Afternoon team,
How are we? Apologies for not sending this out yesterday.
I was in and out of the doctors and or White Cross being told it was $150 (yep, $150?!) to see a GP out of hours (or wait two weeks for an appointment.)
Anyway, I’m back and sentient again and drinking a flat white. I know I’m back to normal when I’m back to three a day. (I know. I know. It’s a lot of coffee. But I think we all need a manageable vice, otherwise we have nowhere for the inherent reckless dark pixie dust of fckery that’s innate in the human soul to go to. And at least it’s not heroin.)
Anywho.
So this week, I did something Aucklanders never do. I thought about Wellington.
Now Welly, to a Jaffa of my age and stage, isnt rally somewhere you go. Unless, and this is the big caveat, unless you’re smart - and care about NZ.
See most Aucklanders consider it a rite of passage to eventually piss off to Sydney, but Welly is where smart Aucklanders go when they want to make a difference to the country.
They’ve got heart.
And I respect that. You can tell it’s the sort of place that collects smart young people with a conscience, and they’re all in one tiny town trying valiantly to improve the nation.
It’s powerful. That optimism.
And I respect that greatly - I rarely agree with them, sure, because there’s a practical, cynical, small business side of me that feels Wellywood just doesn’t understand how the real world works. But!
But but but but, I still have a helluva lot more time for the city because that combination of smarts and conscience is the intellectual backbone of the nation.
And you can tell the city cares. Cos if you’re under 40, and you’re still down there sticking it out, you’re doing it because you believe in NZ. You won’t be the one give up on it in its time of need.
You’re staying and serving.
Which is precisely why it’s so frickin heartbreaking to go down there at the moment. And exactly what I wrote for this week’s column.
Welly is clearly on its knees.
And I don’t mean economically (I think in the GDP data I saw, for the 2025 period, Welly was neutral at 0% growth whereas Auckland contracted at -1.2% ish.)
But the mood is grim.
The city is flat on its back on the canvas, totally floored by the uppercut of job cuts and even MORE public sector job cuts.
That’s hard to see, especially as a Jaffa. And a small biz Jaffa who has been in the trenches these past few years.
You go down and see all these bright young things looking around in a daze. You can practically hear the people thinking, “but I STAYED, for YOU, to help you! And this is how I get repaid??”
I wrote about that this week, about how (as an Aucklander who had been through two years of this already) seeing Welly like this is heartbreaking.
I mean, Auckland’s had it rough. But at least we weren’t full of youthful idealism to begin with.
We never believed that the Government was coming to save us, not really, so we weren’t surprised when they didn’t.
But Welly? Welly loves Government. It’s infatuated with the beehive, the beehive is the love of its life. (Whereas we see it as a distant cousin who always has loud (irrelevant) opinions on how we should be doing things. Which we promptly ignore.)
And God. God, that’s a raw deal.
What’s even rawer is no one seems to give a damn about the fact the city is now going to go the same way as Akl. And sure, there’s some people who’ll shrug and say, screw the cities. They’re not real NZ anyway.
And they’re right. We’re not. But we are its bank balance.
Or as I put it to a Wellingtonian last week (who was complaining about how he missed Covid days when all Jaffas were quarantined from the rest of the country),
“I know you don’t like us, baby, but you like our money.”
And it’s true, when Auckland’s poor, the whole country feels it. Same with Welly. The city money drives the country’s money.
And it just seems crazy to me that we can be so passive about that. (I mean, I know we’re annoying, but you can’t say we don’t have our uses.)
So that’s this week’s column. Give it a read, send it to a Wellingtonian as proof that Auckland does (occasionally) care.
And that, despite us all giving each other shit constantly, we do love it. And this is actually breaking our collective hearts.
The one thing I’d say, having done three years of this already, is if you’re on the frontline of it right now…find something to believe in.
Because that’s the thing that’s going to get you through it.
One of the big reasons I’ve stayed in NZ (despite everyone else my age leaving and even when I lost all my life savings because my small business took a beating in the recession of 2024/25) is love.
My partner also owns a small business here, and he can’t leave it, and I certainly wasn’t going to leave him. I wasn’t going to give up on him, nor the business he’d given his life to, when the rubber hit the road. I believe. So I’m here.
And however hard these past years have been, I know why I’m here. For love. And him. And for what we’ve worked for. And a lot of sheer “fck you, I’ll show you,” grit too. But mostly love.
And that genuinely helped me get through the past few years.
So, if you’re in Wellington, find that thing you’ll die on a rock for. It helps. Promise. That - and reading a lot of Seneca. (Who, as someone who knew a thing or two about living through the fall of Rome, is surprisingly insightful in 2026.)
So. Don’t let the bastards get you down. And Welly, we gotchu boo. Don’t say we never pay attention to you ;)
Talk soon
Vee xo
