On Our Cover

You Can’t Say That!

Or Can You?

It’s time for a grown-up conversation about tough issues

By Yvonne van Dongen

View October issue

Features

Filter

Health – it’s a matter of consent

Health - it’s a matter of consent March 13, 2025 "Power is not truly effective power when there is no consent; it is simply ‘power over’, which demands compliance." By: Dr Renee LiangA few weeks ago, I watched as a father signed a consent form for his newborn twins to…

Little Girl Lost

Little Girl Lost March 13, 2025 Missing person files are, by definition, a sad lament. When it’s a child, acutely so. The disappearance in 1949 of 2½-year-old Elizabeth Shannon, who wandered off and vanished is still etched into the minds of many who lived in Wellington at the time. By:…

A Kete Half Empty

A Kete Half Empty March 13, 2025 In her essay below, first published in North & South in January 2020, Liang describes poverty as a "heritable condition" that perpetuates and amplifies through generations: “It is also not hard to see how individual poverty flows into communities and society, with downstream…

Secrets and Lies

Secrets and Lies   An explosion in the popularity of DNA tests is exposing a litany of secrets and lies, with as many as one in four tests returning an unexpected result. And as Joanna Wane discovers, it’s ripping some families apart. How many people would have known what the…

Japan’s theme parks

Japan's theme parks February 27, 2025   Fancy paying to play with a dog, watch a sheep being shorn or share a beer with a real Kiwi bloke? For a few hundred yen, you could find all this at monolithic New Zealand-themed adventure parks in the Japanese countryside. Michelle Duff…

Canopies and clarity

Canopies and clarity February 27, 2025   To visit Abel Tasman National Park in the off-season is to discover wild beauty uncluttered by crowds. Sarah Daniell finds her own pace in a self-guided day walk from Tōtaranui to Medlands Beach.Abel Tasman sailed into this jewel-like world in 1642, the first…

Full Noise

Full Noise February 20, 2025   Sarah Daniell recently moved from the suburbs to the inner city in Auckland. In an occasional column she writes about discovering new noises, neighbours and a different place - and way -  to live.I wake early each morning to the sound of the city…

Operation Gypsy

Two young women are missing, allegedly murdered in violent circumstances. Who are Gypsy, and Alexa Cullen? What really happened to them? Or are they the same woman? Thirty years later, a tragic story remains a dark mystery.

Culture Etc.

Filter

The family album

Interdisciplinary artist Stella Brennan remixes archival objects into anti-nostalgic meditations on progress and history. Thread Between Darkness & Light is Brennan’s most personal artwork, and one of her most beautiful. By Theo Macdonald.

Olafur Eliasson: Beyond the limits of perception

Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki welcomes a retrospective exhibition from one of contemporary art's great ambassadors for climate consciousness and the capacity of art to affect change.

Christine Jeffs: Making A Mistake

Christine Jeffs latest film, A Mistake, is based on author Carl Shuker’s novel in which a surgeon’s split-second decision leads to dire consequences. Shuker talks to Jeffs about directing Hollywood stars and the love of horses that keeps her home. By Carl Shuke

The first XI

Once a thorn in the side of New Zealand sports media, the Alternative Commentary Collective have become Kiwi sports royalty over the last decade (and a year).

Man of Letters

A conversation with painter Julian Hooper. By Theo Macdonald.

Late bloomers and buttocks

Guy Somerset kicks off his new North & South column on reading the backlist with the genius of Barbara Anderson

Perfect pictures

Perfect Pictures By Theo Macdonald Let’s cut to The Chase (Arthur Penn, 1966). For the past five years, the New Zealand International Film Festival has been lost in The Fog (John Carpenter, 1980). Long-term leader Bill Gosden passed away in 2020, 2021’s Auckland leg was rudely cancelled by COVID-19 (We…

Surf’s up

Surf’s up. By Nadia Shaw-Owens

Partner Content

Filter

Appetite for investment

Growing up in the eighties, “a little girl with buck teeth and red pigtails”, Megan Dunn didn’t dream of becoming a Project Manager. She wanted to be Madison, the mermaid played by Daryl Hannah in Splash. By Theo Macdonald.

Smith’s Dream

The late Maurice K Smith spent most of his career practising and teaching architecture in the United States, but also left a vivid impression in the country of his birth. By Lucy Streep.

Virtual Revolution

NORTH & SOUTH + AUT Virtual Revolution AUT puts the latest technology in the hands of today's students AUT has opened its virtual production studio, putting top-end Hollywood production technology in the hands of today’s students. Associate Professor Dafydd Sills-Jones, Head of AUT’s Virtual Creative Precinct, says the virtual production…

Trading concrete for cows: A leap from city life to country bliss

NORTH & SOUTH + FMG Trading concrete for cows: A leap from city life to country bliss When Julia Jones decided to swap city living for the rural idyll of a lifestyle block, she was signing up for more than just fresh air and open space. It was a dream…

Four Corners

Utopia Lab

Filter

Too Many People Are Dying On Our Roads

We need better roads, not better people.

Intensive Dairy Farming Is Killing The Environment

New Zealand should halve its number of cows.

The Criminal Justice System Is Broken

How we could reduce crime by locking up less people.

New Zealand Has A Dental Care Crisis

How do we fix it?

Why We Should Borrow More Money

A case for changing the way we think about national debt.

Bring Back the Glory Days of Rail

Why it's a smart idea to re-invest heavily in our national rail system.

Backstory

Filter

Heaven or a Place on Earth?

What awaits us after death?

The Lost Islands

Historic artefacts washed up by the tides hint at lost lands whose full stories we can only guess at.

Beyond the Badlands

Strange monsters and ominous ghosts can be traced to repressed memories of violent histories, argues one Australian researcher looking at the past through a novel lens.

The Northern Bear

Our relationship with Russia has been characterised by instability — cycling between friend and foe, the nation and its citizens have often become symbols of our own fear and anxieties.

Echoes of History

Most New Zealanders remain unaware of the Surafend massacre by Anzac soldiers in 1918.

Gone Bush

To evade New Zealand’s draft in both world wars, scores of conscientious objectors fled deep into the bush.

Closed Encounters

Covid-19 checkpoints are not the first time some parts of the country have been sealed off from the rest.

As a Matter of Fact

Dismissal by Western scientists of mātauranga Māori and indigenous knowledge as unscientific “myth” often succumbs to its own criticism.

Archive Highlights

Filter

Bert’s Labyrinth

Survivors are finally speaking out — but years earlier, a journalist tried to publish the inside story of the notorious Auckland commune. Then she came too close. By Anke Richter

Issues

Contact Us

If you want to get in touch with us, please send an email to

Subscribe To Our Newsletter

For regular updates on what’s happening, please sign up for the newsletter here.

* indicates required