TLDR: The podcast above is a recording of our Weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers. We do this every Friday for an hour at 5pm and it’s one of our most popular features, along with my Ask Me Anything session from midday on a Friday. Yesterday’s was a cracker.

This week’s guests on the ‘hoon’ were University of Otago Foreign Relations Professor Robert Patman and Kiwibank Chief Economist Jarrod Kerr.

This week I was in the Parliamentary Press Gallery in Whanganui-a-tara and co-host Peter Bale joined us from Tamaki Makaurau.

The five things of note I’ve focused this week included:

* Christchurch City Council voting against the Government’s densification directives and doubling down by promising to charge developers extra if they don’t have enough trees;

* the Government completely dumping the ‘traffic lights’ system of Covid controls, including vaccine mandates and mask mandates, but not seven-day isolation for Covid sufferers;

* REINZ figures showing Auckland City and Wellington City house prices down 17-23% from the peak in October/November, but with signs the market is warming up again in Auckland in particular;

* Wellington City Council voting to limit speeds on most city streets to 30 km/hr, triggering accusations of being ‘anti-car’ as voting papers are mailed to potential council voters; and,

* an inflationary surprise in the United States unnerving investors hoping the Fed won’t have to crunch the global economy into a recession with sharply higher interest rates.

But also overseas:

* Ukraine’s amazing counter-offensive that drove Russian troops out of 6,000 square kilometres of eastern and southern Ukraine, and have sparked the glimmerings of dissent in Russia;

* Vladimir Putin met with Xi Jinping overnight and Putin reported Xi was not thrilled with his invasion of Ukraine; and,

* Europe announced windfall taxes on energy firms.

Here’s Peter’s always excellent weekly bulletin email on international affairs that goes out on a Thursday via the Spinoff. Sign up here

I also started the Substack ‘threads’ trial on the Substack iOs app.

Chart of the week

ANZ lifted its OCR forecast peak to 4.75% from 4%

Quote of the week

“We’re making Earth our only shareholder.” Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard said while announcing he and his family had given the company to two trusts dedicated to fighting the climate crisis.

Other places I’ve been

A fun thing. I want one.

Mā te wā

Bernard

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