The Spinoff

The Spinoff is a digital magazine from New Zealand that focuses on topics like politics, pop culture, and social issues. We also offer a specialized editorial team that crafts engaging and shareable content tailored for brands.

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The global challenge making your backyard come alive

5 days ago | thespinoff.co.nz | Shanti Mathias

Last year, 20,000 observations of Christchurch species were made during the annual City Nature Challenge, a way for anyone to get involved in biodiversity. It’s back again this month. Even in suburbia, even on grey autumn weekends, there is biodiversity. You just need the time to look for it: to name the bird flapping through your backyard or identify a spider dangling from the corner of a shed or a frothy lichen growing across a park bench.
Is this the great New Zealand dessert?

6 days ago | thespinoff.co.nz | Kate Evans

Feijoa scholar Kate Evans reviews the dish everybody raves about at Metro’s 2024 restaurant of the year, Forest. People have been telling me I need to try the deep-fried feijoa dessert at Forest for about three years now. I’m embarrassed it took me this long, but it takes a lot to get me over the Divvy from Raglan and up to the Big Smoke.
Watch live: the 2025 NZ Scrabble Masters

1 week ago | thespinoff.co.nz | Calum Henderson

The top-rated Scrabble players in the country go head-to-head this Easter weekend. Watch games live from 9.30am on the stream below. How does it all work? The Masters is different to most Scrabble tournaments in that it’s invitational, open only to the top-rated players in the country.
Hospitals to be rebuilt in four stages under new $20b plan

1 week ago | thespinoff.co.nz | Catherine McGregor

Hospitals nationwide are set for upgrades – though at a more sedate pace than some might have hoped, writes Catherine McGregor in today’s extract from The Bulletin. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. A blueprint for rebuildingAfter years of warnings and stocktakes, the government has finally published New Zealand’s first national health infrastructure plan – and the bill is as daunting as expected, RNZ reports.
Defunding the police is good policy, actually

1 week ago | thespinoff.co.nz | Erin Silver

Suggestions of defunding the police have sparked uproar but it’s a sensible and noble goal, argue two crime researchers. When we both first saw the “attack” ads put up by some combination of the Sensible Sentencing Trust and the Campaign Company, we couldn’t fully grasp the framing of an “attack” in the context of posters that promote transformative social policy.
The Beehive is lauding a big drop in violent crime. But what do the stats really say?

1 week ago | thespinoff.co.nz | Alice Neville

This week, a dramatic dip in the number of victims of violent crime was revealed, a remarkable turnaround in just eight months that the government was quick to take credit for. But, as Alice Neville explains, crime data is far from clear-cut. In September last year, the government announced a concerning development: the number of violent crime victims in the 12 months to June 2024 had risen to 215,000. This put its reduced violent crime target – 165,000 victims by 2029 – officially “at risk”.
The tiniest rebuild in Ōtautahi is finally complete

1 week ago | thespinoff.co.nz | Alex Casey

For the last four years, one artist has been rebuilding the lost icons of the city in miniature form. It’s a Friday morning and Mike Beer, aka Ghostcat, is flitting about Pūmanawa Gallery in Ōtautahi making last-minute adjustments. “These are actually from the Canterbury sale yards,” he says, gesturing to some graffiti’d concrete blocks sitting on a window sill. He tilts his head. “Does it look too much up there?
Review: The Polkinghorne documentary and what the trial was missing

1 week ago | thespinoff.co.nz | Calum Henderson

Does Three’s new true crime series about the trial that gripped the nation bring us any closer to knowing what happened to Pauline Hanna? We all have our vices, and for eight weeks in the winter of 2024 mine was ghoulishly mainlining coverage of the Philip Polkinghorne murder trial.
The rise of linkrot: What happens when the internet starts to disappear?

1 week ago | thespinoff.co.nz | Shanti Mathias

The internet seems to be permanent. But all those dead links are a reminder that useful information sometimes only stays accessible when someone is paying for it. Sometime in the early 2010s, it occurred to my high school teachers that they ought to be teaching us something about how to interact well on the internet. “The internet lasts forever,” I remember being told, with the vague threat that future employers might find my nascent Facebook accounts and judge me based on their contents.
Behind the Luxon-Peters bust-up over free trade

1 week ago | thespinoff.co.nz | Catherine McGregor

As the US ramps up tariffs, the PM and his deputy are clashing – not just over strategy, but over who gets to define New Zealand’s foreign policy tone, writes Catherine McGregor in today’s extract from The Bulletin. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here.