Columns

Since U Been Gone
Welcome back to the second half of the semester. I hope you had a wonderful break. We sure did.

The one down side to the public holidays are, of course, that on your days off you can’t necessarily do the things you might have wanted to do. I, for instance, wanted to catch up on my banking and visit my local chain stores. Obviously foregoing a few hours of consumerism is a reasonable price to pay to ensure that New Zealanders are entitled to sufficient holidays. My real gripe, however, is that it’s impossible to buy alcohol on Good Friday. This isn’t some “I’m a scarfie and this is an affront to my human right to drink” kind of rant. Rather, it seems that prohibiting the sale of alcohol on a certain day, presumably because it’s a Christian holiday, is an anachronistic measure that deserves to be left in the times when New Zealand wasn’t the secular, multicultural nation it is today. It’s the principle of it really.

But while some of us may have been on a break, there’s been no rest for the wicked elsewhere. Namely, the politicians, who have been acting out their very own Jersey Shore-style reality show, complete with scandal and backstabbing. The year began, as you surely know, with the Darren Hughes sex scandal; while our legal system may hold dear the “innocent until proven guilty” mantra, the burden of evidence seems to be reversed in the eyes of the media. Next thing you know, an alleged coup was brewing within the Labour Party ranks, although the change of leadership never quite came to pass. Then last week Hone Harawira announced he was launching his own party: the Mana Party (although the name seems subject to change, with “the Real Maori Party” and “Aotearoa” among the alternatives). Finally, in a move that seemed almost too crazy to be true, Don Brash ousted the nimble Rodney Hyde to become the leader of the ACT party (this after making infantile threats about starting his own extremist party- The Real ACT Party perhaps? - if he didn’t get his way).
 
For an election that was looking to be a big old bore, things are actually getting quite interesting. Although the latest TV3 poll put National at achieving just short of 60% of the vote, it’s possible that ACT’s change of leadership and the establishment of a new party (Mana or otherwise) will impact on the polls. Perhaps ACT will hijack National’s voters, perhaps ACT voters will flee from Brash to the relative safety of National. In short, what was once black and white (or rather, blue and red) may become a little more colourful.
 
The changes also bring some pretty amazing characters to the forefront of New Zealand politics. Brash, the star of Hager’s Hollow Men, is back, the same Brash who wouldn’t comment on whether he would enter into coalition with the Maori party. Oh, but don’t worry. Brash assures us he’s not racist. Brash’s new party colleague, the turncoat Hilary Calvert, is similarly talented at giving interviews. In an interview with ODT last year, Calvert didn’t seem to know whether she had a criminal conviction, if she’d belonged to other political parties, or how much she’d spent in Parliament. Hopefully she’s got those niggly wee facts sorted now.
 
This week’s issue is our “War” issue, which thankfully is a theme that few of us have had first hand experience of. Read our feature on what Anzac Day means to our generation (page 20), the effects war has had on the environment (page 24), or a brief rundown on the bizarre things that have started wars in the past (page 18). As always, we hope you enjoy this issue.
 
Merry second half of the semester,

Julia Hollingsworth