TLDR: This week’s news in geopolitics and Aotearoa’s political economy covered on The Kākā for paying subscribers included:

* Council staff in Wellington going rogue on their council, quietly reinserted 797 villas into the Council’s district plan, despite express instructions from Council after a heated debate and vote last year that character zones stopping building be cut by 72%; Monday’s email

* A law change designed to tighten the number of free carbon credits allocated to major polluters could instead allow them to emit more carbon for free; Tuesday’s email

* The IRD confirmed the release next Wednesday of much better wealth data and a speech on wealth and income from Revenue Minister David Parker; Wednesday’s email

* Auckland Transport, at the behest of Mayor Wayne Brown, abandoned a long-running drive for special powers to remove kerbside parking for things like cycleways and has dropped a proposal to charge at park-and-ride stations; Thursday’s email

* The Government, which still says it is treating emissions reduction as a climate emergency and a nuclear-free moment, defended its decision to allow NZ Steel to extend the consent on its Glenbrook steel mill until 2046 without the Auckland Council having to consider climate change in the consent process. Friday’s email.

My podcast for The Spinoff this week

Going wider for new workers - Employers are struggling to replace staff of all skill levels and the Reserve Bank says it has no choice but to hike interest rates because it says the economy is at full employment. But in this week’s When The Facts Change, I challenged that assumption in an interview with Autism NZ CEO Dane Dougan about the thousands of workers unnecessarily unemployed because of their autism, and how to change that.

What we talked about on the ‘hoon’

In this week’s podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers at 5pm on Friday night, I talked with co-host Peter Bale in Perugia (!) and special guests:

* Merja Myllylahti from AUT on this week’s dramas in media globally, including Fox News’ defamation settlement payout and non-apology for lying about US election fraud and her Trust in News survey (more here) from 5.20pm to 5.40 pm; and,

* Christina Hood from Compass Climate to talk about the Climate Commission’s advice to the Government to actually reduce emissions from 5.40 to 5.50 pm. 

Peter and I also talked about the news in geopolitics this week, including the beginning of spring offensives in Ukraine and the new civil war in Sudan. The Hoon podcast version is produced by Simon Josey.

Thanks to the support of paying subscribers here, I’m able to spread the work from my public interest journalism here about housing affordability, climate change and poverty reduction around in other public venues.

Ka kite ano

Bernard

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