Juggernaut Season 2
About 9 months ago we had The Spinoff's Toby Manhire in to talk about a new podcast - Juggernaut It took us inside David Lange's 4th Labour government and ended up being one of the years surprise hits. Toby's just announced that work has started on season two - this time looking at the 4th National government... That's the Jim Bolger & Jenny Shipley era and they want your leads and tip offs.
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The Spinoff
4 days ago
- The Spinoff
Councils under pressure as government pushes ‘back to basics' agenda
Increasingly loud demands that councils rein in spending have made for a fractious week between ministers and mayors, writes Catherine McGregor in today's extract from The Bulletin. Ministers and mayors air out their differences The relationship between central and local government was extra prickly this week, with a fresh suite of reforms tabled in Wellington and ministers getting a somewhat frosty reception in Christchurch at the Local Government New Zealand conference. The Local Government (System Improvements) Amendment Bill, which passed its first reading last night , will remove councils' legal responsibility to consider the 'four wellbeings' – social, cultural, environmental and economic – when making decisions. Instead, councils will be legally obliged to prioritise so-called 'core services' like water, roads and rubbish. Opening the conference, the prime minister pitched the changes as a return to basics, saying ratepayers wanted councils to '[prioritise] pipes over vanity projects'. But among the mayors gathered in Christchurch, frustration was palpable at the expectation that they somehow, as Newsroom's David Wiliams put it, 'achieve the triumvirate: upgrading infrastructure, holding down rates, and keeping debt in check'. Clutha mayor Bryan Cadogan said ministers refuse to admit they're demanding the impossible. 'The Government knows it, we know it, but we just keep on getting this.' Councils fed up with policy whiplash That frustration is compounded by the sense that councils are forever adapting to the whims of central government. The four wellbeings, for instance, have now been added and removed from the Local Government Act four times since 2002 – inserted twice by Labour governments, stripped out by National. 'Every time we have an election, there's a flip-flop,' said LGNZ president Sam Broughton. As Shanti Mathias reports this morning in The Spinoff, he and others also pushed back at the government's suggestion that councils are blowing money on 'nice-to-haves' like bike lanes and 'fancy toilets'. In his own district of Selwyn, Broughton said, 80% of spending goes to key infrastructure like pipes and roads, with the rest funding services that communities still see as essential. Coalition partners not convinced on rate caps One of the other changes introduced in the new bill is benchmarking – mandatory, comparative performance reporting on council spending, rates, debt and outcomes. While this information is already publicly available, the law will now require councils to collate it into reports. Deputy PM David Seymour is a fan: he told the Christchurch conference that 'some healthy competition between councils is long overdue'. He also cheered the removal of the wellbeing requirements, which he dubbed the Puppy Dogs and Ice Cream Bill when they were proposed by Labour, for the second time, in 2017. However Seymour later expressed reservations about local government minister Simon Watts' proposed cap on rates increases. 'Don't cap your income until you've got your spending under control,' he warned. NZ First leader Winston Peters was even blunter, RNZ's Lillian Hanly reports. 'Doctor, heal thyself,' Peters opined, arguing that central government's own spending record left it in no position to preach to others about fiscal restraint. Tikanga or 'red tape'? Seymour's speech also ignited controversy with his attack on what he called 'ceremonial chanting' in the consenting process – a reference to clauses in resource consents requiring karakia or other tikanga Māori. As Māni Dunlop reports in Te Ao Māori News, the line was in his prepared remarks but not in the speech he delivered at the conference. However Seymour doubled down later that day, claiming that developers were backed into a corner over karakia, believing they had to allow their use to avoid controversy. The comments brought Seymour his second rebuke of the week from Peters: 'Why am I responding to what David Seymour doesn't know? Excuse me,' said the NZ First leader, adding that he had spent much of his career defending the 'right protocol'. Karakia, he said, are 'appropriate when used correctly'. Writing in The Spinoff, Liam Rātana notes that such clauses are typically inserted by mutual agreement to build respectful relationships with mana whenua, and argues that Seymour's complaints are based on misunderstandings of both tikanga and how consent conditions actually work. 'While highlighting these clauses as unnecessary 'red tape' and 'roadblocks', Seymour says his changes will put 'power back with communities',' Liam writes. 'I wonder which communities he's talking about?'
The Spinoff
4 days ago
- The Spinoff
Beloved Auckland cinema faces backlash for ‘racist' AI-generated Russell Crowe video
It may have been intended to be ironic, but a 10-minute AI-made trailer created by an American film director for the Hollywood in Avondale was met with 'full-on pitchforks and torches' when it ran before a movie this week. What stands out straight away is the fact you can't really tell what it's supposed to be. It's Russell Crowe, but with a contorted figure that expands and thins, gets older and younger, generated completely by AI. Then there are the signs with the jumbled-up lettering that can't even properly spell the name of the cinema it's promoting – Auckland's the Hollywood in Avondale. Then you see the AI-generated Māori warriors whose tā moko are just geometric scrawls, and your theory that the popcorn's laced almost seems confirmed. Created by US filmmaker Damon Packard and written and animated by ChatGPT, the video played before an advance screening of Andrew DeYoung's film Friendship at the Hollywood in Avondale on Wednesday. The historic cinema is an Auckland icon, an independent haven for film buffs, and the clip was met with boos from the crowd. In the 10-minute clip, titled 'Hollywood Avondale PSA', Crowe guides viewers through a colonial Aotearoa, then finally modern-day West Auckland, while waxing lyrical about the golden days of cinema and bemoaning today's teens preferring TikTok over Tarkovsky. The video has copped flak online for its AI origins, which one movie-goer said fell short of the theatre's standards and reputation, and its depictions of certain ethnic groups. The Māori in the beginning of the video wear tā moko that bear no cultural significance or meaning, and when Crowe is transported to a modern-day Aotearoa and is lamenting the state of the society's teenagers, most of the phone-obsessed young people in the video are depicted as Asian. Comedian Guy Williams told The Spinoff he was proud to throw the first boo at the 'genuinely quite bizarre and insane' video on Wednesday night. He said he believed it was real for the first 30-40 seconds, before he realised Crowe's body and face kept distorting and ageing and then de-ageing, and then the AI-generated Māori appeared. 'I'm a pretty white guy,' Williams said, 'but that didn't seem right.' Williams said the video received a 'visceral response' from the crowd, which he said comprised mostly fellow comedians and media industry professionals. Currently in the process of making New Zealand Tomorrow for Netflix, Williams said the video spurred 'low-level anxiety' about the role of AI in creative industries. 'If their point was to challenge the changing landscape of media, the piece itself was a terrifying glimpse of the future,' he said. 'Occasionally things need a good boo,' Williams added. 'The whole thing was a fucking nightmare.' Comedian Liv McKenzie also witnessed the 'true dog shit' video, and said the experience had left her 'bewildered'. She said the Hollywood was held to a higher standard than big chains like Hoyts, and she couldn't 'believe how far they missed the mark'. That feeling was shared among the crowd, she said, who started booing, heckling and 'banging on the walls' as the video went on. 'It was full-on pitchforks and torches,' McKenzie said. The depiction of Māori was 'very misguided' and resembled a 'racist caricature', said McKenzie. 'Everyone was a bit like, 'hmmm, OK, someone's going to get fired.'' Matt Timpson, owner of the Hollywood, told The Spinoff the video was created by 'an underground artist in the US with knowledge of Aotearoa limited to a few Google searches'. He said the intention of the video was to create an 'ironic' public service announcement championing the Hollywood's 35mm film presentations. 'The audience reactions have been diverse, and it was never intended to cause offence, nor become a staple in our pre-show programming which changes all the time,' Timpson said. 'We acknowledge that this was a complete misfire. We hope to see you all soon.' In a YouTube comment section, Packard said he had switched to creating content mostly made by AI in recent years for financial reasons. '[There is] lack of proper funding to make a live action film I'd feel worthy and worthwhile of putting the time into,' he wrote. 'I guess you could say I'm weary of those kinds of extreme limitations.' In the comment section for the PSA itself, Packard confirmed he used ChatGPT to create the video, and that he had Crowe's permission to use his likeness. 'I'm a friend of Russell Crowe, he told me I could use it,' Packard wrote.
The Spinoff
6 days ago
- The Spinoff
Echo Chamber: Shane Jones, greatest ever Australian politician?
Nearly 30,000 New Zealanders crossed the ditch last year. Could the minister for resources be next? Echo Chamber is The Spinoff's dispatch from the press gallery, recapping sessions in the House. Columns are written by politics reporter Lyric Waiwiri-Smith and Wellington editor Joel MacManus. The last time the 54th parliament of New Zealand was gathered in the House for question time was about two weeks ago. Back then, the price of butter was the main thing on the minds of the Labour Party caucus, who appeared to see the rising cost of dairy products as a sign of the end times. On Tuesday, the new objective was to put the spotlight on the nearly 30,000 New Zealanders who left the country for Australia in 2024. So long as there remains plenty of problems to pin to the government, Labour won't have to make the effort to dream up any of its own policies. There have been two significant changes in the House since then as well. The death of Takutai Tarsh Kemp leaves an open seat for either Labour to bring in the next candidate on its list or for former broadcaster Oriini Kaipara to make her parliamentary debut for Te Pāti Māori, depending on who wins the Tāmaki Makaurau byelection on September 6. And, following the sudden departure of NZ First MP Tanya Unkovich, the House welcomed a new politician into its fold: David Williams. There was heckling from the opposition benches right off the bat when Labour leader Chris Hipkins rose to ask prime minister Christopher Luxon whether he stood by the government's actions, which he took as an opportunity to laud vocational education minister Penny Simmonds' recent Te Pūkenga restructure announcement, but the jeers drowned him out. When Hipkins came back with 'how many Kiwis have left New Zealand since he became prime minister?', a group of high school students sitting in the public gallery gasped 'ooouusshh!' Resources minister Shane Jones, answering a question from NZ First MP Andy Foster about economic growth in his sector, announced – 'with characteristic modesty' – that he had recently travelled to Singapore and Sydney, and amazed his peers by waxing lyrical about overturning the 'foolish' ban on oil and gas exploration and giving a 'glowing account' of the fast-track laws, the 'most permissive regime in Australasia'. The Greens co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick raised her eyebrows. Jones' characteristic modesty shone through again. 'I have endeavoured to assure investors in the resources sector that we have decriminalised the coal industry,' the minister declared. 'I had the privilege of addressing a host of mining investors [and] professionals in Sydney … They regard the quality of leadership I have shown on behalf of the government of such stature that they invited me to be a politician in Canberra.' 'Take it up!' Labour's Duncan Webb jeered. It's good to know that despite burgeoning opportunities overseas, our best talent stays at home. It wasn't over there. NZ First leader and foreign affairs minister – as he liked to remind his coalition partners before he entered the House on Tuesday – Winston Peters decided to rise and ask the minister if he was saying he'd stop 'virtue signalling' by using local coal rather than 'inferior' offshore coal? It gave Brownlee a moment to consider the importance of phrasing – well, he said, that question is sort of interesting, 'because it's hardly factual as soon as you say 'virtue signalling', but anyway'. When health minister Simeon Brown took patsies from fellow National Party MP Carlos Cheung, it gave deputy prime minister David Seymour a chance to show off his wealth of knowledge on political theory by quoting China's former paramount leader Deng Xiaoping: 'Does the minister subscribe to the philosophy … that it doesn't matter if the cat is black or white, so long as it catches the mice?' Brown grinned and rose to his feet, but Brownlee wouldn't let him answer – it would only be a reasonable question, the speaker said, if the minister was some kind of expert in rodent control. The Act Party leader sought leave for his question to be answered, but was shut down again. 'Well, the House is the master of its own destiny,' Seymour said, sagely. Then Swarbrick's voice popped up: 'Get a grip!' Back on the brain drain, Labour's jobs and income spokesperson Ginny Andersen wanted to know whether finance minister Nicola Willis thought the government was doing enough to 'deliver jobs' despite the tens of thousands headed across the Tasman. Andersen quoted Luxon and Seymour's sentiments that Aotearoa is where the opportunities are and having people leave is 'bad', to which Seymour took offence. Who would want a deputy prime minister who thinks New Zealanders leaving the country is a good thing, Seymour asked, then suggested that such a thing might be possible if the New Zealander doing the leaving was Ginny Andersen. His comment had Brownlee reminding the House, yet again, that question time is not an opportunity to attack the opposition. Up in the backbenches, Labour MP Shanan Halbert made his read of Seymour's comments clear: 'Misogynist!' Maybe Seymour could've tried it a different way: it doesn't matter if the cat is in New Zealand or Australia, as long as it still agrees the government is doing a good job.
