The Bulletin: What do Russian mercenaries want with the Chatham ...

Duncan Greive is joined by The Spinoff staff writer Shanti Mathias and The Bulletin editor Anna Rawhiti-Connell to discuss the Safer Online Services and Media Platforms document, and its implications for the future of digital media.

For a very special episode of The Fold, Duncan Greive analyses the Safer Online Services and Media Platforms, an obscure “discussion document” which contains a bold idea: regulate the internet in the same way we do legacy media. He is joined by Shanti Mathias to explain the context, then Anna Rawhiti-Connell to analyse its implications.

Listen below or wherever you get your pods

* This is an excerpt from Rec Room. Sign up for regular Friday dispatches here.

It’s a long weekend for most, so you might be keen to try out some new shows. Whatever you do, don’t start with HBO’s Succession successor The Idol (Neon). Billed as an over-sexed journey into the world of ultra-pop stardom from the minds of Euphoria’s Sam Levinson and pop icon The Weeknd, critics say it categorically does not live up to the hype. “Prosaic,” said Vanity Fair, “punishing,” declared Paste, “skin-crawling,” quipped Rolling Stone. “Even the music is dreadful,” said The Telegraph. With just a 27% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, it might pay to avoid this one.

Elsewhere, Amazon Prime is unveiling a suite of new content just in time for the weekend, including the excellent Deadloch, a comedy cop show starring our own Madeleine Sami, Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets, about a hardcore Christian collective in America (“Damning,” said Jezebel), and Medellin, a French drug adventure set in Columbia. Netflix has the third season of cult sketch comedy fave I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson. And you can stream Primavera Sound festival, featuring Blur, Halsey and Kendrick Lamar, through Amazon Music’s Twitch stream.

This weekend’s big new movie release is Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, the follow-up to the legitimately great animated film Into the Spider-Verse from 2018. I’ve watched this a heap of times, and my son sent the entire soundtrack into my most-played lists. Elsewhere, Bank of Dave is based on a true story film about a Brit who opens his own bank, while The Boogeyman is a Stephen King adaptation that’s getting great reviews “Hits hard,” declared AV Club. All are in theatres now.

* For more new releases, check out Sam Brooks’ weekly guide, New to Streaming.

The disaster relief fund – administered by Red Cross New Zealand – was established to support victims of Cyclone Gabrielle and the other wild weather from earlier this year. Red Cross approved 67 new grants worth $3.49m over the last two weeks. That brings the total amount of money allocated to roughly $8.9m – 36% of the $25m New Zealanders have donated to the whole fund.

Aside from grants to rebuild homes, businesses and communities, Red Cross also provides clean-up kits and has funded mental health services and travelling doctors. Mates4Life – a suicide awareness and prevention programme that’s supported 900 Hawkes Bay victims – received a $200,000 grant. Baderdrive Doctors Clinic (Māngere) got $160,000, primarily for free home visits for flood victims. 

$7.64m of the total $8.9m has gone to community organisations like Mates4Life. Only $1.2m has been allocated for immediate recovery responses, and $0 has so far been issued to improve resiliency for future crises. 

In April, The Spinoff reported that Hawkes Bay cyclone victims felt forgotten by the response efforts, including Red Cross’s mahi and the fund. Although Hawkes Bay residents were grateful that money was now trickling in, a volunteer told The Spinoff over the phone last week they are still frustrated with the slow pace of the overall response – a slight not only on Red Cross but also on the government and the Lottery Grants Board. The New Zealand Disaster Fund exemplifies that slowness, as only about one-third of it has been allocated nearly four months after Cyclone Gabrielle made landfall.

Heather Te-Au Skipworth, the hopeful MP who stood aside in Ikaroa-Rawhiti to allow for Meka Whaitiri, will run in the Tukituki electorate in this year’s election.

In a statement, Te-Au Skipworth called the decision to stand in Tukituki a “no brainer” as she was born in Hastings and raised in Pakipaki. “The people here know me; they know I am a hard worker, and they also know of the ‘IronMāori’ kaupapa I created and how it has helped change and save thousands of people’s lives,” she said.

“Tukituki sits inside the Ikaroa-Rawhiti electorate, so it means Meka and I can support each other on the campaign trail. I am looking forward to working with her, particularly in advocating for our whānau who are still wearing the impacts of the Cyclone and ensuring that the Government hears our voices loud and clear.”

(The Te Pāti Māori website still has Te-Au Skipworth listed as the Ikaroa-Rawhiti candidate, which is more just an observation that someone should probably update this).

The Tukituki electorate, formed in 1996, is currently held by Labour’s Anna Lorck who won by a 4% margin in 2020 against National’s Lawrence Yule.

National’s housing spokesperson Chris Bishop wants councils to zone enough land with enough pipes and roads to house 30 years’ worth of population growth, but not all through densification. In this week’s episode of When the Facts Change, Bernard Hickey asks Bishop just how big he wants Aotearoa to be, and who will pay for all the extra infrastructure needed when that growth is on green fields.

Listen below or wherever you get your pods

A belter of a story here. When Stuff reporter James Halpin noticed the Chatham Islands marked on a map showing a notorious mercenary company’s global interests, he did what any enterprising reporter would do: he asked the Russian oligarch who runs the private army for comment. “We will not share this information, everything has its own time,” said Wagner Group owner Yevgeny Prigozhin, nicknamed “Putin’s chef” because of his background in catering. Prigozhin’s spokesperson later said they would “not disclose the plans of the PMC ‘Wagner’ regarding Chatham Island.”

Chatham Islands mayor Monique Croon tells Stuff being picked out on the map “seems absurd, but you can never rule anything out”. Wagner is part of Russia’s invasion force in Ukraine, and is famous for using prison conscripts as mercenaries. “New Zealand has sanctioned the Wagner entity, as well as Prigozhin and other individual leaders in the group,” Halpin reports.

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New Zealand is one step closer to its first Ikea store – but you will have to wait another two years to get your meatball fix.

Construction on the 34,000 square metre store started today in Auckland’s Sylvia Park, following a Māori blessing with local iwi and a Fika, a traditional Swedish ritual involving food. It’s due to open in late 2025.

The country’s first Ikea will be three floors, including a carpark, and be connected to the neighbouring Sylvia Park retail precinct. As with international stores in the homewares chain, there will also be a restaurant featuring meatballs, hot dogs and plant based alternatives.

Mirja Viinanen, chief executive for Ikea New Zealand and Australia, also confirmed that the first store will open alongside nationwide online shopping.

“We know anticipation has been building since we first announced our intention to come to New Zealand, so we are excited to share our plans today as we take an important step closer to saying hej to the many New Zealanders. We’re so grateful to iwi who have welcomed us to the land, in addition to Kiwi Property, our partners who have enabled construction to begin as we look towards our anticipated opening date of late 2025,” Viinanen said.

“New Zealand felt like a missing piece for IKEA and I am so pleased that, thanks to the support of the many involved, we are now able to start changing that.”