New Reading Reviewed

A Variety of new publications have come to compete for your attention over the last few months. Among the more interesting:

The Australian, the new national Australian newspaper, is now on sale in Wellington one day after publication at a shilling a copy. A little expensive for students, perhaps, but well worth buying once for a reminder of what a good daily newspaper looks like. Its well-written feature articles and signed political commentary usefully complement a news presentation which is designed to supplement, not supersede, local Australian papers.

Metropolitan Magazine

Is a local giveaway publication— with a difference. Its articles are not merely space-fillers between the advertisements, but cover important national and international topics, assessing issues and positions. "New Zealand's Road Speed Laws are Archaic" the first issue announced, and the second issue considered "Strife in Malaysia." The third issue analysed "Vietnam and the continuing struggle for Asia" and gave the scientific and ethical background to "Gas as a weapon." The very fact that anyone has bothered to try and present the Wellington public with articles such as these is encouraging. More encouraging still is its intelligent use of offset printing, by-lined articles, and colour.

Newspeak is an anonymous publication actually emanating from Training College. The second issue, on sale at the university at term end, had a discouraging tendency to pad out some original writing with material filched from such varied sources as World Student News, Cappicade, Dispute, Liberation, N.Z. Monthly Review, Salient, Critic, 1964 Arts Festival Yearbook, and the Boy Scouts' D.H.Q. Gazette. When this is deleted, the standard of the publication drops.

Murray Rowlands, writing on "Managing the S.U.B." has some interesting points to make, but gets carried away, seemingly by anger, into incoherence and the frontiers of libel.

David Wright interviews "An Amoeba" with about as much useful result as we would expect from such an interview.

Tony Haas makes some useful points about Student Action and in particular boycott action, an anonymous "Penhryn" rehashes the Mills case and makes an interesting new allegation, Joan Barrington foreshadows a potentially interesting series on Education, and problems in Fiji's political future are outlined by Tony Langron.

The magazine also serves the characteristic purpose of providing an outlet for student poetry.

—H.B.R.