A bold solution to the housing crisis

Simplicity Living: like if TOP was a business

Kia ora and welcome to The Weekend, featuring the best of The Spinoff and the wider internet. I’m just going to hop on the small soapbox that is my intro to these newsletters and wholeheartedly second Madeleine Chapman’s editorial about why trans allyship is important. Anti trans sentiment is dangerous for trans people and making some people prove that they’re human over and over again is just a massive waste of time that could be used to do something more interesting and productive. Something to dwell on as you drink Coffee Supreme and read some of my favourite freshly brewed articles from this week. (P.S. If you want to be a better ally to gender-nonconforming people in your life, start here.)

-Shanti Mathias, staff writer

Simplicity’s Sam Stubbs is building an alternative to the state

Sam Stubbs is the founder of Simplicity, an organisation that has disrupted how banks profit from Kiwisaver schemes. Shane Brealey is a builder who has disrupted some of the default (inefficient!) ways houses get built in New Zealand. Together, they’ve created Simplicity Living. “‘The really big, hairy dream is to have one in 10 New Zealanders living in these things,’ Stubbs says. That means a minimum of 200,000 houses – around three times the current number of state houses.” Duncan Grieve wanted to chase this story because housing seems to him like the root cause of so much of what is broken in Aotearoa. “Fixing it holds the promise of also solving many other problems at the same time,” Greive told me. “That’s why this quest, imposing as it remains, was a story I was desperate to get closer to.”

Make your morning Supreme
Coffee Supreme has been serving New Zealanders great coffee since ’93. Their commitment to live up to their name: being the supreme coffee option, extends from the rich coffee they produce, to they way they take care of all their people, from producers to baristas.
It’s called Supreme for a reason. Fill your mug now at Coffee Supreme.

Tutekawa Wyllie’s landmark case to get compensation for CTE

Tutekawa Wyllie, former All Black and New Zealand First MP, was a stalwart of Wellington rugby in the 1970s and 1980s. During this time, he received several concussions, which made him, at times, feel dizzy and unable to drive. Wyllie had a second career as a politician in the 1990s, but in 2010 he started to become forgetful, irritable, alarmed. Those concussions had caused probable chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative neural condition linked to repeated blows to the head. Wyllie is no longer verbal, but after five years of tireless advocacy by his wife Margaret and their lawyer, his CTE has been recognised by ACC, meaning there is support for his accessibility needs and caregiving. Sports reporter Dylan Cleaver writes a wide-ranging feature about Wyllie’s life, and why the ACC ruling matters in our rugby-obsessed culture.

Why is the state paying to lobby itself?

This week, Radio New Zealand’s Guyon Espiner has been reporting, extensively, on the role of lobbying in New Zealand’s political system. Using information obtained by the Official Information Act and other sources, the series has examined how lobbyists promote the causes of corporate clients, and how there’s a “revolving door” between parliament and PR firms. Duncan Greive argues public money is being used to make it harder for the public to know what the government does, which is banal and bleak.

A message from Toby Manhire, editor-at-large and host of podcast Gone by Lunchtime.

Independent journalism is never more important than during an election year and we want to cover Election 2023 with rigour, range and humour. To do that, we need your help. Support our mahi by making a donation today.

Red, White & Brass celebrates Tongan māfana

In 2011, Halaifonua Finau’s Tongan church formed a brass band to perform at the Rugby World Cup – despite none of them knowing how to play brass instruments. Years later, trying to think of a movie idea to produce, Finau’s friend told him that the brass band story should be its own film. The result is Red, White & Brass, which is out now. Sela Jane Hopgood talked to Finau about how every step of his career has led to making this movie, and why it means so much to him. Lots of his family and friends who were involved with the original brass band got to be part of the production, which was particularly special. Watching the film, Finau says people will “see how proud we are to be Tongan.”

• More good watching: Guy Montgomery’s Guy Mont Spelling Bee is perfect low stakes television

Weekend watch: Amber Clyde gets back on the board

Back on the Board is a new one-off documentary about skateboarder Amber Clyde. A lifelong advocate for women in the sport, Clyde founded Girls Skate NZ after being bullied as the only girl in the skate park in Birkenhead. Now a single mother of two who is juggling raising her young children with a packed teaching schedule, Clyde struggles to find time for herself to rebuild her own confidence in the sport. In this intimate observational documentary, made with the support of NZ On Air, Clyde explores the realities of being both a solo mother and a skater, and the mental and physical challenges that come with getting back on the board. 

Everything else

• Hyped drug semaglutide has been approved for use in New Zealand — plus, Jia Tolentino on what its popularity may indicate for our societal relationship to obesity

• Listen to this (slightly ironic) podcast about why silence is important — and read about an order of cloistered nuns in the US who were forced to move after the noise of the city interrupted their quietness

• Public transport in rural areas needs to be way better

• Ten writers try food they’ve always avoided. First up: bananas.

• Is it going to be a climate change election? Toby Manhire looks at the polling

• What does polyamory look like in New Zealand today?

• Festival reviews: the Homegrown formula needs a switch up — but Womad is eclectic and great for families

• Super fascinating read about how hard it is to define who is indigenous

• Help Me Hera: Knowing when to quit

• Spinoff fave Ellen Rykers has this gripping yarn about a group of Antarctic explorers who got lost in 1972 — plus, what does a polar oceanographer do?

• Loving your mother when she belongs to a different culture

• Fun weekend activity idea: write an Auckland Council submission!

• A day in the life of a children’s librarian

• And finally, the Auckland Arts Festival continues to have loooooots of performances to get amongst; I’ve been listening to this composition about albatrosses on repeat since I went to the album’s premiere last Friday