'All That We Know', The Treaty Principles Bill, and AI & Therapy

I started out with this being a semi-regular Substack, where I wanted to share good articles and resources I’d come across - and to use this as a space to be a bit more analytical about topics of interest. Other work has gotten in the way, and I haven’t posted anything at all in recent months, but I still intend to share resources and links occasionally, so here goes (again).

Shilo Kino’s new book and New Zealand novels about young lives in a time of insecurity

I enjoyed Shilo Kino’s book, All That We Know. It’s funny and engaging - a story that shares the human impacts of colonisation in Aotearoa New Zealand, and also explores dating, what it’s like to be political and righteous (especially in conversations with friends), family, and other themes.

I think the book is part of a rich vein of New Zealand writing in the last 5-10 years on young(ish) people finding their way through urban life in a period of significant economic security. These novels have contributed to a fuller picture of class in Aotearoa (and the working class in all its diversity), and have often also dealt with the relationship between class and racism. Alongside All That We Know the books that come to mind in this category for me are:

• Rebecca K. Reilly’s wickedly funny and smart Greta & Valdin (2021), a book that made me laugh more than any other book I’ve ever read;

• Dominic Hoey’s Iceland (2016) and Poor People With Money (2022), both clever and the latter in particular also with a plot that keeps you hooked;

• Coco Solid’s How to Loiter in a Turf War (2022), which stands out for its dialogue and turns of phrase and the way it snaps a scene so crisply;

• Eamonn Marra’s 2000Ft Above Worry Level (2020), a story focusing on flatting, New Zealand’s housing, and mental health;

• Pip Adam’s The New Animals, which captures the glamour and cool of the fashion scene as well as some of the darkness and inequality embedded in it.

All of these books get under the skin of lives of precarity in New Zealand in the years after the 2008 global financial crisis: where differently positioned individuals try to get by, including through humour and friendships and interdependence, and in the face of systems of exploitation, gentrification, and oppression. I’m no expert on New Zealand literature, but I think we’re incredibly lucky to have had these books published in recent years in our small country, helping to make sense of experiences encountered by so many. It’s been great occasionally recommending these books to friends not from New Zealand, and hearing them be enjoyed by non-New Zealanders, which I think speaks to the common structures of experience in urban life in many places around the world. And if I’ve left books off this list that should be on here, it’s probably because I should read more fiction and just haven’t read the book, rather than because of any silent judgement. (I know, for example, that I really need to read Brannavan Gnanalingam’s work, and I want to.)

So: read Shilo Kino’s book, and check out any of these others if they sound appealing.

The Treaty Principles Bill: getting up to speed

People reading this living in New Zealand won’t have missed the introduction of the Treaty Principles Bill in the last week, and the strong opposition to this Bill (including through a powerful hīkoi and haka in Parliament that has gone viral). The Bill seeks to erase Māori rights and undermine constitutional foundations, all through a deceitful process that has failed to engage with Māori (one of the partners to New Zealand’s founding treaty, Te Tiriti o Waitangi).

A friend living overseas asked me about the best writing on the Treaty Principles Bill, and others I know will be trying to catch up on some background. Here are three suggestions for overviews of the Bill, what’s wrong with it, and what’s driving it:

1. Lillian Hanly’s backgrounder on the Bill and its context for RNZ.
2. Carwyn Jones’ primer on the Treaty Principles Bill, presented as a Q+A.
3. Rupert O’Brien’s piece on the connections between the Bill and corporatisation and privatisation.

If you’re up for reading a little more, the Waitangi Tribunal’s two reports are a thorough analysis. The first addresses the Treaty clause review and the Treaty Principles Bill as of August 2024; I’d especially recommend pages 109-142. The second looks at the actions of the Government and officials between August and November; pages 103-114 offer some strong conclusions. (Full disclosure: I gave briefs of evidence to the Tribunal and was involved with the process.)

There are some good resources and suggestions for how you can act to oppose the Bill via the Together for Te Tiriti campaign, launched by ActionStation. (I work part-time at ActionStation, but this awesome campaign hasn’t been my work - it’s been driven by Kassie Hartendorp and Rangimarie Jolley, with support from the rest of the team.)

Some good long reads

There have been some excellent long-form pieces since I last provided a round-up. I’m not going to try to list everything I’d recommend over that period, so here are just three pieces I’ve enjoyed of late, if you have a few more minutes in a weekend or evening (or whenever you’re able to get reading done):

- Jess McAllen’s characteristically insightful essay on AI and therapy, and how mental health has been approached in recent decades;
- This account of Gillian Rose’s work and life in the London Review of Books, by Jenny Turner, which requires effort to get through (in part because of its length), but captures a thinker who resisted cliches and glib mantras, and practised the hard work of thinking;
- Part 1 of Tim Barker’s three-part series on Gaza and the labour movement, the workplace and the world order, which has some good insights on the union movement in the US, and the state of economic and political elites in that country.

Something different (away from books and long-reads!)

Away from books and essays: sign up to this great campaign on getting New Zealand bank ASB to divest from Motorola, which helps to maintain and enable illegal Israeli settlements.

I’ve been enjoying the latest Fazerdaze album, Soft Power, where the New Zealand artist is experimenting with newer, dreamier sounds. I’ve particularly liked the track In Blue - have a listen here.

We’ve also been getting into the series A Spy Among Friends, about Kim Philby and UK intelligence (on TVNZ) - especially its brooding lighting, smart plotting, and compelling characters, though we’re only two episodes in.

Until next time, love and solidarity,

Max