TLDR: This week in geo-politics, the global economy and Aotearoa’s political economy, we learned:

* the Government’s RMA replacement will take 10 years and keep distracting us all from the magical thinking of the last 30 years that low taxes and investment co-exist with high population growth; Thursday’s Deep Dive

* a new report showed the big electricity gentailers paid out $3.7b in excess dividendss in the last eight years, starving investment in renewable generation and delaying our emissions reduction; Tuesday’s Deep Dive

* three opinion polls showed National’s lead over Labour narrowing and Christopher Luxon’s personal popularity continuing to plateau as Labour targets him personally;

* TOP proposed an alternative to Three Waters for planning and funding water infrastructure that uses existing structures and avoids balance sheet separation and centralised co-governance; Friday’s Dawn Chorus and,

* China distanced itself from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by signing up to a G20 communique denouncing an era of war and declaring the use of nuclear weapons inadmissible.

What was in this week’s Hoon

We talked with Dominion Post columnist Josie Pagani about polls showing Labour and the Greens reducing their deficit to National and ACT, along with the plateauing of Christopher Luxon’s personal popularity. We talked with University of Otago Foreign Relations Professor Robert Patman about the Russian-built missiles fired by Ukraine that strayed over the border into Poland, and President Xi Jinping’s hopeful appearance at the G20 and APEC summits. Our apologies, but the promoted appearance of Adam Jasser was a bit too ambitious. We hope to get him back another week.

Peter and I also talked about Elon Musk’s week of chaos at Twitter, the implosion of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX and look ahead to the final interest rate decision of the year by the Reserve Bank this coming Wednesday.

Some longer reads and listens for the weekend

Profundities, spookies, feel-goods and curiosities

Have a great Sunday

Mā te wā

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