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The Whistleblowers

July 24th, 2025

In North & South last month doctors and other health professionals said they were being gagged which was, in turn, threatening patient safety. Three case studies are significant precedents of medical whistleblowing and are also reminders of the power of speaking out.

By Dr Renee Liang

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Watching the detectives

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The Whistleblowers

Watching the detectives

The Culture Compass

Small town socks it to the world

Sex workers: in their own words

The Base of a World

You’ve (not) Got Mail: how the Post Office lost its legendary status

Comedy may not save us but it’s a good start

The Sport Column

Jungle Drums

The Culture Compass

The Inconvenient Truthers: doctors speaking out

Illustration: Daron Parton.

The CEO of Age Concern says seniors on a fixed budget will stop eating, and forgo costs for basics like the internet or a cell phone. “They lose the joy of life.”

Where Will You Live When You’re Old?

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ORCHESTRAL MANOEUVRES

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In Conversation With Serena Stevenson

In Conversation With Serena Stevenson 26th June 2025 When photo journalist and documentary artist Serena Stevenson decided to make Three Days In February, a film about the music and arts festival Splore at Tāpapakanga, she had more than 20 years of personal connection with the festival and five years of…

The cost of giving birth: Aotearoa v Europe

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Desperate Housewife of Verona 26th June 2025 Back in 2023 when actress Beatriz Romilly was about to star in Auckland Theatre Company’s King Lear, she said, presciently, in an interview with Canvas magazine, “does someone have to be completely destroyed to realise what a jerk they’re being? It’s the techies,…

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‘You’re taking the place of a man’ – the women medical school grads who changed history

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Stu Wilson – Mighty, Not Fallen

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In Conversation With Edward Sampson 12th June 2025 The Doc Edge Film Festival celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. Sarah Daniell talks with Aotearoa NZ film maker Edward Sampson ahead of the world premiere of his directorial debut, the documentary-drama Devils on Horses - a powerful story that explores the…

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How new AI soured my love for tech

How new AI soured my love for tech 5th June 2025 Ben Moore has always loved technology, the way it pushed boundaries. But AI is a bad actor, he writes, and the game has changed. By Ben MooreAn unhealthy number of my core memories involve computers. Christmas in the 90s;…

Siouxsie’s Saga

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French Film Festival

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School Lunches

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Talkback Radio And Empty Shells

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The Jukebox Murder

The Jukebox Murder 22nd May 2025 A murder that shook Tāmaki Makaurau 70 years ago was adapted into a sell-out play and an award winning novel. Scott Bainbridge recalls the case that still has a hold, in the heart and memory of one who was ‘there’ and which recalls the…

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NZ Music Month

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Nanny Dearest

Nanny Dearest: A Childhood Nightmare 8th May 2025 Belinda Robinson, the daughter of famous Aotearoa playwright - and founder of Pōneke’s Downstage Theatre - Bruce Mason and renowned obstetrician Diana Mason, speaks publicly about the childhood abuse inflicted by Lili, their opiate-addicted nanny. Warning: This extract contains themes around abuse and…

Catherine Chidgey

Catherine Chidgey in conversation with North & South 8th May 2025 Internationally lauded and best-selling Aotearoa author, Catherine Chidgey, has published her ninth novel, The Book of Guilt. Set in Britain in 1979, it’s a dystopian and sinister story about 13-year-old triplets - Vincent, Lawrence and William - who live…

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First in Folk

First in Folk 8th May 2025 Nadia Reid is something to behold, live, and her fourth album, Enter Now Brightness is a thing of exquisite beauty and according to The Guardian: "remarkably peaceful and restorative". Reid is now based with her family in the UK but will be touring in…

Straight from the heart

Shayne Carter: songwriter, rock star, author, football fan, chess player, average driver. Photo: STEPHEN PERRY FOR METRO/SUPPLIED Straight from the heart May 1, 2025 From snotty punk to senior statesman of New Zealand music, Shayne Carter’s career has been wild and acclaimed. But his memoir reveals the drama and trauma…

Scandal, weed and witchcraft

Anna Hoffman in 1960. Scandal, weed and witchcraft May 1, 2025 As a child she played the violin; as a woman, chess with a Mongrel Mob president. Scott Bainbridge on the life and curious times of Anna Hoffman, the Maharanee of Marijuana. By: Scott BainbridgeShe was the antithesis ‘it’ girl…

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Oliver Stretton-Pow, Hard Graft Mark II, 2025 Culture Compass May 1, 2025 Around ngā mōtu there is art, film, comedy and literature - here’s our guide to lightning the weight of the times.In heavy times like these, one could be fooled into thinking that going to a show or exhibition…

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The case for armed neutrality

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Polkinghorne

Power, Privilege and Polkinghorne 17th April 2025 Sarah Daniell attended a media screening of the documentary Polk: The Trial of Philip Polkinghorne and interviewed producer Mark McNeill By Sarah DaniellOnce, while covering a medical conference, I was introduced to a group of ophthalmologists. “You must meet these people,” said the…

Men of God

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Cave Creek

A River of Grief Runs Through It 17th April 2025 In the April 2005 edition of North & South, 10 years after the Cave Creek disaster, award-winning journalist Mike White interviewed survivors, families and key players in the aftermath and inquiry. He discovered for those affected there was no justice…

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Severance and Tech

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The Dark Dad

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Mark Adams Story

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Parkinson’s and a pilgrimage

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Dauntless Donna

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Child Poverty

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Health – it’s a matter of consent

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Little Girl Lost

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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

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Japan’s theme parks

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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

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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.

USAID – The gutting of America’s biggest aid agency

Charlotte Bellis looks at the shuttering of the United States Agency for International Development and what it really means for our security.

Lives and money: The dangerous business of health privatisation

What’s the true cost of privatisation of healthcare in Aotearoa New Zealand? Lives and money - much more money, writes Dr Renee Liang.

The Sheep of the West

Charlotte Bellis on Europe’s response to the Trump inauguration, and why New Zealand needs to take a principled stance over foreign policy.

In the neighbourhood

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.

LA fires up close and personal

The LA firestorm that started on January 7 has claimed the lives of 27 people and destroyed over 10,000 structures. Matt Ragghianti is a screenwriter, creative director and journalist who lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two teenage sons. In an exclusive essay for North & South, Ragghianti…

Sleeping dogs: Tom Phillips and New Zealand’s wilderness myth

From Man Alone to Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Kiwi culture has long romanticised the bush-dwelling loner. Now Tom Philips drags his children into a dangerous reality challenging our national narrative of rugged individualism. By James Borrowdale

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The disappeared

Writer John Sinclair talks to the Chief Police Commissioner Andrew Coster on the eve of his departure for the shores of social reform. By John Sinclair

Canute economics

Economist Geoff Bertram on why the turning tides of price increases doesn’t mean government can claim credit for cutting inflation. By Geoff Bertram

Top cop

Writer John Sinclair talks to the Chief Police Commissioner Andrew Coster on the eve of his departure for the shores of social reform. By John Sinclair

Bluff and Lies

How one man’s fabrications about Māori land claims exposed deep-rooted prejudices and, surprisingly, led to an unexpected journey of healing. By Anna McMartin

Madam President

Too clean for green politics? What a Harris administration could mean for New Zealand and how the Biden White House fused environmental policy with industrial protectionism. By Henry Whyte

Out of sight and out of their minds

Alarming statistics reveal a mental health crisis behind bars. John Sinclair writes about the urgent need for reform and rehabilitation highlighting the struggles of both inmates and staff in a system that has been pushed to its limits. By John Sinclair

The Case of the Poisoned Milk

Experiencing dizziness, dry mouth, delirium or attempted murder? Scott Bainbridge exhumes a historic mystery worthy of Sherlock Holmes. By Scott Bainbridge

Smoke & Mirrors: What’s gone wrong with the ETS?

The emissions trading scheme is meant to be the country’s main tool for reducing our emissions, but critics say it’s doing little more than carpeting the country in permanent pine forest. Meanwhile, the price of carbon credits has gone from boom to bust. What’s gone wrong? By George Driver

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