The Hoon

The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night featured co-hosts Bernard Hickey and Peter Bale talking with regular guests Robert Patman and Cathrine Dyer, and a special guest about the economy, politics, geopolitics, climate change, The Kākā’s future and how to fund the building of social housing by Community Housing Providers (CHPs) and others.

This week’s special guest was Home Capital Partners CEO James Stewart.

We talked about:

* The Kākā’s future after Bernard published a State of The Kākā Nation report for 2025 showing falling subscription revenues and the loss of the sponsor for the weekly When The Facts Change podcast via The Spinoff.

* The release of the first comprehensive and nationwide flood maps forecasting how climate warming of one degree, two degrees and three degrees would affect households and infrastructure in the event of one-in-one-hundred-year floods.

* Bernard, Peter & Cathrine also talked about the potential for community assemblies to agree solutions to climate adaptation and mitigation.

* Robert Patman talked with Bernard and Peter about this week’s meetings between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, and Donald Trump and Christopher Luxon.

* James Stewart talked about Home Capital Partners’ launch of its new Home Capital Partners’ $185 million fund to accelerate building of over 250 medium density affordable and social homes.

* Bernard and Peter then talked about Labour’s Capital Gains Tax proposal.

The Hoon’s podcast version above was recorded on Thursday night during a live webinar for over 200 paying subscribers and was produced and edited by Simon Josey.

The Hoon won the silver award for best current affairs podcast in this year’s New Zealand Podcast awards.

(This is a sampler for all free subscribers and anyone else who stumbles on it. 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 in full. Remember, all students and teachers who sign up for the free version with their .ac.nz and .school.nz email accounts are automatically upgraded to the paid version for free. Also, here’s a couple of special offers: $3/month or $30/year for under 30s & $6.50/month or $65/year for over 65s who rent.)

Ngā mihi nui.

Bernard

Just briefly, I spoke last night with Standard & Poor’s Global Ratings Director of Government Ratings Anthony Walker last night about a research note S&P Global published yesterday titled: ‘New Zealand Water Reforms Don’t Guarantee Rating Relief For Local Councils.’

He told me there was no guarantee the current Government’s ‘Local Water Done Well’ reforms would alleviate the negative outlooks S&P Global had on many councils’ credit ratings, even though the creation of separate water authorities in accounting terms appeared to lessen their apparent exposure to big new debt-funded water infrastructure investments.

“In capital markets, off the books doesn’t always mean off the hook. As New Zealand local councils pursue new water service models, we think shifting assets and liabilities “off-balance sheet” may ease the optics, but not the underlying credit risk.” Standard & Poor’s Global Ratings Director of Government Ratings Anthony Walker

In my view, that’s a problem for councils and the Government, who may have hoped the creation of the new water authorities would reduce the exposure of ratepayers and taxpayers to new borrowings for water and free them up to expand without the need to use the Crown’s or council balance sheets. The hope that ‘off balance sheet vehicles’ can do the heavy lifting underpins the Government’s entire housing growth strategy. It has enabled the Government to remain committed to not borrowing directly through the Crown’s balance sheet.

The first cab off the rank, Watercare, has been able to separate completely from the Auckland City Council and has been promoted as the model, but it is the exception because it has its own specific Act of Parliament, which actually puts the Crown on the hook, Anthony said.

In my view, this S&P analysis that the other water authorities are still tied to Council balance sheets, has put a major spanner in the works of the entire infrastructure funding strategy the Government is relying on.

I have published this article and video for all to read and watch as part of my public interest mandate covering our political economy. Paying subscribers support this work. You can too by subscribing.

A lightly edited transcript of our conversation

Firstly, I asked Anthony to expand on the details of the note.

“It’s designed to highlight the analytical issues that we see when it comes to the local water reforms when it comes to councils. The councils have been provided up to six options by the Crown via a DIA (Department of Internal Affairs) guidance document. And what we’ve done here is gone through how we would view each of those six. Now, only three of them are being pursued by councils,” he said.

“What we’ve found is that there’s 22 councils doing business as usual, another eight doing a single owned entity and another 38 potentially merging into 12 big entities. And their ratings outcomes do depend on which option is chosen. As you highlight, some will be better off, some will be worse off, and some will be somewhere in the middle. And what we’ve done here is we’ve found that, or we’re showing the market and the councils right now that if you are going to go out there with financial guarantees, it’s not going to be off the books for credit ratings.”

‘You can’t really have your cake and eat it too’

I then asked him why in capital markets “off the books doesn’t always mean off the hook,” and what were the gradations used by S&P to decide how much ‘on the hook’ councils were.

“One of the things to say here is that we don’t rate to accounting standards. Accounting standards, they vary from very good to very bad across the world. And we work in all systems globally. And even in New Zealand, we don’t think the accounting standards are as holistic as others. Operating leases and capital leases are a prime example. That’s debt in every other market in the world, advanced market we work in. So we put those on balance sheet, even though the accounting standards in New Zealand say no,” he said.

“You can’t really have your cake and eat it too. You’re going to get cheaper interest rates because you’re guaranteeing it. Well, then the government is going to have to bail it out when something goes bad.” Anthony Walker

“And that’s what we talk about when we say in capital markets, off the book doesn’t always mean off the hook ,because accounting standards might say it’s not there, but when councils are guaranteeing it, it is there.

“We’ve had people say to us, well, we’re only going to guarantee it because we don’t think it needs to be guaranteed. Well, capital markets and investors don’t believe that. That’s why they want the guarantee. So you can’t really have your cake and eat it too. You’re going to get cheaper interest rates because you’re guaranteeing it. Well, then the government is going to have to bail it out when something goes bad.”

‘Labour’s involvement of Iwi helped create greater separation’

Anthony said S&P also looked at the activity of the new entity, and whether it was an essential service.

“Is it a port? Is it a commercial business, or retail business? Or is it doing an essential service like water where people can’t live without? Are there other providers of water in the system in your area? And if the answer is no, and this is the only water provider that gives you water to live on. Obviously, when the council are owning it, obviously it’s going to be very essential,” he said.

“And then the other thing we look at is the role and the linkages between the council. And this is where the Three Waters from the former Labour government tried to separate this Iwi ownership. I know that wasn’t very popular throughout the country, but that was why they went down this path, to try to dilute the linkages with council control.

“Because if the council is controlling it, they’re appointing managers, they’re appointing boards, they’re signing off statements of intent, signing off decisions and now they’re guaranteeing them, then this is a council entity. They can’t just wipe their hands and say, it’s not my fault, not my responsibility, and by the way I have a watertight guarantee (to back that up).” he said.

“These things will come back to bite you. They’ve (bond investors) seen them around the world. In fact we have seen many governments around the world step in to bail out businesses which are not guaranteed, and they’re not water providers so this is why we kind of look at a holistic approach about what may or may not happen.

Why Watercare is different

Anthony then talked about Watercare, which has been cited as a model, and why it was different.

“So Watercare, we have separated from Auckland’s balance sheet and that’s specifically because legislation bans Auckland from providing any financial support at all. So we believe that if something goes wrong with Watercare. It’s going to be the Crown who’s asked to step in to support it,” he said.

“And these are different things because maybe a smaller council, we could pull water off the balance sheet of a small council under that rule, but how would that entity go and borrow? It can’t borrow in the same terms as Watercare. It just can’t do it from the sheer size.”

I then asked about the impressions voters and politicians might have had about how Local Water Done Well had created a way for them to avoid having the debt on Crown and Council balance sheets, and therefore to have cheaper rates with lower interest rates, all other things being equal.

Anthony said the biggest determinant of council interest costs was whether they borrowed through the Local Government Funding Agency (LGFA), which is a Government-backed joint borrowing vehicle, which sets the rules for councils about how much debt they can have relative to their income.

“The biggest determination of council debt caps or …

The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night features co-hosts Bernard Hickey and Peter Bale talking with regular guest Robert Patman and special guests about the economy, politics, geopolitics, climate change, Jim Bolger’s funeral, Treaty of Waitangi issues and yesterday’s ‘mega-strike’ by doctors, teachers and nurses.

This week’s special guests were Lawyers for Climate Action Executive Director Jessica Palairet, former Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations Minister and Chris Finlayson and Association of Salaried Medical Specialists Executive Director Sarah Dalton.

We talked about:

* The Government’s gutting of climate reporting requirements and its shifting of its methane emissions reduction goalposts.

* The latest moves by the United States and Europe to sanction Russian oil and gas exports to try to force Russia into a ceasefire in the Ukraine War.

* Jim Bolger’s legacy on Treaty of Waitangi issues, and his National-led Government’s differences with the current one. We discussed Chris Finlayson’s obituary for Bolger in the NZ Herald-$ and his interview with columnist Audrey Young in the NZ Herald-$.

* The Marine and Coastal Area Act, which passed into law last night, and why Finlayson opposes it.

* Yesterday’s marches by over 100,000 supporters of nurses, teachers and doctors, who went on strike the 1% pay increases offered by the Government. We discussed pictures of signs at the marches, including the ones below. We discussed this research report on fiscal rules for the ASMS by Ganesh R Ahirao and this research report for the ASMS on health economics by Marilyn Waring.

The Hoon’s podcast version above was recorded on Thursday night during a live webinar for over 200 paying subscribers and was produced and edited by Simon Josey.

The Hoon won the silver award for best current affairs podcast in this year’s New Zealand Podcast awards.

(This is a sampler for all free subscribers and anyone else who stumbles on it. 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 in full. Remember, all students and teachers who sign up for the free version with their .ac.nz and .school.nz email accounts are automatically upgraded to the paid version for free. Also, here’s a couple of special offers: $3/month or $30/year for under 30s & $6.50/month or $65/year for over 65s who rent.)

Ngā mihi nui.

Bernard

I spoke with Labour Finance Spokeswoman Barbara Edmonds last night about Labour’s first big policy idea for the 2026 election: a new sovereign wealth fund to invest in New Zealand infrastructure and growth businesses. It would be seeded with an initial grant of $200 million and topped up regularly with dividends from state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and potentially partially-owned SOEs such as the gentailers and Air New Zealand, although that wasn't confirmed due to ‘commercial sensitivities.’

I asked her what problem it solved and why other tax and more direct Government investment policies couldn’t solve it better. Here’s a lightly edited version of the conversation below, just in case the video above is too sketchy to watch. We had some connectivity issues and then the AWS wrecked my usual backups. A PDF of the policy is also attached below.

People are saying we want to see a long-term vision, we want to see a plan for the country. So this is a first step for us. Barbara Edmonds.

Edmonds said she couldn’t say which assets would be included because of commercial sensitivity and fair disclosure reasons.

“Ultimately, the fund is purpose-built to back Kiwi ideas and our small innovative businesses, and basically is here to create wealth for New Zealand, by New Zealand, for New Zealanders,” she said.

I asked what problem Labour was trying to solve.

“When we look across the world, future funds are set up to help countries recycle their wealth and help to back and grow within their own economies. New Zealand doesn’t lack talent and skills and ideas, but what we lack is backing. So one of the key things that the Productivity Commission talked about before it was collapsed by this current government is that we have shallow pools of capital,” she said.

“We want to set up this wealth fund at arm’s length to the government, similar to how the Super Fund works. But actually, it has a different purpose, which is to create wealth in New Zealand to help secure jobs, transition to clean green energy, to help us back our innovators in tech industry, and to help us build a resilient infrastructure.”

I then asked if New Zealand actually had shallow capital pools, given there was $123 billion in KiwiSaver funds as at the end of March, the NZ Super Fund has $88.6 billion and counting as of today, the ACC had $51.1 billion in funds under management of June 30 this year, and there was $302 billion in bank term deposit and savings accounts as of the end of August this year.

Why aren’t those $565 billion being invested here?

I asked why those funds weren’t being deployed into New Zealand infrastructure, businesses, jobs, new technology and jobs, and whether another fund would make a difference.

“Ultimately, there are different funds for different purposes. And what we’re saying is this wealth fund is solely dedicated to reinvesting back in New Zealand. The Superfund, for example, they invest around 11%-18 % of their funds in New Zealand. However, they’ve got a very different purpose. Their purpose is to maximize returns to help with future superannuation costs,” she said.

“We’re saying it’s a model that works well for the Superfund. However, for the future fund, we need a different pool with a different purpose to back Kiwis.”

I asked whether this fund was being announced instead of changing the fundamental savings incentives for households, which mean buying leveraged residential land was vastly more attractive in risk-adjusted and after-tax terms than in businesses, pension funds or infrastructure, given pension funds don’t receive any significant incentives, as pension funds overseas do, as in Australia.

“We will have a savings and investment policy, which we will announce in the future. However, this is just the first step to realize New Zealand’s potential. And again, it’s about backing Kiwis and making sure those that get away and see the world, there are opportunities for them to come back to. That pullback to New Zealand is diminishing,” she said.

“We have 200 people leaving every day to find opportunities offshore. People are saying we want to see a long-term vision, we want to see a plan for the country. So this is a first step for us.”

I then asked how big the fund could be and what assets it could include.

“Top of the list of the types of assets we will see the fund with will be a lot of those publicly owned commercial assets that the government owns. We also set aside $200 million one-off capital costs to go into the fund. And again, the governance of this will be at arm’s length to the politicians because it will be looked after by the Guardians of the New Zealand Superfund.

“It will grow every year, depending on the assets that are put in, the dividends that come back to it. But also, we want to be able to use those dividends better. Currently, at the moment, those dividends come back to the crown coffers. Ministers can spray that wherever they want to.

“There may not be any strategic use of it, or for example, they may be trying to go into clean energy but then they’re doing an underwrite for gas subsidies. Whereas this is different. This is saying that those dividends should remain in the fund, be reinvested into the country, and depending on what the assets are, that’ll determine the growth.”

Why not just borrow and invest directly?

I then asked why the Government shouldn’t just use its balance sheet to borrow to invest directly, which would be much cheaper.

“At the moment, the politicians are are fiddling around too much with this. Ultimately, we have government assets. We believe that they should be managed with a commercial approach. The dividends should be reinvested in New Zealand. Ultimately, where the fund will go will be set out in legislation. We want it to be reinvested back for the public good.

“Yes, the Crown may lose money because we may forego some dividend in relation to it. But ultimately, the money is staying back in our economy so that it can grow in New Zealand, as opposed to us having to wait for foreign investors and speculators to come and save us. So we truly believe for us this is about a future made in New Zealand. It’s one where we want to make opportunities for the next generation to want to stay here, or come back here because there are opportunities for them.”

So is this a good idea?

In my view, a Future Fund is try to solve problems that would be better addressed more directly, faster, cheaper, more efficiently and with more honestly and transparency by:

* firstly, the Government simply borrowing with its own balance sheet and investing directly in publicly-owned infrastructure, staffing and systems to improve housing, health, education, skills and training; and,

* secondly, changing the tax incentives that currently mean households have ploughed $1.6 trillion into residential housing, and are choosing to leave $302 billion in term deposits, ready to be deployed with yet more mortgages to make more tax-free capital gains in residential housing.

Changing those incentives would involve:

* taxing the unearned wealth bogged down in New Zealand’s housing market through a wealth or capital gains tax, and not just on the family home, given a big chunk of that $1.6 trillion is embedded in those family homes and exempting them will leave the incentive intact; and,

* providing a tax incentive to save in pensions funds, as is the case in Australia and other developed markets with much higher investment in their businesses, much better productivity and higher real wages.

For example, New Zealand’s housing market value is seven times bigger than our stock market’s value. Australia’s housing market is three times bigger than its stock market. America’s housing market is actually worth slightly less than its stock market. Australia and the United States have (imperfect but substantial) taxes on capital gains and incentives for investing household savings into businesses. New Zealand has neither.

Still wedded to the catastrophic 30/30 rule?

My concern is that Labour remains em…

I spoke with Mangawhai Pharmacy owner Lanny Wong today to about plans barely-announced or covered this week by Associate Health Minister Casey Costello to deregulate the nation’s pharmacies.

Lanny said she was shocked at the details revealed in full in Cabinet papers released proactively on Monday, particularly because there had been no consultation with the pharmacy sector, which would be upended by the removal of its current regulatory model. Costello barely mentioned the likely industry transformation in a release on Tuesday titled: ‘Medical Product Bill taking shape.’

Costello characterised the deregulation as “allowing for more flexibility and innovation that will improve safe access to medicines and healthcare,” but Lanny, who is the spokesperson for the Independent Community Pharmacy Group (ICPG), said the reforms risked creating a US-style sector dominated by big corporates, where turnover and profit are prioritised over the health of customers and communities served by pharmacists, who own the businesses and live in those communities.

“This means that pharmacy are no longer needed to be owned by pharmacists and pretty much means anyone can own a pharmacy if you’ve got enough capital. It means every supermarket can have a pharmacy, every corner dairy, and it no longer needs to have majority ownership by a pharmacist.” Independent Community Pharmacy Group (ICPG) Lanny Wong in the interview above.

Currently, pharmacies are a regulated facility where only a pharmacist licensed with Medsafe is allowed to own the pharmacy, and can’t own stakes in more than five pharmacies. Pharmacists operate under a code of ethics and the patient’s code of rights.

“So there’s a lot of law that govern what we do in the pharmacy and the activity that happened in pharmacy. That’s why we’re different from a retail, from a vitamin shop.

“Pharmacists actually provide clinical care. So when you go into a pharmacy, you have the right to receive the care that you request and have the right to understand your medicine. That’s why pharmacists always have to be present in a pharmacy to be able to provide a patient with that care The pharmacist is actually a health professional that you can see every day, anytime, for free.” Lanny Wong

Lanny gave the example of a pilot she is working on with Te Whatu Ora-Health NZ to screen for rheumatic fever in her practice, which would not be profitable.

“That is something that I do because I want to have a good relationship with Te Whatu Ora and that’s in my community. If a pharmacist is no longer in effective control of a company, then decisions like that can become quite challenging to make when it’s not churning out the profit or the margin that you desire.” Lanny Wong

Lanny said the reforms appear designed to enable a ‘Hub and Spoke’ model of pharmacies where pharmacists making the key decisions are centralised and the workers serving customers in stores are not enabled, incentivised or expected to provide independent advice or decisions that might reduce sales and profits.

“When pharmacists no longer have business and financial control of a pharmacy, it means the corporates can call the shot on how a legislation should be written.” Lanny Wong.

Lanny gave the example of the hub and spoke model enabled by deregulation in Taiwan, where medicines are allowed to be distributed that way without the supervision of a health professional, often online. She also referred to the way the oxycodone crisis developed in the United States, where ‘pill mills’ distributed pills in large numbers to swathes of customers without supervision.

“The overseas evidence definitely show in deregulated environments, for example the United States with its oxycodone crisis, that’s precisely the type of risk that can happen when profit basically is more important than care.” Lanny Wong.

Lanny also contested comments in the Cabinet paper that deregulation would encourage innovation, or that consolidation and economies of scale would result in lower prices. Examples of innovation in New Zealand often began with independent pharmacies working with doctors and hospitals in their areas to try things out.

“In the short term, there might be some that type of benefit, but I think everyone in Aotearoa will probably understand in the long term once a monopoly or duopoly situation that has been established, prices go back up and service drop.” Lanny Wong

Lanny also referred to the loss of regional and provincial pharmacies in remoter communities after a similar deregulation in the UK.

I have requested an interview with Casey Costello.

She said in the release the reforms would introduce a new role of supervisory pharmacist, which would be required in all companies that operated more than one pharmacy. The supervisory pharmacist would be responsible for compliance with pharmacy standards and regulation for the company as a whole. Costello said the bill would be introduced next year. It would also include “allowing unapproved medicines to be advertised and promoted in some circumstances.”

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Pharmacy Deregulation

03:01 Understanding the Role of Pharmacists

05:48 The Impact of Deregulation on Pharmacy Ownership

08:50 Risks of Deregulation: A Global Perspective

11:46 Innovation in Pharmacy: Independent vs Corporate

14:55 Legislative Process and Industry Consultation

Subscribe in full as a paying subscriber for more detail and analysis in the full video and podcasts that go out with my Early Bird and Daily Chorus email newsletters. Paying subscribers support my work being done in the public interest here, and via my appearances on other media such as RNZ & 1News. Paying subscribers also get early and full access to our webinars, our chat room, my morning ‘Early Bird’ post with the full ‘Picks n’ Mixes’ digests of news links, and can comment on articles.

Ka kite ano

Bernard

The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night features co-hosts Bernard Hickey and Peter Bale talking with regular guests Cathrine Dyer and Robert Patman about the global economy, local and international politics and climate change.

This week’s special guests were independent climate change policy expert Christina Hood and former NZPA foreign correspondent and Evening Post Business and Economics editor Bruce Kohn.

We talked about:

* Jim Bolger’s legacy;

* The debasement trade, the price of gold and trust in the idea of money;

* The future of the Gaza ceasefire and the latest in Ukraine war;

* The Government halving of our methane emissions reduction target (Christina Hood’s LinkedIn post summarising the news);

* The Government’s non-decision yesterday on climate adaptation (Newsroom);

* Treasury’s decision to again leave our Paris climate liability out of the Crown Accounts (Page 25)

The Hoon’s podcast version above was recorded on Thursday night during a live webinar for over 200 paying subscribers and was produced and edited by Simon Josey.

The Hoon won the silver award for best current affairs podcast in this year’s New Zealand Podcast awards.

(This is a sampler for all free subscribers and anyone else who stumbles on it. 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 in full. Remember, all students and teachers who sign up for the free version with their .ac.nz and .school.nz email accounts are automatically upgraded to the paid version for free. Also, here’s a couple of special offers: $3/month or $30/year for under 30s & $6.50/month or $65/year for over 65s who rent.)

Ngā mihi nui.

Bernard

I spoke with economist and Motu researcher Arthur Grimes yesterday about a paper he has just published today with Amelia Blamey and Norman Gemmell about the effects of monetary policy on wellbeing and inequality.

The paper attached below and linked above and below is titled: Impacts of macroeconomic policies on objective and subjective wellbeing: The role of housing tenure and concludes:

“Using survey data from 84,732 representative households collected by StatsNZ, we find that, relative to outright owners, higher property prices are associated with a decline in NHE for each of private renters, public renters and mortgaged homeowners. In addition, relative to homeowners, renters report significantly lower life satisfaction as house prices rise, with heterogeneous effects depending on age, income and local house price: rent ratios. Our results indicate that macroeconomic policies, operating through the property market, can exacerbate wellbeing inequalities associated with housing tenure.” Motu paper

We discussed:

* how monetary policy has driven up housing prices in New Zealand;

* the implications for renters vs owners;

* how homeowners benefit from rising property prices, but their life satisfaction does not improve;

* how renters experience a decline in well-being as property prices rise;

* The lack of a capital gains tax distorts the housing market in New Zealand;

* Political dynamics favor homeowners, complicating housing policy reform;

* There is potential for reducing house prices through policy changes;

* The current housing market is heavily influenced by macroeconomic policies;

* Supply constraints have worsened housing affordability issues; and,

* there’s a need for tax reform such as a capital gains tax to address housing affordability.

This chart tells the story of housing costs for renters both in private rentals and state homes, homeowners with debt and homeowners without debt.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Housing Economics and Well-being

02:54 The Impact of Macroeconomic Policies on Property Prices

06:00 Winners and Losers in the Housing Market

08:52 The Political Economy of Housing in New Zealand

Subscribe in full as a paying subscriber for more detail and analysis in the full video and podcasts that go out with my Early Bird and Daily Chorus email newsletters. Paying subscribers support my work being done in the public interest here, and via my appearances on other media such as RNZ & 1News. Paying subscribers also get early and full access to our webinars, our chat room, my morning ‘Early Bird’ post with the full ‘Picks n’ Mixes’ digests of news links, and can comment on articles.

Ka kite ano

Bernard

I spoke to Association of Salaried Medical Specialists (ASMS) Economist Andrea Black this week about a report she’s produced on the economic, social & financial costs of the worsening health of our workforce.

The 52-page report, titled Managed decline: The Health of New Zealand 2011 to 2024, details a worsening in the health of the working-age population, in particular around mental health and obesity.

Andrea used Treasury cost-benefit models to work out the potential costs to society and the economy of up to $10.6 billion per year through lost hours worked, falling productivity, presenteeism and lost taxes because of the sickening health of the workforce. She estimated that a continued worsening at the same rate would increase that loss by an extra $3.3 billion by 2035/36.

We talked about:

* How the self-rated health of New Zealanders has declined significantly.

* 80% of health determinants were outside the health system.

* How 22,000 more people are out of work due to health issues.

* Presenteeism contributes significantly to lost productivity.

* Mental health issues had a substantial economic impact.

* Social determinants like housing and income were crucial for health.

* Health impacts not only individuals but also families and communities.

These tables charts in the report tell the story:

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Health Trends in New Zealand

03:07 Self-Rated Health: A Decline in Perception

06:05 Economic Implications of Health Deterioration

09:05 Social Determinants of Health and Community Impact

Subscribe in full as a paying subscriber for more detail and analysis in the full video and podcasts that go out with my Early Bird and Daily Chorus email newsletters. Paying subscribers support my work being done in the public interest here, and via my appearances on other media such as RNZ & 1News. Paying subscribers also get early and full access to our webinars, our chat room, my morning ‘Early Bird’ post with the full ‘Picks n’ Mixes’ digests of news links, and can comment on articles.

Ka kite ano

Bernard

The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night features co-hosts Bernard Hickey and Peter Bale talking with regular guests Cathrine Dyer and Robert Patman about the global economy, local and international politics and climate change.

This week’s special guest was Israel Cooper from The Home Foundation.

We talked about:

* The economy, the Reserve Bank’s rate cut and global financial bubbles.

* This week’s annual report on the marine environment by the Ministry for the Environment and Stats NZ, including how the seas around Aotearoa are warming 34% faster than the rest of the world and that $180 billion of residential property is exposed to floods and slips. We also talked about this Op-Ed by James Renwick et al for The Public Health Communications Centre on the health dangers of climate change.

* The Gaza peace plan and the controversies here about New Zealand’s Gaza stance;

* The housing crisis and how to solve it (no biggie).

The Hoon’s podcast version above was recorded on Thursday night during a live webinar for over 200 paying subscribers and was produced and edited by Simon Josey.

The Hoon won the silver award for best current affairs podcast in this year’s New Zealand Podcast awards.

(This is a sampler for all free subscribers and anyone else who stumbles on it. 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 in full. Remember, all students and teachers who sign up for the free version with their .ac.nz and .school.nz email accounts are automatically upgraded to the paid version for free. Also, here’s a couple of special offers: $3/month or $30/year for under 30s & $6.50/month or $65/year for over 65s who rent.)

Ngā mihi nui.

Bernard

Last night I spoke with Kiwibank Chief Economist Jarrod Kerr last night after the RBNZ’s 50 basis point cut in the OCR. He says the cash rate may need to go under 2% to get the economy going again. Here’s his full note on the decision.

We talked about:

* How interest rates need to be below neutral to encourage growth.

* The housing market’s stagnation was concerning for overall economic health.

* Whether communication from the Reserve Bank has led to confusion among businesses. Jarrod says it has.

* A new governor at the Reserve Bank may bring better leadership.

* The housing market is expected to recover slowly over the next few years.

* Investors are waiting for mortgage rates to align with rental yields.

* Whether Debt to income controls are currently a major constraint on the housing market. Jarrod says not.

* Wholesale rates have fallen, indicating a positive market reaction.

* The depreciation of the Kiwi dollar may boost tourism and exports.

Chapters

00:00Reserve Bank’s Decision on Cash Rate

02:57Impact of Interest Rate Cuts on the Economy

06:07Housing Market Dynamics and Economic Growth

08:52Market Reactions and Future Projections

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Bernard