/on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/opinion/rss 九一星空无限 Sat, 19 Apr 2025 19:39:07 Z en /on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/opinion/jack-tame-the-miracles-and-mysteries-much-closer-to-home/ /on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/opinion/jack-tame-the-miracles-and-mysteries-much-closer-to-home/ The pictures made it look like a parody.  Eleven minutes after taking off from a West Texas launch site, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space capsule touched down with its all-female celebrity crew. Bezos opened the capsule door and greeted his fiancé. One by one the women filed out, each in their snazzy blue, flared space outfits. Having technically been in space for just four minutes, the popstar Katy Perry knelt down and kissed the ground.    I feel the same about space tourism as I do about climbing Mt Everest. In the broadest possible terms, the idea is really appealing. I’d love to go to space! But as it stands today, actually appreciating how much resource is involved, and the extent to which money rather than talent is the only thing separating anyone from the loftiest heights... I can’t bear the thought. We all know Jeff Bezos isn’t spending billions upon billions to push the boundaries of scientific understanding. He’s going as a vanity project. It all feels a bit gross.    Perhaps when space tourism is a little more normalised and they can achieve economies of scale, I’ll quietly eat my words and find the whole thing a little more palatable. But for what it’s worth, I’d hand my explorer-of-the-week award not to Katy Perry and Jeff Bezos’ other half, but to the crew of the Schmidt Ocean Institute’s Falkor vessel, who just captured the first ever footage of a colossal squid in its natural environment.   Colossal squid are the largest invertebrates on the planet – 500kgs without a spine! And yet for all that science has achieved, we know remarkably little about them. It’s only a century since the species was first discovered, and we know most of what we know about them today because of their predators. Sperm whales, in turns out, are much better at tracking down colossal squid than we are.   600m below the surface of the South Atlantic, somewhere off the coast of the Antarctic South Sandwich Islands, in an area so remote that the next closest humans were on the International Space Station, the group of scientists used an unmanned submersible to film the most extraordinary footage of a juvenile colossal squid. Forget anything that Katy Perry or Jeff Bezos’ wife-to-be might be seeing out the window of their shuttle; set against the absolute black of the deep deep, the squid was purpleish and orange, elegant, brilliantly, beautifully alien.  Isn’t it amazing that our species can send a rocket with a popstar to space, and yet it’s taken us until 2025 to actually record an Earth-based tentacled beast that can grow as long as a bus and weigh as much as a cow?   I just think it’s such a timely reminder. For whatever fascinations and discoveries await us in the infinite depths of the cosmos, there are still so many miracles and mysteries much closer to home, in the infinite depths of the real blue origin.  Fri, 18 Apr 2025 22:12:53 Z /on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/opinion/jack-tame-an-anticlimactic-end-to-the-treaty-principles-bill/ /on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/opinion/jack-tame-an-anticlimactic-end-to-the-treaty-principles-bill/ In the end it was kind of an anticlimax.    After almost 18 months of anger, obfuscation, hīkoi and haka, and hundreds of thousands of submissions, the Treaty Principles Bill was voted down in fairly emphatic style. I suspect the majority of New Zealanders are so over it.    Looking back, I’d say David Seymour and ACT largely got what they wanted. Te Pāti Māori were perhaps even greater political beneficiaries. And the whole saga will endure as a bit of a stain on Christopher Luxon’s tenure as Prime Minister. It was telling that once again, just as for the first reading, this week’s vote was scheduled for a time when the PM wasn’t in the house. I think being there and suffering through it would have shown greater leadership.   I watched the speeches in Parliament and thought David Seymour was right in his observation. Almost none actually considered the substance of the government’s defined Treaty principles. Like most of the debate outside of Parliament, they were all emotion. At times, I think what was supposed to be a constitutional debate was boiled down to pretty a basic and unedifying level: pro-Māori vs anti-Māori!     Personally, I tried to engage with the detail of the bill in good faith. I think one of the most underrated qualities in people is a genuine capacity to think critically or even change your mind. It’s a curiously strange thing these days to come across someone who doesn’t instantly default to their team or side.    It seemed to me though that there was a fundamental problem with proposed principles. They didn’t accurately reflect what the Treaty actually says. Te Tiriti specifically guarantees Māori tino rangatiratanga. It has, if you like, a Māori-specific carve-out that did not appear in ACT’s interpretation. In my view, that absence was absolutely critical.  Many of the bill’s opponents accused ACT of a cynical approach to the debate. I can’t speak for the party’s motivations, but I do think the most honest approach would have been to define the principles by what is clearly said in the Treaty, rather than what anyone thinks should be said in the Treaty.  And that leads me to my final point: the Treaty is clearly an imperfect document. The English and Māori versions say different things. There is no returning New Zealand to 1840, and in the context of the modern day, it’s clunky. I do think David Seymour’s broader desire about more purposefully defining the Treaty’s application and meaning in modern New Zealand, is a good one (or at least worthy of more consideration). For example, I wonder if 200 years from its signing, New Zealand should aspire towards developing some sort of a written constitution underpinned by the Treaty, that gives it better and clearer effect in the modern World.    I think the Te Tiriti o Waitangi / Treaty of Waitangi was meant to unify New Zealand. If we’re honest, this debate probably had the opposite effect. But I still have faith that once the dust settles, we can collectively find a way to constructively have these conversations and move Aotearoa forward.    Fri, 11 Apr 2025 22:06:46 Z /on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/opinion/jack-tame-highs-and-lows-of-parenting/ /on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/opinion/jack-tame-highs-and-lows-of-parenting/ It was Murphy’s Law, of course. An inevitable that’ll-teach-ya for breaking one of the golden laws of parenting: never take off a nappy if you don’t have a replacement immediately to hand.    Especially when your six-week-old baby has been stewing and straining and writhing in his cot. And double-especially (that’s a thing) when he just had the live rotavirus vaccine and it’s playing havoc with his belly.    It was just as I bent his legs up and put a little squeeze on his stomach that I sensed it. Something in the air. A drop in barometric pressure. A little facial expression, perhaps.   It might have been 2am but I threw myself back and across the room, out of the line of fire. It was like that scene in The Matrix, where time stops and Neo dodges bullets.    You know in a horror movie when someone has their throat slit, and the blood sprays on the wall? It’s a pattern, an arc, a kind of parabola of crimson gore.    It was like that. Except yellow. An explosion of you-know-what was in his tummy one second, and literally dripping down the wall the next. And the bin. And on the laundry basket, the exposed floorboards and the corner of the chunky woolknit carpet. Somehow, he got it through the crack of the door to my wardrobe, a patina of tiny little specks down on my shoes.    The distance he covered was unbelievable. I actually pulled out a tape measure the next morning... from the change table to the wall was 90-odd centimetres: twice his height.    In relative terms, it’s as if I pulled, twisted, and strained and pulled up my legs and propelled my last meal across three and a half metres of open territory. Guiness World Records, give us a call!    I hosed him down, delivered him to his mum, fetched the disinfectant and started scrubbing the walls.   The next morning, I put him on the change table again.    This time he wasn’t squirming. His tummy was a bit more settled.    As I re-dressed him and pulled on his onesie, I sang to my son, and he stared up into my eyes.    “It’s our problem freeeee,” I sang. His face changed just a little as he cooed... was that a smile?    “Philosophyyyyy,” he squealed.    “Hakuna Matata,” his little mouth broke out in a giant smile. No question. An unmistakable smile. His whole face, his whole body seemed to smile with him. Just for me.   I felt my chest flood with endorphins. It was the craziest physical reaction, just this rush, this sweep of joy and love.    It said it all, really. Dripping walls one days and his first smiles for Dad the next.    Welcome to parenting. Sat, 05 Apr 2025 01:06:53 Z /on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/opinion/jack-tame-its-hard-to-see-how-trumps-tariffs-will-work-out-how-he-says/ /on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/opinion/jack-tame-its-hard-to-see-how-trumps-tariffs-will-work-out-how-he-says/ Trump’s been right before.    There are occasions when he’s come out with something seemingly crazy —totally bananas— earning him all the ire and ridicule of the expert class and the media, only to maybe be proven right over time.  The one that springs to mind is the travel ban with China, shortly after Covid-19 took off. One minute he was being rinsed for it, the next, everyone had a travel ban with China.  That being said, it is so hard to see how his extraordinary move this week is going to work out as he says it will.    Overnight, China has reacted to the tariff plan and share markets around the world have continued to shed trillions of dollars in value. Today is not the day for checking your KiwiSaver balance! But even as the US Federal Reserve says America should expect slower economic growth and higher inflation, the White House insists his plan is working.   One of the curious things about this term is how little he’s seemed to care about the stock market. In his first term as President, anything that hurt share prices elicited an immediate backdown, and Trump constantly bragged about how he had the strongest economy ever. It’s going to be extremely difficult to make that argument when almost everything costs more.   Still, if we’ve learnt anything from the past it shouldn’t be that sometimes Trump is right to buck conventional wisdom, it’s that in the absurd polarised world we live in, personality and teams are more important than facts. This applies to many of his opponents as well – people on the absolute opposite end of the political spectrum. But Trump’s keenest cheerleaders are so slavishly loyal, many refuse to even acknowledge the most obvious objective failings.   So his team accidentally messaged war plans to a journalist? Well, we’ll just insist they weren’t classified. So he’s slapped tariffs on uninhabited sub-Antarctic islands? Of course he has! Those penguins have been getting away with murder! He’s kicked off a global trade war that’ll leave a majority of us worse off? Fantastic. All part of the genius.    It’s a fool’s game to try and predict Donald Trump’s next move but for the little it’s worth, my best guess is that none of these tariffs are set in stone. Countries are going to try and placate him. Companies in the US are going to try and negotiate their own little carve-outs. Trump’s gonna absolutely love picking favourites, but his approach will lurch all over the place, defined only by spur-of-the-moment whims and incoherence.    Regardless of what happens, he will claim success. His supporters will agree, but the global order looks that much more unstable.   Fri, 04 Apr 2025 20:41:07 Z /on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/opinion/jack-tame-netflix-adolescence-is-devastatingly-perfect/ /on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/opinion/jack-tame-netflix-adolescence-is-devastatingly-perfect/ The time was 3.34am on a Wednesday morning and I lay there wideawake. I pressed the screen on my phone to check the time any messages, I wondered? I flipped my pillow, shifted my weight and tried to sleep. The obvious cause of my insomnia was the five-week-old grunting and squirming in his sleep sack, a few feet away from me. But it wasn’t the humidity, or the Police helicopter making one of its swoops over the neighbourhood, and this insomnia wasn't caused by a baby. It was caused by Adolescence. My wife and I had watched the final episode, episode four, a few hours earlier. The episode finished, like most of them, in devastating fashion. I sat there, turning over the story in my mind. If you haven’t yet caught the Adolescence buzz, the show has had more hype in the couple of weeks since it came to Netflix than almost any other show in recent times. It’s broken all sorts of records. After just eleven days, it broke the record for the highest-number of Netflix streams in a two week period. Tens of millions of views Worldwide... with millions more everyday.  In a sense, Adolescence is a simple concept. It’s a four-episode series set in the U.K about a knife crime.  A young woman has been stabbed to death. Every episode Hasan incredibly ambitious production quality in that it's all one shot. The whole thing. 45 minutes or an hour. One take. And in the words of the creator Stephen Graham, it’s less of a Who-dunn it than a Why-dunnit? As someone who’s worked in the telly for twenty years, I feel I have a pretty good sense of how hard it into make a one-shot show. Technically speaking, it is ridiculously complicated. I don’t think most people appreciate how hard it is to light a single scene. But then going from indoors to outdoors to classrooms to hallways to drone shots, a hundred metres off the ground. Sound recording is such a pain. And what if an actor screws up a line 20 minutes in? You start again, that's what. I read a piece which explained many of the crew dressed as extras for the show’s production, so if they were caught in the back of shot it would hopefully make sense. A friend reckoned the single-continuous shot thing might be a bit of a gimmick. What’s the point? He asked. Personally speaking, I just found it never gave me a chance to subconsciously look away, or to catch my breath. No chance to check my phone. The story didn’t pause because the people didn't pause, the scene didn’t end until the episode ended. And what scenes. Sheesh. The speed of Episode One. I just love how it had all of the banal procedural stuff, the process. The chaos of Episode Two at the school. It was a stunning vision of a totally dysfunctional space, the teachers yelling to try and control the kids. The teachers who just didn't care. Episode Three? What a brave, bold call. Just two people in an empty room nothing of visual interesting. Just two actors in conversation; the volatility, the brinksmanship, the unravelling. And episode Four, all that was lost. The desperation. The performances in Adolescence, especially Stephen Graham, were astonishing. I immediately became that person annoyingly texting all of his friends and group chats and asking who had seen it. We think of movies as being art. Well, film, cinema! We probably don’t think of TV as being art in quite the someway. Or at least as often. But how do you define good art? Surely it’s a creative work that makes people feel.. that affects them that sticks with them that has them tossing and turning in bed at 3.34am in the morning, replaying scenes in their head. It's been a long, long time since a TV show affected me like Adolescence. As a story, it was devastating. But as a TV drama, it was close to perfect. Fri, 28 Mar 2025 20:46:03 Z /on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/opinion/jack-tame-luxon-is-at-his-best-when-hes-hustling/ /on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/opinion/jack-tame-luxon-is-at-his-best-when-hes-hustling/ Despite the polls, I reckon the last two weeks have been among the best for Christopher Luxon in his time as Prime Minister.   Sure, the numbers aren’t showing him and his government much love. School lunches still have their issues and the Treaty Principles episode is far from over, but at a time when Luxon faces significant pressure on the domestic front and a pretty grumpy voting public, you can’t deny his efforts at the Infrastructure Investment Summit and in India represent a full-court press in the government’s push for economic growth.    I know we don’t have big tangibles yet. I know we don’t yet have a Free Trade Deal. I know that if we do get one negotiated and signed, our biggest primary export sector may end up with very little. But at a time when most of us are feeling really glum about the economy (despite this week’s GDP figures), when unemployment continues to rise, and when our second-biggest trading partner and world’s biggest economy is being led by an erratic and highly-unpredictable President, the welcome that Luxon and his delegation received in India and the resumption of negotiations were meaningful. Sure, it’s a stretch to think get a comprehensive deal signed in the next 18 months, but you can’t argue we’re not in a better position today than we were when Luxon took over.    It’s my view that on several occasions as National’s leader, the Prime Minister has suffered from having a bad political radar. I think he’s made some misjudgements that perhaps MPs with more political experience would have been able to avoid. But of his many public-facing responsibilities, I think he’s probably at his best when he’s alongside international business and political leaders in salesman mode as it were, hustling.    I was at APEC in Peru with him last year. It was the same. The PM flew in and flew out.  The time zone was a dog. He was only the ground for about 48 hours. There were breakfasts and dinners, official meetings, multiple bilaterals all across town and twenty different leaders to meet. I just remember that when he landed, before he even went to his hotel or had a shower, after 17 or 18 hours in the air, Luxon insisted on swinging past the Australian delegation from an impromptu visit to Anthony Albanese. By anyone’s measure, it was a gruelling schedule with no down time, and Luxon always had to be ‘on’. And I asked him just before he flew home how he was feeling.   ‘You must be exhausted?’ I said.    Honestly, it was as though the possibility had never crossed his mind.    ‘Huh?’ He said.    ‘No... I love this!’ he said. I believed him.    There are plenty of levers governments can pull that impact economic conditions. This government’s critics will argue that a part of New Zealand’s current economic malaise is the result of its policies. Nonetheless, at a time when the world’s biggest superpower is spraying around tariffs and speedily retreating from its traditional international role, I do think there’s value —symbolic or otherwise— in a Prime Minister overtly hustling for his country.  Fri, 21 Mar 2025 21:05:16 Z /on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/opinion/jack-tame-maintaining-a-low-profile-makes-sense-for-now-but-not-the-long-term/ /on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/opinion/jack-tame-maintaining-a-low-profile-makes-sense-for-now-but-not-the-long-term/ “Canada will never be part of the United States!”   That was the defining line of Mark Carney’s first speech as Canada’s new Prime Minister overnight. It was not said in jest or as a joke. It said as a statement of firm defiance, a serious response to Donald Trump’s ‘51st State’ taunts.   I can’t think of a time in my life where so much in the World was changing so quickly, where so much we took for granted was being tipped on its head. I bet Mark Carney can’t either! Just a few weeks ago, his party was 25 points behind Canada’s Conservatives in the polls. He wasn’t even a politician! Now he’s Canada’s Prime Minister. There it is, I suppose... the power of Donald Trump.   It’s interesting how differently Mexico and Canada have approached the Trump Presidency. Mexico was kind of used to Trump’s hostility from his first term and its government has taken a softly-softly-gently-gently approach, delaying retaliation and hoping that negotiations will spare them the worst of the economic pressure. They’ve been surprisingly quiet. Canada’s opted for a much more combative response, from its big retaliatory tariffs to the ice hockey fans booing the US National Anthem, and the nationwide coordinated campaign not to buy American-made stuff.    The irony of Mark Carney’s rapid rise to Canadian Prime Minister is that his party’s support has come at the expense of a political opposition in Canada that was arguably much more closely aligned to the US Republicans and Donald Trump. It’s so ridiculous – Canada’s opposition leader has effectively been reduced to posting social media videos, insisting ‘Donald Trump hates me too!’   Fundamentally, no country is going to out-muscle the US in an economic fight. Not Canada, not Mexico, not Australia, and certainly not New Zealand. And I reckon what’s lacking at the moment is a more forceful, coordinated international response. Most countries are sucking up to Trump while keeping their heads down and hoping not to attract Trump’s ire. As Canada is bashed by tariffs, it seems absurd their King could possibly go ahead in welcoming Donald Trump to the UK for an official state visit.    Winston Peters is in Washington DC this week. From New Zealand’s perspective, I reckon there’s probably no better person for the job at this moment. And in those meetings, for now, we will no doubt continue to try and maintain a low profile.   That makes sense for now. You just have to hope that behind the scenes, like-minded countries are quietly coordinating on a longer-term strategy. Playing a small target game only makes sense until for whatever reason you do catch the President’s attention. It could be something so minor: a dumb tweet, a viral video, or an ill-advised comment from a diplomat. The temptation for leaders around the World is to shut up and hope their countries can slip by, unnoticed. But in the long term that’s no way to defeat a bully.  Fri, 14 Mar 2025 21:06:33 Z /on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/opinion/jack-tame-auckland-fc-is-taking-me-away-from-super-rugby/ /on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/opinion/jack-tame-auckland-fc-is-taking-me-away-from-super-rugby/ As a sports fan, I suppose it was actually a genuinely meaningful moment. I was sitting on the couch last night. 7.28pm. Sleeping baby in my arms. Remote in my hand. A decision to make. Do I watch Moana Pasifika play the Highlanders? Neither of which is my first choice team but Super Rugby is Super Rugby and it was a local derby, no less. Or do I switch channels and watch the Phoenix play Melbourne City in the A-League? Again, not a result I was particularly invested in or angsting over but a game I knew enough about to at least know it was being played. It’s kind of ridiculous, the extent to which our household has been caught up in the Auckland FC ride. After we attended the first couple of games – and loved it – my wife ended up splurging on memberships for the rest of the season for me and our 8-year-old boy. From a live sport perspective, they’ve absolutely nailed a couple of fundamentals. For starters, there is an amazing family atmosphere. They’ve had various play areas for the kids: blow-up football arenas, a huge artificial beach behind one of the goals for the kids to make sandcastles, and an enormous blow-up slide stretching the length of the northern embankment, sliding down which on day one I very nearly lost my shorts. Games kick off at 5pm so you’re home with the kids by 8pm at the latest. I think one of the most under-rated qualities is the stadium. Warriors fans know this, too. Go-Media (Mt Smart) was a sell-out last weekend for the derby. 27,000 people. The atmosphere was incredible! And while most games don’t get quite that many fans, it’s always closer to full than empty. You never get that feeling you sometimes get in big stadiums, when it feels like you’re watching a game in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. I really hope sports administrators take note: it is so much better to watch live sport in a full mid-size stadium than to watch it an empty big stadium. Anyway..back to my decision. My vote with the remote. In some ways, I reckon the real measure of Auckland FC’s success is the stuff on the periphery. The stuff that’s bigger than the team. I’m not naïve enough to think they’ll keep winning forever! Since the start of the A-League season, our boy has become obsessed with football. He spends hours in the backyard practising skills and accidentally kicking his ball into the neighbour’s swimming pool. He went and picked up ‘The Encyclopaedia of Football’ from the library, and makes me read to him as his bedtime story the excruciating detail contained within. Last week I had to read a whole chapter on football pitch turf preparation techniques. He’s eight! He sat there, transfixed, as I ran through a paragraph on the drainage system at Wembley. And, if I’m honest, I have been affected too. At least I realised I have, last night, when instead of picking the game I would’ve picked to watch every Friday for the last thirty years, I switched from an exciting, close game of Super Rugby to the A-League instead. I switched from an exciting, close game of Super Rugby to the A-League instead. I wonder how many households in New Zealand might be doing the same. Fri, 28 Feb 2025 20:26:20 Z /on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/opinion/jack-tame-my-takeaways-from-the-birth-of-my-son/ /on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/opinion/jack-tame-my-takeaways-from-the-birth-of-my-son/ In the end, it was just over an hour. Just over an hour between being asleep on the floor of Auckland hospital, to standing, bewildered under the delivery suite lights, helping to dress my newborn son. Mava had been induced on Sunday – the scans had suggested that all was ok but that our baby was small for his age. We spent an oddly serene day waiting for the induction medication to kick in. They give you a dose every two hours until you go into labour but sometimes it takes a few hours to work and sometimes it takes days. It was actually lovely, in a way. Mava and I both read for hours in-between the doses. We went for coffee and a stroll in the domain, Mava constantly assessing baby’s every shift and every hint of a contraction. My goodness, though, when it happened... it happened. Zero to one hundred. A blur.  I won’t labour you with all of the details but it’s become clear to me that there's a reason every parent has a birth story.  It was surreal. It just felt like a week’s worth of crazy experiences happened in the space of fifteen minutes. It was beautiful, wild, traumatic, thrilling... it was animal. All these things.  Mava was incredible. I felt so proud of her, and yet so helpless at the same time.  And weirdly through it all, I felt calm. I’m not bragging. I’m not saying calmness was a good response – honestly I was probably just a bit stunned – and it turned out our son was too when he came out. They hurried him off and chucked him on the oxygen and he regained his colour. I took my cues from our amazing midwife and the other hospital staff. She wasn’t freaking out too much and so I didn’t either.  The scans were right – our son was small for his gestational age. But he what lacked in size he made up for in his capacity to feed. There can be no doubt he has inherited my skin tone, my hair colour, and my appetite. This morning is the longest I’ve been away from him in his life, but at five days old I know him well enough to know that right now he is probably feeding.  Isn’t it incredible how instinct works? Out of the womb, almost blind, and yet he absolutely throws himself at the boob. Head back, mouth wide, latch! Who taught him that?!  A few random takeaways: 1) The placenta. Wow. That thing could feed a family of four.  2) We had three nights in hospital and a couple more in Birthcare afterwards. If our experience of the New Zealand healthcare system this week is anything to go by, it is being completely held together by migrant workers: Indians, Filipinos, Europeans, South Americans, Pasifika... they were fantastic. For all the justified concern over the health care system as a whole, we had a really positive experience and felt so grateful to the people working in what are often very tricky conditions.  3) Women's bodies, eh? To have the capacity to grow an entire human being, from his skinny little frog legs folded up at his belly, to his tiny little fingernails to the lightest fur on his pink little cheeks. To grow him, birth him, and then, having done it all, having done everything... to immediately switch to nourishing him day and night. What can I tell you about our son? He’s got his mum’s eyes. He sucks his thumb. His first music was the Koln Concert and he made sure to stay up to watch Will Young and Tom Latham  score centuries against Pakistan. His name will be finalised soon enough. When he’s bulked up a bit, he’s got a long list of visitors waiting to meet him, too.  After five nights away, yesterday I put our son in his carseat and drove him home. His older brother ran home from school and cuddled him on the couch. Through the madness and exhaustion of the week, running on caffeine, sugar, and love, we sat there together, a family. It was perfect. Fri, 21 Feb 2025 20:43:55 Z /on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/opinion/jack-tame-savings-are-worth-nothing-if-the-kids-dont-eat/ /on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/opinion/jack-tame-savings-are-worth-nothing-if-the-kids-dont-eat/ I suppose it was inevitable that something would go wrong.    It wasn’t like the new school lunch providers all had the opportunity to ease into their work. They didn’t do huge practice runs or slowly build capacity over time.    For most of them it was a case of going from zero to one hundred. Day one of the school year and they had to be zipping along in fifth gear.    And all you needed were photos of a few mishits and word of a few schools with missing lunches and news spread on social media in a way that blunders never would have under the last school lunch regime.    Think about it: last year, all anyone had to compare school lunches to was the previous regime, when schools were provided with nothing. Now, there’s a different precedent.    If we’re honest, there is also a political dimension at play. David Seymour is so attached to the school lunch funding cuts. But he’s a polarising figure, especially in education communities. And just as he is happy to make soak up political support for being the guy making the funding cuts, I’m sure there are more than a few educators who are quietly willing Seymour to fail.    All that being said, I don’t think anyone who’s seen the examples of some of the stodgy offerings being sent out to schools (or not being sent out, as has also been the case) could possibly argue with the young students who’ve reportedly been comparing them with dog food. I was listening to 九一星空无限talk ZB the other day when someone said that presentation doesn’t matter. It’s simple; the kids don’t eat the meals then they can’t really be that hungry.    For anyone who’s actually spent time around children will know just how naive and misguided that is. Sure, if we were in the midst of a full-blown famine, you might reasonably expect kids to eat any old slop. But mercifully, we’re not in a famine. And actually, hungry kids don’t always act rationally. Most young children would prefer to go without kai for an afternoon than be forced to eat a tray of dog food. You probably would too. Presentation matters. I was discussing it with a mate this week, who said the whole thing still annoys him because it should be parents’ responsibility to feed children and not the New Zealand taxpayer.   Sure, I said. In a perfect World, I totally agree. But unfortunately, this ain’t it. For whatever reason, there are thousands of kids who without school lunches would not be eating three meals a day. Even if you think it’s all the parents’ fault, none of those kids can choose their folks any more than we chose ours!    And here’s the thing I think risks being lost in this episode: full bellies aren’t just good for the kids who would otherwise be going without. They’re good for all of us.    At a moment in time when the government is literally soliciting for ideas to drive economic growth, there are few things that will drive our future productivity like better educational achievement. Kids who are hungry do not learn. An investment in a full belly today is an investment in growth in twenty years’ time. It’s an investment in skills, in businesses, in innovation.    The new school lunch programme is off to a lumpy start (literally). Teething issues were inevitable, and I really hope it’ll improve.    But I can tell you this much, for all the concern over the state of the books, the savings made from the school lunch programme are worth nothing if the kids don’t eat.  Fri, 14 Feb 2025 21:02:29 Z /on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/opinion/jack-tame-the-good-stuff-takes-a-little-time/ /on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/opinion/jack-tame-the-good-stuff-takes-a-little-time/ I am very particular.    I’m a big believer that a Tidy House makes for a Tidy Mind. I like things to have their place. I like routine and I hate clutter.     Both of my televisions are mounted on the walls with their cables hidden away. I use organisers to secret my stereo cords, and a cluttered benchtop makes me feel so unsettled that I insist on having nothing on it. Nothing. Our microwave is hidden away in a cupboard. Our toaster is hidden in a drawer. And when it comes to electric gadgets, that’s as far as I’m prepared to go. An air fryer? You’ve gotta be kidding me. Despite my wife’s protestations, I still refuse to buy an electric kettle.    Therefore, for most all of adult life I’ve made coffee the same way. An Italian stovetop, a little Bialetti number. You put the water in the bottom, coffee in the funnel, put it on the element and wait for the espresso to brew. It spits out the top of the shaft after about 5 minutes and 12 seconds of steady heat. It makes you wait, just a little. But it’s worth it: a rich, black espresso, creme on the top. I love the smell, I love the taste, and I love the ritual.    I figure my Bialetti brew lands in that perfect middle-ground between freeze-dried instant coffee and the in-home espresso makers which have steadily become ubiquitous in our kitchens. It’s coffee for someone who cares about coffee, but doesn’t require a gleaming chrome spaceship taking up 4sq metres on the kitchen bench.   But am I missing out?    Truthfully, I’m starting to second guess myself. Last year, a family member very generously offered to shout us a fancy espresso maker as a wedding gift. I gently demurred at the time.  It’s not that I think they’re totally gimmicky. They’re not popcorn-makers or at-home candyfloss machines.  But it’s funny, my parents got a machine a couple of years ago with a grinder and steamer and pitcher for the milk and Dad thrashes it every morning.    My sister has an even fancier new number and brews velvety rich flat whites in those fancy see-through mugs. She says she hasn’t bought a coffee since. And I can see how the economics add up. If you replace two cafe-bought coffees a week with a $500 dollar machine, add in the milk and coffee costs, you’d have paid it off by the next Rugby World Cup.    To the best of my knowledge, only one other person in my life has consistently made coffee the same way as me. But as my brother sheepishly admitted to me last night, he’s just ditched his Italian stovetop for a big, fancy espresso maker he bought in a Briscoes sale.    “It’s great bro!” he said.   “You just push a button.”   You just push a button.    You see, I think that’s it.    Sure, maybe it’s the cables on the benchtop that puts me off. The sound. The cost of a big fancy coffee machine. Or maybe in a world that’s always changing and where nothing is guaranteed, starting every day in exactly the same way with exactly the same ritual and exactly the same brew... maybe starting the day by waiting on a simple process and a humble pot... maybe that’s what makes the coffee taste so damn good.    Fri, 07 Feb 2025 21:44:48 Z /on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/opinion/jack-tame-rfk-jnr-has-a-point-about-processed-food/ /on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/opinion/jack-tame-rfk-jnr-has-a-point-about-processed-food/ Trump’s wasting no time, we can be sure of that. Whether it’s his executive orders, Greenland, or his extraordinary Cabinet appointments, the President’s strategy in office is obviously to move quickly, to flood the zone. For his opponents, there is just so much to be outraged about they simply can’t keep up.     Of the many crazy things to observe, RFK Jnr’s confirmation hearing this week has been a standout for me. Obviously, the guy is wacky and unconventional but having someone with his history of campaigning against vaccines in such an important public health role is extraordinary, even by Trumpian standards. Potentially dangerous, for sure.    But I don’t want to talk about vaccines, I want to talk about food. Because despite his unconventional persona, despite how much I disagree with things he’s said about vaccines and actions he’s taken in the past, not everything about RFK’s health philosophy should be discounted. Not everything’s loopy. When it comes to his attitude towards ultra-processed foods and America’s big-food industry, I’m 100% on Kennedy’s side.   In a nutshell, he reckons America’s ultra-processed food industry is making Americans less healthy. The combination of processing, the use of artificial, engineered ingredients, factory farming, and excess sugar has contributed to alarming health outcomes.   And honestly, I agree.    Speaking personally, I think I might have first adopted a food philosophy of sorts when reading Michael Pollen – he of the simplest food rules (‘Eat Food, mainly plants, not too much). But for a long time now, my personal philosophy on food is the more it’s been processed, the more it’s been tinkered with and optimised and engineered, the more numbers it has for ingredients, the worse it probably is for your health.    Don’t get me wrong – I love a bit of junk food. But life’s too short to only eat numbers. I’d much rather have a big wedge of carrot cake or a slab of ginger crunch from a fancy café than a junk food that comes in a package. I’d rather have a pizza from an independent pizza place or an Uncle Man’s Malaysian laksa than a large combo and a Coke from one of the big chains. I know they’ve made big efforts to improve their offerings, but speaking personally, it’s almost 18 years since I had anything from the likes of McDonalds, BK and KFC etc. I doubt I’ll ever eat that stuff again in my life.    In America, of course, it’s much worse. Everything is processed. Everything comes in a packet. Every aisle at the supermarket is a middle aisle. I’ll never forget when a Kiwi mate came home for a month over summer and accidentally left a bag of bread in the pantry of his New York apartment while he was overseas. He returned after four or five weeks, expecting to find a writhing blob of blue penicillin in his pantry, only to discover a bag of bread without a single spore of mould, anywhere. Yeesh, we wondered, if that bread can survive a month in a warm cupboard, what’s it doing to us?     And yet on average, despite spending twice as much on healthcare per capita than other large, wealthy countries, life expectancy in the U.S is five years lower. Bananas, eh? They spend twice as much per-person, only to live five years less.    We can’t pin it all on ultra-processed foods, but diet certainly plays a role.    About half of the trillion US dollar supermarket industry is ultra-processed food. That’s about NZ$850 billion every year.   If RFK Jnr is confirmed and can break through some of the vested interests that underpin that industry, honestly, all power to him.  Fri, 31 Jan 2025 21:02:43 Z /on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/opinion/jack-tame-the-solitude-of-tramping-in-the-bush/ /on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/opinion/jack-tame-the-solitude-of-tramping-in-the-bush/ As I turned on my phone for the first time in three days, it lit up with text messages from my wife.  A photo. A tiny baby. Trussed up in a cotton wrap like a fresh, fleshy burrito with a little woolen hat for good measure.  “Congratulations,” she said.  “You’re a dad.”  I knew she was joking. I’m not denying there was an element of risk in going tramping through the backcountry of the Kahurangi National Park with a wife who was 32-weeks pregnant. I just knew that if she had had the baby while I was dragging myself up a distant ridgetop, her first words to me when I emerged from the bush would not have been ‘Congratulations!’  Solitude in the bush —the uncontactableness— is a big part of the attraction for me. I love the physical challenge of tramping. I love the birds, the piwakawaka flitting about when you're under the canopy, and the kea squawking over the valleys. I love how humbling it is, how insignificant you feel, when you stand on top of a mountain ridge and are confronted with your puniness. But maybe above all, I love that feeling when you can see nor hear no sign of human beings.  Realistically, that solitude is about to take a massive hit. When I was in the Kahurangi, it struck me that it’s only a matter of time —a couple of years at most— before satellite internet and communications technology mean we will all have internet and cell phone reception all the time. It won’t matter if you’re in downtown Auckland or halfway down the traverse from Yuletide Peak to the Anatoki Forks Hut, if you want comms you’ll have comms. That endless stream of notifications buzzing in your pocket.  I’m not going to deny the obvious upsides, especially in my family, where there is a history (thankfully not mine) of people going missing in the bush. In emergency situations it’s going to be hugely valuable. For trampers who want weather forecast updates or people in some rural parts of the country with connectivity holes, a gamechanger.  But with all that is gained with increased connectivity, that humbling sense of solitude is lost. It’ll be that much harder to escape the World, even for a couple of days. All I hope is that when our child is born and is old enough to go tramping, a voluntary code of sorts will have become the norm for all trampers when they head into the New Zealand bush: Fill out the intentions book, tell someone where you’re going. And for goodness’ sake, unless it’s an emergency, put your phone on airplane mode.  Fri, 24 Jan 2025 21:27:33 Z