Welcome

I grew up in the 1960s on a farm ten miles out of Feilding. I had a heart attack at 27 in the Dargaville public hospital with a bulging wad of race winnings in my pocket. I survived to write about what I’ve seen in the last few hours and decades.

I got my law degree at Victoria University and used it to be a liquor licensing consultant, a speechwriter in the Prime Minister’s office, a columnist, and a talk radio host. These days I am a daily correspondent trying to make sense of where we are and where we might be headed. This can arguably feel more urgent if you know the feeling of a giant fist squeezing inside your chest on your 27th birthday.

What I Write About

Some days it can be policy manifestos, sometimes it can be sitting in COVID isolation watching the bag fill and emptying it. It might be what happened in Parliament today, it might be what my father remembers from 1933, it could be what I remember about my father.

I write about politics, family, memory, climate, housing, bikes, degrowth, and the bullshit of people in power dressing up greed as just getting on with it.

I write about what we're losing and what we could build; the warm world my grandmother made in Mangaweka during the Depression; the Treaty partnership we've spent 180 years trying to honour, the native birds we could hear again if we made the choice, the affordable homes we could build if we stepped outside broken markets; the country we could be if we chose sufficiency over extraction, warmth over coldness, partnership over domination.

Some readers tune in daily for my take on whatever the hell that was we just ran over. Others tell me they especially like the pieces about family and New Zealand's past. They're really the same story, about defending what matters and imagining what's possible.

A Vision Worth Fighting For

Imagine tourism built around environmental restoration: visitors coming to help run trap lines and plant natives, funding a conservation corps, returning years later to hear a dawn chorus so loud you can't hear yourself think.

Imagine state-built affordable apartments along Auckland's transport corridors, sold at cost because we've chosen social returns over fiscal ones.

Imagine Te Tiriti honored as the partnership it was meant to be, not rewritten by think-tank money and political opportunism.

I write to keep those choices visible.

Recent Writing

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I write most days. Sometimes it's 300 words, sometimes 3,000. It's $8/month or $80/year, and you can unsubscribe any time.

If you'd rather just follow along for free, you'll get the occasional post in your inbox. But the daily stuff is for paying subscribers, because this is how I make my living.

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A Bit More About Me

I'm also the author of a few books, including Bullshit, Backlash and Bleeding Hearts: A Confused Person's Guide to the Great Race Row (2004).

I live in Devonport with my wife Karren. I ride my bike most places. I think degrowth and sufficiency economics make more sense than endless GDP worship. I believe in free stuff based on UBI principles. I like to get up at 5:20am to run empty streets and think.

You may remember from the radio or the TV or the Sunday Star Times or Metro. Or not.

I'm on Bluesky at @davidslack.bsky.social.

Thanks for being here.