Bernard’s Pick ‘n’ Mix at 6am on Tuesday, March 18

Seymour won't let school pull out of lunch contract; ACT plans council politics launch; Bishop says refusal of office building consent near train station 'insanity'; Luxon's big problem in one chart

Here’s my selection¹ of scoops, breaking news, news, analyses, deep-dives, features, interviews, Op-Eds, editorials and cartoons from around Aotearoa’s political economy on housing, climate and poverty from RNZ, 1News, The Post-$², The Press−$, Newsroom³, NZ Herald, Stuff, BusinessDesk-$, NBR-$, Reuters, FT-$, WSJ-$, Bloomberg-$, New York Times-$, The Atlantic-$, The Economist-$ and more as of 6am on Tuesday March 18.

In short: David Seymour is refusing to let a Christchurch school opt out of its school lunch contract. A Talbot Mills chart shows Christopher Luxon’s popularity pales in comparison with other first term PMs. Chris Bishop calls a planning committee rejection of an office building next to an Auckland railway station ‘insanity and total nonsense.’ ACT is planning to launch into council politics.

(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 from paying subscribers, we’ll open it up for public reading, listening and sharing, although we’d love it if you subscribed to join The Kākā’s community and support making this journalism public. Students and teachers who sign up for the free version with their .ac.nz or .school.nz emails are automatically upgraded to the paid version for free. Our special offers right now are: $3/month or $30/year for under 30s & $6.50/month or $65/year for over 65s who rent.)

Bernard’s Pick n’ Mix Six at 6am on Tuesday, March 18