Issue 01 | February 25,2013 | critic.co.nz

This is a bandwagon. Get on it.
Politicians jump on the
O-Week bandwagon
BY SAM MCCHESNEY
during O-Week, many things appear in
the otherwise calm streets of Dunedin
– short shorts, drunken bellows, vomit,
cheery reps bearing vouchers that sound great
when sensually pressed into your palm but actually
promise nothing more than $1 off a kilo of
tomatoes at the farmers’ market. The seasoned
student deftly dodges these perils, shrugging
them off with the kind of savvy that only this
most brutal of environments can teach.
But this year another menace stalks beneath
Dunedin’s velvety skies. This new threat targets
not the lone strays as would a regular thief or
violent psychopath, but seeks out the ambitious
prey: the tastemakers, the large crowds,
the twin media juggernauts of Critic and Radio
One. That’s right, people: this year the politicians
are in town.
But politics is a serious business, and New Zea-
land politicians are serious people, people who
take what they do seriously, take themselves
seriously, speak in serious tones about serious
things with serious words, and want us all to
know how serious is this business of theirs that
they undertake with such seriousness.
But enough of this frivolity. Let’s get serious.
Grant Robertson, the probably-next-leaderof-Labour-but-shhh-don’t-mention-it,
was
in town to discuss funding for Polytechnics. For
the purposes of Being Visible, Robertson swung
by the Critic office. Dunedin North MP David Clark
came along for the ride, playing Robin to Grant’s
Batman.
Apropos of slightly more, but still not much,
was Green MP Holly Walker’s visit. An ex-Critic
editor and the second-youngest MP in Parliament,
Walker came by to shoot the breeze,
slam patriarchy and cast a beady eye over
Nietzsche-spouting editorial debutant Callum
Fredric.
Three Dunedin-based MPs also found their way
onto these pages, requiring only a minimum
of coaxing before leaping into view like Tracy
Flick in a focus group. Napoleonic National MP
Michael Woodhouse is interviewed on page 22,
Green MP and co-leader Metiria Turei discusses
mud-wrestling and shoot/shag/marry on page
23, and Clark finally gets his day in the sun,
basking in the glory that is page 24.
OUSA launches fair
trade campaign
BY SAM MCCHESNEY
NEWS
oUSA pushed its new fair trade message
at Tent City on Thursday. The policy,
which has been approved by the student
body and the University Council, aims to bring
predominantly fair trade products to the already
laughably overpriced campus shelves.
The smell of freshly-roasted Rwandan coffee
beans and bespoke Guadeloupe chocolate bars
was even enough to lure Vice-Chancellor Professor
Harlene Hayne away from the clutches of her
tyrannical secretary and down to the Museum
Reserve, where she chatted to the Otago Daily
Times and slyly evaded the ace news hound
whom Critic had sent to the scene.
Critic was instead cornered by Dunedin City
Councillor Teresa Stevenson, who encouraged
students to buy fair trade before vowing to
kidnap a Critic reporter and take him or her
on a tour of the Greggs factory – a threat oddly
reminiscent of the scene in Red Dragon in which
Philip Seymour Hoffman is glued to a wheelchair
and lectured before being set on fire.
Critic hit campus to gain students’ views on
the new policy. “Fair trade is the biggest sham
since the moon landing,” one respondent fumed.
“When you buy fair trade, you’re subsidising
Farmer Joe at the expense of Farmer Jim down
the road. And the knowledge of the moral wrong
you’re committing by enabling the scam makes
the coffee taste burned and bitter.”
This struggling Mexican farmer was overjoyed
to hear of OUSA’s new fair trade policy.
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