The Kākā by Bernard Hickey
The Kākā by Bernard Hickey
Hoon: The week that was for the week's end with Thomas Coughlan
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Hoon: The week that was for the week's end with Thomas Coughlan

In which we take a 'hoon' over our political economy, including the Covid elimination debate after Victoria's capitulation, Labour's 'sustained moderation' housing inflation stance & 'Team' National

In this podcast recorded on Friday night, Thomas Coughlan and I took a 'hoon' around the big events in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy this week, including:

  • the debate about our Covid elimination strategy after Victoria's capitulation this week,

  • Grant Robertson's 'sustained moderation' housing inflation comments in this interview with Interest.co.nz’s Jenee Tibshraeny on Friday, and,

  • what’s going wrong inside National’s caucus.

Thomas Coughlan works for the NZ Herald in the Parliamentary Press Gallery in Wellington, having previously worked in the gallery offices of Stuff and Newsroom, where we worked together in 2018 and 2019.


From September 21, access to participate in live webinars and the pieces below that were published Monday to Friday will only be for paying subscribers, while these weekend ‘wrap-ups’ with the podcasts will be for free subscribers.

I’ll be providing a special inaugural offer for all those on the currently free list. The regular cost will be $19/month or $190/year per subscriber. There will be group and corporate offers too. Watch this space and keep opening the The Kākā emails until September 21 to find the coupon to get that offer.

To get a sense of what I do Monday to Friday, I wrote these pieces this week:

The Kākā by Bernard Hickey
Dawn Chorus: Auckland faces four more weeks at level four
Listen now (12 min) | TLDR & TLDL: Morena! The signs are growing that Auckland faces another four weeks with level four restrictions, despite what appears to be a peaking of new cases. Modellers point to infections still happening at level four, including 65 ‘mystery’ cases not connected through a household or clear contact…
Read more
The Kākā by Bernard Hickey
Dawn Chorus: 'Don't come home for Xmas'
Listen now (20 min) | TLDR & TLDL: Huge demand from locally-infected covid cases to use limited MIQ spots has extended a pause on the issuance of new MIQ vouchers from a ‘few days’ to weeks. Chris Hipkins even warned expats not to book slots in a new ‘randomised’ queueing system, once it opens up, in order to allow space for humanitarian cases…
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The Kākā by Bernard Hickey
Dawn Chorus: $9b in Govt kitty for Covid
Listen now (21 min) | TLDR & TLDL: The Government has handed $1.25b in cash to property-owning business owners in two weeks and is reassuring them it has another $8b ready in the kitty for more economic support if needed. House prices are set to jump again as some of that cash is used to bid for a much lower number of new home listings during lockdown…
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The Kākā by Bernard Hickey
Dawn Chorus: Vaccine deal in the works
Listen now (6 min) | TLDR & TLDL: The level four lockdown was extended as expected for a fortnight in Auckland and now the focus shifts to how the country can find enough Pfizer doses to keep up a stunningly-high daily vaccination rate…
Read more
The Kākā by Bernard Hickey
Dawn Chorus: 'Tighten the lockdown and slow vaccination'
Listen now (7 min) | TLDR & TLDL: Cabinet is expected to agree later today to extend Auckland’s level four lockdown for at least two more weeks and allow Aotearoa-NZ below the Bombay Hills to move to level three from tonight. But the risk of longer and more frequent lockdowns appears to be rising…
Read more

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