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Fishery officers target illegal pāua gathering

Source: New Zealand Government

Fishery Officer patrols will be stepped up over summer to help reduce the illegal gathering and illicit trade of pāua, Oceans and Fishers Minister Shane Jones says.

“While our pāua stocks are in good shape overall, poaching is a growing problem. Summer is always the worst time of year for it. Poaching and black-market trade, some of it connected to gangs, is a significant threat.

“People in and around the ocean can expect to see more Fishery Officers this summer with patrols being stepped up, including in some of our more remote areas,” Mr Jones says. 

While overall fisheries compliance rates sit at around 94 percent, compliance in Wellington and Wairarapa regions has fallen to around 74 percent. This means that, in those areas, around one in five inspections reveal some illegal activity.

“People can do their part to help break up the illegal trade in pāua by reporting those who break the rules to Fisheries New Zealand through the 0800 4 POACHER line,” Mr Jones says.

Legally caught pāua usually goes for about $100 per kilogram. If people are offered prices that seem too good to be true, they should reconsider.

“Fishery Officers have seen an increase in social media pāua sales over recent years. This is extremely prevalent during December/January each year and people should not be tempted. 

“There are no excuses for not doing the right thing. Pāua poachers are thieves that take from all of us and cut across the legitimate catch of recreational, customary and commercial fishers. Let’s work together this summer to put a stop to them,” Mr Jones says. 

Download the NZ Fishing Rules App for all the fishing rules in different parts of the country. 

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Four arrested, one in hospital after ‘mass disorder’ on Auckland’s Karangahape Road

Source: Radio New Zealand

Karangahape Road on a quieter day. The Detail/Tom Kitchin

Four people were arrested and one hospitalised after a mass brawl on central Auckland’s Karangahape Road early on Sunday morning.

Police said they received “multiple reports of a mass disorder and people fighting” just after 3.30am.

On arrival, they found and dispersed a crowd of about 50 people.

“One person was found with serious injuries and was transported to hospital,” police said in a statement to RNZ.

“Four people were arrested in relation to the disorder.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

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Weather: Sunday expected to live up to its name, though still ‘showers about’

Source: Radio New Zealand

MetService meteorologist Devlin Lynden says the thunderstorms will ease (file image). 123RF

A calmer day is in store for parts of the South Island battered on Saturday by hail, and lashed by torrential downpours and lightning.

One of the storms was a rare, powerful and long-lasting ‘supercell’ in the Canterbury Plains.

In Ashburton, the council dispatched a contractor to clear street gutters after a big hail storm there.

New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) sent crews between Timaru and Fairlie to reports of hail blocking the road and cars being flooded.

MetService meteorologist Devlin Lynden says the thunderstorms will ease.

“Although there still is a moderate risk for northern parts of the South Island, however, the southern parts that have seen that significant thunderstorm activity yesterday, they are not in the firing line of thunderstorms.

“However, there will still be a few showers about.”

Horticulture New Zealand had no reports of damaged crops.

MetService had two heavy rain watches in place for Sunday:

  • Coromandel Peninsula from 9am Monday into Tuesday morning, with a moderate chance of being upgraded to a warning

    • “I think there will be some fine breaks in there,” Lynden said of Sunday’s expected weather.

    “The people will see sun today, which is brilliant, but there still will be those showers, particularly in the afternoon and particularly for inland areas.”

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Nelson mayor welcomes police boost a year after officer was killed

Source: Radio New Zealand

RNZ / Samantha Gee

The police commissioner being on the beat in Nelson this New Year a year on from the death of one of its local officers will be a reassurance and comfort, the mayor says.

Richard Chambers says it’s only right he is in the city where Senior Sergeant Lyn Fleming died on duty almost a year ago.

Fleming was the 34th name added to the police roll of honour, which recognises officers killed while working.

In September, a plaque was dedicated to her nestled in a garden outside Nelson Central Police Station.

“Tragically killed on duty… never forgotten,” it reads.

Chambers will be working alongside frontline staff.

“Being in Nelson this New Year’s Eve is the right place for me to be,” he said.

Calling Fleming a much-loved colleague, he said he wanted to be in Nelson to back up staff who had worked with her, and to remember her.

Nelson Mayor Nick Smith welcomed the commissioner’s decision.

Wreaths placed by Police Commissioner Richard Chambers and Police Minister Mark Mitchell outside the Nelson Central Police Station to remember officers who’ve lost their lives in the line of duty. RNZ / Samantha Gee

“The Nelson community is apprehensive about New Year’s Eve given the tragedy that occurred with Senior Sergeant Lyn Fleming,” he said.

Smith said the commissioner choosing to be in Nelson, and at New Year, was “an absolute sign of class”.

“Nelson has never had a police officer killed during service, and so what occurred a year ago was just felt right through the community but particularly by our close-knit police community, I think the commissioner coming down is going to be a tremendous support but also a reassurance for the Nelson community.”

Smith described the officer’s death as a tremendous shock that locals could not believe.

“Let alone a woman police officer that had served us for nearly 40 years would be killed by a motor vehicle,” he said.

“So it caused tremendous shock, a huge blow to our small Police community, but a real coming together after the tragedy to say ‘this is not us’, we want to support our police, we want a safe city, and we’re all just hoping and praying that New Year’s Eve this year will be safe – fun, but safe.”

Smith said the commissioner’s visit would be reassuring for local officers as well as the wider community.

Chambers will also be policing Rhythm and Vines in Gisborne, joined by Eastern District Commander Jeanette Park before she takes up a new and more senior role.

Police union concerned about office staff deployments

The union for police officers meanwhile was worried about another announcement from the Commissioner.

He was requiring all senior sworn staff to help with duties like road policing, working at concerts and sports events and being out on the beat regardless of rank or location.

It would mean about 600 Level 2 responders deployed for a total of at least 40 hours each over the next 12 months, the Commissioner said.

The directive applied to staff mainly working in office-based roles.

Police Association president Steve Watt. RNZ/ Phil Pennington

But Police Association president Steve Watt feared it would mean extra pressure for senior sworn staff, and many officers did not have the right training for the frontline.

“Many of the upper managers… are really looking forward to getting out there and re-engaging with their communities, but there is that added pressure that they are being taken away from their core roles, so we just have to be mindful of that and the pressure that that may put on some members who have to catch up on their workload because they’re out doing other duties.”

Chambers said the initiative would contribute more than 25,000 extra hours of support to frontline officers and was a substantial investment in community safety and operational resilience.

Refresher training courses were compulsory, he said, with more specialised training offered if a particular deployment needed it.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

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Chris Wood set for extended time out after surgery

Source: Radio New Zealand

Chris Wood of New Zealand. PHOTOSPORT

All Whites captain Chris Wood’s spell on the sideline will continue for an indefinite period after undergoing surgery.

The Nottingham Forest striker hasn’t played since mid-October and the recuperation from a knee injury has been unsuccessful, forcing the 34-year-old to have an operation in a bid to resolve the issue.

It continues a forgettable season for Wood, who played only nine games before suffering the injury against Chelsea on 18 October.

Last season he scored a club-record 20 goals for Forest, the fourth-most across the entire English Premier League for 2024-25, helping them qualify for European competition.

The nature of Wood’s injury is unclear, nor when he underwent surgery. He has been seen wearing a knee brace while watching recent Forest matches.

Wood provided an update from his hospital bed on Instagram.

“The Christmas I didn’t expect, you can never know what football throws at you,” Wood wrote.

“From the highs of last season to now the battles and the lows personally of this season. You have to be ready for anything.

“Truly gutting and frustrating that I’ll be on the sideline for another period of time. It’s what’s needed to come back stronger and better to help my teammates do the job needed in the Premier League and in Europe.”

Forest manager Sean Dyche said the operation had gone well but, couldn’t suggest a potential return date.

“He has had an operation, at the end of a period of trying to settle it down,” Dyche said.

“It is unfortunate. We had a lot of specialist opinion to try to get him through naturally. But they have decided it is time to go and do it.

“It is a version of a cartilage op. It certainly won’t be days, obviously. We are hoping it will be weeks. We will have to wait and see how it settles. The signs were good from the surgical point of view.

“I don’t like throwing timescales about because of potential disruption on the way back to fitness. We are hoping it is a smooth pathway, but sometimes it isn’t. We will just have to wait and see.”

Chris Wood of New Zealand applauds after their 4-0 win over Malaysia. Andrew Cornaga/www.photosport.nz

The All Whites’ next fixtures are two home games in late March as they prepare for the FIFA World Cup in June.

Without Wood’s finishing touches, Forest have struggled this season, winning five of 18 games.

Their 2-1 loss to Manchester City on Sunday morning leaves them 17th, just five league points above the relegation zone.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

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Charities turning away high numbers of volunteer applications

Source: Radio New Zealand

Volunteering NZ spokesperson Margaret McLachlan SUPPLIED

Charities are turning away people wanting to volunteer amidst a flood of interest they say is linked to the high rate of unemployment.

It comes as some businesses receive thousands of applications for paid roles and people look for experience anywhere they can.

The advocacy organisation Volunteering NZ has been tracking the trend. Spokesperson Margaret McLachlan said there has been a considerable rise in applications for volunteer roles across a range of charities.

Many application forms asks people to divulge if they are job hunters.

“Over the last year or so, they are seeing more people coming in who are saying they are in that category. They are looking for work but doing volunteering while that process is taking place.”

“As unemployment increases and the cost of living, times are tougher for everybody.”

At the same time, she said community organisations supporting social services were busier and needed more helpers.

McLachlan said depending on the organisation, they might want to do a police check, a reference check and an interview.

“In some cases it can be a process to go through and not always, and that can take some time.

“It’s actually the same barriers that a person might find in finding a job, can also apply to volunteering. It’s not always a easy option.”

SPCA had 120 op shops and animal rescue centres across the country in which volunteers worked.

General manager of retail Cathy Crichton said they received about 1300 extra applications for volunteer roles, a 32 percent increase, from June to November 2025, compared to 2024.

“There’s definitely a nudge forward which is very exciting and we’re very grateful.”

SPCA general manager of retail Cathy Crichton SUPPLIED

But it meant they were not accepting any more volunteers in some areas.

“Because the applications are up it’s a unique scenario. But at this point in time, in smaller locations, we’ve actually got a hold in 19 locations in New Zealand where we are at capacity – and that’s very rare and it’s a very new trend.”

Crichton said anyone seeking volunteer work should think creatively about what skills they can offer – it could be in administration or marketing.

“We’d love to welcome as many people as we could because the more hands on deck the more we can do and the more we can contribute to the community.”

She said people were self-motivated to apply for volunteer work.

The unemployment rate rose to 5.3 percent in the September quarter, meaning 160,000 people were jobless. The next quarterly figures are out in February.

“There’s a willingness to give back and contribute to the community. Unemployment being high really does encourage people to engage with the workforce and get experience,” Crichton said.

“It really is about staying connected with the community and meeting others.”

She said they had also seen an increase in young people seeking volunteer work experience.

“It’s a great opportunity to get work experience and a reference and there’s an appeal there as an employer…I really do think it adds value to a CV.”

Stats NZ data showed over half of New Zealanders, 53 percent, volunteered during March 2025 and of those, 27.6 percent volunteered through an organisation and 40.8 percent volunteered directly for another person.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

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The best board games to play (and gift) this summer

Source: Radio New Zealand

In a world that can seem increasingly digitised and isolating, board games offer a unique chance to connect with others. And over the holiday period, the right game can make all the difference while spending time with friends and family.

But board games are part of a multi-billion dollar industry, so it can be hard to decide which games to try out – or which ones to gift. Luckily, I have some recommendations.

Kiwis take home top board game award

4000 years of arguing over a die

Ancient board game, known as the Royal Game of Ur.

AFP / Shwan Mohammed

Board games have been part of societies for at least 4000 years. The Royal Game of Ur, which scholars discovered in the tombs of ancient Sumer (now modern-day Iraq), can be dated back to around 2500 BCE.

This not only showed board games as an integral part of ancient homelife, but something people held dear.

From what archaeologists can glean from the re-discovered rules, the game involved moving pieces around a board (and probably inspired later games such as backgammon).

Meanwhile, in Mediterranean cultures such as Athens and Rome, dice games were often played at taverns, with people gambling on the results. Indeed, according to historian Karl Galinsky, the Roman Emperor Augustus “loved gaming, literally rolling the dice for hours”.

Today, tabletop games are a massive industry. Some games, such as Kingdom Death: Monster and Frosthaven, were boosted by millions of dollars raised through online crowdfunding campaigns.

Modern board games can range from party games that can take about half an hour, to epic war games that can take a whole day.

Australia has contributed significantly; one of the most critically-acclaimed board games of the 21st century, Blood on the Clocktower, was designed by Sydney-based Steven Medway.

The gift of gaming

There are a number of resources devoted to covering the vast range of board games available. (file image)

Unsplash / Mireille Raad

For those prone to decision paralysis, there are a number of resources devoted to covering the vast range of board games available. These include critic channels such as Shut Up and Sit Down, as well as YouTube channels such as No Rolls Barred, where you can see various board games being played.

There are even online digital libraries such as Board Game Arena, where you can try games (including some of the list below) before you buy them.

With that said, here are my seven recommendations for anyone wanting to try out a new board game these holidays.

This colourful, fast-paced game has great art, and a “menu” that can be changed depending on the number of players (up to eight) and their familiarity with the game.

Players win the game by creating the best combination of cards, depending on what’s available, by rotating the cards from player to player like a sushi train. It’s easy to learn and relatively cheap.

In this party game, teams have to try and guess the location of a hidden target on a spectrum, using a clue from one “psychic” team member. The ends of the spectrum reflect two binaries, such as hot–cold or optional–mandatory, and the target falls somewhere in between.

The closer the team gets to where the psychic thinks the target should go, the more points they score. Wavelength is one of those games where no matter if your team gets it right or wrong, you can expect people to give their two cents.

In these team games, players play mediums seeking the counsel of another player – a ghost – who gives them clues to important information about murders in the house, including the ghost’s own murder.

The ghost offers the other players tarot cards with abstract artwork with which they must attempt to discern the murder weapon, location and culprit.

This game sees players take the role of potion makers at the local fair, who must push their luck by drawing ingredients out of a bag to make the best potions without them blowing up in their face. It’s simple to teach and hilarious when someone else blows up their cauldron (although arguably less when it’s you).

This is one of the most celebrated games from board game designer luminary Reiner Knizia. Players are art dealers auctioning off beautiful paintings done by five professional artists. Players might even forget to play as they get caught up in simply admiring the pieces they are auctioning off.

Modern Art remains a fiendishly clever game that is easy to learn but hard to master.

This strategic racing game is based on 1960s Formula 1 racing. The base game boasts four tracks on two gorgeous boards, and lovely little cars that pass each other and risk spinning out around corners.

By far the most expensive (and complicated) game on this list, Nemesis can best be described as Alien: the board game.

Players have to move through a spaceship, discovering rooms and items as they go, taking care not to alert the horrific extraterrestrials that have managed to get onto the ship – represented by amazingly designed pieces. It’s a truly tense and fun experience for a full afternoon.

*Matthew Thompson is an academic in history and communications at the University of Southern Queensland.

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

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Essential New Zealand Albums: Bressa Creeting Cake

Source: Radio New Zealand

To a listener who was tuned to Auckland’s bFM in the mid-1990s, the self-titled debut of Bressa Creeting Cake might not have come as quite the surprise it did to everyone else. 

But even if you knew it was coming, the album was full of surprises. And it still sounds surprising today.

The first surprise was the name of the band: Bressa Creating Cake. What kind of a name is that? And there was the fact that the album was on Flying Nun, a label still strongly identified with South Island guitar bands and DIY mavericks like Chris Knox.

Bressa Creeting Cake – Bressa Creeting Cake

Essential New Zealand AlbumsSeason 5 / Episode 4

Bressa Creeting Cake – left ro right: Geoff Creeting, Joel Bressa and Edmund Cake.

Simon Grigg

The best music of 2025

But mostly the surprises were in the music.

Fifteen finely crafted songs with absurdist narratives threaded through maze-like melodies. Intricate guitar lines and rhythms that lean towards the exotic.

It was the era of grunge and techno, gangsta rap and boy bands, but this music clearly conforms to none of the above. Bressa Creeting Cake seemed to exist in its own musical biosphere, independent of prevailing fashions.

But if they seemed to come from nowhere, the three musicians who would make up the group – Edmund McWilliams, Geoff Maddock and Joel Wilton – had all been students at Avondale College in West Auckland, which is where they first played together.

This video is hosted on Youtube.

McWilliams, at that time, had the most experience.

“I had two other bands”, he recalls. “One of them was called The Gutter Wizards. We had a song on the top 10 on BFM. The Gutter Wizards used to practice on top of the Newmarket car park. You used to be able to drive to the top, and there were some electricity outlets, so we’d just plug in there. We did get a complaint once from someone on Mount Hobson. So we must have sort of been beaming out there a bit.”

Maddock had grown up on an exclusive diet of classical music. Wilton had learned from local jazz legend Frank Gibson Jr and played in various school bands, which had sometimes included either or both Maddock and McWilliams. He had also studied the Indian tabla.

But it was only after the three had all left school that they really became a unit. With both Maddock and McWilliams writing songs, and all three contributing to the arrangements, they started playing small gigs around Auckland, usually as support for other groups.

They also made their first recordings. As McWilliams had already had his youthful success at BFM, the student station was the obvious first stop for the newly formed trio.

This video is hosted on Youtube.

Flying Nun furnished the band with the budget to make an album. There was just one condition.

The name the trio had given themselves – Breast Secreting Cake – had to go. At the time, the label was making inroads into Europe and America, and that name was apparently considered just too unappetising for the global market.

The band’s answer was to change the spelling without really changing the name. They became Bressa Creeting Cake – a sort of phonetic version of their old name – and adopted new surnames to match: Joel Bressa, Geoff Creeting and Edmund Cake.

Looking for a studio suitable for making their album led this wilful trio to the North Shore home of recording engineer Joe Gubay.

Maddock remembers that, as well as chickens and Gubay’s children, the studio was filled with unusual instruments, which at various times found their way onto the record, like the mandolin and wooden marimba that feature in what would be the album’s opening track, ‘Palm Singing’.

Bressa Creeting Cake’s 1997 self-titled debut album was the Auckland band’s only release.

Flying Nun Records

If there’s an absurd, almost-surreal quality to these songs, it’s got something to do with the way the mundane meets the fantastical.

They sing about petrol stations and make them sound like strange netherworlds. When they describe attending the Mountain Rock music festival in the song ‘Rocky Mountain’, it is as though they were anxious anthropologists encountering some previously unknown subculture for the first time.

Bressa Creeting Cake never made another album, although Geoff Maddock went on to form Goldenhorse, in which Joel Wilton also played.

Their first album Riverhead features in another episode of Essential New Zealand Albums.

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

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Thunderstorm watch lifted as South Island hit with intense storms

Source: Radio New Zealand

An active supercell south from Rakaia. MetService/Screenshot

The thunderstorm that lashed the South Island and brought widespread and large hail is one of the year’s most intense storms, MetService says.

Large parts of the mainland have been under brief severe thunderstorm warnings through Saturday afternoon.

The severe thunderstorm watch that had been in place for several parts of the South Island has now been lifted.

Regions including Timaru, Ashburton, Central Otago, Southern Lakes, Dunedin and Southland were under watch throughout Saturday afternoon and evening, with some parts experiencing heavy rain, lighting and hail.

At one point NZTA dispatched crews to State Highway 8 between Timaru and Fairlie after reports of hail blocking the road, and cars getting flooded.

“There has been some very active weather in parts of the South Island, that east and south eastern area, all the way down to Southland, Clutha, North Otago and Dunedin and up the Canterbury coast as well, there’s been lots of lightning, lots of thunder and also hail,” MetService meteorologist Devlin Lynden said

“We’ve seen reports of widespread hail particularly in that Canterbury Plains area, as well as very long-lived thunderstorms and heavy downpours in that Canterbury area.”

He said storms like this could happen at any time of year.

“Particularly in summer, it’s often we see thunderstorms in summer,” he said.

“But what is unusual just how intense some of these thunderstorms have been, one of our forecasters was saying the cell over Canterbury is one of the strongest he’s seen this year,” Lynden said.

MetService confirmed that the most severe hailstorms have been from a supercell storm in the southern Canterbury Plains region, which is a powerful thunderstorm with a rotating updraft.

“This rotation allows the storm to last longer and become more intense than typical thunderstorms, increasing the risk of severe weather such as large hail, damaging winds, and heavy rain,” MetService said.

Supplied / MetService

“That was some hail storm this afternoon!” Ashburton District Council said in a Facebook post.

It said its roading maintenance contractor was out after the hail storm clearing street gutters to make sure stormwater could drain away.

Horticulture New Zealand’s regional representative, Chelsea Donnelly, said there had been no reports so far of any damage to crops.

Two farms near Ashburton contacted by RNZ said the severe hail storms did not reach them.

MetService had said that very heavy rain can cause surface and/or flash flooding about streams, gullies and urban areas.

Poor visibility and surface flooding could make driving difficult, and large hail had the capacity to “cause significant damage to crops, orchards, vines, glasshouses and vehicles”.

“Should severe weather approach or if you feel threatened, take shelter immediately.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

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What makes Shona Laing’s South an essential album

Source: Radio New Zealand

Shona Laing was just 17 when she had her first national hit with ‘1905’ in 1972.

Fifteen years later, she was reintroducing herself as a different kind of artist with the 1987 album South.

In a career spanning more than five decades, Shona Laing has made albums that mark each stage of her musical life.

Shona Laing – South

Essential New Zealand AlbumsSeason 5 / Episode 8

Shona Laing in 1987.

Supplied

How do we inspire girls to rock out?

When South was released in 1987, Laing was already 15 years into a career that had begun with a TV talent quest that beamed the then-teenage singer-songwriter into all the nation’s living rooms.

Laing followed this with a series of local hits, a long spell in Britain, including a stint with Manfred Mann’s Earth Band, and her return to a New Zealand that had gone through some big cultural changes in her absence.

As Laing would later reflect, she entirely missed ‘the Muldoon years’.

This video is hosted on Youtube.

Though she was absent for the Springbok Tour protests of ’81, Laing would later address the subject of apartheid on South, along with another issue that was emblematic of the 1980s – New Zealand’s nuclear-free policy.

As a musician, Laing had gone through some changes of her own.

Last time the country heard from her, she was an acoustic guitar-strumming singer-songwriter.

Shona Laing in London, 1980.

Shona Laing collection

One song in particular defined those early years. A hit even before she had finished high school, ‘1905’ was a meditation on time, framed as an unsent letter to the American actor Henry Fonda, whose son Peter had recently co-written and starred in the film Easy Rider. Peter Fonda’s sister Jane Fonda was a figurehead of the anti-war movement.

Laing may have been the only teenager in the world obsessing not over the young Fondas, but their father, whose heartthrob heyday had been in the 1940s.

‘1905’ was an early example of the unconventional angles at which Laing approaches her subjects, and which help make her songs so unique.

Shona Laing performing in 1974.

Courtesy of Shona Laing

In 1972, ‘1905’ was a top 5 hit for the 17-year-old Laing, but it touched on a theme that would recur in her songwriting more than a decade later: of America’s cult of celebrity, the dominance of its imagery, and its influence on New Zealand.

This was something that stood out to her even more clearly after almost seven years away.

One of her new songs, ‘(Glad I’m Not) A Kennedy’, became South‘s best-known track. Like ‘1905’, it ruminates on a particular American type of fame, its promises and its perils.

This video is hosted on Youtube.

Beyond the fact that, for a country as small as New Zealand, America’s influence is impossible to ignore, there’s a personal reason why America looms so large in Laing’s writing, including being the subject of her two biggest local hits, as she explained in a 2022 interview with RNZ.

“You know all through my career people have said, ‘Your songs are very personal, aren’t they?’ and I’d go, ‘Well, actually no, I’m writing about the world here.’

“But I was writing about the world from a very personal place, which is my life. My father was going to the States when I was about three years old. He had a business importing things that New Zealand needed, because he met people during the war, and he had business relationships with America and Japan. So America was a thing in our family.”

Shona Laing in 1985.

Courtesy of Shona Laing

“Then [I spent] seven years in Britain, which at that time in the world was pretty much the core of anti-Americanism; they would take the mickey out of America, they had no respect.

“When I came home, I found the transition from New Zealand being more British than the British to just blatant American culture sprawled all over the place, shocking. So the fundamental physical, personal response to that was songs like ‘America’, ‘Kennedy’ and ‘Neutral and Nuclear Free’.”

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand