Dawn Chorus: Am I orange or red?

TLDR & TLDL: We’ll find out after 4pm which colour of the ‘traffic light’ system various regions will be placed in from this Friday. Auckland is expected to go ‘red’, with much of the rest of the country in ‘orange’. No one will go ‘green’.

Christopher Luxon looks likely to win the National leadership and the construction industry is frustrated the Government has chosen not to mandate vaccinations for the sector’s 550,000 workers. Over 50,000 remain unvaccinated. They now fear chaos and delays on building sites trying to handle a mix of vaccinated and unvaccinated subbies. More from me on those stories below the paywall fold.

The biggest players in the construction industry fear a lack of vaccine mandates risks projects being stalled in the $28b sector. But riots across the Tasman have spooked the Government here. Photo: Lynn Grieveson/TheKaka

Elsewhere in the news over the weekend:

• Global stocks fell 2.2% on Saturday morning on fears about the new Omicron variant of Covid, oil prices fell 10% to below US$70/bbl and the US 10 year bond yield fell 16 basis points to 1.48%, which was its biggest fall since March 2020.European stocks fell 3.7% in the worst rout in over a year;

• New Zealand, the UK, the EU and the US scrambled to close their borders to South Africa and its neighbours, but Omicron cases were discovered in the Netherlands, the UK, and two were found in New South Wales (Beehive);

• Britain announced the reimposition of mask mandates in public and on public transport, and Israel closed its borders to all foreigners;

• The Merck pill to treat Covid, molnupiravir, was found to be 30% effective in its final study, not the 50% reported in early stage trials (CNBC); and,

• Christopher Luxon is reported to have slightly more support in National’s caucus than Simon Bridges with just over a day to go until a caucus vote for a new leader.

Coming up this week, I’ll be covering:

• Today’s traffic lights announcement in the 4pm post-Cabinet presser;

• The Reserve Bank lending stats for Oct on Tuesday, Stats NZ building consents data for Oct on Wednesday and Reserve Bank household balance sheet data for the Sept qtr on Friday;

• US jobs (non-farm payolls) figures for Nov on Saturday morning, where economists expect jobs growth of about 563k in Nov, up from 531k in Oct.

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