The Hoon

TL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers last night features co-hosts Bernard Hickey and Peter Bale talking with:

* The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer talking about the National-ACT-NZ First Government’s release of its first Emissions Reduction Plan;

* University of Otago Foreign Relations Professor Robert Patman and special guest Dr Karin von Hippel, the Director General of RUSI, the Royal United Services Institute in London, talk about what the attempted assassination of Donald Trump means in Geopolitics and for Aotearoa-NZ;

* Simplicity CEO Sam Stubbs talks about Simplicity Living’s progress building hundreds of apartments a third cheaper than others, and how tens of billions of KiwiSaver and other institutional funds could be mobilised to help solve Aotearoa’s housing crisis.

The Hoon’s podcast version above was recorded last night during a live webinar for over 150 paying subscribers and was produced by Simon Josey.

Near the end of the podcast, Peter referred to this cartoon in New Yorker. Robert wrote this article for Newsroom on foreign interference in New Zealand. Robert wrote this article for RUSI on New Zealand risking sending the wrong message to Ukraine.

(This is a sampler for all free subscribers. Thanks to the support of paying subscribers here, we’re able to spread my public interest journalism here about housing affordability, climate change and poverty reduction other public venues. Join the community supporting and contributing to this work with your ideas, feedback and comments, and by subscribing.)

Ngā mihi nui.

Bernard

TL;DR : Here’s the top six items of climate news for Aotearoa-NZ this week, as selected by Bernard Hickey and The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer, most of which they discussin the video above.

* According to experts, the rate of ocean surface warming around New Zealand is “outstripping the global average threefold in some areas and twice on average”. They warn that the severity of storms like Cyclone Gabrielle and the ones that recently hit the East Coast are expected to grow even higher in the future as a result.

* At the same time, a new briefing from Public Health Communication Centre Aotearoa (PHCCA) claims the Government’s policy response is incoherent, saying that ‘clean-ups are not enough’!  Further,  “It is evident that the current Government is failing to make the connection between their climate change policies and increasing negative impacts on communities and the country.”

* Their call for ‘policy coherency’ is echoed by carbon market expert Christina Hood, who suggested recently that key ministers appear to be operating under the misapprehension that emissions growth caused by their policies will be automatically offset by the ETS.

* That same policy incoherency is replicated again in the government’s new ‘Five-point’ climate strategy as experts point to inconsistencies in the policy approach.

* As if to put a pin in the risks to human wellbeing, ‘crazy’ ocean temperatures super-charged the earliest ever recorded category 5 hurricane in the Atlantic Ocean. Hurricane Beryl slammed into Texas this week, turning out lights for two million households, after killing 11 people during its early season rampage across the Caribbean.

* Canadian oil companies, lobby groups and third-party advertisers are scrambling to scrub their websites clean of carbon capture claims likely to fall afoul of new greenwashing rules.

(See more detail and analysis below. Cathrine Dyer’s journalism on climate and the environment is available free to all paying and non-paying subscribers to The Kākā and the public. It is made possible by subscribers signing up to the paid tier to ensure this sort of public interest journalism is fully available in public to read, listen to and share. Cathrine wrote the wrap. Bernard edited it. Lynn copy-edited and illustrated it.)

1. NZ waters warming more than global average

New data sets released by Stats NZ this week show sea surface temperatures around the country in 2022 and 2023 were the hottest ever recorded. Areas to the west of the North Island were bathed in heatwave conditions for nearly 90% of the year.

Dr Matt Pinkerton, Principal Scientist – Marine Ecology & Remote Sensing at NIWA points out just how dramatic and localised the increase has been:

"Things are getting hotter because of climate change – we knew that already – but the accelerating pace of warming of the oceans around New Zealand is surprising. The rate of ocean surface warming round New Zealand is now outstripping the global average threefold in some areas and twice on average. This disrupts the narrative that New Zealand is well placed to avoid the worst that climate change will bring. More warming brings more marine heatwaves and the increase in these abnormally hot events since 2010 is dramatic.”

Acceleration in the rate of ocean warming has consequences that extend beyond the marine environment itself, with the ocean being a dominant factor in the weather experienced in Aotearoa. Dr. Georgia Grant, climate scientist at GNS Science warns of increasing storm intensity.

“It’s important for New Zealanders to be aware that, even if global warming is kept to 2°C above pre-industrial temperatures in line with the Paris target (which the world is not on track to meet), we should expect higher ocean temperatures here. As an island nation, the ocean dictates much of our weather, and increasing ocean temperatures are one of the factors as to why storms like Cyclone Gabrielle are expected to increase in severity under climate warming."

Aotearoa’s ongoing vulnerability to climate-amplified storms has already been brought home to communities on the East Coast , forced  to evacuate once again last month  as widespread flooding, slips, power outages and 6-metre swells hit the region.

2. The Govt’s incoherent climate approach

Yet government policy is failing to engage with the recurring and amplifying nature of the risks being faced. A new briefing from Public Health Communication Centre Aotearoa (PHCCA), an independent organisation hosted by the Department of Public Health at the University of Otago takes aim at the government’s ‘incoherent response’ to climate change, saying that ‘clean-ups are not enough’!

“It is evident that the current Government is failing to make the connection between their climate change policies and increasing negative impacts on communities and the country. The Government is promoting more mining for fossil fuels, weakening existing protection for wetlands (key to effective flood mitigation and carbon sequestration), focusing on large-scale roading projects while reducing spending on public transport, and continuing to delay action on reducing agricultural emissions. 

In the wake of damage to homes in East Coast communities, it must also be remembered that the Government’s Fast-Track Approvals Bill proposes to reduce the rigour with which major housing (among other) developments are considered and approved.”

The briefing points to the resulting impacts on the health and well-being of citizens (for example from polluted drinking water and displacement) as well as the economic consequences from infrastructure damage and interrupted supply chains. Importantly, they note that the impacts are not experienced equally by people, with rural, Māori and low-income populations disproportionately affected. This was reflected in Wairoa Mayor Craig Little’s response to the storm,

“I don’t know how we’re going to get through this one, to be honest. We are a poor community, and this is just another big kick”.

 The PHCCA are calling for more policy coherence, an approach being actively promoted by the OECD. Coherency in policy approaches suggests that consistent policies should be developed across government to ensure they don’t undermine one another and instead produce co-benefits from the alignment of mitigation and adaptation measures.

3. Ministers’ false faith in ETS

In another example, carbon market expert Christina Hood recently pointed out in a post on Linkedin that government ministers appear to be misapprehending the way that the ETS operates, putting too much faith in its ability to offset the increased emissions that are resulting from their own policies being introduced across various sectors.

Like the PHCCA, Hood is also calling for greater policy coherence in an op-ed article for The Post, suggesting that ALL relevant ministers need to be given responsibility and accountability for emissions.

“Understanding that the ETS will not automatically constrain net emissions to meet the 2026-30 budget is one key reason that ministerial accountability matters. Failure to implement the policies agreed in the Emissions Reduction Plan could lead to the target being missed. Other decisions unrelated to the Emissions Reduction Plan that increase emissions could also lead to the target being missed [...].

A robust accountability process would mean ministers assess the emissions impact of all major decisions, liaise with the Climate Change Minister to understand the degree to which the ETS is likely to compensate or not, and make Cabinet aware of any resulting emissions shortfall and its cost. Individual ministers could even be given responsibility to fill any holes that they have created.

Responsibility for the emissions budget cannot sit solely with the Climate Change Minister. The Emissions Reduction Plan is the place to set climate change KPIs for all key ministers.” Source: The Post

4. A ‘plan’ full of contrad…

TL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers features co-hosts Bernard Hickey and Peter Bale talking with:

* The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer talking about the National-ACT-NZ First Government’s climate strategy ‘pamphlet’, its watering down of Clean Car Standards and its general lack of coherence;

* University of Otago Foreign Relations Professor Robert Patman and special guest Helen Clark talking about the NATO summit, the debate about Aotearoa joining AUKUS II and how MFAT, DPMC and security establishment officials often try to push us back closer to our former ANZUS partners; and,

* Greater Auckland Director and former NZTA-Waka Kotahi Director Patrick Reynolds talking about the Government’s ‘Going for Housing Growth’ strategy and its new approach on Transport.

The Hoon’s podcast version above was recorded last night during a live webinar for over 150 paying subscribers and was produced by Simon Josey.

(This is a sampler for all free subscribers. Thanks to the support of paying subscribers here, we’re able to spread my public interest journalism here about housing affordability, climate change and poverty reduction other public venues. Join the community supporting and contributing to this work with your ideas, feedback and comments, and by subscribing.)

Ngā mihi nui.

Bernard

TL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers features co-hosts Bernard Hickey and Peter Bale talking with:

* The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer about the National-ACT-NZ First Government’s moves this week to take farming out of the ETS and encourage more mining and oil and gas drilling;

* Robert Patman about the visit by China’s Premier Li Qiang to Wellington yesterday this week, what it means for Aotearoa-NZ’s relations with our largest trading partner, and whether we can (or should) join AUKUS II; and,

* Politico Europe contributing editor and columnist Paul Taylor about the swing to the right in European Union elections this week and French President Emmanuel Macron’s surprise decision to call Parliamentary elections after his party lost badly in those elections.

The Hoon’s podcast version above was recorded last night during a live webinar produced by Simon Josey.

(This is a sampler for all free subscribers. Thanks to the support of paying subscribers here, I’m able to spread my public interest journalism here about housing affordability, climate change and poverty reduction other public venues. Join the community supporting and contributing to this work with your ideas, feedback and comments, and by subscribing.)

Other things we did elsewhere

We produced an episode of When The Facts Change via The Spinoff, including this interview recorded on May 27 with Reserve Bank Chief Economist Paul Conway in the immediate aftermath of a surprisingly hawkish monetary policy statement, and just before the Budget.

We talked about where the inflation is coming from, why interest rates are staying high for longer than anyone expected, and whether the blunt instrument of the Official Cash Rate can affect this extra sticky inflation.

We also produce the 5 in 5 with ANZ daily podcast and Substack for ANZ Institutional in Australia, free to all via Spotify. Apple and YouTube

Ngā mihi nui.

Bernard

TL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers features Bernard Hickey talking with:

* The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer talking about the latest reports on a warming climate and the UN’s call this week to ban fossil fuel advertising;

* Robert Patman talking about the growing disquiet globally over the United States’ support for Israel in Gaza, plus the latest from Ukraine;

* Association of Salaried Medical Specialists executive director Sarah Dalton on the health funding crisis;

* Queenstown Lakes District Housing Trust CEO Julie Scott on social housing and the shortages of housing and transport in and around Queenstown; and,

* Commercial Communications Council CEO Simon Lendrum on the UN call for a boycott of fossil fuel money in advertising, PR and the media.

The six things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about in the Hoon above and via The Kākā and elsewhere in the last week included:

* Politics: Public and media reaction to Budget 2024 zeroed in on National’s breaking of election promises to fund 13 new cancer treatments and 50 new doctor training places, to not cut sick leave and holiday entitlements for part-time workers and to not cut funding for first-home buyer grants. See more in Monday’s email.

* Climate: Transport and Energy Minister Simeon Brown pushing ahead quietly with plans to water down emissions reduction rules for car imports. This move and the already-banned Clean Car Discount scheme could increase Aotearoa-NZ’s climate emissions by 30 million tonnes by 2030, which could cost taxpayers $680 million extra to buy emissions credits overseas, or risk the nation reneging on our Paris climate agreements in a way that would lock our farmers’ exports out of the European and UK markets. See more in Thursday’s email.

* Various cases emerged this week of ‘penny wise and pound foolish’ decisions by the Government to freeze or block funding for water infrastructure and public transport infrastructure that will dramatically slow the building of new homes, in direct opposition to the Government’s avowed ‘going for housing growth policy.’ See more in Monday’s email.

* UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres used the release of key reports this week on the warming climate by the World Meteorological Association (WMA) and the European Commission’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) to call in speech for a ban on all advertising by fossil-fuel companies, and for media agencies and media companies to stop working for such companies. See more in Thursday’s email. Also, see more in the weekly climate wrap from Cathrine and myself out this morning.

* Calls grew this week for deeper, more wide-ranging and more independent inquiries into Te Pati Maori’s use of data obtained during the Census and covid vaccination programmes by organisations associated with TPM President John Tamihere to promote voting for TPM.

* Ports of Auckland began telling clients last week it plans to increases its peak-time container pick-up fees by 84% to $175 per container. All because the Port has been told by Auckland Council to pay more dividends, again because both flavours of Government won’t fund councils properly for all the population growth Government has enabled. It’s another example of administered prices driving up domestic inflation, which is forcing the RBNZ to keep rates high for even longer.

The Hoon’s podcast version above was produced by Simon Josey. Regular co-host Peter Bale was off this week travelling.

(This is a sampler for all free subscribers. Thanks to the support of paying subscribers here, I’m able to spread my public interest journalism here about housing affordability, climate change and poverty reduction other public venues. Join the community supporting and contributing to this work with your ideas, feedback and comments, and by subscribing.)

Other things we did elsewhere

We produced an episode of When The Facts Change via The Spinoff, including this interview with Flick Electric CEO Luke Blincoe about what really happened during last month’s cold-snap blackout scare.

We go deep into the mechanics of the electricity distribution system and market to look at how to solve the dry winter and cold snap problem without billions of dollars worth of spending on new generation and lines.

We also produce the 5 in 5 with ANZ daily podcast and Substack for ANZ Institutional in Australia, free to all via Spotify. Apple and YouTube

Ngā mihi nui.

Bernard

TL;DR: Here’s the top six news items of note in climate news for Aotearoa-NZ this week, and a discussion above between Bernard Hickey and The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer:

* A year of record-breaking surface temperatures has spawned a month of global extreme weather chaos in May, including howler monkeys falling dead from trees in Mexico during a ferocious heatwave that is also threatening to run Mexico City dry of water

* Meantime, Brazil has more water than it can handle as biblical-scale floods displace more than half a million people in the state of Rio Grande do Sul.

* Tornado-spawning thunderstorms killed 21 people, destroyed hundreds of buildings and disrupted Memorial Day weekend traffic in the US. The so-called‘kitty cat’ storms (as opposed to ‘nat cat’ for nationally catastrophic storms) have sent the insurance industry reeling at the accumulated scale of losses.

* North India has been suffering through an intense heat wave that experts say has surpassed 50˚C on the heat index (the apparent or experienced temperature) due to high levels of humidity. Hospitals in Delhi have been forced to set up special facilities to treat the increasing numbers of patients experiencing heat-related illnesses.

* And then there was the devastating landslide in Papua New Guinea that buried an entire village, part of a series of landslides driven primarily by the country’s unique geography. However, experts warn that climate change, particularly in the form of intensified rainfall events, can overwhelm the landscape’s ability to cope and contribute to landslides.

* Climate change could be producing more diarrhoea-causing cryptosporidium outbreaks in Aotearoa, according to a new study from the University of Otago.

(See more detail and analysis below, and in the video and podcast above. Cathrine Dyer’s journalism on climate and the environment is available free to all paying and non-paying subscribers to The Kākā and the public. It is made possible by subscribers signing up to the paid tier to ensure this sort of public interest journalism is fully available in public to read, listen to and share. Cathrine wrote the wrap. Bernard edited it. Lynn copy-edited and illustrated it.)

Monkey fall from trees, water runs short in brutal heatwave

What follows a year in which average surface temperatures exceed the pre-industrial average by more than 1.5˚C, adding energy equivalent to four Hiroshima bombs (or Hiros) per second to Earth’s climate system? That massive pulse of energy, amplified by the effects of El Niño will take some time to dissipate.

In May alone we have seen extreme weather events unleash chaos in multiple locations around the world. Howler monkeys were falling from trees in Mexico, dead from heatstroke and dehydration as they suffered under a brutal heatwave that has killed at least 26 people since March.

“Wildlife biologist Gilberto Pozo counted about 83 of the animals dead or dying on the ground under trees. The die-off started around 5 May and hit its peak over the weekend.

“They were falling out of the trees like apples,” Pozo said. “They were in a state of severe dehydration, and they died within a matter of minutes.” Already weakened, Pozo says the falls from dozens of yards (meters) up inflict additional damage that often finishes the monkeys off.

Pozo attributes the deaths to a “synergy” of factors, including high heat, drought, forest fires and logging that deprives the monkeys of water, shade and the fruit they eat.

“This is a sentinel species,” Pozo said, referring to the canary-in-a-coalmine effect where one species can say a lot about an ecosystem. “It is telling us something about what is happening with climate change.” The Guardian

The effects of climate-driven drought, heatwave and low precipitation are combining with Mexico City’s long-running infrastructure problems to create a crisis in which the sprawling metropolis could run out of water entirely within weeks.  The water crisis has become a bone of contention in the country’s upcoming presidential election

“In a Sunday debate between Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico’s governing Morena party, and Xóchitl Gálvez, who represents an opposition coalition, Gálvez blamed the water issues on the inaction of Sheinbaum’s party. Sheinbaum, an environmental scientist who co-authored the 2007 Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, is the former mayor of Mexico City.” The Washington Post

Meantime, Brazil has more water than it can handle, with epic, biblical-scale floods displacing more than half a million people.  Concerns are mounting that conditions could spawn a health crisis as the displaced gather in temporary shelters ill-equipped for the scale of the disaster.

“More than 580,000 people have been displaced, with almost 70,000 of them depending on shelters, according to a state government report. A total of 2.3 million people have been affected by the torrential rain and floods.

City, state and federal governments are working to provide assistance, but the authorities estimate that the situation will take months or even years to return to normal. More than 90% of Rio Grande do Sul’s 497 municipalities have been affected, with 418 declaring a state of emergency or disaster.” The Guardian

Tornado season becomes even deadlier

‘Tornado-spawning thunderstorms’ have killed at least 21 people and destroyed hundreds of buildings across four US states, disrupting Memorial Day weekend travel plans for millions. At least 30 million people were under severe thunderstorm advisories in New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania on Memorial Day this week as the storms headed Northwest from Arkansas, Texas, Kentucky and Oklahoma.

Just last week, the BBC warned that climate change was altering the behaviour of tornado season, in terms of both location and duration. Establishing the link between fleeting weather events like tornadoes and climate change is more complex than for other weather events like hurricanes and heatwaves, but there most certainly is a connection they report:

"We expect that the number of days in any given year that are favourable for tornadoes… are going to increase in the future and specifically increase earlier in the season," Victor Gensini, associate professor of meteorology at Northern Illinois University, tells the BBC.

Across the US's southern Plains states like Oklahoma and Kansas, "what might have been May and April as your peak months are now March, April, and May or even February", Gensini says. He notes that there hasn't been an uptick in strong tornadoes – tornadoes at EF4 ratings and higher – over the last 50 years, but where they occur has been changing.

States notorious for tornadoes such as Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas are actually seeing a decrease in tornadoes while states like Tennessee, Georgia and Arkansas as well as upper Midwest states like Minnesota, Illinois and Iowa are seeing an increase.

"We have way more people living in the mid-south and east of the Mississippi River than we do in the Great Plains," Gensini says. The higher population densities of the states seeing an increase in storms means that they have the potential to do more damage.” BBC

The billowing cost of homeowners insurance is becoming the most prominent symptom of climate change in the US, as the recurring damage from so-called ‘kitty cat’ storms in heartland US join the effects of hurricanes in Florida and Louisiana, and fires in California.

“These so-called “severe-convective storms” are large and powerful thunderstorms that form and disappear within a few hours or days, often spinning off hailstorms and tornadoes as they shoot across the flat expanses of the central United States. The insurance industry refers to these storms as “secondary perils” – the other term of art is “kitty cats”, a reference to their being smaller than big natural catastrophes, or “nat …

TL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers features co-hosts Bernard Hickey and Peter Bale talking with:

* The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer about extreme heat in India and Mexico and the prospects climate migration to Aotearoa-NZ;

* CTU Chief Economist Craig Renney and Good IDEAs founder Max Rashbrooke about Budget 2024; and

* Community Housing Aotearoa (CHA) Deputy CEO Chris Glaudel about Kāinga Ora and social housing.

The six things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere in the last week included:

* Housing, Climate, Poverty and Economy: The new National-ACT-NZ First Government unveiled its first Budget on Thursday, deciding to go ahead with long-promised tax cuts despite a weaker economy that is forcing $68.3 billion of net new borrowing by mid-2028. The income tax cuts cost $14.7 billion over four years and debt will rise by $12 billion more than Treasury forecast in December. Willis argued the tax cuts were ‘fully-funded’ by spending cuts and tax increases, and therefore it was not borrowing to pay for tax cuts. That would be true if the economic forecasts had not changed between the election and the Budget, but they have in a way that means there’s less money to spare. See and hear my full analysis in the podcast above, in Friday’s email and Friday’s podcast here featuring a discussion with Ganesh R Ahirao…

There’s also this discussion with Toby Manhire in a Budget Special ‘co-pro’ with Gone by Lunchtime for my weekly When The Facts Change podcast:

* Housing: Kāinga Ora’s board released the feedback it gave in April on Bill English’s review of the state-owned house-builder and landlord, criticising his comments about KO’s financial sustainability and performance as variously ill-informed, wrong and/or based on anecdotes, as also reported by Newsroom’s Tim Murphy. Newshub’s Jenna Lynch reported on Tuesday that Chris Bishop arranged for English to lead the ‘independent’ review in a series of text messages. See more analysis from me in Tuesday’s email and in comments I made on The Detail broadcast on RNZ and Newsroom on Thursday, and also listenable here directly.

* Housing and Economy: The Reserve Bank confirmed plans to limit mortgage lending for loans worth six and seven times the income of owner-occupiers and landlords respectively from July 1. These DTI limits won’t reduce lending much now because lending at those multiples is currently low, but will stop most high DTI lending growth in future as interest rates fall. It affects landlords more than first home buyers because loan to value limits are the main restraint on their borrowing. LVR limits were also loosened a bit from July 1 to offset any effects of the new DTI limits. See more analysis from me in Wednesday’s email.

* Housing and Economy: Key leaders in housing and infrastructure construction sent a joint letter to the Government pleading for more project certainty and warning its funding freezes for councils, water reform and transport projects had significantly damaged confidence and risked driving staff overseas,  Newsroom’s Fox Meyer reported on Tuesday. See more analysis in Tuesday’s email.

* Cost of living: The Commerce Commission announced its draft decisions on regulated electricity transmission costs for the next five years. It decided the nationwide transmission and local lines distribution costs will rise 48% in the next five years to a combined $17.8 billion. These costs make up 37.5% of power bills and mean that monthly bills will rise around $15 from July 1, 2025, followed by $5/month hikes in each of the following four years. See Thursday’s email.

* Poverty: The Fairer Futures advocacy group and the Disabled Persons Assembly published a report titled A Thousand Cuts that estimated a disabled person could already be up to $256 per fortnight or $5,742 a year worse off because of the Government’s changes to disability support, bus subsidies, benefit indexation, the minimum wage and prescription charges. See more detail in Thursday’s email.

What we talked about on ‘The Hoon’ on Thursday night

In this week’s ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers at 5pm on Thursday night:

* 5:00 pm - 5:10 pm: Bernard Hickey and Peter Bale opened the show with a discussion about the Budget and some international news. Peter referred to a Rest is Politics episode featuring Kwasi Kwarteng and this Haaretz article about Gaza

* 5:10 - 5:25 pm: Peter and Bernard spoke with The Kaka’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer about extreme temperatures in India (52.3 degrees celcius) and Mexico and the prospects for Aotearoa-NZ to become a climate refuge.

* 5:25 - 5:35 pm: Peter and Bernard talked with Craig Renney about the Budget. He referred to the chart below in Chart of the week from the Budget (Page 52).

* 5:35 - 5:45 pm: Peter and Robert talked with Max Rashbrooke about the Budget and his launch with others of a new thinktank, the Institute for Democratic and Economic Analysis, which has its own substack Good IDEAs.

* 5.55 - 6:00 pm: Peter and Bernard spoke with Community Housing Aotearoa Deputy CEO Chris Glaudel about Kāinga Ora and social housing.

* The ‘skateboarding dog’ story this week referred to this video of a man with a suspended driver’s license joining a court appearance about his unlicensed driving via a Zoom call. While driving in his car.

The Hoon’s podcast version above was produced by Simon Josey. Regular guest Robert Patman was off launching his new book New Zealand's Foreign Policy under the Jacinda Ardern Government: Facing the Challenge of a Disrupted World. It is available now via Amazon on Kindle and in hardback form from June 15.

(This is a sampler for all free subscribers. Thanks to the support of paying subscribers here, I’m able to spread my public interest journalism here about housing affordability, climate change and poverty reduction other public venues. Join the community supporting and contributing to this work with your ideas, feedback and comments, and by subscribing.)

Other things I did elsewhere

We produced an episode of When The Facts Change via The Spinoff, including this discussion with Toby Manhire. We also produce the 5 in 5 with ANZ daily podcast and Substack for ANZ Institutional in Australia, free to all via Spotify. Apple and YouTube

Chart of the week: National’s debt track above Labour’s

Ngā mihi nui.

Bernard

PS: This week we produced 10 daily podcasts averaging about 10 minutes each, three weekly podcasts of around 30 minutes each, ten daily emails averaging over 1,000 words per email, a weekly diary, and I appeared in The Detail podcast. That’s nearly four hours of podcasts, 10,000 words of news and analysis, all edited and sent to your inboxes. I also participated in a CPAG post-Budget analysis panel discussion in Auckland yesterday. We hope that’s value for money and we’d love you to subscribe.

TL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers features co-hosts Bernard Hickey and Peter Bale talking about this week’s Kainga Ora and first home loan news, along with regular guest Robert Patman on China’s warning to New Zealand and special guests Michael J Field on the riots in New Caledonia and Giorgi Lomsadze on the escalating protests in Georgia against Russian influence.

The six things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the last week included:

* Housing: The Government extended its freeze on new housebuilding by Kainga Ora into next year after releasing a report on the state house builder and manager by former National PM and Housing Minister Bill English that said its rapid expansion over the last five years was financially unsustainable. Housing Minister Chris Bishop also announced the cancellation of first home buyers’ grants to save $245 million over four years, of which $140 million would be used to fund 1,500 new social housing places by Community Housing Providers (CHPs) and to help pay for tax cuts for landlords. See Thursday’s email.

* Economy: The Reserve Bank held the Official Cash Rate at 5.5% as expected, but extended out its forecast for a first cut by three months to August 2025 after also increasing its forecast for inflation. The central bank blamed sticky domestic services inflation, mostly from rents, council rates and Government fees and charges, and insurance premiums, which tighter monetary policy is unlikely to influence much. The announcement dampened hopes for mortgage rate cuts this year and questions the Government’s decision to freeze funding for councils in a way that forced them to hike rates dramatically, as well as various decisions to impose new fees and charges on motorists, migrants and importers. See Thursday’s email and Wednesday’s email.

* Geopolitics: China’s ambassador to New Zealand, Wang Xiaolong, told PM Christopher Luxon at the annual China-NZ Business Summit in Auckland this week that relations between China and New Zealand were at a ‘critical juncture’ because of New Zealand’s consideration of joining Aukus II, which the ambassador said directly supported the nuclear-powered Aukus I. He said Aukus was targeting China and New Zealand joining Aukus II would mean we were ‘taking sides.’ Luxon said he didn’t think joining Aukus II would hurt New Zealand’s trade with China much, and that New Zealand wanted to diversify its trade in a strategy he described as: ‘China and…’. The risk for New Zealand is diversification will be difficult when any trade agreement with India would have to exclude dairy and meat exports, and our recently signed EU and UK trade agreements include clauses forcing New Zealand to abide by its Paris emissions reductions commitments, which the current Government has challenged with a series of emissions-increasing decisions on EVs, motorway building, railway cancellations and farming rules. (See more in the podcast above)

* Climate: The massive offshore wind project backed by the NZ Super Fund has told ministers in a briefing it can't operate off the Taranaki Coast if seabed mining is allowed to go ahead. It said the dredging of 10m of sands was incompatible with building turbine platforms and running power cables to shore. It was based on this study released in March. See Tuesday’s email.

* Climate: Energy Minister Shane Jones announced a strategy of mining more coal and precious minerals on Department of Conservation-controlled land and other areas to double such exports by 2035. The announcement did not mention climate once and the strategy did not detail if any climate emissions analysis had been done. EU and UK farmers will find this interesting.

* Economy: Global funds management behemoth BlackRock said it thought central bank rate hikes designed to tame inflation actually worsened inflation because higher interest rates give savers more money from their savings accounts, which they then spend and pump up demand and prices. See more in my interview with Kiwibank Chief Economist Jarrod Kerr for my weekly When The Facts Change podcast via The Spinoff titled: An interest rate bludgeoning.

What we talked about on ‘The Hoon’ on Thursday night

In this week’s podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers at 5pm on Thursday night:

* 5:00 pm - 5:10 pm: Bernard Hickey and Peter Bale opened the show with a discussion about the Government’s release of Bill English’s report into Kainga Ora and its decision to scrap first home buyer grants in favour of adding 1,500 social housing places and helping to pay for tax cuts for landlords.

* 5:10 - 5:20: Peter and Bernard spoke with The Kaka’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer about Microsoft’s revelation this week that its heavier use of AI is increasing its climate emissions, and signs climate change is increasing mid-air turbulence for high-flying passenger jets.

* 5:20 - 5:35 pm: Peter and Bernard talked with Robert Patman about a tough speech this week by China’s Ambassador to New Zealand, Wang Xiaolong, warning PM Christopher Luxon not to join Aukus II.

* 5:35 - 5:50 pm: Peter and Robert talked with veteran Pacific issues journalist (and substacker) Michael J Field about this week’s riots in New Caledonia.

* 5.50 - 6:00 pm: Peter and Robert spoke with Georgian journalist Giorgi Lomsadze from Tblisi on the escalating protests in Georgia against Russian influence.

The Hoon’s podcast version above was produced by Simon Josey.

(This is a sampler for all free subscribers. 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. I’d love you to join the community supporting and contributing to this work with your ideas, feedback and comments.)

Other things I did elsewhere

I produced an episode of When The Facts Change via The Spinoff, including this interview with Kiwibank Chief Economist Jarrod Kerr from Wednesday afternoon. We talked about the bluntness of the Reserve Bank’s main monetary policy tool and a developing view that high interest rates actually increase inflation, rather than decrease inflation.

We also produce this 5 in 5 with ANZ daily podcast and Substack for ANZ Institutional in Australia, which you can sign up to via Spotify and Apple and Youtube for free.

Ka kite ano

Bernard

TL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for subscribers features co-hosts Bernard Hickey and Peter Bale , along with regular guest Robert Patman and special guest former PM Helen Clark on Aukus II and much more. We also spoke with Ngāti Toa CEO Helmut Modlik about why his iwi opposes the Fast-track Approval bill.

The six things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the last week included:

* Housing & climate - Opposition to the Government’s Fast-track approvals bill mounted in submissions to the Environment Committee this week. Helen Clark warned in the podcast above of the dangers of placing so much power in the hands of the executive. Helmut Modlik warned of a repeat of the top-down damaging of the long-term prospects of Ngāti Toa and the land around Porirua, just as happened with mass house-building in the 1950s and 1960s.

* Infrastructure - The pressure on Council finances from Government funding freezes and a fundamentally borked system of infrastructure financing for fast population growth is becoming so intense it is forcing them to sell assets sales and force unsustainable dividends, as evidenced by a shock resignation of Christchurch’s asset management company and intense debates in Auckland and Wellington about selling airport shares. See more in Thursday’s email.

* Economy - Aotearoa’s biggest and last-best-hope of being a global business, Fonterra, announced plans yesterday to sell its global consumer brands businesses and 17 of its remaining factories overseas, including brands such as Anchor, Anmum, Anlene, Fernleaf, Mainland and Kapiti. The assets up for sale employ capital of $3.4 billion and generating $190 million or 20% of its earnings in the first half of the year. I spoke in this week’s Hoon above about how this represented the final victory for the housing market in its quest to focus spare capital on investing in land appreciation for tax-free capital gains, rather than real businesses and assets that increase real wages and real business wealth.

* Population - Stats NZ reported this week a record-high 52,496 New Zealand citizens left the country permanently in the year to the end of March. That equates to about one full A320 leaving each weekday, with just over half of those citizens going to live in Australia. They were replaced by people on temporary work and student visas (with work rights) from India, the Philippines and China, in that order. See Wednesday’s email.

* Environment - ECan reported this week more than half of the wells monitored in its annual survey last year showed nitrate levels were likely to be increasing, with water from 35 of the 349 wells having nitrate levels above the maximum acceptable value for human health. South Canterbury has the highest incidence of bowel cancer in New Zealand. See Wednesday’s email.

* Economy - Surveys this week showed the economy is settling into a state of suspended animation as the Government’s funding freezes and job cuts chill confidence and combine with stubbornly high interest rates to extend the recession of late 2023 through the rest of the year. See Tuesday’s email

What we talked about on ‘The Hoon’ on Thursday night

In this week’s podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers at 5pm on Thursday night:

* 5:00 pm - 5:10 pm - Bernard Hickey and Peter Bale opened the show with a discussion about Fonterra’s decision to sell its global brands and give up on its global value-added ambitions.

* 5:10 - 5:40 - Peter and Bernard talked with Robert Patman and Helen Clark about whether Aotearoa should join Aukus II and how the new Government was performing.

* 5:40 - 6:00 pm - Peter and Bernard talked with Ngāti Toa CEO Helmut Modlik about why his iwi opposes the Fast-track Approval bill, as he detailed in this Op-ed via The Spinoff.

The Hoon’s podcast version above was produced by Simon Josey.

(This is a sampler for all free subscribers. 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. I’d love you to join the community supporting and contributing to this work with your ideas, feedback and comments.)

Other things I did elsewhere

I produced an episode of When The Facts Change via The Spinoff, including this interview with Transpower’s GM of Grid Mark Ryall about the Redclyffe substation near Napier. It is Aotearoa’s climate canary. Where it goes, we go.

It was flooded during Cyclone Gabrielle and turning it off turned off the power for much of Hawkes Bay and Taitawhiti. Transpower fixed it, but has had to make a big call: should it rebuild it where it is now, next to a stream? Or move it up a hill? The choice tells us a lot about how to think about our climate future.

We also produce this 5 in 5 with ANZ daily podcast and Substack for ANZ Institutional in Australia, which you can sign up to via Spotify and Apple and Youtube for free.

Ka kite ano

Bernard

TL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for subscribers features co-hosts Bernard Hickey and Peter Bale , along with regular guest Robert Patman on geopolitics, and special guest Jesse Richardson from A City for People on a big victory for YIMBYs in Wellington this week.

The six things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the last week included:

* Housing: In a big win for YIMBYs over NIMBYs in the nation’s capital, Housing and RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop approved almost all of the Wellington City Council’s recommended zoning changes to allow many more apartments and townhouses in its inner-suburbs. He went even further on densification than the council by allowing six-storey apartments in Kilbirnie, but decided not to strip the derelict Gordon Wilson flats of their heritage status. See Thursday’s email.

* Poverty: Associate Education Minister and ACT Leader David Seymour announced the continuation of the Healthy School Lunches Programme known as Ka Ora, Ka Ako for two years, but with cheaper packaged food for intermediate and secondary school kids at lower decile schools, rather than hot meals. He said it would save $107 million. See Thursday’s email.

* Tax: Finance Minister Nicola Willis announced in her first pre-Budget speech in Wellington an expansion and renaming of the Social Wellbeing Agency (back) into the Social Investment Agency. She also said the Budget would include “meaningful, but modest” tax cuts that would increase the take-home income of 83% of New Zealanders over the age of 15 and 94% of households.

* Climate: A cold snap increased power demand and forced Transpower to warn of potential shortages this morning. Wholesale prices leapt 50-fold. Meanwhile, Genesis Energy is resuming coal imports because of gas shortages and a lack of investment in the last decade by (mostly) state-owned gentailers who have prioritised high profits, high dividends and capital returns over investment in (already consented) wind farms. See Thursday’s email.

* Poverty: MSD cut funding for budgeting services, debt restructuring advisors and helping Christchurch attack survivors, surprising those working with poor families stuck with loan shark debt and survivors struggling to rehabilitate. Willis confirmed in her speech this week the Government had found $1.5 billion of savings to help pay for lower taxes for landlords. See Thursday’s email.

* Climate Minister Simon Watts announced this morning the Government had agreed that Parliament’s Finance and Expenditure Committee would conduct an inquiry into climate adaptation. This followed the Environment Committee’s inquiry into climate adaptation last year, which reported back in February.

What we talked about on ‘The Hoon’ on Thursday night

In this week’s podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers at 5pm on Thursday night:

* 5:00 pm - 5:20 pm - Bernard Hickey and Peter Bale opened the show with a discussion about climate change, school lunches, woke sushi and Christopher Luxon’s very, very bad week.

* 5:20 - 5:50 - Peter and Bernard talked with Robert Patman about the latest moves in Gaza and a growing lack of confidence in US leadership.

* 5:40 - 6:00 pm - Peter and Bernard talked with Jesse Richardson from

A City for People on a big victory for YIMBYs in Wellington this week .

The Hoon’s podcast version above was produced by Simon Josey.

(This is a sampler for all free subscribers. 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. I’d love you to join the community supporting and contributing to this work with your ideas, feedback and comments.)

Other things I did elsewhere

I produced an episode of When The Facts Change via The Spinoff, including this interview with Otago University public health Professor Nick Wilson on the true costs of tax cuts paid for with higher tobacco taxes.

The Government has repealed various smoke-free measures to ensure it keeps collecting $1.2 billion a year in tobacco taxes, in order to pay for tax cuts already being delivered to landlords. But an economic analysis done by Wilson and colleagues found keeping the smoke-free measures would have made consumers $51 billion better off by 2050 through earning more and spending less, which would more than offset the $19 billion net losses of the Government, given less tobacco tax and more pensions spending because more people will live longer and past the Super age of 65.

We also produce this 5 in 5 with ANZ daily podcast and Substack for ANZ Institutional in Australia, which you can sign up to via Spotify and Apple and Youtube for free.

Ka kite ano

Bernard