Word: australian
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March 7 was census day for 4 million New Zealanders. While much of the talk around Auckland last week was about ethnic identity and a festival of sport, there was also bright buzz around news of a business deal. The $NZ700 million purchase by Australian media company Fairfax of local online auction site Trade Me had a number of sweet elements. Founder Sam Morgan, 30, a university dropout, was about to become one of the country's wealthiest people. Fairfax's new Sydney-based boss, David Kirk, is a former captain of the All Blacks. And if it seemed almost...
...selling second-hand stuff to each other, it's also tempting to ask whether the sale would have happened without the involvement of expatriate Kirk. Did the connection help Morgan get in the door or secure a great price? Did Kirk see something in Trade Me that his Australian competitors (or his Fairfax predecessor) missed? You can't help wondering if this deal isn't the first of many in which the global Kiwi network will make a difference...
...that matter, heard. When Ten Canoes has its world premiere as part of the Adelaide Festival of Arts this Sunday, it will be the first feature to play out almost entirely in an indigenous Australian language (Gulpilil's intermittent narration is in English, as are the subtitles). But in a film set before Western contact - where young warrior Dayindi (Gulpilil's son Jamie) hunts for goose eggs while being told Dreamtime stories - Ganalbingu, the language of the "magpie goose people," rules. Dayindi has been coveting his older brother's young wife, and the cautionary tale Minygululu (Peter Minygululu) offers...
...true, of course, that no family's child-care worries last forever. But the kind of care on offer affects everyone, whether they're changing nappies or not. For one thing, over the next four years Australian taxpayers will fork out more than $A9 billion to subsidize child care. A shortage of places is keeping women - and their much-needed skills - out of a workforce in which they play an increasingly important role. There's ample international evidence, too, that the quality of a country's child care affects the way its kids grow up. And if - as many experts...
...Family and Community Services Minister, Mal Brough, says child-care places have more than doubled - from 300,000 - since the government first came to power, and insists that families are receiving "unprecedented financial support" to access places. But statistics and parents suggest that's still not enough. A recent Australian Bureau of Statistics report says around 250,000 women who want to return to work or work longer hours can't because of a lack of child care. Having seen friends in that position, Melbourne mother Sarah Tomasetti thinks herself lucky to have just been offered a place...