If you follow this blog at all, you will know that I have been in a state of some despair at the quality of the media "debate" on the forthcoming cannabis law reform referendum. So it gives me great pleasure…

The first song to be written, record and released in New Zealand by a New Zealand label was sung by a woman. ¶ Pixie Williams, by her own account, saw music as a means to happiness and never coveted a career.…

"How many shops will there be? How many shops will there be? How many shops will there be? How many shops will there be? How many shops will there be?" Duncan Garner demanded of Chloe Swarbrick MP towards the end…

Over the past week, the annual police cannabis recovery operation has been taking place in West Auckland. A helicopter – accounts differ on whether it is a police or NZDF aircraft – and a spotter plane have been flying low over the…

Most music festival organisers, anywhere in the world, have some idea of cultural victory in their heads. They want not only to make money, but to have their shows stand for something. ¶ You've probably seen one or both Fyre festival…

As I've done for the past five years at the Splore festival, I've put together The Listening Lounge, a Saturday morning talk programme for conscious (in both senses of the word) Splorers. ¶ Again this year, we'll be talking about drug…

I've wondered here several times where an organised "no" campaign in next year's cannabis referendum might come from. Outside of Family First, it's still hard to tell where the opposition emerges. But I think what we are starting to hear…

Amid the calm of the holidays, in the blessed present between the race to wrap up 2018 and the need to envision the year ahead, a series of stories have flipped me way back up the river, into my own…

I was at a music festival in Auckland on New Year's Eve when I saw, on my phone, the news that "dangerous drugs, made with pesticides and paints, have been found at Rhythm and Vines." And that patrons had received…

Sometimes – often, even – grief is an ambush. You don't know what's in there until you lose something, or someone. You don't know how the experience of loss will make you feel about yourself, or what to do about it. ¶ It…

In a hastily-issued press release today, Public Address publisher Russell Brown admitted that his site's annual Word of the Year vote "may have been used by terribly nice people to express a blessedly good sentiment." ¶ Shortly after the announcement that…

The debate has been had and the longlist has been written. It's time now for you, the public, to vote. Just use the form embedded below to register your top three choices for Word of the Year – and go in…

It's in the nature of politics that this morning's announcement about changes to drug laws is headed 'Crackdown on synthetic drug dealers'. The billing is not inaccurate: it's no secret that the government has been seeking to have the two…

The years keep getting weirder, but one thing doesn't change: the Public Address Word of the Year is annually chosen by the people of the internet as the strange light fades into Christmas. Will this year's people's choice be a…

One of the many challenges posed by Christmas is Christmas music. Christmas carols are all very well, but spending the day actually listening to carols? That way lies madness, or at least an unseasonable degree of suffering. In our house,…

He Ara Oranga: Report of the Government Inquiry into Mental Health and Addiction was published last week and while it offers a substantial list of recommendations for the way such services should be conceived and delivered, I found what it…

Before she finally got to make her solo record this year, Sandy Mill sang on a lot of other people's records. And two of those people, Dick Johnson and Steve Hewitt, formerly of Placebo (and now of Love Amongst Ruin),…

A couple of weeks ago, I hopped on my bike and rode around the corner to MOTAT. I hadn't been for a while and I wasn't planning on looking at the restored machines. My destination was the Walsh Memorial Library,…