I attended Internet New Zealand’s one-day NetHui on Copyright at Te Papa today. This event featured great speakers, robust discussion and very delicious catering.
I recently sent an Official Information Act request to the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC) hoping to get to the bottom of one of the great mysteries of political semantics: what’s with the inconsistent naming of Ministerial portfolios? How come we have a Minister of Conservation but a Minister for the Environment? I recently received a letter from Michael Webster, Secretary of the Cabinet, with the answer I’d been waiting for.
New Zealand politicians are a real pack of mongrels. Or at least, that’s what they’d like you to think. In any other country’s political context, the press congratulating an ascendant politician on having “a mongrel streak” or a party leader describing his communications director “a mongrel, like me” would be seen as bizarre, crass, and probably racist. In New Zealand, by contrast, “mongrelism” is celebrated in politicians and sports stars alike. But… why? And: what’s wrong with us?
I was recently drawn in by a link on the New Zealand Herald website that boldly proclaimed "NZ's favourite rom-com has been found" (spoiler alert, it's Love, Actually).