changer.”

More than 400 of the 1700 subSalient spoke to a care worker missions were from ratepayers. who had worked in disability supThe GWRC included a commit- port for 30 years, who said that the ment to “consider” a tertiary fare in low wage made her feel undervalued.

2018 in its draft Annual Plan, but She pointed out that her job VUWSA are hopeful that public dealt with emergency situations and support will convince councillors to was often multiple roles in one. “We make a more concrete commitment. were the cook, the cleaner, the driver, — Brigid Quirke doing the finances, giving the medication, doing the personal cares, arranging medical appointments, liaising with professionals and managers CARE WORKERS — all within an eight hour shift, and WIN all for $16 an hour!”

EQUAL PAY The government announced a new Pay Equity Bill on April 20 following the settlement, however this The New Zealand government has has been criticised by the Council of announced a $2 billion settlement Trade Unions as “undermining” the for care workers, after a lengthy court settlement.

The proposed Bill would narrow case led by aged-care worker Kristine

News the current “comparator” model under which Bartlett was able to compare her female dominated rest home sector to a male dominated industry to successfully argue her low wages were due to gender discrimination.

Labour leader Andrew Little suggested that the proposed changes “go against what the court has said was the correct way to approach pay equity,” and that if the legislation was in place at the time of the settlement, “the aged care deal wouldn't happen.”

Little said that, if elected into government in the 2017 election, Labour would legislate for a process that “makes it quicker and easier to get pay equity determinations,” citing the lengthy process that preceded the care worker's settlement.

The settlement did not include mental health workers, nurses, occupational therapists, and social workers, although the case set precedent for other female dominated industries to seek an equity claim.

— Sofia Roberts

UPDATE: VUW FACULTY OF HEALTH VUW’s Faculty of Health, which was established on January 1, has moved a step closer to providing courses for trimester one of 2018.

The proposed courses include a Bachelor of Health, a Graduate Certificate of Health, and a Graduate Diploma of Health.

They were approved in an Academic Board Meeting on April 11, but are still subject to secondary approval by the Committee on University Academic Programmes (CUAP) on July 13.

Prospective students will have a choice of five majors: Population Health, Policy, and Service Delivery; Health Promotion; Health Infor-

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News

matics; Health Software Development; and Health Psychology.

There is the future intention to include postgraduate programs, but they will be subject to a later CUAP proposal in 2018.

The Dean of the faculty, Gregory Coster, was unable to comment on the specific academic roles that will be included as part of the proposal.

However, effective May 1, the Graduate School of Nursing, Midwifery, and Health and the Health Services Research Centre, which was previously part of the School of Government, are part of the Faculty of Health.

According to the VUW staff directory, the Graduate School of Nursing, Midwifery, and Health has 15 academic staff and three professional staff.

Coster was able to comment on the orientation of the proposed courses, stating “we will be able to influence health service delivery and health policy and health management in the New Zealand context, and we have that opportunity because of the fact we are located in the capital city.”

“We need a health workforce that is appropriately trained to work in hospitals and communities to improve health care, but more than that we need better health policies, better health service, and better access for children and for aged cared.”

— Tim Manktelow

PHARMAC TO NOT SUBSIDISE SANITARY ITEMS Pharmac has rejected an application received in 2016 requesting subsidies to tampons and pads.

Legally, the agency can only fund medicines, medical devices, or products which provide “therapeutic benefits relating to a health need.”

Pharmac concluded that “san-

itary products are not medicines or medical devices,” and that the application “did not provide sufficient information” to show sanitary products helped address a health need.

Pharmac’s Director of Operations Sarah Fitt called menstruation a “normal bodily function,” which is why it did not fall within the scope of funding.

Other items currently subsidised

by Pharmac include flavoured condoms, vitamin tablets, and sunscreen.

Salvation Army’s head of social services, Pam Waugh, was disappointed by the decision, describing it as “a wasted opportunity” for Pharmac. She expressed concern for women who could contract serious infections due to the inaccessibility of suitable sanitary products.

Pharmac said it remained open to considering future applications targeting groups of women with specific health needs, including “certain menstrual conditions.”

— Brigid Quirke

currently below the living wage), provisions for redundancy pay, overtime allowances, and pay equity.

Last week, Restaurants Brands announced a profit of $26 million dollars after tax, a $2 million increase from the year prior.

Mike Treen, Unite Union’s national director, said that it was “appalling” that the large profit made

by Restaurant Brands was not seen by employees. “There is a real anger out there.”

“The chief executive needs to take the matter in hand and sort it... because the people he’s put in charge have created this dispute.”

— Henry Badenhorst Juer

DEATH OF WELLINGTON ICON

Oriental Bay’s famous dog, Bernie, died on April 19 following a terminal illness.

The ten-year old Bernese mountain dog was a prominent fixture BOYCOTT RESTAURANT outside Wellington’s Freyberg Pool on Oriental Parade, and the face of BRANDS; SUPPORT on the Bay café.

STRIKING WORKERS! Bernie's He was believed to have developed a growth in his lung which led to his death. The average life expecOver 2000 employees of Restaurant tancy for a Bernese mountain dog is Brands — the company that oper- six years. ates KFC, Pizza Hut, Carl’s Jr., and Bernie had been a poster-dog Starbucks in New Zealand — held to help raise funds for the SPCA’s strikes and picketed workplaces on relocation to the Fever Hospital, April 22, after Unite Union reject- featured in Wellington City Couned a collective agreement offer put cil’s event calendar, and won a 2013 forward by Restaurant Brands as Dominion Post poll on Wellington's “unacceptable.” favourite shop dog.

Unite Union proposed an annual Many Wellington residents wage increase of $0.10 an hour for took to social media to express their three years for Restaurant Brands’ condolences on hearing of Bernie’s lowest paid workers, which would death, with Wellington City Council take their wage to $0.30 above the Mayor Justin Lester tweeting, “Sadminimum wage by 2019. dened to hear the news this mornThis was declined by Restaurant ing that Bernie, Oriental Parade's Brands, who offered one $0.10 in- favourite resident has crossed the crease over three years.

Rainbow Bridge. #ripbernie.”

The strike action was also aimed — Brigid Quirke at shift supervisors’ pay (which is

17 17

POLITICAL ROUND-UP Pay equality Last week saw a huge win in the ongoing battle for gender pay equality.

Back in 2013, aged care worker Kristine Bartlett won a landmark case against her government-subsidised employer. Bartlett successfully argued that care workers are paid less because their industry is dominated by women. While Bartlett’s individual case was a success, its wider ramifications remained unclear.

Last week, however, the government announced its long awaited settlement package for the estimated 55,000 workers employed in state-subsidised care jobs. From July, the predominantly female workforce would receive a pay rise ranging from 15 to 49 per cent.

Bartlett’s own employment is a case study in just exactly how exploited care workers have been. Despite working in the industry for 25 years, Bartlett was being paid just barely above minimum wage at $16 an hour. Under the new rules, that will move up to $20 and on to $23 by 2021.

Prime Minister Bill English hailed the settlement as a victory, heaping praise on what he described as the “hardest-working but lowest paid” workers in the country. But with all the positive rhetoric it’s easy to forget that the government fought against this settlement to the bitter end.

Through Bartlett’s protracted legal battles the government opposed her case and supported her employer. After the Supreme Court made its final ruling on the matter they continued to fight in the lengthy settlement negotiation process that followed.

The irony was not lost on Labour leader Andrew Little, who said he was surprised to see the government was making a settlement at all. He

Politics News POLITICS said that while the pay increase was a positive step, it did not address the underlying issues of gender discrimination.

There is no doubt that the settlement is an important step toward pay equity, but concerns remain over the way it is remembered. This is a moment to be grateful to the women who fought to address these issues, not to the successive governments who stood in their way.

Immigration rules New Zealand’s working visa system looks set for major changes after an announcement from Immigration Minister Michael Woodhouse. The Minister announced the new restrictions last week, with a call to businesses to “work harder” to employ New Zealanders.

The proposal introduces new restrictions on the different types of work visas offered by the government.

The Skilled Migrant visa, for instance, currently allows qualifying migrants the right to work in New Zealand indefinitely. Under the proposed changes, those applying for the visa will now have to meet an income threshold of nearly $50,000 a year, even if their job type was previously considered “skilled.”

The Essential Skills work visa is also undergoing changes. Those entering the country on this type of permit will only be able to stay for three years, before being forced to leave and wait through a stand-down period before reapplying.

The proposal was met with strong criticism from the Opposition.

Labour leader Andrew Little said the changes did not go far enough in limiting immigration. He quizzically described the country as in need of an immigration “breather,” and promised to introduce even tougher restrictions to reduce pressure on infrastructure and health care.

New Zealand First’s Winston Peters said the changes showed that

the government lacked a clear immigration strategy. He called on the Minister to reduce immigration to 10,000 net per year.

While Opposition parties felt the changes did not go far enough, leaders from across a range of private industries feared that they were too restrictive.

International student advocates said that the changes were likely to put off prospective students looking to work in New Zealand after study.

These students brought in huge economic benefits, with international education one of the country's fastest growing markets.

Meanwhile, dairy farmers and produce growers say the changes could starve their industries of valuable seasonal labour that they struggle to find in New Zealand.

In response Mr Woodhouse described the changes as designed to challenge employers to take on more New Zealand workers. He claimed that record immigration was placing a heavy burden on taxpayers.

It’s little surprise that immigration has once again reared its head as a major election year issue. Political parties understand that immigration is an easy place to lay the blame for any number of issues. The question is where that leaves us once the dust of election day settles.

— Ben Leonard

THE TRUMP FRONT After a relaxing two week Trumpfree hiatus, we’re back at it again with your unwanted, page-filling, politically insulting, ego-enlarging Donnie news. As his 100th day in office has just passed, let us fleetingly traverse the escapades of Trump and his cronies in the past 14 days.

• Silly Spicy aka Sean Spicer, Trump’s White House Press Secretary told journalists at his

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daily press briefing on April 12 that “Hitler... didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons” when condemning the actions of Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

Hmmmm don’t know if you remember this lil thing called the Holocaust??? Where Hitler gassed over six million Jews with CHEMICAL weapons???

What an imbecile.

• Jeff Sessions, the US Attorney General, proved he didn’t take geography at high school when he stated on April 19 that he was “[…] amazed that a judge sitting on an island in the Pacific can issue an order that stops the president of the United States from what appears to be clearly his statutory and constitutional power,” after Hawaiian Federal Judge Derrick Watson blocked Trumpy’s racist lil travel ban.

Jeff, buddy. Hawaii is a part of America. Has been for over 55 years. Buy an atlas or please re-associate yourself with the phrase “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say it at all.”

• April 22 marked National Earth day. In order to celebrate and provide awareness on this event, what do you reckon DJ Trump did? He tweeted about it: “Today on Earth Day, we celebrate our beautiful forests, lakes and land. We stand committed to preserving the natural beauty of our nation. I am committed to keeping our air and water clean but always remember that economic growth enhances environmental protection. Jobs matter!” *insert dramatic eye roll #358* JOBS AREN’T GOING TO MATTER TRUMP OL’ MATE WHEN THERE IS NO EARTH LEFT TO INHABIT DUE TO THE INCREASED EFFECTS OF GLOBAL WARMING. — Tessa Cullen

that the predominantly female workforce in New Zealand’s aged and disability residential care and community support services are recognised On April 18 the government an- for their dedicated work, experience, nounced a $2 billion settlement for the and qualifications in a fair manner.

The Young Nats support the pay equity case brought before the courts

by Kristine Bartlett. Bartlett success- government’s decision to update the fully argued that the low wages she and Equal Pay Act and Employment many other care workers received were Relations Act to create a simpler and more structured process for women the result of gender discrimination. Acto file pay equity claims and allow cording to the Ministry of Women, the employers to respond to these more gender pay gap, the difference between effectively. women and men's earnings, was 12 per This National Government has cent in 2016. What measures need to be also created frameworks to support implemented to address this disparity? women into higher paid careers with tools such as the STEM Directory VicLabour announced in 2016. The joint leVicLabour celebrates the histor- gal and social action helps create a ic settlement for 55,000 low paid, robust program we are proud to mainly female, workers fought for stand behind to address pay disparity

by Kristine Bartlett and E Tū. It’s in NZ. time the government started actively valuing women's work and skills. Greens at Vic The government worked against this Women are being systematically case for over five years, and now it denied their right to equal wages as tries to claim it cares. If ever there sexist assumptions have driven down was a reason to join a union, this is it. the value of work traditionally done Unions are how workers collectively by women. No amount of feel-good address their issues, including those liberal tinkering can address this. that heavily affect women; unions are This disparity can only be properly feminist. addressed when workers are given Labour has long been aware of rightful control over their wages and the pay equity gap, and the last La- employment. Greens at Vic support bour government strove to address public and cooperative ownership it. “We still need to see a modern as well as measures to empower coland more effective system for deal- lective bargaining. We must secure a ing with pay equity claims, which living wage, a generous universal bais overdue years after National shut sic income, and a movement opposed down the pay equity unit set up un- to precarious work if we are to ever der a previous Labour Government” overcome the gender pay gap.

(Andrew Little, 2017). It’s finally — Julie Littlewood time in 2017 for the government to be held accountable, and follow through with updated pay equity If you are a representative of a youth principles. political group and wish to participate in this section, please email editor@ Young Nats — Lower North Island salient.org.nz The Young Nats were pleased to see the $2 billion pay equity announcement for healthcare workers from Prime Minister Bill English and Minister Jonathan Coleman on April 18. The announcement ensures

THE PARTY LINE

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• INTERVIEW WITH JAMES SHAW • James Shaw is a co-leader of the Green party. Salient sat down with him for nearly an hour to chat about policies, The Opportunities Party, and pie.

The extended transcript of this abridged interview can be found on our website, salient. org.nz, and you can listen to the full interview on Salient FM.

us a bit more “fiscal headroom” — some more money to play with. [...]

*** The Labour Party and the Green Party have agreed to Budget Responsibility Rules which will provide the foundation for fiscal management after the election.

For someone not familiar with the terminology and the way government expenditure is approved currently, could you run us through what these rules would practically mean?

How would you respond to comments from Sue Bradford, an ex-Green MP, who slammed this policy as the Green Party renouncing their left-wing base and attempting to appeal to voters in the centre and to the right of the spectrum, and in doing so “completely abandoning the huge number of people who are in desperate need in areas of housing, welfare, jobs, and education.”

There are five rules, which focus on debt, expenditure, revenue, taxation, and investment. The idea is that you devise a set of principles for the government when it comes to writing the budget, which sets expectations for ministers in government.

We did it in advance of the election because we wanted voters to know what they were getting with the shape of a Labour/Green government. It distinguishes us from the National government because it gives

A lot of people really like the Greens. They like our vision and our values, and to the extent that they understand them they like our policies. But they might be thinking, well how fast are you going to move? If there's going to be an adjustment, will the pain be fairly distributed? Can you run the economy? This was a signal to people to say, yes, we do plan to make these kinds of investments in a recognisable framework.

I disagree with and reject her analysis, on a couple of grounds. One of the things that we did when developing this was to road-test our policies from the 2014 campaign, and said “if we were to promise those things again this year, under this set of rules, would we still be able to?” And not only were we able to, we had even more room to move. So this is consistent with what we've said in the past.

Because we've been living in a neoliberal paradigm over the last 30 years, people have collapsed economics with neoliberalism, and cannot distinguish between the two. I think this document is more Keynesian, because it’s about counter-cyclical spending — the idea that you invest in a downturn and put money away when times are good. [...]

Fiscal conservatism and fiscal responsibility are not the same thing. Fiscal conservatives think you should cut expenditure when times are good and when they are bad. I would argue that during the 2008–2010 Global Financial Crisis, if the government had invested in housing, it would have injected money into the economy, created jobs, and added to the housing stock which would have helped to avoid the current housing crisis. That would have been the responsible thing to do, but it wasn’t the conservative thing to do.

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We were careful when creating these budget responsibility rules and we are absolutely confident that there is room to undergo a massive house building programme, invest in education, restore funding to DOC and health, as well as some of the new initiatives we are looking at.

The Green Party formed out of the Values Party which was started at VUW and became the Green Party for the election of 1990, and later joined the left-wing Alliance for the 1993 and 1996 election. It cohered to certain tenants of the Green Movement — environmentalism, nonviolence, social justice, and grassroots democracy. How do you feel the present iteration of the Green Party fits with this kaupapa?

All of those things still apply. The circumstances we are facing both as a country and as a planet are more grim now than they were when we were formed. If you track back to the ‘70s, a Green vote was a protest vote, in the sense that it was a First Past the Post system and it was impossible for those values to win seats. But it got something like 15% of the vote and was very, very popular. And that political philosophy was a new philosophy which arose from an appreciation that had grown about the limits to growth; so had quite a different worldview to capitalism and socialism and social democracy, although there are recognisable elements of all of those things in Green Party philosophy.

How would these different pie making philosophies be ironed out in the co-governance agreement?

Every coalition government has fundamental differences.

It's interesting; if you look at the RMA reforms Nick Smith is currently making a dog's breakfast of, all three of their coalition partners have had pretty fundamental disagreements — both with the National party's prescription and with each other. The Māori party are proposing one set of amendments and a model, and ACT and United Future are proposing the precise opposite. National essentially had to make a decision about what set of problems it would like to have.

We have a commitment to a stable, responsible government which will go the distance. And I kind of see this like a marriage.

When you're married, you've got a legal document, you've had a big party, you've told your friends and family that It seems important, given the nature of MMP, that there is this ideological separation so that voters who support the Green Party they can kick your arse if you screw it up, and you can expect them to stand for certain things that Labour can not.

What do you see as the fundamental differences between the Green might own property together.

So when things get tough, Party and Labour given the Memorandum of Understanding? it's quite hard to walk away from that relationship — The fundamental differences between the parties are that National says you have to grow the pie; Labour says you have you're heavily invested and if things get a bit shit, to divide the pie equally; and the Greens say, ultimately, the you've committed to size of the pie is determined by the size of the oven… and working things out. while you’re making pie, you should keep the oven clean otherwise you will all get food poisoning.

So we've gone from that, to being a parliamentary party, which was a big adjustment to make, and led to a real increase in professionalisation over the last twenty years.

Now we are on the verge of going into government, and that will be another change again, with its own tensions and responsibilities.

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If you're in a relationship and none of those other conditions are present — you don't have the legal document, your friends and family haven't been involved, you don't co-own property — it's a lot easier to say, "look, this isn't working out, I'll catch you later." That kind of bond isn't about when times are good; it's about when times are hard.

Ultimately, it's a numbers gave. If we fundamentally disagreed with Labour on something, we would have the ability to vote against it, and Labour would need to try and assemble a parliamentary majority to get it through.

And if there was something we fundamentally disagreed with, chances are it would be something Labour would more agree with the National party on, and they could go to other side of the house and get National to vote with them on the issue. Which is a normal kind of practice on non-partisan issues.

Ideologically, how would you delineate the Green Party from The Opportunities Party?

Their policy prescriptions are very close to ours, and in s ome cases are ours. I have known Gareth Morgan and Geoff Simmons for years. Their thinking — especially the stuff around taxing wealth rather than income, working towards a universal basic income, and climate policies — was quite influential on me. My sense is that Gareth is not aiming for the people who have been voting Green. He's trying to pitch to the blue/green vote. The people really concerned about inequality and the environment, but who prefer National to manage the economy.

Gareth, after the 2014 election, argued that the Green Party should be prepared to go with either side. I just don't think he likes the Labour party much! When we didn't do that, I think he felt a bit frustrated, and thought that [...] he'd like another 'Green' party in parliament that can, and will, co-govern with National and hold them to account in the same was that the Green Party see ourselves interacting with Labour. We know there are a lot of strong environmentalists and people with a social conscience who are frustrated with the lack of progress in National. [...] I think ultimately it's a question of political strategy. Gareth wants a Green Party who will go with National and we have said that we won't do that — so he's pursuing one himself.

And that's an entirely valid thing to do.

Interview

Lastly, what is your favourite colour?

It has actually become green.

When I was young, it as blue, brown, red — but these days I think, because I am so engrossed in protecting the natural environment, the colour’s associations are really strong for me.

— Brigid Quirke and Tim Manktelow

OPINION

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DEAR MR JAMES… The following article is written in response to an opinion piece, “Freedom of Speech”, which was published online only on April 20 — http:// salient.org.nz/2017/04/freedom-of-speech/.

Okay, I took the bait. Despite the possibility that your opinion piece “Freedom of Speech” (April 20, 2017) was actually satirical, I read it as a serious proposition and what follows is a serious response.

“Here is the crux of my argument: speech should be allowed on campus if it is factually correct, and if it serves the purpose as a societal conscience.”

Alright, but what’s “factual correctness”?

Mainstream definition lacking, I was enlightened by the scholarly Urban Dictionary which defined it as “a completely and utterly accurate statement… above dispute or debate.” Pop quiz: How much speech on campus can be said to be “factually correct”, according to that definition?

At a guess: not a lot. Welp.

Cue some context. Modern liberal education is driven by a combination of the Socratic “examined life” and Mill’s metaphorical “marketplace of ideas.”

University is a place of learning and discussion, a communal debating chamber necessarily entailing a friction of ideas, ideals, and identities.

Speech is obviously important in the service of conversation and debate, to tease out different experiences we have, meanings we draw from them, and how they compare with broader society. The “critic and conscience of society” is only enabled through the freedom to speak in a critical, but considered, fashion.

“I will put aside the claims that free speech in… universities is being threatened. This claim is baseless, and as someone who works and studies within the university environment I have never seen this exist.”

Yeah, well, that’s just like, your opinion, man. Or, perhaps, you’re in a confirmation

bias bubble. Your conclusion is heavily dependent on what your beliefs are, and the environment you seek to articulate them in, as to whether your free speech, as opposed to another’s, is under threat. “I’ll believe it when I see it,” right?

While I haven’t the word space to build a “factually correct” case for the existence of free speech woes at Victoria, there’s a broader issue at stake. The problem with shutting down discussion is that those silenced go underground to private discussion and thought. By not exposing opinions to criticism, they become entrenched because they aren’t challenged.

Before you mistake my point and lampoon me for being an apartheid supporter or worse, here’s the crux of my argument: the principle behind, and exercise of, the freedom of speech is not, and should not be, dependent on factual correctness; otherwise it cannot serve its purpose as a societal conscience.

Free speech balances its freedom to discuss with the responsibilities it necessarily entails: that ideas will always be subject to robust criticism instead of an unchallenged free-for-all. Perhaps that was your point, that free speech needs responsible exercise and accountability.

But you missed the mark. To adhere to your argument takes the real out of reality and the difference out of diversity that defines humanity. The challenge is to meet those differences we find impermissible or wrong and prudently draw conversation boundaries without defeating the purpose of the university and our studentship.

— Grace Carroll

Opinion

FEAR NOT!

OPINION OPINION

of tino rangatiratanga by the organisation as a whole and requiring (at a minimum) basic competency in tikanga Māori from UniQ executives.

Meanwhile, expediting any future successes on the university level is the fact that for the first time in history, queer students are recognised on VUW’s Equity Strategic Plan — the foundational document for universityprovided support. Several key goals have been set for the university on our behalf as a result, such as establishing a rainbow network for staff and students, founding a permanent queer space on campus, and generally increasing the visibility and support available to queer students at VUW. UniQ has also since joined a dialogue with Mauri Ora to help reform its usage of sex and gender in their records and practice, the availability and accessibility of its services to queer and trans students, and to improve education and understanding from medical staff on queer and trans issues that may arise when students seek medical care.

So if you read that column and felt a little pang of familiarity — fear not! There’s been lots in the works and more on the horizon.

UniQ’s got your back..

— Alex Mark and Dani Pickering, UniQ Victoria co-presidents

OPINION OPINION OPINION

After more than two years of helping to run UniQ Victoria, we know all too well the queer fear the anonymous writer spoke of in Issue 04 of Salient. Both coming from universities that had considerably more robust queer support structures in place, we transferred to Vic in 2014/2015 and were both shocked by how much work there was to be done on both a cultural and an institutional level.

The silver lining to this scenario? We came in with a pretty good idea of what needed to be done.

Among the first things we did was to move the lunch space to a regularly booked room, both for privacy’s sake and for the ability to hold structured discussions (which were staples at both of our previous universities). Attendance skyrocketed from a handful of regulars to dozens, and through them we were able to start figuring out the collective needs of the rainbow community at Vic. We discovered early on, for instance, that legal names were used on student rolls despite the existing “nickname” option that was in the enrolment system at the time. This was dangerous for trans students because of its capacity to out them to entire classrooms; for most, legal names are “deadnames” — that is, they are names that are no longer used because they no longer match a trans person’s gender identity.

Following well over a year of navigating bureaucratic red tape on this issue, we actually won. The enrolment system now asks for “preferred” names, which come up on student rolls for lectures and tutorials instead of legal names. We’re still working out the kinks, but it is a huge improvement from the constant risk of being outed that existed before.

Internally, we have also incorporated Te Tiriti o Waitangi into UniQ’s constitution at the 2016 AGM where no acknowledgment existed prior, mandating acknowledgment

OPINION

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PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS Like many other New Zealanders, ANZAC Day last week was a chance for me to remember my family members who fought and some of whom lost their lives in World War One. I attended the dawn service at Wellington’s cenotaph at Parliament alongside another exec member, and laid a wreath on behalf of VUWSA. At the top of my mind were the students, many of whom had barely opened their books before being marched down the hill to the wharf and sent off on a ship to war in 1914.

At the centre of ANZAC is doing exactly this — remembering the lives that were lost and sacrifices made. But in my opinion if we do this without also taking the opportunity to highlight the atrocities of war, question why New Zealand was there, and how we ensure this never happens again, we are not truly honouring those lost lives This is why I was really pleased to see Peace Action Wellington at the ceremony last week.

They did an extremely good job of participating in the wreath laying while also drawing some attention to the things mentioned above, including the civilian lives lost in the recent war in Afghanistan.

Many others at the ceremony, including organisers, were also supportive of the group, but the debate that ensued in the media and online about the protesters astounded me.

I cannot understand how so many people believe ANZAC day should neglect all of the important debate and discussion about war and violence. In my view, doing this does not minimise the respect paid to those who lost their lives — in fact, it strengthens it.

— Rory Lenihan-Ikin

VUWSA Winter has arrived! Although this does not mark any significant change in Wellington’s weather (seeing that we haven’t yet had a summer), cold draught is making its way through the cracks in the floorboards and the seasonal colonisation of mould on the bathroom walls has begun.

For many of us living in overpriced and freezing flats, as the evenings get colder, apart from layering up with oversized jumpers and sleeping in a pile of blankets, there is not much we can do. The lack of insulation coupled with the overpriced rent and high living costs means heating is not an option.

As a result, our health can suffer. For the past two years, I have spent several weeks in isolation having been diagnosed with whooping cough. The combination of a cold and mouldy flat with pre-existing asthma is not a recipe for a healthy winter. It meant taking time away from study, changing assessment dates, and having to play catch up for the rest of the semester.

This is the reality that students face.

In VUWSA’s Local Body Election campaign last year, we asked candidates seeking election to the Wellington City Council to sign a pledge calling for the introduction of a rental warrant of fitness by 2019. A majority of those elected to the council (eight of thirteen) signed this pledge.

The Wellington City Council is currently calling for submissions on the 2017/18 Draft Annual Plan. Submissions close on Friday May 19 (http://wellington.govt.nz/have-yoursay/public-inputs/consultations/open/2017-18annual-plan/how-to-have-your-say). This is a great opportunity to let councillors know about the rental conditions you face and the importance of introducing a rental warrant of fitness.

Living in a warm, dry, and healthy home should not be a luxury that students can’t access.

— Isabella Lenihan-Ikin

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TE ARA TAUIRA Last month, Ngāi Tauira hosted Pūrangiaho, an annual event designed to bring our tauira Māori together, and for us all to learn about the history of Māori at Vic. First year student Pounamu Chambers lets us know exactly what banter went down this year: On the first night we were told that only one Pou or carving in the wharenui at the marae is native Tōtara wood. Only a few people know which one it is and I am determined to find it before I leave Victoria. Hearing the history of the wharenui and all the work that went into getting the marae where it is today was beautiful privilege. Learning the waiata of Ngāi Tauira was also another highlight.

I had heard them before, but never knew any of the words.

Pūrangiaho was such a meke thing to be a part of. It was a time to make the connection we all needed to make to feel fully a part of the whanau and a part of the Māori student body at university. It was an event that connected us all as a whanau and connected us with the marae here on campus. It was so cool hearing about all the Māori support networks and rōpū Victoria has to offer, and the whakapapa and energy that was put into all of them.

Going into the noho, we started as friends, sleeping next to each other and all, but not necessary knowing much about each other.

However, when we left the noho we were whānau sharing laughs, sharing blankets and even soap (too far??). It was such a cool weekend and I am so pleased I was a part of it. Getting through university in a dominantly Pākehā environment, I think it is essential to have the whanau I have found here.

— Nā Pounamu Tipiwai Chambers

ONE OCEAN HOMESICKNESS After nearly three years of living away from home, I've come to think that homesickness isn't always about missing the place you lived before you moved away. A lot of times, being homesick is about the little things — the small conveniences you once enjoyed.

I remember how exciting it was to move to New Zealand… until I got on a bus and it started moving before I, and several others, were seated.

Another time, I was at my hall of residence, and someone called my friend and I “iiiiiiiiiidiots!” for not knowing how to use a microwave (because it's a matter of life and death, everyone on earth should know how to use one!). Then we both started missing how uncomplicated life once was.

It's not always the actions of other people that trigger homesickness. Maybe you've been eating noodles for two weeks because you have three essays to work on plus a worksheet (yay?).

You would cook, but it'd take two hours — plus washing up time — and that would mean you wouldn't make the 12pm deadline the next day.

When that happens to me, I miss my dad’s chop suey that just never seems to finish.

Most of my relatives in New Zealand just happen to not live in Wellington. The local Pasifika community seems to have set up base in Auckland. Sometimes, homesickness is wanting to go to Mangere and see where my dad went to school, just so I can feel like I'm somewhere familiar.

This isn't a “what to do about-” piece. I still don’t know precisely why pieces of our former, even “less glamorous” lives in our crowded suburbs and on our little islands stay with us for so long. But I've always believed that they help us stay grounded, connected, and motivated. I think they're worth keeping, and worth passing on.

— Jasmine Koria

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This one night, my flatmate and I decided to play an ill-conceived game called Drink Everything In The House.

One thing led to another, and, well, you know how girls get after half a bottle of week-open wine and a can of Smirnoff Ice. So this guy I matched with on Tinder came over, let’s call him Niev. Fair cop, Niev knew his angles; I felt a little catfished by a Tinder profile strategically curated to give the impression he was significantly taller than he actually was. Being the embodiment of the Take Her Swimming On The First Date meme myself, don’t think I didn’t see the irony. Looking at him, I did a cost-benefit analysis: ok I’m so uncomfortable with this / he’s got alright chat? / eee ok this guy is barely my height / but you’re really horny Sash.

Naturally — after graciously declining a lukewarm Lion Brown — Niev ended up in my bed. After hours, I’m not exaggerating, hours of forced chat (me, way too anxious to make the first move; him, who the fuck knows because he sure as hell wasn’t genuinely enjoying me struggling to maintain a “chill girl” façade for four hours), I awkwardly went to kiss him and we were off. I’d be generous in giving Niev three minutes. Which makes you more anxious, having to spend the night next to him, or having to ask him to leave? The threat of the former proved too much; he assured me he was just about to suggest that he got going.

MY LITTLE HUNTRESS � OTHER SHIT CHAT

NOPE (seriously are those Dirty Dogs?)

NOPE (I’m sorry I imagined your face on top of mine and—) (long hair) YES NOPE (seven other guys in each pic? hon,) NOPE (an American flag is a red flag, ammirite) (* D O G *) YES NOPE (tell me you looked in the mirror and said, yup, that’s the amount of hair gel I’ll wear today)

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This one night, I was at a friend’s 21st and came across someone I’d matched with on Tinder; someone who is fondly referred to in my flat as Douche Lord. He was good looking — especially without my contacts in, especially seven gin and tonics deep — and his admittedly good bar stool chat offset the qualms I had about his snapback. I can only blame the gin and tonics for Douche Lord finding himself in my bed — snapback and all — later that night. Douche Lord was one of those guys that you’re physically attracted to, but intellectually and emotionally repulsed by. Highlights from our passionate encounter include his aversion to condoms, when he somehow decided it was a good idea to ask me how much I weigh, and when I had to ask him to leave at 3am. Apparently some guys just wanna say “f*ggot” more than they wanna have sex.

NOPE (finger guns) NOPE (“also I’m a massive nerd” — good for you, Brad) (goddamit long hair) YES NOPE (one picture and it’s of your ute? for real?)

NOPE (oooooooooooh maybe — oh god no why do I even have 18-year olds on here) NOPE (the screen wouldn’t load, tough luck Doug) NOPE (“Barbell Connoisseur”) (arrested development reference) YES NOPE (imagine that sick beard from the Hunger Games, barbered by a literal goat) (6’4” ¯\_(ツ)_/¯) YES

No one is as cool as their Tinder profile would have you believe, which is why if a guy has two pictures and both of them are of him wearing Dirty Dogs... it’s gonna be a no from me, dog. In an effort toward full transparency, my Tinder bio right now is “but how many girlfriends do you have,” so I may not be an authority on the authentic Tinder experience. I’ve also cancelled approximately seven different Tinder dates this year alone, and generally greet men I don’t know with the devil in my eyes and murder in my thoughts. So. Functional is a relative term. Tinder is the fucking worst, but as I sit in the Hunter Lounge, listening to some shit lord whine about how this girl wouldn’t fuck him all the while trying to snake his hand up some other girl’s skirt, it’s starting to sink in that this is only because people are the fucking worst. Limit your interactions with the opposite sex to drunken hookups at 3am in Siglo, is my advice. Better living everybody.

Love you, xoxo — Sasha Beattie

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THE QUEER AGENDA In case you haven’t heard yet (or need a reminder), UniQ meets every week! On Fridays from 1:00–3:00pm in SU218, we either hold space for the UniQ inclined to play board games and just hang out, or we facilitate structured discussions on issues relevant to the rainbow community.

These topics range from the obvious, like the closet and coming out, to the less straightforward, like religion and relationships. In the past, we have also run a discussion on media representation, but for the reasons this column will detail, there are no plans to do so this year.

It is not to dismiss the importance of the visibility of rainbow identities in the media, particularly for our young people who are still exploring and formulating their identities. Far from it, we have found over the years that many are barely starting this journey by the time they get to university.

We have, however, noticed a tendency for our structured discussions on representation to veer towards the negative side of things very quickly, compared to when they come up naturally while socialising during board games weeks. Our kaupapa quite generally suggests that we avoid this sort of thing, which is why one of the rules for our movie nights is that there are no tragic endings allowed (next movie night is this Friday in CO119 by the way!).

We are very keen to distinguish between symbolic political struggles, like representation more broadly, and material political struggles, like access to adequate health care, housing, employment etc. that affect everyone. The inclination at UniQ has been to discuss the former at the expense of the latter, so our aim going forward is the change that.

For this week’s discussion space, the focus is going to be on a Big Picture of sorts and striking that balance. What are sources of our oppression?

How does the LGBTQIA alphabet soup fit into the larger political landscape? We’ll be tackling some big questions this week, so join us!

— UniQ

ACCESS DENIED Language is powerful. It empowers and disempowers. It conjures thoughts and imagery that are associated or disassociated with people, ideas, and things. It builds bridges of understanding or burns them down to entrench misunderstanding.

It is no different when talking and thinking about disability.

Our understanding of disability is that it’s an inability to do certain things because of impairment(s). Disability, a limitation, is closely associated with the idea that the disabled person is unable; they are lacking (the ability to do things because of their disability).

We contrast disability with standards that “we” (society) perceive as benchmarks of “normality” and “health”, without acknowledging the person in their own context.

To have a disability, where you fall short of these health benchmarks, is to be unhealthy.

Disability is seen as the antithesis of health.

And we disassociate from disability and, by extension, from the person.

Yet experiences of health and wellbeing are a fluctuating process. We all have our own health and ability struggles. Having a disability is to have a type of health and wellbeing need. Although we may struggle differently, we all experience some struggle over an ability or inability to do things.

To place a stigma on disability is to ignore our own struggles and the reality of human health. The stigmas associated with disability, which come from the language we employ and which generate our understanding, are false.

To give someone their due is to be fair to them. So give us our DUE: that, while we may be (D)isabled, which may mean we are (U)nable, we can be (E)nabled. To be enabled, like anyone else in society. is to be understood and included as a valued part of society. Towards this aim, everyone is able to contribute. Where will you start?

— Grace Carroll

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SWAT Welcome back to school fellas. You are possibly experiencing post-holiday blues, known as the inability to adjust yourself to a normal routine after a break. The leisurely lifestyle during the holidays might make you sleep later than normal due to an absence of morning lectures to serve as motivation. A few days into it, your body clock will be disrupted, you will get used to the extra leisure, sleeping, and getting up time. The longer the holiday is, the more intense the post-holiday blues may be.

A lot of you may have assignments or tests due the first week back to university. It is not fun suffering from the post-holiday blues during this important time. Here are some tips that I found useful, and hopefully you too will find them helpful.

First of all, eat on time. As I know, some of my friends always skip breakfast if they are going to morning classes. They choose to get a tiny bit more sleep and go to the lecture, then have breakfast after the lecture. However, there are lots of studies that suggest doing intelligent work on an empty stomach might not be a good idea. Our brains need nutritional food to work properly.

The next practical tip is a Sunday-school truth — exercise, especially aerobic exercises.

Exercise can regulate our body clock and emotions. I have always found the gym is a better place to go than the bed when I am tired from intellectual work.

Last, but not least, is to start keeping regular living habits that make you feel awesome in the morning. For instance, I always drink a glass of warm water after getting up — it makes me awake and refreshed for the new day. Doing these personal habits in the mornings remind you that it is the beginning of another gorgeous day, and you will love it.

— Sharpay Xu

POSTGRAD INFORMER My application for New Zealand residency was approved on August 28, 2015 — back when a Trump presidency and a British withdrawal from the EU were still punchlines, and vehement anti-immigrant rhetoric belonged to fringe extremists rather than to major political parties. On August 28, 2017, I will be eligible for permanent residency, in a world that has become much more hostile towards those who dares leave their country of birth in pursuit of better opportunities.

For the first New Zealand election I’ll be able to participate in, I feel like my only option is to choose a party that doesn't want me here, after Labour and the Green Party both announced policies to curb immigration.

It seems that the only way to appreciate the contributions that immigrants make is to learn the hard way, retroactively recognising the importance of welcoming immigrants and refugees after we've made it impossible for them to live here.

Victoria's postgraduate population is made up of a very large proportion of international students, many of whom have migrated here with their families to further their studies.

International students face a very different set of challenges than domestic students, especially in the face of a global move towards antimigrant policies. If VUW truly intends to honour its commitment to an “international outlook,” we need to defend the value of the research contributions and the presence of international students, and not solely as a source of cash flow but as a vital addition to the student population.

— Emma Wollum

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FROM WITHIN

1. The New York Times style guide suggests avoiding the term altogether — the internet certainly can’t tell me if it’s a noun or an adjective.

THE FALLOUT ZONE The cultural fallout zone.

As your resident London ex-pat I’m making good on all hipster stereotypes. I’ve opened a coffee shop in East London, I’m living in a boat on the canal, and my pints are pulled by the same slickhaired bartender that served me in Wellington — a small world for those who can afford to be in the right city.

Even with its many and various definitions, the term hipster is here more derogatory. I called myself a “hipster” at work drinks last week, with all the self-deprecating New Zealandness my sense of humour has come to rely on. The response: “so you self identify as a hipster?” I laughed: “...and you don’t?” It seemed in Wellington “hipsterism” really was a big façade. Someone might be shallow or vain or any other numerous bad things, but to call someone a hipster was a weak insult — if an insult at all, like, lol what, who cares? Amongst the wealth and stress of London, it seems people take themselves more seriously.

While satisfying some fringe hipster criteria, it is only with the move to London that I have encountered real disdain for the hipster. Here, construction sites don’t just reserve their anger for women; an unpicked hem is enough to work a high-vis vest into a swearing tempest. It’s also the first time I’ve given the cultural phenomenon any serious thought. It has only been recently, on reading Mark Grief ’s essay “What Was the Hipster”, that I vaguely understand the hipster’s precedents.1 Precedents more complex than it’s easy to hate Terry Richardson and laugh at the line outside a Supreme store.

The sum of Grief ’s idea is that the hipster creates new a priori knowledge out of reliving past, represented experience. (His writing isn't as pretentious as I'm making him out here). That is to say, hipsters’ interest is often to satisfy the fetishisation of nostalgia. Running GameBoy classics on your MacBook. Or bands like Wellington duo Earth Tongue, referencing back-tothe-earth hippie movements of the ’60s, a name that looks great in Cooper Black emblazoned across a mustard yellow t-shirt (a ’70s staple).

The problem with this feedback loop is that it has developed into an incredibly smart market with access to vast marketing data, making it easy to adapt to or co-opt youth counter-culture, which once largely rejected capitalism. And of course every hipster says their interests are genuine. I like coffee; I order an

espresso or a soy latte, depending on how many Red Stripes — or VBs — I had last night.

So not only are the working class getting priced out of Newtown, they are strong priced out of their own beers!

It's not too hard, then, to see why those high-vis vests get so angry at us hipsters. Maybe we just have to do something new every once in awhile.

— Joe Morris

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Growth

The first plant I ever owned was a succulent. I chose a succulent because they are meant to be so easy to take care of. I thought, I can do this. My succulent died in our cold damp Aro Valley flat. We lived there for two years, it is where I started to become an adult, it is where I started to make a home. The tenants after us took the landlord to the tenancy tribunal because it was such a dump.

I water my plants from my drink bottle. (I carry a water bottle at all times — it is important to stay hydrated, and you never know when you won’t have access to a tap, or a cup). It feels especially nurturing to share with them like this. I have a sip, then my first maidenhair has a big drink, then my second maidenhair has a big drink, then, if its soil is dry, my little calathea can have a sip too. Then I will have a big drink and fill up the water bottle again. It’s important to stay hydrated. Sometimes I forget to water my peace lily, but she is a good quiet communicator. When she droops I know I have been neglectful. The guilt feels like when you accidentally hurt a child’s feelings, they droop too and you want to tell them that really the world is good and beautiful even though it’s at least partially a lie. My peace lily has got two flowers now, the most it has ever had at one time.

It is good to cut the dead and dying bits off your plants, so that they don’t get tired trying to keep the dead bits alive, so that they can grow beautiful and strong instead. My plant family started when I was very sad. It was good to be responsible for something, but heavy. Dead plants break your heart. Last winter both of my maidenhairs shrivelled and browned and I thought, this is the end. I cut off everything and put them in the sun.

Now they are so big and so beautiful. I still get sad in winter. Last week a friend asked me for plant care advice and it made me feel Successful and Maternal.

A lot of dust collects on my leafy plants. No matter how much you dust there is always more dust. You can cry and cry and drink some water and keep crying. It is important to stay hydrated.

— Georgia Lockie

"Matukituki Valley" Both photos were shot on 120 film, in front of the Rob Roy Glacier which we visited after tramping along the West Matukituki Valley for six days.

We were always near glaciers, or their lingering presence carved into the surrounding landscape.

Anastasia N. stasia-rok.net

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THE SUN ALSO RISES: ANZAC AND THE END OF THE DAY Written by Dan Kelly

“I only fought for my body and my land; I had not any wish to fight. After the fall of Rangiriri I desired that peace be made… Put it to the arbitrator, for him to ask who was it that made this war.”

— Wiremu Tamihana As always, I’d left it late. My alarm went at 5:40am, jolting in the dark.

28 years and I hadn’t been to a single dawn service. Call yourself a kiwi?

Gummon mate, show some respect. I struggled into clothes, walked outside in my socks. Trying to be quiet. Failing.

There was a thin slither of moon, the disc behind. Darker than dark. And along its edge, light. I ran down the steps to town, ruru in the trees above. Aro empty and long, longer than I’d thought. Closer there were others, shuffling in the gloom. A father and his sons. A man running in a hoodie and blazer. Crossing roads where you’re not meant to. Night time rules.

The noise of a military band wafted above the traffic. It had started.

Opened in 2015, Pukeahu National War Memorial Park is a “place for New Zealanders to remember and reflect on this country’s experience of war, military conflict and peacekeeping, and how that experience shapes our ideals and sense of national identity.” The park straddles State Highway One, a bridge to the motorway’s cut, joining downtown Wellington to Mount Cook and Massey University in a good example of the end to which urban planning works: connection.

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Dan Kelly

The Sun Also Rises: ANZAC and The End of the Day

The park was packed, insanely so, the crowd diverse in age and race. People crowded at the edges; the elevated ground was occupied — a cruel but not unnoticed irony. I walked past a group at the back and their sign: LEST WE REMEMBER. NO NZ SUPPORT FOR WAR. There was nowhere to go. The Australian anthem played; I tried my luck in the middle, standing behind one of the pillars of the Australian memorial. Cut from large red stone, they tower at the north end of the park. I was shielded, but blind.

I tried again, moving further round, God Defend New Zealand playing above me. The stone was gone, but still I couldn’t see. I resolved to look at the cenotaph, straining my ear to hear the speakers. It was hopelessly quiet.

The Governor-General was speaking. There was a delayed echo, her voice cut off by her voice. She was talking about Passchendaele, the “blackest day in our history.” How one family lost three brothers, others two. In the end, New Zealand deaths from that day came to 950. We had 100,000 troops in World War One. 18,000 died. Numbers that can’t speak to the pain.

She mentioned the Pacific Islanders who served, mostly from Niue and Rarotonga, acknowledging their contribution and sacrifice. I thought of the New Zealand wars, the battles of Rangiriri and Ōrakāu, the murder at Rangiaowhia and all that came after. Of Te Puea Herangi, heir to that dispossession, and the efforts she made in 1917, sheltering objectors at Te Paina, the pā near the Mangatāwhiri river where British troops had crossed, some 54 years earlier, in open declaration of war. Of the hostility she had faced, painted as a German sympathiser, the enemy again. How, in World War One, the only Māori to face conscription were those in the rohe of Maniapoto-Waikato.

The Australian Minister of Tragedy got up and listed the places he’d observed memorials. Indonesia, Japan, Germany. Others. This was his first in New Zealand, an opportunity to “acknowledge and honour all past and current members of our defence force.” I thought about Nicky Hager’s book, Hit & Run, and the outrage that had followed it. How fucked both the action and its denial was. How war produces it, atrocity as part of the push. Whatever happened in Afghanistan, it wasn’t the first time.

A kākā called, a long low croak, and birdsong rose in response, almost louder than the speaker’s echo, from where I stood at least. I looked at the men in front of me — officers from the Air Force, there with their wives and kids — and thought about New Zealand and our different tribes. How if you weren’t there with someone who’d served, it was hard to feel connected. Was this who we’re meant to be?

Later I would bump into family friends, their warm welcome tying me back, good strong-valued kiwis, Pākehā in Michael King’s sense of the word, committed and part of my own whakapapa, a cultural one, this loose knit of ideas and names. I thought of my grandfather, his service in Egypt and the brother he’d lost, the friends he must have lost and how

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little he’d spoken of it, this man that I never knew. Of my grandmother and the fun she’d had in Wellington, how vitalising it had been, war as a reason for change, jobs and a town full of dashing GI’s, it all somehow important and exciting.

The sky grew lighter; the piercing call of a gull rang out. The wartime hymn “Abide With Me” started and a few people sang, their voices quiet but brave. The majority just stood, an audience not yet involved.

A plane roared above the next speaker; there was silence, the rustling of coats, then the first two notes of “The Last Post” came, haunting lilt of a lonesome horn. The men in front of me snapped to attention, holding a salute as the trumpet cried and we heard the past, those who had done what they felt was right.

First in Māori, then in English, the words of Laurence Binyon’s 1914 poem sounded: “Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn…”

I looked towards the cenotaph, towering above the square, thought about scale and the empire that birthed us, forever but a dream, pushed out of the minds of men.

There was a minute of silence; then, somewhere beyond my sight, flags being raised and the first bars of “Whakaria Mai,” our own version of “How Great Thou Art”, popularised by the still to be knighted Sir Howard Morrison when he sang it to the Queen on her ’81 tour.

There was some more talking, a prayer I couldn’t quite hear, and then it was done, the crowd dissipating, and I left with a strange sense of dislocation, the sun not yet up and I apart, this ritual that wasn’t a ritual, there with nothing to do. The time was 6:45am.

In front of me, a little boy asked, “Dad, what do your medals mean?” His sister replied, exasperated: “He tells us every year.” The dad’s mate, in matching Air Force blue: “It means he was a pool boy.”

I had thought I might feel some sense of nationhood, solidarity for the bonds formed in the face of adversary, the grit and camaraderie that fueled the myth: that this was where we started. Given a different time, I would have stood with them, I think, signed up with all the rest, gone off to do my bit and in it maybe found something, a sense we were now unique, different from where we’d come.

Or perhaps I would have resisted, refused to fight then as I would now, refused the lie we fought for us, the people not the pound. There are many ways to nationhood.

Wandering the park afterwards, the precision of military dress had me on edge, these strong men with sharp-cut jaws and close-cropped hair, machines in the shape of flesh. I thought about discipline, what it engendered, violence for the gold of our past. Of our present. Whose wars were we really fighting?

I stood, one lace undone, hair in my eyes as I typed on my phone.

In front of me a group of kids played, beat-boxing and wrestling. A man called out: “Benji, want to come see the wreaths?” His son looked away, “I don’t wanoo.”

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The Sun Also Rises: ANZAC and The End of the Day

* The leaves on the maple trees were turning, imports grown here, drawing in for the coming cold. They lay in small coloured piles, not quite done, not yet gone. I walked back up the valley, my mind in the trees, full with the passing of things, each of their own place and time.

I thought about Wiremu Puke, of Ngāti Wairere, and his proposal for a kowhai blossom festival, its wheels already in motion in the Waikato, both new and ancient, celebrating spring and its fertility, the land that sustains, in absence of the past and its weight, he hoped.

I thought of those who’d signed up to fight or been forced, in our wars both home and abroad. The horrors they’d seen, the strength they had shown, and that special human ability: meaning found in torturous things.

Birds sang in the trees, welcoming a new day. The sun rose. I walked on.

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GALLIPOLI, MAGIAGI, AND ME: TALKING ABOUT THE HORRORS OF WAR Written by Jasmine Koria

“Frankie kicked a mine the day that mankind kicked the moon.”

— Redgum, “I was only 19” (1983) The Polynesian soldiers whose faces fill several large frames at Te Papa Tongarewa Museum look as if they are going to start a conversation with you, if you stare at them long enough. It’s like these many faces have a million stories to tell about a time different from our own, but never got — won’t get — time to tell them.

I’ve always found there to be a sort of fake “soldier strength” that some of the younger faces are doing their best to put on for the camera.

This “strength” isn’t the kind of celebrated mana that is heralded in many of our legends. It’s the same sort of “who gives a damn?” attitude that many Polynesian males are still conditioned to have. These soldiers are the poster children for the “stick out your chest” mantra. The vacant expression on some of the faces exposed the missing patriotic spark I’m used to seeing in soldiers, and this vacancy, or maybe confusion, was a stark contrast to their smart uniforms. Many of them didn’t wear the uniforms with the same pride that European soldiers did; it wasn’t their war.

Those who don’t look so blank look a little tired. The Pasifika experience in the first half of the 20th century was a dreary confusion. It

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Jasmine Koria

Gallipoli, Magiagi, and me: Talking about the horrors of war

was the height of the colonial era, and these kids — who look like they’re straight out of high school — were British subjects. Any mumblings of “not our war” might have been met with reminders of “duty” to King and country (or, at least, King and colony).

“Making history” is a positive phrase to describe people, events, and inventions that changed the course of history and should be remembered. However, “that’s history” is used to describe things people think we should leave behind and simply move on from. I've heard it said in many conversations about the World Wars. It gets used to shut people up when they rant on about the lives and deaths that colour a narrative which is too often relegated to the confines of a museum. These talks are supposedly boring, perhaps even useless, when people say “we weren't there,” “we don't know exactly what happened,” or “we should just focus on what’s in front of us now.” But does that make history less important? Are we missing something, maybe a lot of things, that could make this period of time more history than just “history”?

To paint the scale of our (New Zealand’s) war, Te Papa has done a wonderful job of recognising the diversity that constituted the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC). However, as pictures often do, the photographs bring up more questions. How many of the wars’ survivors made the full journey back to where they came from? How many Pasifika soldiers survived, but are not listed or pictured here? How many died and are not listed or pictured here, remembered only by the ones who loved them?

Who else were involved in the war but aren’t hailed as our great heroes? My maternal great-grandpa, Evara Kuripi, was Melanesian.

In the aftermath of the World Wars, the colonial powers were slow to acknowledge him and the other men of his generation for their roles as soldiers in what is still portrayed as a primarily “white” war. This was in spite of the fact that many had worked as “carriers”, transporting Australian and New Zealand food, weapons, and other supplies to wherever the soldiers were stationed. My great-grandpa was actually a soldier in what was called the Papuan Infantry Battalion. They made contact with the invading Japanese army before their white contemporaries. The Kokoda Track in Papua New Guinea, known also as “the bloody track,” was the work site of some 10,000 indigenous assistants to the Australian Armed forces. Of the nearly 1000 who died, only a handful have been properly acknowledged, and they are seldom mentioned in most ANZAC Day odes and ceremonies. They continue to be known as the “Green Shadows” of ANZAC history.

One of the great horrors (among many) of war is not the gruesome records we have, but instead what we’re missing — what we don’t know. There is indeed a great void of names, dreams, and fears of the faceless and nameless Pasifika soldiers who have fallen. However, I don’t believe that either side of the dichotomy, colonised or coloniser, is completely to blame. I mean Samoa, an infamous former colony of New

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Zealand, has stopped observing ANZAC Day as a national holiday. Before I moved to New Zealand, I didn’t give much thought to my government’s decision to not give us the day off school reduce the commemoration.

It was only when I witnessed the parade on Lambton Quay and felt the ambiance of ghost-city quiet on my first ANZAC Day here that I began to feel as if I had been aiding the propagation of a culture of forgetfulness.

How can I complain about brown soldiers being often left out of ANZAC Day posters in Australia and New Zealand when my own country continues to lessen their importance?

A world away from Te Papa, even farther away from Gallipoli and every other wartime site, Magiagi Public Cemetery in Samoa hosts the graves of at least five New Zealand soldiers. Last ANZAC Day, I was home for the mid-trimester break, so I decided to visit the site. I found that the graves were neatly marked, and rather well-kept. The engravings listed names, ranks, dates of death, and ages at death. What really got me thinking was the fact that none of these fallen soldiers were over the age of 30 when they were killed. The youngest was 19years old. One grave that lay towards the end of the orderly line had some very poignant words on it.

There was a small plaque, reading: “to the father I never knew.” This soldier had died aged 27 and his son, who finally located his grave 50 years later, travelled from New Zealand to see it.

There’s another horror, I think — the horror of the unfinished.

The abrupt end to life is terrible, unfair, and in times of war, very common.

My Philosophy and Ethics paper during that trimester was discussing liability, and what it means to be liable to die for a cause. “Liability” was defined as obligation, and duty. When we discussed war, our lecturer often posed questions of whose responsibility it was to die. Who should die? Who shouldn’t? Whenever I see these graves, I see not an answer to those questions, but another, more complex one. What does it mean to be liable to deal with the consequences of liability? For these deaths invoked liability; it was an obligation to those who had passed for those who remained to grieve and put things back together.

I wonder about all the other graves. They contain human beings who must all have had unfinished conversations, plans to meet someone at a bar, or a prospective university to enrol in after the war.

We, from the Pacific, might complain that many of our sons were taken from us and did not return. These graves at Magiagi, and many like them, stand testament to the fact that many of their sons also came to our shores, and remain beneath our soil. Some were part of the colonial administration (likely facilitating their rule) but others were just passing through, maybe on their way to and from Europe. Is it right to add up wins and losses based on race? An exchange isn’t a plus, and it isn’t a minus. It’s an equal loss. There’s no winner here.

My interest in ANZAC Day peaked when I found out the origins of my surname. It's one of those culturally ambiguous portmanteaus of the different parts of the colonial world. I’ve always known that Koria was

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Jasmine Koria

Gallipoli, Magiagi, and me: Talking about the horrors of war

New Zealand troops arriving to annex Samoa for Britain during World War I. August, 1914.

Malcolm Ross. Alexander Turnbull Library

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derived from Collier. However, thanks to my nationalistic high school environment, I resented this “white name” for a long time. I wanted all the chiefly titles it prevented me from using as my surname.

Then I came to university and learned two things. Firstly, “Collier” is from John William ( J.W.) Collier, who was a Methodist missionary and teacher born here in Wellington. He went to Samoa in 1881, and was stationed at my father’s village, Satupaitea, on the island of Savai’i. My great-great-grandparents were determined that their son would be a protégé of sorts to the Reverend, naming him Collier, which became Koria. They sent him to be trained at Mr Collier’s school, where he learned to speak and write in English. The name lives on — translational variations apply, though. Secondly, Reverend J.W. Collier’s son, Second Lieutenant B.H.F. Collier, was killed in action in the Battle of Pozieres, in Somme, France. At the age of 29, he died on July 23, 1916. July 23 is my birthday..

Nowadays when I think of ANZAC Day, I think of the horror of having my surname and date of birth on a grave dug 80 years before I was even born. Empathy is a horror of its own. It’s not like sympathy, which doesn’t crawl up your spine or tighten your chest. Empathy gets you, because it makes you feel like it’s yourself in a given situation. Empathy makes me feel connected to this white soldier who I'll never meet. It makes me want to talk about history. The same empathy makes me realise that I’m only one of a myriad of stories like this.

Whether you find the listless accounts of war victims and veterans an interesting pastime on the dreaded first week back from break is none of my business. But I would like to ask you to remember. Even if you take nothing else out of this article that's full of names and dates, please remember the spirit of it.

When we remember, we can talk again. The more we talk, the more we realise that the burdens of our human volatility and fragility are universal. They know no skin tones, no accents, and no visas. Let us not let the horror of silence increase the void between us and our histories, and between ourselves and our fellow human beings. Let us start having these universal conversations again, lest we forget.

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Not My President, But My Country Written by Geum Hye Kim On the last day of March, 2017, President Park Geun-hye was arrested for the part she played in a major 2016 South Korean political scandal. By then it was three months after her official impeachment, but that time was not enough to dilute the drama of the occasion. Some commentators argue that Park Geun-hye was never legitimately voted in as president in the first place and that the voting process had been tampered with. Nevertheless, polls before and after the election indicated that Park Geun-hye had a significant number of supporters. These supporters continued to remain vocal for a long time. *** When Park Geun-hye was appointed in 2012, Time magazine introduced her sporting impeccable hair and an artfully cut garment, slightly turned away from the camera with a noblesse oblige smile, a perfectly preserved “Strongman’s Daughter.” In the shadow of her father, the dictator Park Chung-hee, she entered the political arena, and her primary appeal was her link with the past. Park Geunhye rose as a leader of the conservative wing because she was a stand-in for the glories and the gore of the bygone days.

During the lead up to the 2012 election, Park Geun-hye’s primary rhetorical tactic was to attack the faults of the previous government and the left-leaning candidates, and insisted that “If I became a president, I will proceed with clarity about those matters.” Repeatedly she equated her presidency with the miraculous achievement of grand goals without substantially backing up her claims with a plan of action.

When a fresh disaster struck, President Park Geun-hye’s immediate response was to call forth the subordinate and inquire what’s going on with the government, why, and what could be done better. Over and over the citizens saw her issue an inquiry, shift the blame and the responsibility to one of the ministers, and then step back. For Park Geun-hye, the president was the figurehead who represented the democratic power that enabled the state to function, who repeated the voice of the people, and allowed the autonomy of the state to manifest itself.

There was no need to chair the discussion, lead the action, investigate the issue, or develop a plan.

As her autobiography suggests, the presidential position was simply a part of her identity, and her narrative of loss and return; an era ended with the death of her father Park Chung-hee, and the world that Park Geun-hye knew died with that era. Her goal was to be the sceptre — a visible reminder of the time when an order could be issued, be obeyed, and magically bring about results. Her goal was to be the channel through which power flowed. Park Geun-hye hardly had any power to lose, but a certain kind of political power accompanied her presence, as she willingly remained as an embodiment of her father’s dictatorial era.

Park Geun-hye’s downfall in 2016 came with the disillusionment of the people. She had promised to be the sceptre of political power, and a charismatic

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head of the state. Yet time and time again, her power failed her people. When the Sewol ferry sank in 2014, and 304 lives were lost — 250 of which were high school students — she remained absent, and her government failed to respond to the disaster in a timely manner.

Park Geun-hye’s downfall was also based on her past actions while in office. Investigations dug up a series of interwoven crimes, lobbies, and shady deals, at the centre of which was an unofficial adviser to the president — the wielder of the sceptre — Choi Sun-sil. The single individual who had the freedom to influence everything from the appearance of the president to the presidential speech, was none other than the daughter of Choi Tae-min, a cult leader.

Using his new blend of spiritualism, Choi Tae-min reached out to young Park Geun-hye, who was dealing with the loss of her mother who had been assassinated by Mun Se-gwang in 1974.

The public shooting of the first lady would have been a traumatic event on its own, but Park Geun-hye was also stepping into the political arena to fill her mother’s place, and Choi Tae-min readily presented himself as a medium and a parental figure.

President Park Chung-hee (left), Park Geun-hye (centre), and Choi Tae-min (right).

1976. Korea Times.

After Park Chung-hee was assassinated by the head of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency, Kim Jaegyu, in 1979, Park Geun-hye withdrew, retreating further into the inner circle of Choi Tae-min’s congregation. Conspiracy theorists even go on to imply that Park

Features

Geun-hye gained a child from Choi.

After Choi Tae-min’s death in 1994, his authority as a cult leader and the advisory role was transferred to his daughter Choi Sun-sil, who was by then like a sister to Park Geun-hye. In April, 2017, Choi Sun-sil testified that her relationship with Park Geun-hye is based on “loyalty and fidelity.” Whose loyalty to whom? That question is yet to be answered. *** Before Park Geun-hye, Korea had elected a shady businessman as a president. President Lee Myung-bak, who came to power in 2008, was a shrewd son of a poor family. Lee Myung-bak played up to the fantasy of social mobility, where a poor man can be made rich through hard work and intelligence, and economy can be improved dramatically by a few strategically placed redevelopment projects. By the end of his term in 2013, Lee Myung-bak left many families disillusioned and bitter about the cost of living. A group of people felt that it was time to fight for a better democratic system. Another group, the slightly older generation who remembered Park Chunghee and had lived through the period of economic depression, turned to the familiar tactic of Saemaul Undong.

Supporters of the late Park Chung -hee give him the credit for Saemaul Undong, a government-led movement that in the 1970s called for collective sacrifices and compromises in order to modernise the then rural Korean economy. Citizens were asked to voluntarily give up the small luxuries of life. People came together to enrich the country and to protect it from the perceived threat of communism. The strategy delivered results. Korea’s economy grew substantially during the 1970s and ’80s, dubbed “The Miracle on the Han River.” Then the IMF came.

Of course, to most of the world, IMF stands for the International Monetary Fund. But to Koreans aged over 20, IMF stands for the Asian Financial

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Geum Hye Kim

Crisis of the late ’90s and subsequent economic restructuring. This crisis caused individual homes to feel the chill of national debt, and the suicide rate rose dramatically. The sentiment behind Saemaul Undong manifested itself as a new campaign. Households gave up their gold jewellery, such as wedding rings or the sentimental tokens for newborn babies, to pay off the national debt. Never mind where the gold really went.

The success of Saemaul Undong and collection of gold had a strong emotional resonance for the generations who lived through colonialism, division of country, military coup, and financial hardship in short successions. Repeatedly, the country was on the brink of collapse, and citizens were called in to defend the right to have a country. As time passed, and memories dulled, Park Chung-hee’s dictatorship was redeemed in retrospect

by Korea’s miraculous rise from debt to prominence. The man became a figurehead for misplaced patriotism, and the violence he perpetrated is brushed under the carpet, along with other histories of similar nature.

As Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump discovered, misplaced patriotism works well for conservative bigots. “Make America Great Again” is a magic phrase for the Trump administration. “Let’s make Korea great again and show the world” was equally effective for Park Geun-hye, until she failed to bring back the Miracle of Han River. The votes for Park Geunhye in 2012 were cast as an expressive gesture, where a certain kind of group wished to assert that they were there with their history of pride, woes, aspirations, traumas, and wishful thinking.

In Korea, patriotism stems from pride in the fact that our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents fought against the odds to reclaim our nationality and to make democracy flourish. This pride, as you might see, is based on the myth that something can be miraculously achieved out of nothing if

Not My President, But My Country

we all try together. Park Geun-hye made several attempts to be eloquent about this pride and this myth. This is what she managed to come up with, under the editorial aid of Choi Sun-sil: “If you desire it wholeheartedly, the universe steps in to help you achieve.”

Park Geun-hye also stated: “Without knowing your country’s history, your soul is lost.” This statement was in defence of the government’s decision to elect a state-authorised group of editors for history textbooks, allowing the creation of a sanitised history that celebrates collective struggle under the colonial period, the division of the country, and the military coup as a worthy sacrifice.

The sanitised history can then be used to minimise the blame on the perpetrators of violences, as well as on the group of people who benefited from the sacrifice made by the others. *** During Park Chung-hee’s time, citizens had to be nondescript, hardworking individuals to evade the bludgeon of his dictatorship. If you spoke out, your history was erased, and Saemaul Undong covered up any petty concerns about legitimacy of the government. Similarly, under Park Geunhye’s administration, the issues of ordinary people bore the burden of erasure. Critical issues were framed as personal indignations, and the everyday indignities experienced by people were erased from the equation as a result.

Unemployment, household debts, anxiety about Middle East respiratory syndrome, anxiety about the environment, mistreatment of victims who were dubbed “comfort women,” and the tragedy of the Sewol ferry all became labelled as irrelevant with a sleight of hand.

In the meantime, an increasing number of people felt embarrassment for the venerated history of collective sacrifices. The country has been under foreign influence for so many years.

For previous generations, the right to

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Geum Hye Kim

Not My President, But My Country

have a country took priority over the rule of people. Yet how many more sacrifices must be made for the right to claim a country? By now we must have earned the right to be protected as Korean citizens, and to exercise our rights, without worrying about the coercion of foreign powers or the loss of our democratic system.

People poured out to streets to salvage the country that betrayed their expectations. A candle protest was arranged to call for the impeachment of Park Geun-hye and then to pressure criminal investigation of her administration. The square in front of Gwanghwamun is a culturally charged site. On November 5, 2016, a newspaper reported that 45,000 protester gathered in the square with candlelight. The number of protesters reached 900,000 in March 2017.

The first time I saw candles in the street was in 2003, after the arson case in Daegu subway station. Candle protest is emotional, expressive, and eloquent. For me, the candlelight protest worked because it is a demonstration of unbending will, just like homemade flags must have meant for the generation who participated in the Man-se demonstration. However, candle protest gives you a space to step away from the need to sacrifice for a worthy cause, or to exert yourself to make something out of nothing. The darkness dotted with light gives the protesters a space to stand beside someone else, marking a seat of dissent, and giving voice to all the smaller narratives that are wiped out by official discourses. When we come out to the street with a candle, we don’t do it to make you notice. It is to show each other that we are not alone in our grievances and to draw strength to continue standing. But if you turn around, you will not fail to see us.

Park Geun-hye will not be released from prison easily. But she will continue to enjoy small favours and special treatments in prison as long as she’s not forgotten. She is already given access to the “better” rooms ordinarily occupied by the prison guards. For someone like Park Geun-hye, privileges are hard to separate, and while she remains part of a political dispute, someone will find it useful to keep her satisfied. Park Geun-hye’s name attained a political significance in Korea, and strategic use of her presence has the potential to shift the focus of political discussion in the future.

Gender issues, represented as a debate between military conscription versus reproductive rights, are already forming a significant part of discussion about political candidates, meaning that the majority of Korean citizens have already begun to move on. We are now back to resolve the tension between the employer and the employee, the parents and the children, the upper region and the lower region, the seniors and the juniors, and soon a new president will step in, individuals’ political opinions will be diluted, and new wars will take place in the cyberspace, until a new disaster strikes.

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Wednesday: Eyegum Wednesdays — Bring your delightful selves down to San Fran for a hop and a bop with surf rockers Beatcomber and groovy lil dudes Gregonce. Best of all, it ’s free and comes with $5 pints of Kereru, kicking off around 9:00pm. Thursday: Matt Steele Quartet — If you’re the kind of person who knows that university existence is just a blip on the radar and you’ll soon be living your true and splendid boujee life, then the Pyramid Club is the place to be! Lets face it, we all feel a little jazzy sometimes, and with incredible Lower Hutt pianist Matt Steele at the helm of your musical jaunt, it’s bound to be a smooth ride. From 7:45pm. Friday: Fortunes — For your fuckbois and highbrow hipsters alike, Fortunes will be serving top notch slinky, sensual, R&B realness at Caroline. Doors open at 8:00pm, tickets from Just The Ticket. Saturday: Tapz and Mzwetwo — If you’re in the mood for some innovative rap, then look no further than Meow for your Saturday evening plans. Tapz and Mzwetwo are NZ locals who migrated from Zimbabwe in their youths, and are bringing their show back home on the back of signing a management deal with Kanye’s label G.O.O.D. Music. Starts 8:00pm, tickets online from Under The Radar. Also Saturday: So Laid Back Country China and Teeth — If you prefer your music lighter on the swears and heavier on the guitars, then San Fran has got the show for you! Bringing together local stoner country legends SLBCC and psych supergroup Teeth, this will be a joyful and bizarrely satisfying affair, that kicks off at 8:00pm.

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GIG GUIDE

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NZ MUSIC

INTERVIEW: ONONO

Onono is the official moniker of Jono Nott, a local multi-instrumentalist who studied fine arts at Massey, and has played in various bands around Wellington’s indie scenes. He released his debut album as Onono, Bad Posture, at the end of last year, which was entirely self-produced and is filled with stone-cold bangers. I sat down with Jono to get the lowdown on the inspirations for his solo project, finding strange beatboxing voice memos on his phone, and the realities of touring with a pop band.

Salient: How did you came to be a musician and what kind of projects were you involved in before Onono?

Jono Nott: I come from a musical family, and started playing guitar pretty young. Then I got interested in drums when I learned to play my uncle’s old Pearl drum kit down in the Sounds in his woolshed. I started playing in cover bands when I was in high school, and I remember we’d play this country medley of “The Gambler” and “Folsom Prison Blues”, along with classics from The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, and we’d finish the night with “Fat Bottomed Girls” by Queen. That was a job for a bit when I was about 16 or 17. Then I moved up to Wellington, and was studying and started playing in some more bands, like Hans Pucket, and more recently I’ve been playing with bands like Red Sky Blues. I’ve been playing some pop music as well, with Broods, which is definitely a vibe change, but I’ve learnt a lot about touring and about the other side of music that you don’t really delve into in Wellington.

49 S: I can feel, in your album, you drawing on the sensibilities of some of your other projects. Some tracks, like “Filth”, start with the whimsy of Hans Pucket, and then delve into the grungier Red Sky Blues side of things. How have your other projects affected the way you went about making Bad Posture?

JN: The process of writing was at a point where I was playing in all these other bands, so the songs were mash-ups of all those different vibes.

I feel it brought a nice diversity to the album, with heavier songs like “Dreem” right through to quite chill songs like “Custom”. But it really just happened, there wasn’t a huge amount of thought going into the end result. Sometimes I’d come up with a riff, or a chord progression, and then everything else would fall into place from there.

S: How do you go about writing lyrics?

JN: With pretty much every song I come up with, I will have written the entire song with all the instrumentation before I even approach the vocal melody. Recently, I heard Ruban Nielson (of Unknown Mortal Orchestra) talking about how he and Kody wrote “Multi Love”. They were jamming the chord progression, and then vocal jamming over the top of that, and through the process of elimination got to a perfect melody.

That’s the way I like to think that I work. But lyrics are generally an afterthought a lot of the time. I might come up with a line that seems catchy or that I read somewhere, and from that, the whole story will unfold.

S: I really dig the line in the breakdown of “Custom” that goes “The time company/ selling you for more/ than you can afford.” How did that one come about?

JN: I was sitting at my desk, thinking “what am I gonna sing now?” I had a melody but I didn’t have any lyrics. On the wall above the area where I mix and write, there’s a clock that I think was from the Warehouse or Briscoes or something,

Music but the brand was The Time Company. It’s crazy that there’s actually a company called The Time Company, and they probably thought when they came up with it, “I can’t believe no one’s ever thought of this, this is gold.” So I looked at the clock and it just came to me. I thought about how you never have enough time in the day, and everyone’s rushed off their feet, saying “I can’t do this because I’m busy.” You overbook yourself, you double-book yourself. The time company is selling you for more than you can afford.

S: What inspires you to write for instruments?

JN: I know a lot of people walk around with headphones in, listening to music, and get inspired that way, but I find it can be much better to just have nothing in your ears, and then a riff or something will come to me. Often, I’m in the middle of nowhere, so I end up with all these odd voice memos on my phone of me doing weird beatboxes and shit like that. At the time I was probably super stoned or something, thinking that it was gonna be the next hit.

S: Does your background in visual art inform what you do with music?

JN: I found myself, when I was studying, trying to make this organic, psychedelic imagery, and playing in bands; I was trying to match the two together. Obviously, album art and live projected visuals are also a nice meeting point between them. I’ve become more aware, playing in a bigger pop band in shows with incredible production and stuff, or even making music videos, of the whole idea of creating an entire experience, not just the music itself.

S: Speaking of, have you got any more videos brewing — other than the most recent one for “Slo Burn” where you sensually eat fruit in the forest?

JN: Just that one at the moment, although we’ve had some offers from friends who film stuff. But that video had to be the lowest budget music video ever, I think the only thing we had to

50 pay for were some mandarins and a bottle of sparkling grape juice; it wasn’t even champagne!

We’re at the point now where we’ve played a few shows and the album’s been out since December, so it could be a good idea to release a music video to refresh a song that people have heard already.

S: Are there any bands or artists that you’ve been exposed to recently that you’re excited about?

JN: Being over in Europe, I’ve been exposed to some great house music. As well, being in a pop band and being able to see how other pop musicians work and produce music has been really interesting, in terms of mixing sampling and electronic elements with more organic instruments. I saw Glass Animals play the O2 in London recently. They’re one of those bands that are doing the crossover of playing with both samples and instruments really well, but they don’t use MIDI clocks or anything so they’re not relying on technology to keep them in time. They just know the tempo of their samples and they make these loops, and night to night it could vary, not by heaps, but it’s definitely a challenge for them. My experience is playing to a track with a metronome so it was quite impressive to see them smash a show like that. I’ve been enjoying other local Wellington bands like Mr Amish. He’s got an amazing voice, and the way he plays guitar is awesome to watch and hear.

Mothers Dearest are making the kind of music that I think has been missing in Wellington, this heavy, gnarly, teeth-gritting, detuned kind of music, and they’re doing it really well.

S: So what’s next for Onono?

JN: At the moment I’ve got these songs that I recorded at the end of last year, just before I released the album. They are newer songs with slightly different guitar sounds that I’ve been trying to find a place for. I’ve also been thinking about releasing an album, maybe at the end of this year or start of next year, possibly with the help of a label. But I’m still exploring those options; I’m not quite sure how to navigate that yet. We can’t really do too many shows here because I’m quite busy touring and going away

Music for a couple of months at a time. So when we do have shows, it’s good to put more hype behind it, because a lot of bands in Wellington just find themselves playing the same venue week in week out and don’t give themselves enough time to refresh their set. We’ve had some good luck in the sense that the first few shows have been really in great venues with great other bands, and sometimes people have heard about it that I haven’t even met which is really cool.

You can find Jono’s debut album at https://o-n-on-o.bandcamp.com.

— Lauren Spring

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Podcast

PODCAST

Interview with Andy Zaltzman Andy Zaltzman is an English stand-up comedian who has been making audiences the world over laugh with his superb political satire for almost 20 years. He is also the co-host of the immensely popular podcast The Bugle, which he created with Last Week Tonight’s John Oliver.

different perspectives, having different comedic styles — I’ve had two co-hosts in the shows recorded in Australia which I think has freshened things up further so maybe there will be more of those in the future. It’s been great working with new people I’ve not really worked with before.

Hi Andy, thanks for talking to us today! I believe you’re in Melbourne currently for their comedy festival, how is that going? It’s been good thanks.

It seems clear that your American co-hosts — Hari Kondabolu and Wyatt Cenac — are really keen to talk about the Trump administration, because it’s the nightmare they’re living in, yet many non-American listeners may be suffering from Trump fatigue. Is there such a thing as too much news, and does that worry you as a political comedian?

People have been mostly laughing in the right places, so it’s been fun.

The show you’re bringing to NZ is called “Plan Z”, what can audiences expect to see? Well, it’s a quick scoot

round various global events of the last year or so, which touches on global issues like Syria, global migration, obviously Trump, a bit of British stuff, and I guess I’ll have to mug up on whatever is going on in NZ before I go over!

You’re also the host of the phenomenally successful podcast, The Bugle. Does writing for the podcast help with writing stand-up material? Unquestionably yes. I’m been doing The Bugle for ten years now, for most of that

time it’s been a weekly show, and having a regular deadline to write topical stuff and random tangential stuff is a great discipline. The more you write, the more ideas you have and some of that stuff will seep into The Bugle and adapt and develop into stand-up as well. So just having that regular outlet definitely helps to write stuff for live shows.

The Bugle is back after a hiatus, with a revolving set of co-hosts. Are you enjoying the new perspectives they bring to the show? Yeah it’s been

great, obviously I miss working with John [Oliver] because we worked together for 12 or 13 years, back on The Bugle and before. It was clear he just didn’t have time any more. Having lots of different people to work with, having

Because it is a topical news comedy podcast people expect The Bugle to cover these stories fairly repeatedly, and I don’t think that is too much of a problem seeing as they are always shifting and changing and there’s always new stories and new angles coming up. Also the show has a built in balance where we shift from doing stuff about Trump to something completely unrelated about sport or absolute nonsense. I guess there is an element of there is only so much people can take, but I think if you can present it comedically in a way that’s fresh that can be quite a good thing, if in the deluge of news you can provide a fresh perspective and some respite.

Andy is performing his show “Plan Z” in Wellington on Monday May 1 at the Hannah Playhouse as part of the New Zealand International Comedy Festival.

The full interview can be found on our website salient.org.nz.

— Annelise Bos

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FILM AN ODE TO ALIEN (1979) My favourite quote in regards to Ridley Scott's masterpiece comes from Chris Taylor’s (highly recommended) book How Star Wars Conquered The Universe. In it, producer David Giler says, “Alien is to Star Wars what The Rolling Stones were to The Beatles.” Alien is the badder, nastier version. Indeed, in 1979 very little serious nastiness had come from the space genre, but heavens above did that change after a vicious intergalactic beast latched itself to John Hurt’s unsuspecting face. Where Star Wars was groundbreaking and dazzling, Scott chose instead to take the special effects in a far more realistic but equally flooring direction. The gargantuan space freighter the Nostromo is a heartless, hulking monolith representing the industrial nature of humankind at this point in the future, and the theme of corporation does not stop at the mere visuals.

Likewise, the crew is far from the lovable rag-tag band we all know and love from George Lucas' trilogy. There is bickering about bonuses, tension in the ranks, and conflicts of interest — you know, all the best team dynamics you need when a giant beast is scrambling through the air vents devouring your fellow crew mates.

What is perhaps most interesting about the cast of characters is that Ripley, in Sigourney Weaver’s signature performance, doesn't emerge as the protagonist until the second act. In the beginning, each of the cast are dealt to equally. It is only when half a dozen of them are killed off that Ripley begins to take charge, and once she does she cements herself as one of the most iconic sci-fi characters of all time. Here's someone facing a threat that is entirely alien, without the necessary skills or knowledge, but who survives on pure force of will and tenacity.

Her opponent is equally tenacious however, and the xenomorph is still incredibly effective today (granted you don't Google image search what the prop looked like out in the open; clearly the close ups and dark lighting were used for a reason).

However, it is the small effects that elevate this film as well. All of the lighting is expert: the heavenly white chamber that the crew are brought out of hypersleep carries heavy connotations to human birth; the steamy, slightly sickly and sterile canteen conveys heavy artifice; and then there's every single puff of smoke and rich colour to the fire and alarm lights in the third act that pump one’s veins with a medically alarming dose of adrenaline. Visually every aspect is splendid, especially the art direction from H. R. Giger, who I suggest you Google only out of morbid curiosity. Rumour has it he was put in the far most corner of the offices where the film was being worked on because no one particularly enjoyed his company, and when you see the symbolism (or just direct portrayal) of various genitals in his work it’s not hard to see why. Still, it makes for such a multi-layered piece of film and science fiction.

On the one hand you have a film which is just like a Rolling Stones record; it's 40 years old but still gets people moving because it's a pure banger. I adore watching it with people for the first time because there are at least half a dozen scenes that induce a visceral reaction every time a coconut. But then beneath that

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Film

is a deeply psychological horror story wherein there is a gender struggle and a basic narrative involving the invasive “other”. There’s a reason the xenomorph’s tongue is phallic, and there’s a reason its method of reproduction is a perverse and violent version of human pregnancy. Further still is comment on human greed in the wake of commercialism, as the crew of Nostromo is sacrificed by their higher ups in order to bring the xenomorph back to earth and weaponise it. There’s even a development (SPOILER ALERT) where Scott begins to explore an idea he’d bring to the forefront in his adaptation of Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? re-titled Blade Runner — the idea of what makes us human. When the science officer Ash is revealed to be a traitorous company android, all kinds of questions are raised. As it turns out in Ripley’s case, to be human is to crawl tooth and nail, against the clock and against all odds, to survival.

I first saw this film on a family holiday in my very early teens when my uncle exclaimed over dinner “you've never seen Alien?!” I think my mother and father’s parental techniques were subsequently called into question and said uncle swiftly departed to the rental store. Now I’ve seen Alien at sleepovers, movies nights, in lectures theatres, the planetarium, and most recently in a proper theatre for the first time on Alien Day last Wednesday, and at no point in the foreseeable future can I see it losing any replay value for myself, or any long-time or first-time viewers.

— Finn Holland

Fin.

54

Games

GAMES Supply and demand: How Nintendo is screwing you

Did you want a Nintendo Classic Mini: Nintendo Entertainment System (aka the NES Mini)? You know, the miniature plug-and-play replica of Nintendo’s most famous console that came out last christmas? It has thirty classic NES games on it, the controller feels just like an original NES controller, and the emulation of NES hardware is as good as it gets. Sounds like a great little package, doesn’t it?

Sorry, but you’re too late.

Despite being on the market for less than six months, and even after selling 1.5 million units, Nintendo are discontinuing the NES Mini.

The last shipments have gone out to retailers, and they’ve likely already been snapped up by some lucky bastards. Even when they were making them, they were rarer than hen’s teeth, with Kiwi retailers selling out their pre-order allocations months before launch. If you desperately want one, there’s probably a few on TradeMe, but they’re going for well over the standard price of $120; some arseholes on eBay are selling individual units for thousands of dollars!

But why is the NES Mini’s discontinuation a big deal? You might be thinking: a little plastic box with some retro games in it going away isn’t that important, is it? Pretty much every other case of this happening hasn’t caused this kind of fuss, so why write about it?

Guys, this is Nintendo we’re talking about.

Nothing that this company does is typical, nor does it make much sense. This issue is somewhat reflective of Nintendo’s attitudes towards both its own products and the gaming market in general, and what I see is something that is just a little worrying.

Much of Nintendo’s current business practices can be summed up in just two words: artificial scarcity. While it has never been confirmed they are doing this, the prevailing view amongst gamers is that Nintendo

deliberately manufactures less units than what would adequately meet demand. The lack of available units creates a buzz that essentially guarantees the product will sell well over time, even once they finally start making enough of them.

Pretty much every Nintendo product not named the Wii U has had supply issues since the launch of the Wii in 2006, notably with certain Amiibo figurines being notoriously difficult to find. In the case of the NES Mini, it got bloody ridiculous; some brick-and-mortar stores reported receiving as little as TWO units in each shipment, and Amazon of all places sold out their pre-orders in less than 15 minutes. Even the Nintendo Switch isn’t immune from this; while there are plenty for sale in New Zealand, elsewhere there aren’t enough to go around.

Artificial scarcity punishes consumers simply for playing their role in the open market, and it frankly beggars belief that companies like Nintendo can seemingly get away with it.

While I can understand being cautious with new product launches, there’s a difference between that and acting dick-ish towards your customers, and Nintendo often skirts that line. Perhaps with the NES Mini, they never planned for it to be available for very long in the first place; it is essentially a toy, a nostalgic novelty that supplemented their core business, and it was likely just a stop-gap between the Christmas season and the launch of the Switch.

But that doesn’t excuse this kind of bullshit.

Nintendo probably knew full well they hadn’t made enough NES Minis, and they pushed on knowing suckers would buy them no matter what. This is the kind of bollocks that drives people away from games, and it needs to stop — make the product so we can buy the product!

— Cameron Gray

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Television

TELEVISION Riverdale

The town of Riverdale is left stunned when allstar high school quarterback Jason Blossom goes missing, presumed dead, with no clear suspect or motive. But when a group of teenagers make it their mission to find out the truth, it opens up a Pandora’s box of seemingly unending secrets and scandal upon the sleepy community.

Riverdale, the CW’s newest teen craze, is an adaptation of the Archie comics, though I think characters and setting aside it’s a fairly loose adaptation. It’s also got an edge, and you can tell that because everything is the same colour as the first Twilight film. When I tell people about Riverdale, I say it’s “got a Twin Peaks vibe” even though I’ve never watched Twin Peaks. Starring New Zealander KJ Apa as boy wonder Archie Andrews, former Disney cutie Cole Sprouse as aloof weirdo Jughead Jones, and a smattering of ’90s heartthrobs (Luke Perry!

Skeet Ulrich!) with dad bods, Riverdale is your new favourite show to complain about watching on Twitter while living for every moment of it.

First up, seeing a Shortland Street actor on a CW show is a wild experience. I used to watch a lot of Shortland Street, and in turn got everyone in my life addicted to Shortland Street, and then I abruptly stopped watching Shortland Street and left everyone in my dust. But seeing KJ Apa on my screen as Archie Andrews makes me feel so weirdly patriotic, and that’s coming from someone who is writing this at 3am on Anzac Day and feeling absolutely nothing. While he was never the most animated actor on Shorty, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt since he was playing a depressed teenager on a New Zealand sitcom. His ginger dye job in Riverdale is atrocious, but his American accent is okay and he’s very nice to look at. Archie is the most oblivious main character in television history and frankly couldn’t care less about this murder mystery because he has a lot of people to make out with.

Cole Sprouse is delightfully sulky as Jughead Jones, and yes, he is also very cute. Lili Reinhart’s

Betty Cooper is a good girl with a perfect ponytail on the edge of a complete breakdown, something that seems imminent between the demands of her psychotic family and new girl Veronica Lodge (Camila Mendes) flirting up a storm with Betty’s long-time crush, Archie.

For a teen drama Riverdale is refreshingly selfaware and delights in being messy. The very first episode features a faux-lesbian kiss that is immediately shot down as a dated antic by a head cheerleader, and also normie cutie Archie making out with his music teacher Miss Grundy in a sweaty car. Each episode is sure to feature a handful of reaction-gif-in-the-making moments from Kevin, the openly gay son of the town’s sheriff, who is hooking up with every closeted guy in Riverdale. Jason Blossom’s grieving twin sister Cheryl (Madelaine Petsch) is a show standout and the ultimate scheming queen bee bitch we need right now.

Riverdale isn’t even close to perfect; it has a cheesy script and overly muddled storylines (maple syrup empire?), and it definitely isn’t anything you’d recommend to your friends who only watch “serious” shows like True Detective or Westworld. No, Riverdale is steaming hot trash and I am the gaping begging garbage can it is thrown into. If you too still watch melodramatic teen shows from the mid-2000s (The OC, Gossip Girl, One Tree Hill) in your mid-20s, you will love this. Riverdale is currently streaming on Netflix, ready to binge watch in time for the end of the first season in May. — Katie Meadows

56

Food

ORIENTAL KINGDOM

Oriental Kingdom is well known in Wellington for its less than classy reputation and less than acceptable food, but the trip was made anyway for a football team BYO. The decor seems to be stuck in 1996, probably both the last time it was updated and the last time someone went there sober. The tables and chairs are acceptable, but you can't be too critical of it as they are likely home to at least two litres of white wine; if you licked a table you would probably get a buzz. The low quality of the decor likely comes from the knowledge that their customer base is young, drunk, and reckless. Nice tables and chairs here would be like putting a nice rug in a crack house or wearing a white shirt to a spaghetti festival; just a bad idea.

We ordered the Char Kuey Teow, which is a standard Malaysian seafood and flat noodle dish that is stir fried, along with the finest thing on the menu — the corkage. The dish had a lot of flavour but barely any sass. Instead I tasted a dish that should have been served in a Styrofoam container by an ex-convict named Perry trying to get his life back together.

Too many vegetables, and not enough seafood or affection in the dish. It further reminded me that Oriental Kingdom is a restaurant that is Capital Market level, but does not belong in Capital Market; thank fuck.

The other meal we got was the chicken wings, to see if they compared to the chicken we’re currently in the process of perfecting.

They didn’t even hold an extinguished candle to any reasonable fried chicken. They were dry with barely any meat on the bone; it was clear these chickens were not raised on steroids like any respectable chicken in 2017. These paleo chickens left much to be desired; Pete Evans loved it though. They came with sweet ‘n’ sour sauce in an attempt to add both flavour and moisture, but all it added was sadness, not because it was a terrible sauce but because I could see through the cover-up.

In all honesty, Oriental Kingdom is the drinking destination you don’t deserve. The food quality and hygiene suspicion is on level with your alternate restaurant in Capital Market, but the vibe in the restaurant is a student’s dream. The owners clearly understand that they are not a popular destination because of their food, but rather their BYO rules and location to other bars and pubs. It saddens them, and that’s the kind of sadness that we can all relate to. The most confusing part of the experience was the fact that there were families with young children there. The mind boggles as to why you would bring children to such a seedy establishment when there are many more respectable Asian restaurants in Wellington.

It could be said that the parents wanted to involve the kids in New Zealand’s binge drinking culture early on, so that by the time they hit year 11 they are able to funnel a box of Mavs in a night, and by the time they are a fresher then can hit the Wine Before Nine and Goon Before Noon before all of their friends. The added benefit of this is not having to worry about choosing to donate organs on their driver’s license, because they will all be monumentally fucked.

— Kii and Tom You can catch Kii and Tom on SalientFM (88.3) on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays 6.00– 8.00pm. Find them on Facebook: “Kii and Tom”.

57

Creative Writing

ORLD A SLIVER OF THE W

, in a cabin my father's island just outside of the city an on am I and ay rsd Thu It is rilyn Monroe, tribal vases, is clearly enamoured of Ma flamboyant boss owns. He ters on my heels burn in a leis over everything. The blis and hanging cheap plastic en by mosquitos even t I'm continually being bitt tha ced vin con am I and prickly way ns N’ Roses t-shirt despite ble bite. I am wearing a Gu visi le sing a e hav 't don I though ring them on my chest is their music to feel that wea mirror (non-existent). not being partial enough to my ab development in the ng cki che ly nal asio occ warranted, and ed” and “sport ” even ctuate his sentences with “Fr t My father continues to pun ause I've always been reluctan the age of eight. I let him bec d ppe sto s ent par though I've long been over my d that of childhood (when I realise to let go of these remnants ng my teeth for me every shi bru usly oro vig n the and ” grin y ees “ch a do making me ck). night, I had a mild panic atta powder and old sweat.

His room smells like talcum and the sea near an old man (my father) Sea I read The Old Man and the online poker. (a swampy inlet). He plays looking roads that turn keep telling him to go up fun I r. tou We go on a tiki into dead ends. g Bay and Rocky Bay. rsection between Dead Do We are stationary at an inte ” I can tell my dad is antsy.

“W hich way should we go? . in the sports park,” I respond “'There are lots of chickens ans nice views in some Road because I think it me I want to go up Bella Vista t. ignores my wordless reques .

European language, but he but all the rocks are jagged Bay cky Ro at ks roc skim to me ch tea and y to I want him and we have to turn awa ing next to us on the shore I notice three large boats sitt panic attack ensues. leave immediately before a smiles absently and lights ive tyre swinging skills. He ress imp I show him my up a cigarette. giants. He laughs and k quarries were staircases for thin to d use I t tha him I tell es.” rld. unnecessarily repeats “quarri brings a new sliver of the wo rds because each new row eya vin I like staring into of strangers cycling.

High tide. Overcast. Lots t of anger. me with a slow boiling sor Overly large front lawns fill ng on top of it. ridi cat a w t in the sand. I dra Someone drew an elephan ause there's no central 't open the door at first bec I finally remember that I can le sense of pride. locking and feel an inexplicab — La ure n Sp rin g

58

Books

The Collected Writings of Jaysankar Lal Shaw: Indian Analytic and Anglophone Philosophy — Dr Jaysankar Lal Shaw

I am unqualified to take on a formal review of this book. Three years of philosophy papers, three years ago, is the sharpest tool I have on me as I approach this work. My memory has grown dim through the years. I no longer see as clearly as I once did the intricately woven cords of logic and language played with sweet tenderness by those who chose this as their life, their livelihood, and their greatest pursuit.

And as I continue to stall, because in all honesty I haven’t read the thing personally, take it upon yourself, perhaps, to consider picking up a copy of something that might provoke you to think, despite its painful resemblance to those textbooks sitting there in a pile on your floor, uncracked and buried in dust.

The Collected Writings of Jaysankar Lal Shaw is a study of Indian classical thought as it can be used to approach Western philosophy.

It is a work of analytical philosophy focusing in particular on philosophical logic and the philosophy of language. In English, this means that it talks about how Indian traditions of thinking can throw light on Western traditions of thinking. It actually sounds pretty fascinating to me. I’ve always had the suspicion that the divide between East and West is not as easily drawn as it is sometimes made out to be.

Shaw’s book launched in late March of this year, at a prestigious event held by VUW and sponsored in part by the Society for Philosophy and Culture. Shaw is widely respected and was dutifully honoured by those in attendance. It is an exciting thing to see complex philosophical scholarship be so well-received in this day and age of populist thought.

— Kimberley McIvor

The Word for World is Forest — Ursula K. Le Guin

In nearly the same way that Michael Scott marched into his offices and loudly, assuredly, declared bankruptcy, so too did European colonists trot off to lands across deserts and seas, rifles in hand and a fascinating diversity of hats on head, plant a proud flag, and declare sovereignty; and so too do the “yumans”, upon arriving on Athshe, a lush, green planet budding with the forestry that Earth has long since been stripped of, declare their presence to the native alien population.

Science fiction is famous for its allegorical powers. Le Guin is careful to lay out the clash of races realistically, drawing from history as well as moulding the story of this new world within the lines that she has drawn around their distinct reality. So certain characters feel and sound familiar: Davidson, the boasting and brutal soldier, the militarised racial purist that grows increasingly blind to the horror of his own acts; Lyubov, the empathetic scientist, whose detachment in his anthropological pursuits becomes impossible; and Selver, indigenous leader and ex-slave, who feels the call to revolution against his oppressors, and the subsequent siren call to mimic their violence. But the key difference is that in this case, it is two species at odds, and the right path seems less clear.

I think it’s worthwhile reading Le Guin.

Science fiction functions in ways that can take you by surprise, and it’s necessary as a human being to allow yourself to be challenged, to doubt yourself, and to pursue truth. As a master writer, Le Guin’s books are valuable to that end. The Word for World is Forest, specifically, is one of her more famous works. It’s cleanly written, and a short read, if that’s a concern, which, considering the girth of some spec-fic, I wouldn’t be surprised by. So go for it.

— Kimberley McIvor

59

Deus ex flying car: Ada Palmer's Terra Ignota.

Gods in fantasy novels are as unexceptional and versatile as chocolate. Characters whose gifts alter the rules are commoner yet to both fantasy and science fiction — witch, superhero, telepath, choose your flavour and let the consequences roll. I like all those flavours. But when, in chapter one of Ada Palmer’s Too Like The Lightning, a child demonstrates the ability to bring toys and other depictions to life, something is different. This is not a superpower, it is a miracle.

The miracle child, Bridger, is not ensconced in a world where divine interference has agreed-upon precedent, and the characters who must react to Bridger do so not only at the genre-conventional level of awe and speculation — “Who are you? Where did that come from?

How can we make use of you?” — but at the real world one, including alongside those other concerns: “In terms of all human thinking and wondering about the divine, what does this mean and how must our thoughts be changed?”

So many science fiction novels have atheism in their DNA. This one opens, not with old answers, but with old questions.

They are not the only questions at play, either. Too Like The Lightning is the first half of a two-volume story, which is itself the first half of a projected four-volume science fiction series, Terra Ignota. I was fascinated by it from the start. Until recently I could not trust it.

Ada Palmer, a historian, presents a future of historical complexity, rooted in more cultures than one and in more times than now. Unlike much speculative fiction which, for the sake of convenience, give a planet the cultural complexity of a city, or allows five hundred years to produce one great war and one great poet, Terra Ignota interposes between our 2017 and Palmer’s constructed 2450 not a single alteration and its consequences, nor two, nor three, but a twining complexity in which everything changes but no change is complete.

Gender presentation has been culturally set to neuter, but the concepts “female” and “male”

Books retain an unacknowledged power. Organised religion is forbidden, but private religion is mandated. Nations are non-geographic, but those who think of themselves as Spanish may still bow to a King of Spain.

The complexity of the world-building, and its inseparability from the complexity of the plot, come across gradually, via the deliciously mannered narration of Mycroft Canner, a convict whose crime and sentence lack close modern parallels. Until midway through Too Like The Lightning I was, while enjoying that narration, still looking in puzzlement at the components it was showing me, unsure if their individual gleams would come together into more than a dazzling heap. But the more I read, the less the book's complexity resembled chaos. Through to the end of Too Like The Lightning and into its sequel, Seven Surrenders, the pleasures of reading chapter after chapter became the pleasures of realising how every turning cog would serve the clock, how each cuckoo would spring its hour.

Likewise, until midway through Seven Surrenders I was still nervous that the exceptional weight being given to ontological questions might crash down, supported only by a genre-conventional answer which, while lively on its own terms, did not match the implied promise. I will have to do more thinking before I know how much I like the answers Seven Surrenders has — I could point to the chapter where my “this is delightful!” turned into “this may delight me when I've reread it, so much to process!” — but it does conclude on the terms it promised.

There are good reasons why many novels don’t attempt Terra Ignota’s level of complexity: it’s difficult, if poorly handled it burns up a story’s oxygen, and it requires a deep knowledge base. But Palmer has been planning these books for years; they’re her learned contribution to several genre conversations, they’ll make you think new thoughts, and they’re damn good fun.

— Jack Larsen

60

VISUAL ART The Body Laid Bare A Google ad for Auckland Art Gallery’s new exhibition, The Body Laid Bare: Masterpieces from the Tate, is captioned: “Masterpieces from Picasso, Matisse, Rodin and many other renowned artists.” The artwork which illustrates the ad is Auguste Rodin’s The Kiss, a 19th century figura serpentinata of naked marble bodies in romantic embrace. Plastered on the cover of pamphlets distributed across campus, the intertwined figures represent a history of Western art’s ability to do just as the title suggests: lay the body bare.

Each time I’ve seen Rodin’s figures in their various states of reproduction I’ve wondered if the rest of the exhibition is more diverse than the imagery used to sell it to the public. The title of the exhibition is a nice reminder that the body — the female body specifically — has for centuries been stripped and manipulated by the minds of male artists. The female nude comes in various forms, from Delacroix’s exoticised visions of the “Oriental” harem, depicting piles of languid, submissive (and curiously white) female bodies awaiting penetration; to Picasso’s dismembered and “othered” bodies of prostitutes in Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. The female body as (re)imagined by the male is a defining trope of Western Art History that has been heavily criticised since the 1970s, when the gender gap in art institutions first came into question — which is not to say issues of representation and recognition in art have been entirely redressed today.

A recent article by Jori Finkel, published in The New York Times, questions the lack of female artists included in the Desert X biennial, an open-air installation of 16 art works across Coachella Valley. When asked about the gender imbalance of the show, Neville Wakefield, the curator, responded “I’m not a quota curator.” It’s a response typical of the art world, where straight white men are accorded a status of natural default, and affirmative action is considered contrary to the notion of “Great Art” which, we can assume, could be made by anyone — that “anyone” is so often a white male is suggested to be coincidence. Finkel goes on to describe the four artworks produced by women as being “less spectacle-driven and more contemplative,” a stereotype often attributed to art made by women which simply isn’t true of the works at hand — one being a 3 x 30 metre wall covered in bold black and white patterns. Exhibitions curated by women often also give precedence to male artists, as in the case of Nancy Spector’s 2008 theanyspacewhatever at the Guggenheim Museum, which focused on the Relational Aesthetics movement but left out key female figures.

In the gallery’s shop, full of books, lamps, and fine jewellery, there is a collection of exhibition-specific merchandise, including a publication commissioned in

61

Visual Art

relation to the exhibition — which is in this case wrapped in a fleshy pink cover, panelled by a close-up of Frederic Leighton’s The Bath Of Psyche: the melancholy face of classical European beauty. Also for sale: the Guerrilla Girls’ manifestomocking The Advantages of Being a Woman Artist printed on a hot pink tea towel, a token of stereotypically female labour. The work is a list of sarcastic aphorisms detailing the pleasures of being a woman in the art world: “not having to undergo the embarrassment of being called a genius”; “working without the pleasures of success”; “having an escape from the art world in your 4 free-lance jobs”. The Guerrilla Girls were a collective of artists intent on fighting the deeply embedded sexism and racism of the art world, formed in response to the 1984 MoMA exhibition An International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture, in which only 13 of the 165 artists featured were female, and even fewer were people of colour — none women. Another one of their works, commissioned but rejected by the New York Public Art Fund, is a billboard asking: “Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum? Less than 5% of the artists in the Modern Art sections are women, but 85% of the nudes are female.” This observation was based on a count taken in 1989, but a more recent count on their website shows that by 2012 the Metropolitan Museum’s statistics had barely changed.

Upstairs, in the gallery, the loosely chronological arrangement of the show exposes art history’s tendency to exploit the female figure as a medium for artistic experimentation — often contorted, amputated, and simplified to near-nothingness.

As the art on display develops — from early voyeuristic scenes in the painter’s studio and “primitive” renderings of erotic bodies, to Giacometti’s decapitated Walking Woman I — female-made works crop up to counter those by the betterknown masters. Louise Bourgeois’ Arched Figure subverts the traditional male bronze by placing the subject in the involuntary state of a seizure, headless and helpless in the face of its objection; while Tracey Emin’s The Last Thing I Said to You was Don’t Leave Me Here II, in which Emin sits naked with her back to the camera, insists on the artist’s agency over the depiction of her body by allowing her to be both vulnerable and autonomous: a multiplicity the female figure is so often denied. It’s a shame the exhibit’s advertising did not hint at its inclusion of contemporary works.

I left with a renewed appreciation of the formal diversity of the nude across genres and historic periods, perhaps due to something inherent in the body’s capacity to express inner psychological states and respond to external stimuli — including the artist’s hand. I wonder what the Guerrilla Girls would think of the show.

— Nina Dyer

62

Puzzles

CROSSWORD: 'STATE YOUR NAME'

RT

CALL FOR A

SUDOKU

ACROSS

1. Nickname of reality TV star Tiffany Pollard (3,4) 5. Crazy busy (6) 8. Artist noted for her paintings of flowers and cow skulls (7,7) 10. Rainbow or brown fish (6) 13. Software company named for a Greek fortune-teller (6) 16. One of twelve in the Dodekathon (5) 17. Archaeologist who teaches at the fictional Marshall and Barnett Colleges (7,5) 21. Group of three (5) 23. Nearly (6) 25. See 22-Down 29. 'Sideways' actress currently playing Kimble Hookstraten in 'Designated Survivor' (8,6) 30. First dating app to feature the swiping technique (6) 31. 'My House' rapper with the upcoming album 'The Perfect 10' (3,4)

Sudoku difficulty: Easy

DOWN

TARGET Make as many words of three letters or more as you can. Each word must contain the letter in the central square.

LAST WEEK'S SOLUTION

Target goals: Good: 10 words Great: 14 words Impressive: 17 words

1. Dark periods (6) 2. "Which person?" (3) 3. Should (5) 4. Genghis ___ (4) 5. One on a trail (5) 6. Shapes of some moons (9) 7. Necessity for pool (3) 9. Ridges on a guitar (5) 11. In mint condition (9) 12. Location explored by a bathysphere (3) 14. Bother in a Shakespeare title (3) 15. Commit perjury (3) 17. Mosul inhabitant (5) 18. Common score in a World Cup game (3) 19. Last words for a single person? (1,2) 20. "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away" speaker (3) 22. With 25-Across, African country where more people speak Kriol than the country's official language, Portuguese (6-6) 24. Technology used to find subs (5) 26. American state which doesn't really share its name with anyone (5) 27. Kyoto cuisine (5) 28. Location of the triceps surae muscles (4) 29. Dog doc (3)

63

HOROSCOPE

Horoscope

As they say, mo’ money, mo’ problems, so thank you baby boomers for having free tertiary education and then taking away our right to do the same. Find out what is going to happen with the last of your $$ in this fortnight’s horoscope section.

Taurus: April 20–May 20 WOW, you are going to start a new relationship (romantic or otherwise) this month which is going to bring in the cash.

Seekingarrangements.com anyone?

Scorpio: Oct 23-Nov 21 So apparently the universe provides you with the “impetus” for financial action this fortnight. Idk what that means but if you do then fuckin’ go for it m8.

Gemini: May 21–June 20 Oh it’s going to be an unpleasant one for you this month in terms of money, Gems. Trying to please anyone won’t work and you just need to buckle down and save, we’re sorry.

Sagittarius: Nov 22-Dec 21 There’s just so much shit going on with the planets right now that you are irritated, and everyone is irritated, and so you need to book a spontaneous trip to Thailand and/or post Instagrams of sunsets with cryptic captions.

Live. Laugh. Love.

Cancer: June 21–July 22 All these planetary retrogrades have given you a real hit of male and female energies this week and so you will have LOTS of friends and “love” partners but no money.

Leo: July 23–August 22 All the planets are arguing over you this week and this means it is a time for ~RADICAL~ change so money is really the least of your worries. DON’T light your life on fire.

Virgo: Aug 23-Sep 22 Some of our “research” said that it’s a gr8 time to be you. You are full of self love and it is time to channel that love into money making activities. <3 Libra: Sep 23-Oct 22 There is some activity in your house of earning which is really impeding upon your ability to make $$, but don’t worry, your rich friends will have your back because they all love you because you’re really nice.

Capricorn: Dec 22-Jan 21 The universe will ~guide~ how you spend your money this week, but the important thing is that it’s time to invest all your hard earned capital. May I suggest one egg sandwich from Wishbone?

Aquarius: Jan 22- Feb 19 Aquarius, you have to be the boring one who turns down Friday BYOs this month because you are in saving mode. Put down the mi goreng and Fat Bird sav and pick up a sense of responsibility for once in your goddamn life.

Pisces: Feb 19-Mar 20 There is activity in your house of debt, which means *someone* forgot to pay a bill. Looks like you will be living without internet/power this week… so it’s lucky Salient is printed.

Aries: March 21–April 19 One of the horoscopes we read said your finances are “no laughing matter” and that you really need to sort out your debts. Which is true, please do that.

— Aubergine amd Celeste