Welcome

I grew up on a farm ten miles out of Feilding. I had a heart attack on my 27th birthday in Dargaville Hospital with a 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'm a daily correspondent trying to make sense of where we are and where we might be headed.

What This Is About

I write about politics, family, memory, climate, housing, bikes, degrowth, and people who want us to buy their bullshit.

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.

Some days it can be policy manifestos, sometimes it can be sitting in COVID isolation watching the bag fill and emptying 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.

I prefer to write about what we could be doing than to bag the people who are stopping us, although some days a bagging will feel like the thing that needs saying most. I don't much like pile-ons. I prefer to say something different from what's being said by ninety otherpeople.

What You'll Find Here

The daily writing is the main event — 1,600 editions and counting, most days somewhere between 300 and 3,000 words. But the site has grown into something more than an archive.

The Glossary is a reference work for New Zealand political life — people, concepts, policies, rhetorical techniques, and news events, cross-referenced with six years of writing. It's the context behind the commentary, built entry by entry and growing every week.

The Daily Quiz tests what you know about whatever's been happening in New Zealand politics. Everyone can play. Paying members get counted on the leaderboard.

Remembered is where the personal essays live — family stories, memory, the past that shapes the present.

Exploration collects the travel writing and dispatches from elsewhere.

Kia Kaha Primary School and the School Journal are satirical series — political life rendered as a primary school, which can turn out to be surprisingly accurate.

Back Issues is the full searchable archive.

I Have Pictures In My Head

I like to imagine tourism built around environmental restoration, with visitors helping t run trap lines and planting trees, with dreams of a restored dawn chorus.

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

I lilke to imagine Te Tiriti honoured as the partnership of vast possibiities it was meant to be.

I think degrowth and sufficiency economics make more sense than endless GDP worship.

I write to keep better options visible.

Subscribe

The daily writing is for paying subscribers — $8/month or $80/year, unsubscribe any time. That's how I make my living. Free readers get access to everything else: the full Glossary, the Daily Quiz, the archive, the memoir pieces, the travel writing, and the occasional free post in your inbox. The leaderboard — where your quiz scores are tracked and ranked — is for paying members.

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A Bit More About Me

I live in Devonport, I like to bike, I like to swim, I like to get up before sunrise to run empty streets and think.

You may remember me from the radio or the TV or the Sunday Star Times or Metro. I'm also the author of such books as Bullshit, Backlash and Bleeding Hearts: A Confused Person's Guide to the Great Race Row, Civil War and Other Optimistic Predictions, and Bullrush

I like to write, I like to hear that people have enjoyed what I've written. I hope you enjoy your time here.