Culture Etc. Photographer unknown, Henry Wright with his children (from left) Reginald Wright, Elizabeth Minnie Clark Wright and Amy Elizabeth Wright, and their pets. Long exposure A new book and touring exhibition assembles extraordinary photographs from New Zealand’s colonial history to inspire questions about the faces, places, triumphs and injustices which still influence this fractured nation.   By Theo McDonald Wonder and meaning — an emotion and a process. These twin objectives guide A Different Light: First Photographs of Aotearoa, a book and touring exhibitio ..read more

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.   By Aaron Smale Manaaki Waretini-Beaumont is brimming with energy and possibility. She’s about to start a degree in environmental science at the University of Canterbury, and is buzzing with excitement. But it might not have happened. “In 2020,” she tells North & South, “the Universi ..read more

2024 Features Photo: supplied. Doctor in the House Needling the new Minister of Health, Dr Shane Reti. By Jeremy Rose Read the preview Photo: Shutterstock Mental arithmetic The numbers are in on lockdown’s mental health impacts in Aotearoa. By Carl Shuker Photo: Shutterstock Does not compute Who foots the bill for our mounting piles of disused tech hardware? By George Driver Read the article Photo: Stuff Ethics, funds and Russian dolls Mind where your money goes? Meet Barry Coates. By Theo Macdonald Photos supplied by Ngāi Tahu. Great expecta ..read more

Our Tech Tipping Problem Almost all of our electronics end up in landfill, and e-waste recycling is largely user-pays. What should happen to it and who should pay? By George Driver It was like a time capsule of appliances and electronics produced between 1979 and 2010. From the door of the shed I could see two VCRs, a slide projector, a guitar amplifier, a DVD player, two TVs, a computer monitor, a toaster, the components of at least three stereos, a lamp, a heater, a couple of fans and a popcorn maker. The rest of its contents were rendered completely inaccessible. The pile ..read more

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. By Jeremy Rose In February 2021, National Party health spokesperson Shane Reti wrote to Labour Minister of Health Andrew Little asking that tens of millions of dollars be spent equipping Māori health providers to roll out a Covid vaccination programme ..read more

NORTH & SOUTH + NUTRIENT RESCUE A spoonful of rainbow Revolutionising healthy nutritional intake: Four handfuls of berries and leafy greens in one quick shot. The social enterprise Nutrient Rescue was established as a passion project, after Michael Mayell of Cookie Time fame had a health scare. He and his wife Samantha switched to an organic plant-based diet, and after looking around for convenient local micro-nutrient products, and not finding what they needed, they started working with a nutritionist and food technologists to develop a wholesome, sustainable fruit and ..read more

NORTH & SOUTH + BLIS PROBIOTICS Good health starts in the mouth A formative childhood illness set Dr John Tagg on a path to probiotics. The prospect of a daily penicillin treatment plan spanning almost a decade would be enough to make anyone take their throat health a little more seriously, let alone a 12 year old boy. For John Tagg, this nightmare became his reality when a series of bouts with strep throat developed into rheumatic fever. Needless to say, this experience left a lasting impact on the young Tagg, who had unwittingly stumbled upon a way to channel his growi ..read more

North & South + Auckland Eye An eye for eyes Vision correction solutions are about living your best life at any stage of life. It’s a long haul to become an ophthalmologist: five years at medical school, two years as a specialist and three as a surgeon. Nonetheless, Justin Mora knew he wanted to be an eye surgeon from just thirteen-years-old. Family lore has him making this claim, although he had no idea why it was to be his destiny, only that he wanted “to help people see”. Twenty-two years since graduating, Mora is a senior ophthalmologist at Auckland Eye, and finds imm ..read more

NORTH & SOUTH + SLEEPYHEAD Bed heads 85 years of family business experience helps Sleepyhead offer Kiwis the best sleep possible. When Sidney Turner was offered equity in a small mattress manufacturing company as compensation for some electrical work, he couldn’t have envisaged the butterfly effect of what had just occured. It would not be until many years later that Sidney and his children would buy out the remaining equity, rebranding the business in homage to one of its most successful products, the Sleepyhead Mattress. Cut to 85 years later, and what began in a small t ..read more

NORTH & SOUTH + WE EV Powering ahead The case for home charging makes life simpler. These days, to say that Electric Vehicles (EVs) are rising in popularity is perhaps putting it a little lightly. The total number of plug-in vehicles registered in NZ has increased nearly threefold since 2021, a change accompanied by a compounding decline in petrol vehicles. These changes are a sign that Aotearoa is moving towards a greener future with reduced harmful emissions. However – in the famous words of American glam metal band Poison – ‘every rose has its thorn’, and the growing EV ..read more