Remember What We’re Fighting For

EDITORIAL | COLUMN | TUAKIRI / IDENTITY

Written by Tashi Donnelly (she/her) | @tashi_rd | Editor-in-Chief

Kia ora koutou, and welcome to Issue #1 of Debate Magazine for 2026. I’m Tashi Donnelly, former Feature Editor and, as of this year, the new Editor-in-Chief. To me, student media is built on curiosity, questioning, and, when it’s needed, protest. I’m here to make sure Debate remains a space that belongs to you, the students.

We’re starting off the year with a theme that can feel insurmountable: identity. It shapes our sense of self, from our bodies to our communities, spanning the personal and the political. For some, it’s a passing thought. For others, it’s a lived reality every day. And right now, identity is being weaponised.

It always has been. When fear rises, someone is chosen to carry it. In Aotearoa, we pride ourselves on being tolerant and laid-back, yet racism, sexism, and homophobia still run through our institutions through law, media, and economics. Policy debates about bathrooms, Treaty principles, immigration, and “equal citizenship” are framed as existential clashes between competing groups. Identity is flattened into labels and presented as mutually exclusive camps. Migrants are blamed for housing shortages. Māori governance is framed as a threat. Trans people become moral panic fodder. These narratives create phantom enemies, absorbing public anger while shielding those in power from accountability.

The problem is not identity. It’s not marginalised communities. The problem is how identities are distorted to stop working people from becoming organised. Because while we argue about culture wars, rents rise. Wages stagnate. Public healthcare strains. Supermarkets post record profits. Wealth consolidates quietly at the top. Division makes workers easier to underpay, easier to exhaust, and easier to replace. And when we see each other as threats instead of allies, we stop asking who owns what, who profits, and who sets the rules.

If we are serious about dignity, safe homes, fair pay, and a livable future, we need more than outrage. We need unions. We need collective worker organising. We need solidarity that crosses race, gender, sexuality, and nationality. Solidarity does not erase identity. It builds across it. Remember what we’re fighting for. The only thing that has ever shifted power toward ordinary people is organised, collective action.

This issue explores identity from (at least a few) angles. From Ricky’s Reel Recommendations on film and selfhood, to Poi+: Identity in the In-Between, a kaupapa grounding identity in culture and connection, to Me, Myself, and I on fads, rebellion, and self-love. We also cover the next steps for the Toitū Te Aroha campaign, AUT’s new cross-country exchanges, and a personal reflection on queer loneliness and belonging in uncertain times.

Identity is not fixed. It shifts with place, politics, culture, and crisis. It lives in protest movements and in movie nights, in dance studios and in dorm rooms. In this issue, we invite you to see yourself, and maybe to question the version of yourself you’ve held on to. Unlearn the identities that were unwillingly assigned to you. Cherish the parts of your identity that ground you in healthy relationships and community.

Welcome to the Identity Issue.