North & South

North & South is New Zealand’s premier monthly current affairs and lifestyle magazine, specialising in long-form investigative journalism, delivered by award-winning writers and photographers. North & South also showcases New Zealand ingenuity and creativity, explores the country and profiles its people. It is a touchstone of New Zealand life.

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From the Editor

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Behind this issue

North & South

Local haunts • Kiwis love a good yarn, and adding paranormal to the mix makes for enigmatic legends that lie somewhere between history and fiction.

At Middlemore Hospital July 1977

OPERATING THEATRE • Stuart McKenzie and Miranda Harcourt’s new play Transmission: Beta tells the tale of the government’s Covid-19 response — the economic and political fallout — through the words of those perched on the frontline. McKenzie and Harcourt talk to North & South about taking the nation’s temperature at this time of unprecedented disharmony.

DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE • He’s the first Māori minister of health in nearly 99 years, but it took Dr Shane Reti fewer than 99 days to scrap Te Aka Whai Ora Māori Health Authority, which Māori health advocates spent years fighting for. Jeremy Rose talks to Reti about his first few months in the job and his priorities for the future.

Mental arithmetic • How much of a toll did Covid and our official responses to it take on mental health in New Zealand? The numbers tell an alarming story.

Does Not Compute OUR TECH TIPPING PROBLEM

Time to be a policy laboratory again • Our politics pundit weighs up the British policy plans posited to patch up New Zealand’s pressing political problems (and vice versa).

Ethics, funds & Russian dolls • After running Oxfam Aotearoa, fighting the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) and a stint as a Green MP, Barry Coates founded Mindful Money, an ethical investment charity. Six years in, Coates and his team are gathering evidence of their organisation’s outsized impact on the finance sector’s conscience.

Powering ahead • The case for home charging makes life simpler.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS • Last month, North & South investigated how New Zealand’s 19th and 20th-century education system deliberately steered Māori students towards low-skill, low-paid employment. Is this still the case today? Aaron Smale reports in part two of a three part investigation.

A spoonful of rainbow • Revolutionising healthy nutritional intake: Four handfuls of berries and leafy greens in one quick shot.

ORGAN MUSIC • No one knows when they will die, but they can know that their organs could provide a second chance for others.

A brush with history • The history of the toothbrush seems like something only your mother’s strange new boyfriend is keen on. Actually, it’s (sort of) interesting.

Good Health starts in the mouth • A formative childhood illness set Dr John Tagg on a path to probiotics.

Degrees of nursing • Award-winning writer Airini Beautrais teaches science to nursing students in Whanganui. She has great confidence in her graduating students, but worries that tough times in both health...