The Kākā by Bernard Hickey

As we absorb the news of Trump's victory in the US Presidential election, here’s a wrap compiled just before the result of what it might mean for climate action:

* The UN Secretary General says the prospective departure of the United States would cripple the Paris Agreement, likening it to the loss of a limb or organ.

* This analysis suggests that Trump (AND Harris if she had won) will focus on near-shoring or on-shoring of green technologies, ignore the WTO, and consider implementing a US carbon border mechanism, but opportunities for bi-lateral collaborations differed considerably between the candidates.

* Action at State level maintained downward pressure on US emissions during the last Trump presidency, but could that work again if the IRA financing tap is turned off?

* The looming chaos resulting from unpriced risk in the housing and asset markets will define the next presidency, according to Mother Jones.

* That may be the biggest climate lesson for Aotearoa, where similar unpriced risk lurks just around the corner for an economy that is really just a housing market with bits tacked on. From the perspective of Hood’s (2011) politics of blame avoidance, the question of managed retreat must be made both highly visible and unavoidable if we want to see government action to limit the damage.

* Chart of the week: La Niña , where art thou?

(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.)

1. A second Trump withdrawal could cripple the Paris Agreement

UN Secretary-General António Guterres has compared the prospective departure of the United States (US) from the landmark agreement to the loss of a limb or organ.

“The Paris agreement can survive, but people sometimes can lose important organs or lose the legs and survive. But we don’t want a crippled Paris agreement. We want a real Paris agreement,” the UN secretary general said. The Guardian.

It raises the prospect, according to the Guardian, of a domino effect, where the failure of international cooperation emboldens other countries to exit the agreement.

One could argue that the petrostate takeover of climate COPs (UAE last year and Azerbaijan this year) has already crippled the Paris Agreement and that progress is now shifting to bi-lateral and intergovernmental negotiations taking place outside of the UNFCCC framework, including via tax and trade institutions.

2. Approaches to transatlantic collaboration limited under Trump

This analysis before the election from the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) suggested that both candidates would have prioritised reshoring and nearshoring, including (or perhaps especially) with regard to green technologies, ignored the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and be increasingly amenable to a U.S. carbon border mechanism.

In negotiations with the U.S., they recommend that EU negotiators frame climate as a competitiveness issue when dealing with Trump (and as an ideological issue if they had been dealing with Harris). However, ambition for collaborative action will inevitably be more limited under a Trump presidency, meaning that progress beyond the UNFCCC could also be throttled.

3. Can action at State level help to maintain emissions reductions?

An argument frequently proffered is that some emissions declines are not easily reversible, and key states will continue to invest in climate action, even in the absence of federal support. This was certainly the case during the first Trump presidency, when the trajectory of emissions reductions was not affected as much as many feared. (Ketan Joshi reviewed his predictions from 2016 on Linkedin, below).

However, times have changed, and much of the accelerated action being taken by states today is funded by the federal government through the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). That’s a tap that can be turned off and Trump has said it would be “an honour” to “immediately terminate” a law he called the “Green New Scam”. This analysis by the Wisconsin Examiner takes a detailed look at climate action plans in both red and blue states that could be upended by the election result. The League of Conservation Voters tracks the National Environmental Scorecard at both House and Senate level, and will be well worth keeping tabs on during the next presidential term.

The downward trend in U.S. GHG emissions might not be entirely reversed (some changes really are baked in), but it would certainly alter the steepness of the trajectory – by about 4bn tonnes by 2030, according to a Carbon Brief analysis.

A post-election analysis in Grist claims that a Trump win means the Planet loses.

“The results promise to upend U.S. climate policy: In addition to returning a climate denier to the White House, voters also gave Republicans control of the Senate, laying the groundwork for attacks on everything from electric vehicles to clean energy funding and bolstering support for the fossil fuel industry.

“We have more liquid gold than any country in the world,” Trump said during his victory speech, referring to domestic oil and gas potential. The CEO of the American Petroleum Institute issued a statement saying that “energy was on the ballot, and voters sent a clear signal that they want choices, not mandates.””

4. It’s too late for an ‘orderly transition’ anyway

According to Mother Jones, chaos ensues regardless of the election result, because of the vast amount of unpriced risk that is already lurking ominously, and steadily encroaching from dark pockets.

“Hundreds of millions of Americans are about to have an unexpected collision with planetary reality. We’re already seeing the impact on insurance and finance. Insurance depends on the ability to accurately price risk, to accurately measure future value. And the truth is, a big chunk of America is way riskier than we thought it was, and seriously overvalued.

A conservative estimate of the homeowner insurance gap is $1.6 trillion in uncovered risks. That’s mostly being borne by people who are relatively poor or live in acknowledged flood and fire zones. Everyone in the insurance industry expects that gap to grow, as risks metastasize and are priced into policies. Insurance eventually becomes too expensive for many to afford, even if it’s still available. For homeowners, skyrocketing premiums are too high. But insurers worry they can’t charge enough to keep up with increasing risk. From society’s perspective, these imperatives are increasingly incompatible. The climate crisis is, in effect, rendering entire communities and even regions uninsurable. 

[...] This pricing of unacknowledged risk into our communities will be a watershed event that extends into nearly every kind of real estate and local industry. Ignored climate brittleness—the quality of being easily broken by weather extremes but hard to fix—is being exposed. And brittleness revealed means value lost”.

Voters faced a choice between disaster capitalism, in which fortunes are made through dodgy infrastructure repair, corrupt disaster relief and response, insurance scams and utility privatisation or a costly national retrofit.

“The scams won’t stop there. Parasites thrive in muddy water, and there will be plenty of chances to leech away whatever money is left in hard-hit communities, before a process of unofficial abandonment takes hold. In collapsing places, corporations can grift via security contracts and private emergency services.

A broken and paranoid America—splintered by the incapacity to agree on observable facts, or trust the institutions we depend on to solve major problems—tumbling into the worst version of a climate catastrophe: that’s a future almost too grim to contemplate.”

And that is possibly the biggest lesson for us here in Aotearoa, because we have an enormous amount of unpriced risk and some big decisions to make as well. Time is not on our side and, because our economy is basically a housing market with bits tacked on, the implications are even more profound.

The failure to adequately price climate risk in economic modelling haunts the financial system and may end up being the catalyst for either collapse or transformation. A big question is whether our institutions (including the institutions of democracy) are any better placed to bend, not break amidst the fallout, than those in the US.

5. Whatever did happen to that Expert Report on Coastal Retreat?

A reminder that the report from the Expert Working Group on Managed Retreat, commissioned following public consultation by the Ministry for the Environment in April and May 2022 to develop recommendations for policy design was delivered over a year ago now. Rather than use it to design policy, the report was shuffled onto another desk, that of the Finance and Expenditure Select Committee, to form part of its inquiry into Climate Adaptation.

That report was delivered on 1st October 2024. Amongst other things, they recommend that the government consider the Expert Working Group’s recommendations on Managed Retreat regarding the government’s role in planned retreat. So now we have a second report telling the Government to read the first report.

The Government has 60 days to respond in writing. When it does, it will be available on the Parliament website at this link.

This is such a contentious and problematic issue that there is every chance the Government is going to absolutely avoid touching that for as long as they can. Disappearing or invisibilising the report is the first step. According to the politics of blame avoidance (The Blame Game, Christopher Hood), a government will react to a high-risk policy proposition according to two dimensions: visibility and avoidability.  Howlett and Kemmerling (2017) created the following chart for climate change policymaking, based on Hood’s politics of blame avoidance:

So let’s make sure that report is highly visible and totally unavoidable.

6. Chart of the week: La Niña, where art thou??

Whether El Niño, La Niña or neutral conditions prevail has a significant impact on the weather we experience in Aotearoa. They are collectively known as the El Niño Southern Oscillation or ENSO. We are currently still on La Niña watch!

This chart measure the temperature in a very specific patch of the Pacific Ocean North-East of Aotearoa (see map below), and it tells us whether or not we are likely to have an El Nino or La Nina. The orange line shows last year’s El Nino, where sea surface temperatures soared above average in the Nĩno 3.4 patch. The red line shows this year’s surface ocean temperature. One of the criteria for a La Nina is the sea surface temperature in this patch of ocean dropping at least 0.8˚C below average. So far it has been tracking along in neutral territory, only slightly below average. Expectations that weak La Niña conditions would emerge this spring are currently on the wane.

Australia’s Bureau of Meterology (BOM) are the preeminent experts and have a great public page dedicated to the ENSO outlook.  For more information on the effects of ENSO on weather in Aotearoa, see NIWA.

Finally, in other news this week, the biodiversity conference (COP16 in Cali, Colombia) made an important breakthrough on the subject of payment for the use of genetic information drawn from biodiversity. Half of the proceeds are to be distributed to indigenous peoples and local communities after a deal to create a permanent body for Indigenous and local communities was agreed. Here is a summary of progress made at the summit, and its implications for Aotearoa, from Toha’s Dr David Hall in Carbon News.

Ka kite ano

Bernard and Cathrine

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thekaka.substack.com/subscribe

Kia ora. Long stories short, here’s my top six things to note in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate and poverty on Tuesday, November 12:

* The Government will apologise today for decades of abuse in state care, but has put off any decisions on how much compensation it will pay until next year’s Budget as it focuses on its main aim: reducing public debt and the size of Government below 30% of GDP.

* Scoop du jour: Tens of thousands of people are set to lose access to Dunedin Urgent Doctors and After-hours care from next week, the ODT-$$$’s Matthew Littlewood reports this morning.

* Deep-dive du jour: Joel MacManus’ analysis of homelessness via The Spinoff is well worth reading.

* Solutions news: The construction, infrastructure, manufacturing, engineering and logistics sectors’ Workforce Development Councils have published a report on how to employ more disabled workers. RNZ

* Editorial opinion: Newsroom’s Laura Walters calls out the Government’s apology “from a Solicitor-General who refuses to step aside, a national apology without redress for those tortured as children, and law changes without wholesale reform.”

* Chart of the day: The economics explained behind the Democrats’ demise.

(There is more detail, analysis and links to documents below the paywall fold and in the podcast above for paying subscribers. If we get over 100 likes we’ll open it up for public reading, listening and sharing.)

1. The 30/30 fiscal rule that rules everything

Abuse in care redress delayed, more health cuts & Fonterra’s pullback

Here’s my podcast above in readable form:

Today I wanted to talk about three news items today, which on the face of it don't seem connected, but which are deeply intertwined with an overall approach to running government and also running the economy.

Firstly, today's apology for abuse in state care. We now know after the press conference last night from the Prime Minister Christopher Luxon that there will not be an announcement of compensation for those abused in state care. The Prime Minister said that it was a very complex issue to decide on compensation for thousands of people abused in state care.

He denied it was because the government didn't want to spend what could be billions of dollars on compensation, if it was done properly. However he did say after initial plans to have something ready for this apology today, that there will not be anything through until next year, and it will be in the budget for 2025.

The 30/30 rule is always in the background

The background to all of this is that the government's finances are by choice under enormous pressure and this is all about the 30-30 rule. This is not just the current government. This is both sides of Parliament for 30 years. It's a rule that not many people really know about or understand, but it really is the one rule to rule us all.

For much of the last 20 or 30 years, whoever is in government will try to get the size of government under 30% of GDP in the long run. That is a doctrinal and ideological view that the government should be relatively small. And it's something that's developed through both the National Party and the Labour Party through the last 20 to 30 years.

The view is that we're better off when the size of government is repressed or restricted under 30% of GDP. It has blipped up over that 30% threshold at various periods, often around, for example, the Global Financial Crisis or the COVID crisis, but the overall aim is always to get it down.

We saw after the initial GFC in 2008-10, and then the Christchurch earthquakes. The then-National government borrowed to buffer the shock to the economy from the GFC and the earthquakes, but from 2012 onwards right through to 2017, it continued to push down on government spending with a series of zero spending allowance budgets, and to try to reduce the government's gross debt to under 20% of GDP. Depending on how you measure it it might have been 30 percent if it was a net number, however the guts of it is the government wants to get the size of the government government spending under 30 percent of GDP and to keep a debt public debt under 30 percent of GDP.

Why? Because there is this view that somehow we need the flexibility to have low debt so that when there's a shock we can borrow from international investors and they'll be happy to lend us the money. This combination of saying we must keep debt under 30% of GDP and keep the size of government under 30% of GDP is what's driving not just this government, but the previous government, to try to cut back on spending, certainly in real per capita terms, after these shocks.

We now know after the election of this new government that it has the same aim to get the size of government down from where it is currently around about 34% of GDP, to under 30% of GDP within the next three to four years, and also to reduce the size of net debt from where it is currently is, 43% of GDP, towards 30%, or at least on a track towards 30% of GDP. That’s the 30-30 rule.

So what does that actually mean? We know from Treasury in a speech a couple of months ago that this drive to cut the size of government will mean that any discretionary spending — i.e apart from things that are sort of set in stone, for example, the New Zealand superannuation spending, the idea that primary and secondary schools are free, and that in theory our publicly-funded health care system remains publicl- funded — has to be cut in real per capita terms.

So you might hear the government and others say Government spending is always increasing. In nominal terms, it will be. But the real question is what's happening in real per capita terms. Treasury has said the size of the cuts needed in real per capita terms over the next two to three years will have to be more aggressive than at any stage in the history of the government. That includes the comparison with the 1991-93 period of ‘Ruthanasia,’ the ‘Mother of all Budgets’ and the various budget cuts back then.

Constant and big cuts in real per-capita spending required

So that's the background here. The government is very, very keen not to spend any of its own money, and that means essentially scaling back capital expenditure on things like railways, schools, hospitals, and also scaling back on any discretionary spending, and that means doing whatever's possible to not spend money on something that's just come up.

It also means that there is a structural nature to the government's approach to not having a capital gains tax, to not tax wealth particularly on residential land. That's because once you bring in a wealth tax, you are essentially increasing the size of the government. Unless there's some sort of big tax switch, you are more than likely to increase it above 30% of GDP. So when you stick to the 30-30 rule, you can't really have a capital gains tax unless there's some sort of massive tax switch.

That means that the structure of our economy is based on using any spare savings to invest in residential land and to capture the capital gains tax-free, particularly in a leveraged way, and that is by a long shot the best investment return for household savers in a risk-adjusted leveraged way. That means that anyone who owns land, anyone who has spare money, will do whatever they can to invest in residential land and to not invest in businesses or anything that actually produces much that can be exported, and to least to try to avoid highly capital intensive businesses. That means that we don't invest much in training, in new technology, in increasing the capital intensity of our businesses, particularly exports.

It means we refocus as much of our savings and our capital in domestic businesses, ones that are not subject to competition, where you can essentially increase returns by increasing your share of the market and using your power to increase prices. Or you focus your activities on extraction of value from resources in the most simple way — digging things up and selling them off without without doing much extra processing or transformation or essentially going up and down the value chain to make them more valuable.

Item 1: No redress

We know that the government has just decided not to bring forward or to pay out big compensation this year for those abused in state care. And this has led to the government essentially delaying, pushing away the hard decision and the hard announcement into the future, and preparing the ground for a very small set of payments. We can hear that in the comments from the Prime Minister last night and this morning, where he argued that there had already been quite a bit of compensation paid, there were already people in process and that the government was ‘working as hard as it could’, when it's clearly not. We know that because we've had recommendations on compensation for three years and the government has soft-peddled continually.

We also know from looking at the details in the Abuse in State Care report that much of the motivation for the very aggressive approach taken by Crown Law and various government agencies over the last two decades in contesting court cases brought forward by those abused in state care, was to avoid any admission of responsibility or liability and to reduce the size of the payouts that the government would have to make. I’ve linked in the email newsletter to a bunch of commentaries pointing out the inadequacy of the redress in compensation and the inadequacy of an apology without redress.

Item: 2: Local Government & Health cuts

The second thing is a bunch of stories we're getting day after day now from local government, essentially frustrated that the Crown is not stepping forward and helping things like local transport investment. And so they're having to make their own cutbacks and to essentially avoid their own spending because the government is reducing its spending to achieve the 30-30 rule, and often pushing that spending back down to councils.

A good example of that is the intense financial pressure that the Wellington Council is under and it has just had a Crown Observer appointed. The irony here is that the Crown Observer will charge $1,000 a day to observe and report back to the Minister, and that has to be paid for by the Council.

There have been many other examples in the last six to 12 months of the government pushing down costs to councils to absorb, and all in the aim of getting that 30-30 rule achieved.

Item 3: Fonterra’s refocusing on commodities

Then finally today we hear that Fonterra has confirmed plans to sell off its consumer businesses. You may ask what are Fonterra's consumer businesses and why should we care? These are all of the international brands that Fonterra has built up over the years including the likes of Anchor and Fresh and Fruity. These are brands made up of decades of R&D and marketing spend to increase the added value, the final value of the milk, that Fonterra’s farmers produce.

This has been one of the great aims of the last 20 to 30 years. You can recall the views of Sir Paul Callaghan about volume and value, the idea of adding value to the fruit of our land and that we should always be trying to increase the added value in the exports that we make, rather than just producing commodities. Because when you produce commodities, you're not really increasing the wealth, you're simply exporting more volume, often using intensive land use as opposed to increasing the value of the existing commodity. One of the great hopes 20 or so years ago was that Fonterra, with its strong position in the global milk and dairy products business, would be able to build up some consumer brands and add value, not just inside New Zealand, but inside other countries with factories, with marketing, with brands, by building up its ability to add value right along the supply chain.

However, a couple of years ago, Fonterra essentially made a strategic decision to get out of those consumer brands and to sell them off, essentially to hand back the cash to farmers who would then use that to repay the debt they have on their farmland.

They're under intense pressure from the banks, who of course are focusing most of their business growth now on mortgage lending. Why? Because that's where the savings are being directed by households. And to do that, you have to reduce the share of the lending that you do into farming. So you constantly demand that farmers repay their debt.

Farmers realise that they're better off as well using any spare capital they've got to invest in residential land, or at least land that could be turned into residential land. That's the driver behind Fonterra getting out of the value added business. Essentially because our banking system and our economy has reoriented in the last 20 to 30 years around focusing spare capital and savings into leveraged residential land.

Where does the growth come from then?

It does raise the question of how you get real economic growth when the focus of your banking system and of savers and the government is on creating the conditions purely for leveraged tax-free capital gains on residential land. It also begs the question: how are we actually going to improve the wellbeing of our people when this focus on reducing the size of government and reducing government debt to 30-30 is so strong from both sides of Parliament.

The irony is the government has said it's focused purely on increasing economic growth and also on doubling exports, but to do that the only way in the short term without significant investment in infrastructure and business is to encourage more extraction of basic value in commodity exports. So that means lots of exports of plain paper bags of milk powder, plain logs, plain meat to the rest of the world. And that is not going to drive real economic growth. It's essentially going to extract value from the future, because in doing that you wreck your environment.

2. Scoop du jour:

Thousands in Dunedin lose after-hours care ODT-$$$’s Matthew Littlewood

Honorable mentions

'Cloak of secrecy': Aviation leaders accuse CAA of covert restructure NZ Herald-$$$’s Michael Morrah

Collaboration not competition: Concern raised at after-hours healthcare tender process NZ Herald-$$$’s James Pocock

Rising seas will affect city schools ODT-$$$

Notable news elsewhere

Sistema proposes more than 100 job cuts, workers devastated 1News

Counselling service fumes after funding cut RNZ

Council faces hefty maintenance bill if major road is tolled RNZ

Some Gisborne roads may revert to unsealed, amid budget cuts RNZ

Christchurch ratepayers face $51m bill to upgrade railway crossings. The city council and KiwiRail are at odds over the work, which includes an $11m overbridge at Annex Rd - where there is the risk of a fatality once every 472 years. The Press’ Tina Law

3. Deep-dive du jour: Housing unaffordability

Joel MacManus’ analysis of homelessness via The Spinoff is well worth reading.

Honorable mentions:

The slash and burn of the public sector: where are the numbers at now? An in-depth, up-to-date picture of one of the biggest cuts the public service has faced in decades. The Press’ Harriette Boucher and Anna Whyte

Foodbank demand symptomatic of other issues. The high cost of accommodation is spilling out into other areas of people’s lives, says Motueka Community House manager Jane Henderson. “They’re just not affording food.” The Press’ Catherine Hubbard

Explainer: Four things to look out for at COP29 climate summit Newsroom’s Marc Daalder

Cancelled bus routes leave parents scrambling, and angry Newsroom/RNZ’s Amanda Gillies

Pacific foundation fights on after Govt funding cuts Newsroom’s Sam Sachdeva

4. Solutions news: Higher wage jobs

Industry works on plan to hire more disabled workers RNZ

Honorable mention

‘Letting the light in’: Needle exchange opens new space. Intravenous drug user Emma* was beaten down and alone. The needle exchange was her place of hope.Maddy Croad

6. Editorial, Op-Ed or column du jour:

Column by Laura Walters: The big apology is here, including one from the Solicitor-General Newsroom

Op-Ed by Aaron Smale: Sorry means you don’t do it again Newsroom

Column by Tina Morrison: The case for feeding our 5 million first, before first tonne is exported Newsroom

NZ Herald-$$$ Editorial: Abuse in Care - Govt apology to victims has got to be more than just lip service

Op-Ed by Shaun Robinson: It’s time for actions, not words, to put an end to this practice. Most of the factors that led to or contributed to the abuse the inquiry found still occur today. The Press

Op-Ed by Dr Stephen Winter: Apology will be hollow without meaningful legal and system changes Newsroom

Chart du jour: ‘They go low, we go high’

The Kākā’s Journal of Record for Tuesday, November 12

* Migration: Realestate.co.nz reported US-based searches for NZ property increased 123% the day after Donald Trump won, with the biggest increase in California. U.S. visits to realestate.co.nz also increased in the two weeks before the election result, and are 159.4% higher than last year.

* Politics & Wellington: Local Government Minister Simeon Brown appointed former Tasman District Council CEO Lindsay McKenzie as Crown Observer to Wellington City Council, which the Department of Internal Affairs said is at risk of being unable to plan, fund, or deliver services and infrastructure.

* Poverty: The Responding to Abuse in Care Legislation Amendment Bill will have its first reading after the National Apology to survivors of abuse in state care. Lead Coordination Minister Erica Stanford said the Bill will end strip searches of children in care, strengthen restrictions for people working with young children, enforce better agency record-keeping, and amend the definition of a 'vulnerable adult' to include disability. RNZ

* Climate: Climate Change Minister Simon Watts announced he'd attend the 29th UN Climate Summit (COP29) in Baku, Azerbaijan this week, which gathers climate delegates to discuss implementing the Paris Agreement. Watts said one of the major focuses of COP29 will be developing a new global climate finance goal. RNZ, Newsroom-$$$

* Poverty & media: Parliament Speaker Gerry Brownlee reversed his decision to decline investigative journalist Aaron Smale permission to attend the national apology for abuse in care, following backlash from survivors, advocates, and the Green Party. Newsroom co-editor Tim Murphy said the Beehive believed Smale was "too forceful" in his interview of children's minister Karen Chhour.

* Climate: Pacific Studies Professor Steven Ratuva will bring the results of the largest yet study of climate adaptation in the Pacific region at the COP29 meeting. The study maps the impacts of climate change on economies, infrastructure, and culture, and found Pacific communities are already adapting to climate change, including by relocating villages.

Cartoon du jour: ‘Like sand through the hour glass…’

Timeline-cleansing nature pic of the day

Red and shiny

Ka kite ano

Bernard

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thekaka.substack.com/subscribe

The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night features co-hosts Bernard Hickey & Peter Bale talking about the week’s news with:

* The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer on the latest climate news, including how Donald Trump’s re-election and sweep of the Congress changes the equations;

* Robert Patman on the US Presidential elections, Israel vs Gaza/Iran/Lebanon, Ukraine/Natio vs Russia/North Korea and whether NZ now joins AUKUS.

* Special guest Elaine Monaghan on Donald Trump’s win in the US Presidential elections. She is a professor of practice in journalism at Indiana University in Bloomington, and contributed to Reuters coverage of Ukraine, having long been a Reuters correspondent in Moscow, Kyiv and Washington. She was also a correspondent for The Times in Washington and co-authored the 2006 book On the Brink: An Insider's Account of How the White House Compromised American Intelligence.

* Special guest CTU Chief Economist Craig Renney on this week’s cost of living figures, jobs figures and Budget figures in Aotearoa.

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

(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.)

Ngā mihi nui.

Bernard

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thekaka.substack.com/subscribe

Kia ora. Long stories short, here’s my top six things to note in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate and poverty on Tuesday, November 5:

* Strangely for a party that prides itself on being a mainstream bastion of ‘small c’ conservatism, National under PM Christopher Luxon is increasingly at risk of becoming consumed from the inside-out by the extremist policies of some National ministers and those of its coalition partners NZ First & ACT.

* Scoop of the day: RMA reforms being hastily reversed by the Government could cost more than a quarter of a billion dollars. NZ Herald-$$$’s Kate MacNamara reports.

* Deep-dive of the day: Repeated and invasive Police raids on gang homes in Opotiki are alarming local iwi.

* Solutions news: The Nelson Tasman Housing Trust is pushing ahead with house-building on council land.

* Quote of the day: Mental Health Foundation CEO Shaun Robinson says the 656 vacancies in mental health and addiction roles at Health NZ reflects decades of neglect and won’t be solved quickly. RNZ

* Chart of the day: New Zealand’s businesses have basically stopped borrowing to invest in new R&D and technology because spare savings are increasingly going into residential land ‘investment.’

(There is more detail, analysis and links to documents below the paywall fold and in the podcast above for paying subscribers. If we get over 100 likes we’ll open it up for public reading, listening and sharing.)

1. When the parasites eat the host from the inside out

Luxon’s National sidling away from mainstream centre-right

Watching PM Christopher Luxon defending the attacks on health ministry officials by NZ First Minister Casey Costello last night was unsettling. It reminded me of a news story I stumbled across last month about the discovery of a fungus called Gibellula on the west coast of Scotland. It’s a fungus that infects spiders through fungal spores, and then slowly grows to digest the insect from the inside out.

“It’s part of a group of fungi that are known for turning their victims into ‘zombies,' compelling them to act in a certain way before killing them.” Ben Mitchell, who is part of the West Cowal Habitat Restoration Project via IGN

It’s the type of fungal parasite viewers of ‘The Last of Us’ will be familiar with.

Costello has been the focus of intense questions from both the media and her own ministry about her use of tobacco industry research to justify a $200 million tax cut for Phillip Morris, to encourage smokers to use heated tobacco.

Luxon was asked by 1News reporter Benedict Collins about comments in emailed advice from officials that Costello was cherry-picking ‘crap’ evidence to back her position in support of lower taxes on Phillip Morris.

“I can tell you that minister is very very focused on making sure she lowers daily smoking rates and delivers on Smoke-free 2025, but what I'd also reject is your characterization of it as a tax break.

“What we are saying is if we move people from cigarettes into alternatives, and particularly in this case heated tobacco products, that actually we will collect less excise tax as a government because they won't be on cigarettes.” Luxon in his post-cabinet news conference yesterday (21:53 to 23:17).

Subsequently, Costello went on to issue a statement to 1News saying:

“(The emails show) yet again, officials undermining the Government’s harm-reduction approach to reducing smoking rates.

"I have spoken to the Director-General about the importance of maintaining public sector standards of integrity and political neutrality.” Casey Costello via 1News.

This isn’t the first time Luxon has had to defend his NZ First and ACT ministers ignoring official advice, threatening officials, criticising judges, denying humans caused climate change and side-stepping the cabinet decision-making process.

It is one of many instances and demonstrates the extent to which National is being eaten alive from the inside out by policies a long way from the centre-right small-c-conservative mainstream or ‘compassionate conservatism.’ Not all are from NZ First and ACT. His Transport, Energy & Local Government Minister, Simeon Brown, has stepped a long way from mainstream policy with his blanket and evidence-free backing of new motorways and higher speed limits at the expense of public transport and lower climate emissions. His Finance Minister Nicola Willis proceeding with an austerity strategy to cut per-capita Government spending by more than National’s Ruth Richardson did in 1991.

Here’s a selection of instances and policies since the swearing in of the Government that is increasingly disturbing to the ‘true-blue’ National Party members in the regions and provinces that elected them:

* Luxon reneging on a National election promise to rebuild Dunedin hospital fully;

* Luxon agreeing to David Seymour’s decision to break a promise to keep supporting Christchurch home-buyers of poorly repaired homes;

* Luxon agreeing to NZ First & ACT demands to reverse restrictions in tobacco sales to accelerate a move to Smokefree 2025;

* Luxon agreeing to the removal of first-home buyer subsidies to save money;

* Luxon first agreeing to ACT’s demands to dismantle the food for schools programme completely, and then backtracking to a smaller programme, before allowing bigger cuts to include primary schools;

* Luxon agreeing not to pay for cancer drugs promised for Budget 2024, before a voter backlash saw the promise reverse-engineered into the Budget within a few weeks; and,

* Luxon agreeing to NZ First & ACT’s demands that Treaty-gutting legislation be debated (in the case of the Treaty Principles Bill) in Parliament, while other Treaty clauses are gutted in other bills and the Foreshore & Seabed Act is unravelled.

It’s worth remembering that National has a proud history while in Government from 1990 to 1999 and again from 2008 to 2017 of doing Treaty settlement deals, agreeing to include Te Pāti Māori in its Government, and creating Whanau Ora and Smokefree 2025 with Te Pāti Māori.

The disquiet among National’s supporters is growing, as Post columnist Janet Wilson, a former press secretary for once-National Leader Judith Collins, articulated in September:

There’s a bewildering political naivety in agreeing to a coalition deal which is contrary to your own values, which you are losing political capital on daily while your junior coalition partner runs rings around you.

Christopher Luxon’s first term will be defined by an issue he doesn’t agree with, yet he signed up for, in the process destroying decades of National-Māori relations.

Meanwhile hate and mistrust will grow. All because a deal he took to get into power took precedence over his values. Janet Wilson in The Post-$$$

Other cases today of the Government being driven by NZ First & ACT

Seymour announces 'full stop' on quake payout scheme RNZ

Scientists concerned about delays to critical report RNZ

Blood cancer patients call on National to honour commitment RNZ

2. Scoop du jour: When change is costly

Public Purse: The cost of successive resource management reform will easily top a quarter of a billion dollars, but will it go higher still? NZ Herald’s Kate MacNamara

Honorable mention

MPI questions Climate Commission’s native planting targets Newsroom’s Marc Daalder

3. Deep-dive du jour: Toddler left alone

This story was mentioned in the PM’s news conference yesterday and we’ll be hearing more about this. Mark Mitchell denied it was true, but iwi in Opotiki are concerned.

Speaking at his post-Cabinet press conference, Luxon was asked about reports of a 3-year-old child being put in the back of a police vehicle during a recent gang-linked police raid in Ōpōtiki, while its mother and grandmother were handcuffed by officers.

Luxon said it was “not acceptable” if those reports were accurate but was quick to add the behaviour of gangs was “utterly unacceptable”. Mitchell also said he had not been briefed about the toddler being put by herself into the back of a police car.

“Clearly that’s not what we want to see happen and it would be great if the children could be better looked after but the reality is we’re going to be tough on gangs, we are going to harass gangs,” Luxon said.

'Violated': Kuia claims she was strip-searched in Ōpōtiki police gang raids, children ‘traumatised’ NZ Herald’s Joseph Los’e

'We are the mana of this land': Iwi slam police over Mob bust, threaten to block future raids NZ Herald’s Joseph Los’e

4. Solutions news: The Nelson Tasman Housing Trust

There’s great work being done in Nelson to build new social housing, but a lot more is needed, as RNZ’s Samantha Gee reports.

Ministry of Social Development data shows as of September, there were 294 people in Nelson and 153 people in Tasman on the wait list for public housing.

(Nelson Tasman Housing Trust director Carrie) Mozena said in addition to that, the trust also had over 200 people on its waitlist who were in need of housing. It's research showed there were around 600 more people looking for affordable rental housing who were not on any waitlist.

"It's quite a big problem that has been developing for many years and we are one of the many organisations working to make a difference."

The trust has two rent support schemes - it offers affordable rentals where those on low to moderate incomes are charged rent at 80 per cent of the market rate. It also offers public housing, where residents spend 25 percent of their income on rent, with the remainder subsidised by the Government's income related rent subsidy.

"Both of those make it possible for people on low incomes to stay in housing and get ahead. Some of our residents over the years, maybe four or five, have been able to save up enough to go and buy a home."

The two properties in Tōtara St were purchased from the Nelson City Council in 2022 for $715,000 and Mozena said the total project cost was $4.2 million (inclulding the land) and took two years to bring to completion. RNZ’s Samantha Gee

Honorable mention:

Māori businesswomen win top award amid school lunch contract loss NZ Herald’s Matai O’Connor

5. Quote du jour: What the 30/30 rule did

“This level of vacancies hasn't emerged overnight. It's been mounting over the last decade and yet there has been very slow movement to address it, either from politicians or the health system itself.” Mental Health Foundation CEO Shaun Robinson on the 656 vacancies in mental health and addiction roles at Health NZ, which doubled between 2018 and 2022. Via RNZ’s Jimmy Ellingham on Checkpoint.

6. Chart of the day: A housing market with bits tacked on

The Kākā’s Journal of Record for Tuesday, November 5

* South Island & Housing: The Natural Hazards Commission has scaled back its financial support programme for homeowners who bought properties not properly repaired after the Canterbury earthquakes, under changes requested by Associate Finance Minister David Seymour. Applicants will now face stricter deadlines and new limits on what they can receive. The Labour Party said the programme was making up for "botched repairs" by the EQC. RNZ

* Economy & Housing: Several NZ banks identified increasing geopolitical tension as a threat to their capital levels and a "primary driver" of economic downturns, under risk scenario modelling requested by the Reserve Bank. Banks' response strategies to scenarios including spikes in unemployment and falls in property prices are also explored in the RBNZ's Financial Stability Report due later today.

* Poverty: The Child Poverty Action Group reported that Child Poverty Reduction Minister Louise Upston was advised that NZ will remain "off-track" from reaching its ten-year child poverty reduction targets without "significant" further investment. The documents also showed that Upston considered changing the ten-year targets in June 2024, but decided it was “not the right time.”

* Poverty & health: The Green Party called for more publicly funded dental care after a report by Frank Group estimated annual economic losses due to poor oral health at $2.5 billion. Campaign group Dental for All said the report shows current dental policy settings are more expensive for NZ than universal funding for dental care.

* Health: The Public Health Communication Centre's latest briefing argued NZ could reduce the risk of future pandemics and lower the cost of pandemic preparedness through formalised co-operation with Australia and Pacific Island nations. The briefing explored possibilities for NZ-Australia co-operation, including co-ordinated disease surveillance, shared quarantine facilities for travelers, and collaborative simulation modelling.

* Housing & economy: Barfoot & Thompson's Auckland housing market update for October found the number of listings was up 29.1% compared with October 2023. The average Auckland house price, $1,129,950, was up 4.5% compared with September 2024, and the median price, $955,000, was up 2.2%.

Cartoon of the day: Signs ‘o the times

Nature pic of the day: Leaves can be pretty too

Ka kite ano

Bernard

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thekaka.substack.com/subscribe

Kia ora. Long stories short, here’s my top six things to note in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate and poverty on Monday, November 4:

* Budget cuts are storing up costs for future taxpayers and Governments.

* Scoop of the day: The Government is set to deliver another budget-cutting blow for the South Island.

* Deep-dive of the day: Chris Bishop’s RMA reforms have an element of ‘Xi Jinping’ thought about them.

* Solutions news: There’s great news coming out of Cannons Creek on housing supply.

* Quote of the day: One of the Cannons Creek house-builders rightly highlights how important housing is for everything.

* Chart of the day: A shocking poll from Iowa suggests Kamala Harris may actually win handsomely.

(There is more detail, analysis and links to documents below the paywall fold and in the podcast above for paying subscribers. If we get over 100 likes we’ll open it up for public reading, listening and sharing.)

1. Penny wise and pound foolish

Today’s news is dominated by the effects of real budget cuts and worsening poverty, which are often just piling up further costs for future Governments and taxpayers, along with imposing the opportunity cost of lost productivity gains and worse health.

Health workers quit over safety fears as police pull back on mental health callouts RNZ’s Phil Pennington

Documents reveal Treasury’s fears for Health NZ's finances: 'The more we hear, the worse it sounds' NZ Herald

Health Ministry says emergency preparedness may be deprioritised with staff, budgets pressure NZ Herald

Funding shortfall closes unit keeping high risk state care kids in school. As the government tries to get troubled kids back in school, a service doing just that is closing because of a funding shortfall. SST-$$$’s Nikki Macdonald

'Disgusting': Toddler hospitalised multiple times due to mouldy rental NZ Herald

Doctor brain drain about to get worse. Changes in Australia are opening the door for a list of medical specialists to swiftly move across the ditch. Will mirrored changes here stem the flow? The Post-$$$’s Rachel Thomas

2. Scoop du jour: Another hit for the South Island.

1News reported last night the Government is about to shut down an earthquake support fund, which could hit Christchurch hard by stranding 700 home owners without help.

The “on-sold” support package was created in 2019 to provide ex gratia payments to eligible homeowners in Canterbury to cover the over-cap portion of the cost to repair natural disaster damage.

It covers properties that were repaired post-earthquake and signed off, but once resold it became clear the work was not to standard, with many homes needing entire rebuilds.

The original budget for the programme was $300m, but Treasury has revealed to 1News under the Official Information Act that the figure has more than doubled to $717m. Building costs have risen by 40% and more homeowners have come forward.

Around half of the settlements are still yet to be paid out, with hundreds of homeowners left waiting. 1News

Honorable mentions

Legal cone of silence around emergency housing motels. More than 300 motels offer emergency housing, but they don’t have to tell guests that. SST-$$$’s Kevin Norquay

The large previously hidden chunk of NZ’s population at risk from coastal flooding NZ Herald

Government was warned against work-for-the-dole sanctions RNZ’s Anneke Smith

3. Deep-dive du jour: ‘Two laws & 10 principles’

Thomas Manch wrote an excellent deep-dive published on Saturday in The Post-$$$ into Infrastructure & RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop’s process for replacing the RMA, including a bunch of useful quotes from Bishop.

National has carried on the commitment to replace the RMA, but in its own way, so how we get there remains in dispute. And like a drawn-out Environment Court case, the reform will take years still.

But, last week, some movement and a skirmish that illustrates a small part of the wider political battle were at play.

The Government passed the first of two Resource Management Act amendment laws, unwinding Labour government regulations put on farmers for freshwater management. Tucked in there at the final minute was a hammer-blow for the Otago Regional Council, which was preparing to vote through a new Land and Water Regional Plan.

Thousands of people had been involved in the drafting of the plan over five years, according to the council, which was proceeding with the plan despite the Government in December giving councils a three-year leeway on freshwater plans, signalling national-level changes were coming. The Post-$$$’s Thomas Manch

The shock in Otago was palpable.

A day before the vote, the Government declared it would enter an amendment into its prospective law, to stop councils from implementing new freshwater plans until a new National Policy Statement on Freshwater Management was in place. The council cancelled its vote.

RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop, spearheading the reforms, says most councils paused their freshwater plans as the Government wanted. But Otago did not.

“It's a bit stupid to notify a plan and then have to redo it six months later. It would cost a huge amount of time and money. We've been arguing with them about that.

“Some would say [this was] heavy-handed, but actually it's been widely welcomed by a lot of people down south.” Bishop via The Post-$$$’s Thomas Manch

Otago Regional Council chairperson Gretchen Robertson seemed to put her finger on one of the problems: the new delays in finding certainty.

“Otago has been caught in a difficult situation simply because it was diligently doing its job and tackling some tough local issues,” she says.

“RMA reform is coming ‘thick and fast’ now and is creating an environment of uncertainty for those operating businesses and for councils undertaking resource management functions.”

While ministers were saying the change would be positive for farmers, she says Otago farmers wanted certainty -- and that was “still some time away” when it came to freshwater. The Post-$$$’s Thomas Manch

A comparison to ‘Xi Jinping thought’ may not be welcomed by the Government.

The Chinese Communist Party has a penchant for using shorthand phrases to describe its policies, such as “dual circulation”, “four comprehensives”, “two studies and one endeavour”, and in this vein the Government’s RMA replacement could be dubbed “two laws, 10 principles”.

Another phrase that has entered the resource management vernacular, thanks to the National-ACT coalition agreement, is the “enjoyment of private property rights”.

Bishop says this is a “basic precept” of New Zealand’s economy. He described the RMA as originally being a “libertarian statute” that allowed people to do what they want with their property as long as the effects to others were managed.

“This is about going back to basics ... some people have got really excited about the property rights thing, but my general point to them would be that the foundation of New Zealand's economy is the concept of private property in a market-based economy.” Bishop via The Post-$$$’s Thomas Manch

Honorable mentions

Dental system costing $2.5b a year in lost productivity RNZ’s Giles Dexter

Smoke & Mirrors: What’s gone wrong with the ETS? Critics say the emissions trading scheme is doing little more than carpeting the country in permanent pine forest. Meanwhile, the price of carbon credits has gone from boom to bust. The Post-$$$’s George Driver

Somewhere to call home: How emergency housing numbers are changing. The number of people living in emergency housing has been slashed but it’s not clear where all the families who have left are now living. It’s something that worries community advocates. The Post-$$$’s Nicholas Boyack

Mike King charity accused of greenwashing over booklet RNZ’s Eloise Gibson

5. Solutions news: ‘Our Whare Our Fale.’

The Our Whare Our Fale housing project being jointly done by Ngāti Toa and the Central Pacific Collective (CPC) in Cannons Creek in Wellington is creating some hope in the one of the most housing deprived parts of the motu. Building started on Friday.

The combination of using Kāinga Ora land and using leases for community-oriented homes is one way to solve the land cost problem. Here’s the detail via Sunday Star Times-$$$’s Sapeer Mayron and 1News’ Kate Nicol-Williams.

It depended on $115 million in Labour’s 2022 Budget under the Ministry of Pacific Peoples and on the leadership of Ngāti Toa’s Helmut Modlik and CPC’s Tino Pereira, who some might know of as a former Radio NZ journalist.

By Christmas 2025, it is hoped 18 homes will be built with families living in them. In another nine years close to 300 more homes will be built in the area, along with community meeting-houses for neighbours to share. Sunday Star Times-$$$’s Sapeer Mayron

This story from Pereira featured in both pieces.

“A provider told me one day there were grandmothers being discharged early from hospital, and they came to their home — a dilapidated state house in Porirua — with no ablution facilities in the middle of winter, and her children had to go and find a bath from the dump," he told 1News, speaking about the incident from 2018.

"All of the commitments that our communities have made … generations … the story of the migration coming here … that got to me.

"That surely must be the motivation, it gave me the courage to do whatever's necessary and I didn't really care what was in front of me — whether it was the prime minister, or the minister, or a bureaucrat — we just need it done." Tino Pereira via 1News’ Kate Nicol-Williams

4. Quote du jour: ‘Housing is everything’

“We're not just building houses.”

“We are making sure we address health, education, through housing. If you build significantly well-designed warm, dry, efficient homes that are comfortable, that would address the number of our kids who are getting sick and going to the hospital.

“If they are sick, the parents stay home and the kids don't go to school. So what we are providing here is an antidote, addressing all of those disparities in a real significant way.” Central Pacific Collective (CPC) CEO Tino Pereira talking about the joint Our Whare Our Fale housing project in Cannons Creek to Sunday Star Times-$$$’s Sapeer Mayron.

6. Chart of the day: A shock poll

Here’s why it’s so important: Selzer’s poll just before the surprises often everyone and gets the result right, as the DesMoines Register reports, and The Cook Political Report’s Matthew Klein via X.

Nate Silver, who is now on Substack via his Silver Bulletin newsletter, also picked up on the result.

The Kākā’s Journal of Record for Monday, November 4

* Housing & economy: Stats NZ reported that 33,677 new homes were consented in the year ending September 2024, 17% fewer than in the year ending September 2023. 49% more retirement villages were consented in the September 2024 quarter compared with the September 2023 quarter, whereas townhouses and apartments were down 20% and 28% respectively.

* Justice: The Ministry of Justice announced it’s seeking feedback on a legislation review undertaken as part of the Government's plan to enable more remote participation in court proceedings. The move is one of several initiatives intended to reduce court delays, including the rollout of Te Au Reka, a digital case management system.

* Trade: Trade and Agriculture Todd McClay announced that NZ and the Gulf Cooperation Council have finished negotiating a trade agreement to deliver duty free access for 99% of NZ's exports over 10 years. RNZ reported that the trade agreement is the first the GCC has done with a Western country to include a commitment to the UN Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination Against Women.

* Te Tiriti: The Public Service Association reported that the Government's plan to transfer the key functions of Te Arawhiti, the Office for Māori Crown Relations, to Te Puni Kōkiri would see 44 staff transferred and 42 roles cut. Te Arawhiti Chief Executive Lil Anderson called the plan’s benefits “overstated”, according to documents released under the Official Information Act.

* Infrastructure & water: A Te Waihanga the Infrastructure Commission report found that, by introducing water metering, councils were able to improve their ability to identify leaks. The report also found that volumetric charging could reduce costs for low-income ratepayers, and was effective at discouraging wasteful water usage.

* Health: New Zealand Nurses Organisation members employed by Te Whatu Ora said they are "alarmed" by its plans to temporarily stop using its needs-based programme to calculate nurse staffing requirements. The Care Capacity Demand Management programme has been paused during collective bargaining and will be discussed at union meetings across NZ this week.

Cartoon of the day: ‘Surgery for the South Island’

Nature pic of the day: Feijoas in the making

Ka kite ano

Bernard

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thekaka.substack.com/subscribe

The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night features co-hosts Bernard Hickey & Peter Bale talking about the week’s news with:

* The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer on the latest climate news, including research showing the lethality of gas hobs and research on the health effects of climate change;

* Robert Patman on the US Presidential elections and Israel’s banning of UNRWA.

* Special guest Elaine Monaghan, who is a professor of practice in journalism at Indiana University in Bloomington, and contributed to Reuters coverage of Ukraine, having long been a Reuters correspondent in Moscow, Kyiv and Washington. She was also a correspondent for The Times in Washington and co-authored the 2006 book On the Brink: An Insider's Account of How the White House Compromised American Intelligence.

The Hoon’s podcast version above was recorded on Thursday night during a live webinar for over 120 paying subscribers and was produced by Simon Josey.

Peter mentioned his article in this week’s Listener about the history of Polish refugee children in New Zealand.

Peter also mentioned a report in The Lancet on climate change and health.

Cathrine referred to the ‘real zero’ pledge in the climate news section.

(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.)

Ngā mihi nui.

Bernard

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thekaka.substack.com/subscribe

Long stories short, here’s the top six news items of note in climate news for Aotearoa this week, and a discussion above between Bernard Hickey and The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer:

* A study looking at psychological distress associated with climate change has stimulated discussion about the insistent demands for ‘hope’ and ‘positivity’ in climate communications. The study found that those suffering from higher levels of psychological distress were also more likely to be engaged in collective action to address climate change.

* A new report on the health impacts of indoor pollution from gas stoves in the EU has found the lifespan of people cooking on gas stoves is reduced by two years on average.

* Research has shown biodiversity is declining even faster in protected areas than elsewhere. Scientists analysing the ‘Biodiversity Intactness Index’ ahead of the 16th Global Biodiversity COP, opening this week in Colombia, have warned that just designating areas as protected is not sufficient.

* Environmental advocates have accused the New Zealand Government of ‘waffling’ in response to the biodiversity crisis. They say the Government is turning up to the Biodiversity Conference in Colombia this week with no real plan or policies to achieve the targets in the Framework Agreement.

* A group of leading climate scientists from nine countries have signed a pledge calling for ‘real zero’ not ‘net zero’. They say that corporate offsetting does nothing except hinder the energy transition.

* The chart of the week comes from the 2024 UNEP Emissions Gap Report and shows how many G20 countries are on track to achieve their 2030 NDC targets (not many). It comes in the same week that the UK’s Climate Change Commission recommends even steeper cuts of 81% by 2035 for their  seventh carbon budget, despite a paucity of policies keeping the country on-track for its 2030 target.

(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.)

1. The risk of creating ‘comfortable numbness’ over climate

A study in the journal Nature has kicked off a conversation about the potential harms of ‘toxic positivity’ as communicators are relentlessly urged to promote ‘hope’ when talking about climate change.

The analysis showed that the relationship between climate-related psychological distress and four measured climate action outcomes is both positive and significant.

The study also found that those groups most likely to experience psychological distress from climate change are those most vulnerable and exposed to the effects of it, including communities of colour, indigenous peoples, low income communities and younger people. These also happen to be the groups that have historically been the key leaders in environmental movements. The report recommends that

“While climate change psychological distress may motivate engagement in climate action, which in turn may help some people cope, it is essential that people experiencing distress have access to effective mental health resources and support7. Building accessible and climate-informed mental health services is important to helping people cope, promoting positive engagement with climate change, and strengthening adaptive resilience and overall well-being in the face of these challenges.” Nature

The study results are in tune with a growing conversation about the relentless positivity urged by some activists and climate leaders.  In an op-ed in The Guardian, Jonathan Watts, questions the incessant promotion of “hope” by leaders, suggesting that it is contributing to a ‘comfortable numbness’ that curtails action.

“New research reveals that people who are experiencing climate-related distress are more likely to engage in collective action. History, by contrast, shows that manufactured optimism can lead to complacency and the shirking of responsibilities.

In the 1990s, hope – coupled with doubt – was the fossil fuel industry’s antidote to the precautionary principle, the sensible idea that some problems had such dire implications that humanity should err on the side of caution even if the science was not completely settled. When George Bush was president, he was initially so concerned by the impact of fossil fuels on the climate that he looked into regulating the oil industry. But he backed away from this on the grounds that future generations would probably develop new technologies to solve the problem. Call that dumb, call that wishful thinking, or call that hope, the result was the same: no action.

That once again looks to be the temptation of Britain’s Labour government in promising £22bn for carbon capture and storage projects. This technology is supposed to catch greenhouse gas emissions before they can enter the atmosphere. But it is incredibly expensive, has never worked at the necessary scale and, until now, has largely been a ruse for the petroleum industry to continue pumping.

Amy Westervelt of Drilled Media also recently discussed the “unsettling disconnect between people noshing on passed hors d'oeuvres and sipping craft cocktails while talking about the need to "stay positive!" "tell the positive stories!" "give people hope!" and the reality crashing in all around us”, in a newsletter following New York’s climate week.

“Don't get me wrong, there are good news stories and I know how important it is to share and savor them, but the focus on positivity to the exclusion of anything else felt completely surreal and, if I'm being honest, a little scary. It reminded me of something I've heard climate psychologist Renee Lertzman say repeatedly over the years, that the climate crisis is a trauma that needs to be processed, and of what trauma specialist Thomas Hübl calls "collective numbness," that thing that happens when people tacitly agree to leave the trauma lingering, unprocessed, below the surface.” Drilled

Part of that reality is that the repeated ‘tone-deaf’ calls for positivity can be a sign of privilege and carbon colonialism that ignores the pain already being experienced by the most climate vulnerable groups on the frontline of climate impacts. As Westervelt eloquently puts it:

“... over and over again in rooms teeming with white Global Northerners, I heard earnest pleas to center the voices of the Global South. It was a real "actions speak louder than words" kinda week for me. You want positive stories? Take the action required to generate real improvement and stop over-hyping incrementalism! You want to knock disinformation on its head? Fund investigative journalism! You want to center Global South voices? The bodies those voices inhabit need to be in the dang room!” Drilled

2. Using a gas stove shaves 2 years off a person’s life

A new report from the European Public Health Alliance proposes policy solutions after a Health Impact Assessment found at least 40,000 premature deaths in Europe related to nitrogen dioxide from gas cooking. The death toll is twice as high as that from car crashes.

“The cookers spew harmful gases linked to heart and lung disease but experts warn there is little public awareness of their dangers. On average, using a gas stove shaves nearly two years off a person’s life, according to a study of households in the EU and UK.

“The extent of the problem is far worse than we thought,” said lead author Juana María Delgado-Saborit, who runs the environmental health research lab at Jaume I University in Spain.

The researchers attributed 36,031 early deaths each year to gas cookers in the EU, and a further 3,928 in the UK. They say their estimates are conservative because they only considered the health effects of nitrogen dioxide (NO2), and not other gases such as carbon monoxide and benzene.” The Guardian

The EPHA is urging policymakers to phase out gas cookers by setting limits on indoor emissions, subsidising switching to cleaner cookers and forcing manufacturers to clearly label the pollution risks on their cookers.

The analysis follows a US study earlier this year that attributed 19,000 early mortalities there to the effects of gas stoves.

3. Protected areas of biodiversity declining even faster

Ahead of the 16th Biodiversity Conference of Parties (COP), scientists are warning that the agreement to protect 30% of land and water for nature by 2030 may not be sufficient as analysis shows that biodiversity is declining even more quickly in areas that have designated protection status.

Simply designating protected areas will not automatically assure better outcomes according to the analysis by the UK’s Natural History Museum.

“Researchers looked at a Biodiversity Intactness Index, which scores biodiversity health as a percentage in response to human pressures. The report found the index declined by 1.88 percentage points globally between 2000 and 2020. It then focused on the critical biodiversity areas that provide 90% of nature’s contributions to humanity, 22% of which is protected.

The study found that within those critical areas that were not protected, biodiversity had declined by an average of 1.9 percentage points between 2000 and 2020, and within the areas that were protected it had declined by 2.1 percentage points.

The authors say there are a few reasons why this might be the case. A lot of protected areas are not designed to preserve the whole ecosystem, but rather certain species that are of interest, which means total “biodiversity intactness” is not a priority.

Another reason is that these landscapes could have already been suffering degradation, which is why they were protected in the first place. Researchers say specific local analysis is key to working out why each one is failing.” The Guardian

4. New Zealand lacks action plan to achieve biodiversity targets

Environmental advocates claim that the government lacks a plan ahead of the global biodiversity summit being held in Colombia this week. The framework is seen as the biodiversity equivalent of the Paris Agreement for climate. Countries are expected to present their plans for achieving the 23 targets outlined in the framework by 2030. According to WWF-New Zealand chief executive Kayla Kingdon-Bebb:

“New Zealand’s rocked up with a bunch of waffle and some empty, high-level platitudes with zero financial commitment and no action plan about how these targets are going to be made manifest in our domestic policy." RNZ

The global framework’s 23 targets include:

5. Scientists argue for “real zero” not “net zero”

Scientists from nine countries, including Prof. Michael Mann, of the University of Pennsylvania, Professor Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact, and Bill Hare, founder of Climate Analytics and a member of a UN expert group, have signed the “real zero pledge”, organised by The Lethal Humidity Global Council.

The pledge claims that the “only path that can prevent further escalation of climate impacts” was “real zero” and not “net zero”. Further, they claim that carbon off-setting used by corporations are ineffectual and hindering the energy transition. Source: The Guardian

6. Chart of the week: Countries not on-track to achieve 2030 targets

Climate crunch time is here according to the UNEP Emissions Gap Report for 2024. The following chart from the report shows that 11 out of the G20 member countries are off-track to achieve their 2030 NDC pledges, and those that are on track are countries that did not strengthen, or only moderately strengthened their targets in the latest round.

“Some parts of the world are burning. Some parts are drowning and people everywhere are struggling to cope and in many cases to survive – particularly and always the poorest and most vulnerable. Against this backdrop of tragedy and rising climate anxiety, nations are preparing new climate pledges for submission early next year.”

Despite the lack of current policies to achieve the 2030 NDC target, the UK’s climate change commission has recommended even steeper cuts in territorial emissions of 81% by 2035 (from 1990), in its advice for the country’s seventh carbon budget.

Source: Carbon Brief.

Ka kite ano

Bernard and Cathrine

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thekaka.substack.com/subscribe

Kia ora. Long stories short, here’s my top six things to note in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate and poverty on Thursday, October 31:

* US and European GDP growth figures overnight show the world’s largest economies, along with that of our nearest neighbour Australia, are still growing solidly because of ongoing Government investment. Meanwhile, New Zealand’s economy is slumping into a deeper recession because of budget cuts described by Treasury as the most severe per-capita in our history, done without any signs of a fiscal or debt crisis that prompted Ruth Richardson’s less-severe ‘Mother of All Budgets’ in 1991.

* Scoop of the day: Marc Daalder reports for Newsroom this morning that Te Whatu Ora-Health NZ employs no one to deal with Long Covid, despite the hundreds of New Zealanders debilitated by Long Covid.

* Deep-dive of the day: Max Frethey takes a closer look via RNZ’s Local Democracy Reporting on how Tasman District Council doesn’t have a single councillor under the age of 30.

* Solutions news: The Wellington City Mission will open its new $50 million building today, which includes 35 transitional housing apartments, a medical centre, dental surgery, social supermarket, chapel and cafe. RNZ

* Quote of the day: Tauranga cardiologist Dean Boddington, who is quitting because of burnout, says Health NZ Commissioner Lester Levy is ‘living in La-La Land’ if he thinks the system can cope with $1.5 billion of spending cuts, telling RNZ’s Nine to Noon yesterday: “The whole system relies on people overworking."

* Chart of the day: A single container ship of solar panels can provide as much electricity as more than 50 large LNG tankers of gas or 100 large coal ships, the IEA says in its Energy Technology Perspectives report for 2024 published overnight.

(There is more detail, analysis and links to documents below the paywall fold and in the podcast above for paying subscribers. If we get over 100 likes we’ll open it up for public reading, listening and sharing.)

New Zealand’s self-inflicted economic crash landing

NZ slumps deeper into recession as rest-of-world lands softly

New Zealand’s economy is now well into a third year of economic stagnation and recession that is already deeper in per-capita terms than the 2008/09 recession after the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). Back then, the Key-English Government of 2008-2017 could rightly argue that recession was caused by a drought, the very-global GFC and finance company collapses here, which was why they chose not to deliver tax cuts in their first Budget and instead avoided knee-jerk Government spending cuts.

That National Government was reluctant to repeat the experience of cutting Government spending hard for the poorest in the teeth of a recession, as happened in 1991-1993 because of threatened credit rating downgrades and dangerously-high Government foreign debt and borrowing costs in foreign currency. Then-Finance Minister Ruth Richardson could credibly (although still contested) argue the cuts were needed to keep foreign investors happy and avoid some sort of currency collapse and accelerated blowout in Government interest costs.

There can be no such justification now. New Zealand’s Government debt-to-GDP ratio is less than two-thirds its peak levels of 1991 and the interest costs are less than a quarter of their levels back in 1991, relative to GDP.

Where is the crisis?

The austerity has only just begun, as Treasury’s Chief Economic Adviser Dominick Stephens pointed out in a speech in late September, which included this chart.

“The Treasury’s latest forecasts assume that most of the return to surplus will be driven by declines in per capita government consumption. The implied speed and size of this decline is generally unprecedented in recent history in New Zealand. “ Treasury’s Chief Economic Adviser Dominick Stephens

I also spoke to Stephens about this for When The Facts Change here:

The Government is betting the private sector will step up to replace the $40 billion or so in spending cuts forecast over the next three years, either through foreign investment to buy assets or households taking on extra debt against an even more inflated housing market.

But IMF and other studies show a multiplier effect from Budget cuts that reduces GDP by almost three times more than the Budget cuts, and that the economic effects are worse than improving the Budget position through tax increases, which generate a one to one reduction (rather than a three to one reduction).

“New IMF Fiscal Monitor provides estimates showing that fiscal consolidation measures always reduce output and consumption - cuts in public investment are particularly detrimental. "If taxes are progressive, raising them leads to smaller output losses." Philipp Heimberger, Macroeconomist at the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies via X

This week’s IMF Fiscal Monitor report released also showed untargeted Government cuts hit the poorest the hardest, and by more proportionally than the cuts themselves.

Meanwhile, other countries with higher debt ratios, including Australia and the US, are not deliberately crunching their economies with unnecessarily harsh budget cuts. They are all running looser fiscal policy with higher levels of public investment.

Scoop du jour: No one for Long Covid

Marc Daalder reports for Newsroom this morning that Te Whatu Ora-Health NZ employs just a tenth of a full-time equivalent employee to deal with Long Covid.

Jenene Crossan, co-founder of Long Covid Support Aotearoa and a co-founder of the ministry-funded Long Covid Registry project, told Newsroom the gap in attention was harming New Zealanders.

“In Aotearoa New Zealand, we’re known for our responsiveness in critical care, yet we fall short when it comes to supporting those with chronic health conditions – a category that’s rapidly expanding and affecting a significant number of New Zealanders,” she said.

“Each year, around 25,000 people are diagnosed with cancer, a condition that receives substantial resources and direct oversight at the ministerial level (as it should). In 2023 alone, 400,000 New Zealanders contracted Covid-19, and conservative estimates indicate that 5 percent of these individuals – around 20,000 people – will develop Long Covid. We believe about 200,000 people currently are experiencing the realities of Long Covid in NZ.”

“While cancer and Long Covid differ in mortality rates, they share a profound impact on quality of life. We resource cancer comprehensively, not only in treatment but in long-term support, yet there is no comparable commitment for Long Covid. This raises a critical question: why aren’t we valuing the lives of those with Long Covid by resourcing it appropriately?”

A Long Covid Expert Group was set up in 2022 but was disbanded later that year. The Ministry’s Long Covid work programme webpage doesn’t list any documents or advice released more recently than November 2022. Marc Daalder for Newsroom

Quote of the day: ‘Living in La-La Land’

(The focus on budgets was) “going to cripple the system. The whole system relies on people overworking.” Tauranga hospital cardiologist Dean Boddington, who is quitting because of burnout. Via RNZ’s Nine to Noon

Solutions News: Good news for Wellington

The Wellington City Mission will open its new $50 million building later today.

The light, airy building stretches five floors and 5500 square metres. Every one of those is carefully considered. Behind every door, around every corner, there's a special space. A suite of showers, washing machines and dryers is tucked behind the cafe.

"If you haven't got anywhere to live, if you're living rough, or if you're staying in a house - and there's many of these in the community - where they don't have hot water, then this is a privilege," said Wellington City Missioner Murray Edridge.

There is a dental surgery, a medical centre, meeting spaces, a chapel - which is already booked for a wedding next month - and on the top two floors, 35 long-term transitional housing apartments, for those who need "a bit of extra support.”

A social supermarket is stocked with quality goods, and runs on a points system, with points allocated depending on the size of a whānau. It is just like walking into a supermarket, and there are even tills - but no cash. RNZ

Chart of the day: So why does NZ want LNG?

The Kākā’s Journal of Record for Thursday, October 31

* Health & poverty: The Office of the Chief Coroner released annual suicide statistics finding that Māori remain disproportionately affected by suicide, with Māori 26-44 year olds 2.6 times more likely to commit suicide than non-Māori in the same age group. Ministry of Health deputy mental health director Geoff Short said improving suicide prevention efforts will involve addressing the structural determinants of health. RNZ

* Education & poverty: An Education Review Office report found that the number of students chronically absent from school doubled in the last decade, with 55% of students citing mental health as a reason. The report recommended schools take action earlier to identify poor attendance, and work with parents and students to remove barriers to attendance. NZ Herald

* Health & Safety: 61 companies including Vector, Air New Zealand, and Fonterra made a joint submission on the Minister of Workplace Relations and Safety’s health & safety review. The submission argues NZ's health & safety system lacks regulatory clarity, and calls on the Government to improve the capacity for inspections and establish a national health & safety data centre.

* Health: University of Canterbury lecturer Dr Kseniia Zahrai’s study of 389 social media users found that implicit attitudes, in contrast to deliberate thoughts, drive impulsive use of social media. Zahrai recommended mindful and intentional engagement techniques to reduce potential harm.

* Justice & poverty: Erica Stanford announced that survivors of torture at the Lake Alice Child and Adolescent Unit can now lodge a claim with the Ministry of Health for additional reimbursement. The Crown reached a $6.5 million settlement with 95 survivors in 2001, but the payout was reduced by $2.6 million in legal fees. The Government has set aside $2.6 million to address this. RNZ

* Climate: NIWA said that its use of machine learning to forecast potential flooding in Westport can reduce prediction times from 24 hours to 1-2 minutes. NIWA produced a 'StoryMap' explaining how the system works.

Cartoon of the day: Apocalyptic golf carts

Nature pic of the day: A big feed for our Kereru

Ka kite ano

Bernard

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thekaka.substack.com/subscribe

Kia ora. Long stories short, here’s my top six things to note in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate and poverty on Wednesday, October 30:

* The Government’s move to allow qualified builders, plumbers and drainlayers to self-consent their work faces potential hurdles from reluctant insurers and bankers wanting protection against another leaky buildings crisis.

* Scoop of the day: Rob Stock reports this morning for The Post-$$$ that BNZ, ASB & Westpac have started setting emissions reduction targets for farmers, while ANZ is preparing to start targeting farm emissions.

* Deep-dive of the day: An Ipsos poll shows health is rising fast as an issue of concern for voters, and that 57% support a capital gains tax on rental properties, while just 13% want one on the family home.

* Solutions news: The world’s first electric hydrofoil commuter ferry service began in waters around Stockholm in Sweden

* Quote of the day: Marty Baron, the former editor of the Washington Post calls Jeff Bezos’ decision not to publish an endorsement in next week’s US Presidential election an act of cowardice. Over 200,000 subscribers or 8% of the paper’s digital subscribers cancelled.

* Chart of the day: The economy only grows when either banks lend more, foreigners take less out of the economy or Government and councils invest more. None are showing signs of stepping up.

(There is more detail, analysis and links to documents below the paywall fold and in the podcast above for paying subscribers. If we get over 100 likes we’ll open it up for public reading, listening and sharing.)

1. ‘Where is the ultimate backstop?

Banks & insurers may want bigger backer for self-consented homes

Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk announced plans yesterday to allow qualified builders, plumbers and drainlayers to self-consent their own work, in order to reduce average house-building and consent times from 569 days, which includes up to 10 or more council inspections per single-storey home.

There was a burst of enthusiasm from home-builders, politicians and councils hoping to avoid the time, expense and potential liabilities of inspections and any leaky-building-style problems. However, the hurdles remain of being finding willing financiers and insurers for homes without the balance sheets of councils ultimately standing behind the house.

Other markets such as Queensland that have moved consenting away from council and Governments have eventually had to create a type of Government guarantee or subsidy to bring in private insurers, who in turn are needed for banks to be confident enough to lend to owners and builders.

The Government’s vision is that insurers and guarantee schemes such as those provided by the Master Builders Association, but they are unlikely to be enough for insurers and bankers. The Master Builders’ scheme is currently limited to $1 million and for 10 years overall, with leaky-building-style issues only covered for two years after completion of the home.

Mark Graham, the former publisher of Building Guide, was critical via X yesterday:

Chris Penk’s plan for self-regulation of the building ind is madness. Group Home Builders operate on a franchise system. Clients have a contract with Individual franchisees who often don't have the financial backing to fix major issues.

The Master Builders guarantee that many clients rely on for peace of mind is, as with any insurance company, hard to claim on and minimised wherever possible. Furthermore, re-insurance companies largely pulled out of the NZ market because of the overall quality of our construction industry.

The (Licensed Builders’ Practitioner Scheme (LBP) is a wet bus ticket and is also hard to get any kind of positive outcome for clients-it was dumbed down by the Key govt from its initial stricter regulations and qualifying.

The Minister is to be lauded, however, in the promise of stricter enforcement of what regulations there are, however given National's track record, I suspect we'll be heading into another leaky homes disaster.

Quote of the day: ‘An act of cowardice.’

“This is cowardice, a moment of darkness that will leave democracy as a casualty. Donald Trump will celebrate this as an invitation to further intimidate The Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos (and other media owners). History will mark a disturbing chapter of spinelessness at an institution famed for courage,” Former Washington Post executive editor Martin Baron, who led the paper while Trump was president, said in a text message to The Washington Post on Bezos’ decision not to publish an endorsement of Kamala Harris.

6. Chart of the day: Show us the money

The Kākā’s Journal of Record for Wednesday, October 30

* Housing: Building & Construction Minister Chris Penk announced that the Government would develop a scheme to allow building professionals, including plumbers, drainlayers, and builders, to build single-story houses without needing an independent inspection. Penk said the self-certification scheme would also create a more streamlined consent process for businesses with a "proven track-record". RNZ, NZ Herald

* Economy & jobs: Stats NZ reported that filled jobs were down 0.9% in September 2024 compared with September 2023, led by a 13% fall in jobs filled by 15-19 year olds and a 5% fall in construction sector jobs. Health care and social assistance jobs were up 3.9%, however. NZ Herald, Interest

* Economy & post: The Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment announced a number of proposed measures to scale back NZ Post's operations and infrastructure in response to declining use of physical mail. The proposed changes include reducing urban deliveries from three to two days per week, and reducing the minimum number of postal outlets from 880 to 550. RNZ, BusinessDesk

* Economy: A BusinessNZ report identified measures the Government could take to reduce small businesses’ regulatory compliance workload, including ensuring Government departments use IT systems consistently and setting up a 'first port of call' website for business owners. Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee said businesses’ concerns outlined in the report also informed upcoming reforms to the Anti Money Laundering/Countering Financing Terrorism regime.

* Economy: The Commerce Commission issued a warning to Dick Smith that they likely breached Fair Trading Act obligations by automatically signing customers up for a $149 membership subscription. From July to September 2023, Dick Smith's website required customers to pro-actively opt out of a trial membership; Dick Smith made the trial opt in after the Commission raised the issue. NZ Herald

* Health: The Medical Council of New Zealand's Workforce Survey 2024 found that the proportion of Māori doctors has doubled to 5.1% since 2000, and that female doctors are predicted to outnumber men by 2025. The total number of doctors grew by 3.4% in 2024.

Cartoon of the day: The wood and the trees

Nature pic of the day: A happy place

Ka kite ano

Bernard

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thekaka.substack.com/subscribe

Kia ora. Long stories short, here’s my top six things to note in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate and poverty on Tuesday, October 29:

* A new bout of hand-wringing about the ongoing exodus of almost 200 New Zealanders a day to live in Australia has yet to take the final step to challenging opponents of wealth taxes and housing densification to surrender to lower house values to keep their grandchildren at home with them.

* Scoop of the day: Over 8,000 homes on the outskirts of Wellington are being fast-tracked, but without the public transport the developers say is needed, Kate Green reports for RNZ this morning.

* Deep-dive of the day: Indira Stewart reports for 1News about the scale of the intergenerational tragedy of the kids of prisoners.

* Solutions news: The developer of a dried seaweed food for cows and animals that reduces methane emissions by 95.6% needs the Government to lift its ban on seaweed as a food for animals, Louisa Steyl reports for The Press-$$$.

* Quote of the day: An engineering student laments having to leave.

* Chart of the day: A UNEP report shows the urgency and scale of emissions reductions needed to avoid catastrophic climate change in our lifetimes.

(There is more detail, analysis and links to documents below the paywall fold and in the podcast above for paying subscribers. If we get over 100 likes we’ll open it up for public reading, listening and sharing.)

1. ‘You’ll keep your wealth, but lose your grandkids’

Nearly 200 NZers a day leaving. Their parents seem surprised.

Stuff’s newspapers wrote extensively over the long weekend about the record-high exodus of New Zealanders going to Australia and elsewhere to live permanently, largely because of better wages and lower living costs overseas.

The decades of relying on tax-free and leveraged capital gains on residential land instead of investing in infrastructure, business IP, technology and training is now coming home to roost.

It’s crystal clear to most CEOs, economists and non-politicians that the lack of a capital gains tax has created a gaping hole in our tax system that has incentivised dead investment, massively widened inequality and is destroying the hopes of those thinking of starting families in stable and affordable homes they own, unless they can get massive help with deposits from family.

The home-owning parents themselves have yet to make that leap, seeing the constant churn and burn of residents leaving and being replaced by temporary migrants on low wages as some sort of inevitable and unchangeable force of economic nature.

It’s not. New Zealand has the second-highest share of its population living overseas permanently. Having a conventional tax system would give Governments options to invest more in public infrastructure and even up the playing field for businesses to invest more in technology and training in ways that would improve productivity and real wages.

2. Scoop du jour: Fast-tracking without trains is pointless

Thousands of Wellington homes stranded without bus, train funding

Kate Green reported this morning for RNZ about the pointlessness of fast-tracking housing developments on the edges of cities without the Government also funding the public transport needed to make them work.

More than 8000 new homes are set to be fast-tracked on the outskirts of Wellington, but the region's public transport plan is up in the air.

One regional councillor says the government is undermining its own housing policy by refusing to contribute to a programme of upgrades and maintenance.

It turned down a funding bid from Greater Wellington Regional Council earlier this year, asking the government to fund $134 million of a $270m plan over the next three years. Regional councillor Thomas Nash said it would mean big cuts to planned improvements. RNZ’s Kate Green.

Yet again, the Government is trying to bully the councils into paying for the infrastructure it won’t pay for. The end result? No houses.

Property developer The Wellington Company has two subdivisions set to be fast-tracked up the coast - one in Paraparaumu and one in Ōtaki, totally 2300 homes all up - and both within walking distance of a train line. Managing director Ian Cassels said public transport connections, which were often cheaper than owning and fueling a private vehicle, were vital to new developments.

"The main purpose here is to lower the cost of living so that people have disposable income, so society can function well, and at the same time, reduce carbon effects and improve the environment."

It was not about being anti-car, he said, but about giving people choice.

"I think it's vital that we conspire to lower the cost of living for people that have precious little disposable income," he said. RNZ’s Kate Green.

Honorable mentions

Justice & poverty: Government spends $3.5 million to fight historical abuse claims RNZ’s Anneke Smith

Monopolies & poverty: ‘Bizarre’: Sort-by-price option removed from New World, Pak’nSave websites. Consumer NZ says the move makes finding the cheapest option more difficult and could bolster supermarket profits. Stuff

Health & Education: Dunedin medical school status in danger with hospital redesign - MP ODT-$$$ Matthew Littlewood

Housing: Builders to be allowed to self-certify in consent shake up. A new self-certify regime for builders, plumbers and drainlayers will cut costs and delays for consumers, Building Minister Chris Penk says. The Post-$$$ Luke Malpass

Councils: Peter Scott’s vehicle caught speeding almost 1000 times in 12 months. The former ECan chairman’s council-issued vehicle was responsible for almost a third of the excessive speeding by its staff in 2024 - and a loophole at the organisation may explain why it wasn’t picked up earlier. The Post-$$$’s Charlie Mitchell

3. Deep-dive of the day: An intergenerational tragedy

Indira Stewart’s piece via 1News is compelling and the numbers are startling.

According to New Zealand Treasury data, between 17,000 to 20,000 children in New Zealand have a parent in prison. If you count children with a parent serving a community sentence or home detention, that number more than doubles to include about 17 percent of all children in Aotearoa – that’s almost one in five kids. 

That same data shows children of prisoners are 10 times more likely to end up in prison themselves. And perhaps the most confronting finding from research and reviews both here and globally, is that the needs of children of prisoners are not prioritised when a parent goes to prison.

Justice & poverty: The 'invisible' children of NZ's prisoners speak out about the care they need. They've been unseen and sometimes very unsafe, but three teens with parents in prison are standing up for the rights and needs of the thousands of Kiwi kids like themselves. 1News’ Indira Stewart

Honorable mentions

Housing: Emergency housing deep-dive: Success story or data disappearing act?Getting people out of emergency housing is a laudable goal. But where are they going?The Sunday Star Times’-$$$ Nikki Macdonald

Environment: New Zealand’s complicity in global shark fin trade ‘outrageous’ - conservationistNew Zealand has exported almost 500 tonnes of shark fins since 2014 when shark finning was banned - something the country’s Sea Shepherd boss says is “outrageous”. The Press-$$$’s Andy Brew

4. Solutions news: Climate & methane

The developer of a dried seaweed food for cows and animals that reduces methane emissions by 95.6% needs the Government to lift its ban on seaweed as a food for animals, Louisa Steyl reports for The Press-$$$ this morning.

Government is currently reviewing its regulatory sector to help fast track on-farm methane mitigating innovations. This comes as CH4 Global last week announced new research it said validated its approach to busting methane. The peer-reviewed study, published in Animal Feed Science and Technology, compared the methane reduction potential of whole Asparagopsis seaweed versus pure bromoform — the compound found naturally in red seaweed that acts as a methane mitigator.

The results showed that whole, dried seaweed reduced methane emissions by 95.6% when included at 0.5% of an animal’s diet, compared to a 59.6% reduction from an equivalent dose of bromoform. The Press-$$$’s Louisa Steyl

Honorable mention

Food & poverty: Vege garden to tackle supermarket prices and demand on food hub. Kōkiri Marae is growing a vege garden and running workshops behind its Wainuiomata food hub to help feed whānau and support them to become self-sufficient. The Post-$$$’s Hanna McCallum

5. Quote of the day: ‘I don’t want this’

“It’s a tradeoff. Do I want to stay here for culture and love, or do I want to go there for my career and to work hard to achieve my goals. It’s a choice I don’t like having to make.” Engineering student Lydia Frater preparing to join her sister in Australia, talking to 1News Katie Bradford.

6. Chart of the day: Mind the gap

The Kākā’s Journal of Record for Tuesday, October 19

* Climate & emergencies: The Government approved $23.1 million in extra funding for Surf Life Saving NZ, Coastguard NZ, Land Search and Rescue, and Amateur Radio Emergency Communications. Transport Minister Simeon Brown said the funding will replace and repair assets damaged during 2023 North Island extreme weather events. 1News

* Climate & Pacific: Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced NZ will contribute $20 million to the Pacific Resilience Facility (PRF), a Pacific-led climate adaptation financing facility. Pacific Islands Forum initiatives director Zarak Khan said in August that the PRF is over US$300 million short of its US$500m 2026 funding target.

* Housing & Poverty: A new discussion document on a review of the Building Code's fire safety provisions following the 2023 Loafer's Lodge fire identified potential improvements. Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk also announced a new Bill introducing an offence for negligent certification of building inspection & maintenance requirements, and fines for building owners failing to display a Building Warrant of Fitness.

* Transport & infrastructure: Retail NZ, Hospitality NZ, and the Bus & Couch Association urged Wellington City Council to review its CBD roadworks program amid its impacts on Thorndon Quay businesses. Hospitality NZ CEO Steve Armitage said business owners are also concerned about the prospect of Courtenay Place works starting in the new year.

* Housing: Property developer Simplicity Living announced it’s gained resource consent approval for a 330-unit build-to-rent development in Remuera to be completed by February 2027. The project near the Greenlane train station, will cover 1.4 hectares, and features solar panels and rainwater harvesting. RNZ

* Jobs & health: An open letter signed by businesses, unions, and health & safety experts urged Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden to refrain from substantially changing the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015, which is based on legislation from the UK & Australia. The Business Leaders’ Health and Safety Forum, one of the signatories, estimated the cost of workplace illness and injury in NZ at $4.9 billion per year, and noted NZ's workplace fatality rate doubles that of Australia. Business Desk

Cartoon of the day: ‘Hot air in the Pacific’

Nature pic of the day

Ka kite ano

Bernard

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thekaka.substack.com/subscribe