a shitty weekend of news tbh
NZ lost its "cuddly" government & Australia voted "no" on The Voice referendum 🙃
Good morning angels (and hi to all our new pals who joined us over the weekend - stoked to have you here!) I’m writing to you from LONDON this morning!! I’ve spent the weekend seeing my besties (Liv and London Laura included of course) and since it’s my first time here we’ve doing the most British shit you could imagine, like:
learning how to use public transport
seeing all the places from the monopoly board
eating prawn cocktail crisps
being cold
seeing an actor from HARRY POTTER
having dinner at one of the spots Harry Styles and Taylor Russell frequent
watching the entire David Beckham doco
having the best roast of my life
We also went and saw some of the sights, watched New Zealand beat Ireland in a random pub, but mostly we just talked over and over again about HOW EXPENSIVE IT IS HERE!!!
Anyway, while I was having a great weekend, we had some pretty devastating news out of New Zealand and Australia, which I’ll get into soon!
PS: the results of the poll last week tell me that an overwhelming amount of you prefer when I send this at the old time, so I’ll endeavour to do that whenever I can xxx
New Zealand had its election and things will be… different now
Meanwhile, Australia voted “no” in The Voice referendum
Israel-Palestine updates
And in pop culture:
Pete Davidson became Ken for SNL
Katy Perry weighed in on Taylor and Travis
New Zealand had its election and things will be… different now
As you all probably saw, over the weekend New Zealand had an election. On Saturday morning we woke up in London (in an Airbnb full of kiwis) to all our group chats popping off, but not in a good way. A few hours later we started seeing headlines like this:
“New Zealand abandons Labour and shifts to the right as country votes for wholesale change”
“New Zealand elects conservative Christopher Luxon as premier after 6 years of liberal rule”
And they were right. New Zealand had voted to get rid of its “cuddly” government (weird word for the Economist to use, but ok) as the results showed that National’s Christopher Luxon will be our new Prime Minister and that while the exact makeup of the government is still up in the air, we’ll most likely have a National/ ACT government.
I’ll keep you updated as we know more, but for a bit of informative comic relief, you should REALLY go and read this: Winners, losers, big losers and gigantic losers from the 2023 general election (The Spinoff)
Meanwhile, Australia voted “no” in The Voice referendum
Yikes. After what turned out to be quite a divisive campaign in Australia over a proposal to give more rights to indigenous people, Australians have voted “no” to doing so. Every state and territory except the ACT voted against it, and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said: "When you aim high, sometimes you fall short. We understand and respect that we have." Meanwhile, the opposition leader Peter Dutton said the result was "good for our country".
Israel-Palestine updates
As usual, pointing you to the journalists out there who are covering this in depth!
And a personal note from me to thank you for being so kind to me (and to each other) while everyone is figuring out what feels right to say and do. I really appreciate you all.
AND IN POP CULTURE….
Pete Davidson became Ken for SNL
I’m not a big SNL watcher, but this came across my TikTok FYP and I didn’t NOT enjoy it.
And Katy Perry weighed in on Taylor and Travis
That’s all for today my besties,
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The referendum here in Australia was not a vote to give First Nations people of Australia and Torres Strait Islanders more rights. The Voice Referendum was voting whether to change the Constitution to recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing a body called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.
This was part of the problem, people didn’t know exactly what they were voting on. There was a lot of misinformation on the internet, just as you have included in your newsletter today.
Unfortunately the No campaign ran with the slogan, ‘if you don’t know, vote no’, which just encourages Australians to be ignorant to the real issues.
Never been more ashamed to be Australian tbh 🙃