How beautiful is big?

How beautiful is big?

Whatever happened to Austin Mitchell’s ‘half gallon, quarter acre, pavlova paradise’? Thirty-eight years after the English academic coined the phrase in his treatise on Kiwi society, many of us live crammed into 350sqm, subdivided city sections and cheek-by-jowl townhouses.

So how do you feel about a future New Zealand with double our current 4.3 million population?

The cover story of North & South magazine’s August issue asks if we really need eight million people like many economists insist, and why – unlike Australia – we have no government policy on population.

Murder and Insanity

In 1997 Stephen Anderson shot and killed six people – including his father – and wounded four others. The crime became known as the Raurimu massacre. Anderson, then 24, was found not guilty by reason of insanity.

Now sufficiently recovered to live in the community, he writes publicly – and very personally – for the first time about his descent into mental illness and its tragic consequences.

Other stories in the August issue:
• Joanna Wane finds out which civil servants are travelling the world at taxpayers’ expense.
• Experienced outdoorsman Paul Hersey asks if a five-year tally of 29 deaths and 450 serious accidents in the adventure tourism industry is acceptable.
• “Oil, that is, black gold…” Will oil really earn New Zealand $10 billion a year by 2025? Jim Robinson follows the money.

It’s all in the August issue of North & South magazine on newsstands from July 12.

ENDS

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