Bishop more popular than Luxon in Curia poll

Count the Chrises: Chris Bishop (2nd from right) is moving up in the popularity polls. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The Kākā

TL;DR: These six things stood out to me over the last day in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy, as of 7:06 am on Wednesday, April 10:

1. The National/ACT/NZ First coalition Government’s opinion poll lead over the Labour/Green/Te Pāti Māori Opposition narrowed by nearly 10 percentage points to 5.7 points in The Taxpayers’ Union - Curia poll early April poll from the same poll a month ago.

2. PM Christopher Luxon’s net favourability rating in the poll fell another two points to a record-low minus seven percent, which puts him behind Chris Bishop¹ on minus four, but ahead of Chris Hipkins on minus eight percent. David Seymour also fell three points to minus 11% and Winston Peters fell six to minus 18%. Chloe Swarbrick was last on minus 19%.

3. The EU’s climate agency Copernicus declared overnight that March was the 10th-consecutive month of record-high sea and air temperatures for the planet. (See charts and quotes of the day below)

4. Simeon Brown proposed yesterday that the speed limit on the Kapiti Expressway be increased from 100 km/per hour to 110 km/per hour, which models show would significantly increase climate emissions, especially for heavy utes and trucks. (See more below)

5. NIWA, which researches the effects of climate change on Aotearoa-NZ, has told staff that 80-90 roles or 13% of total headcount will be cut to save money, as directed by the Government in order to pay for tax reductions. NZ Herald

6. On the eve of a Reserve Bank Official Cash Rate decision at 2 pm today, the outlook for interest rate cuts later this year deteriorated more overnight as global financial markets further lowered expectations for the number of Fed rate cuts in 2024 to two from as high as seven earlier this year. (See chart below)

(Paying subscribers can see more detail and analysis below the paywall and in the podcast above. We’ll open it up for public reading, listening and sharing if they give permission by getting over 100 likes.)

Worsening emissions deliberately