The Hoon around the week to Aug 26

Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The Kākā

TL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā for paying subscribers in the last week included:

• We launched The Kākā project for Election 2023 in Friday’s email.

• The Government agreed 50:50 funding deals with Auckland Council and Gisborne District Council to buy back land and repair infrastructure damaged by Cyclones Hale and Gabrielle in January and February. I wrote about it Thursday’s email titled: Making up our climate response as we go.

• National said it would shift away from fuel taxes to road user charges and congestion charges to pay to repair and build roads and public transport, but hasn’t worked out what removing the disincentive to burn fossil fuels and removing the incentive to drive electric cars would do to climate emissions or the Government’s finances. I wrote about it in Monday’s email.

• More evidence emerged on the open slather approach taken with migrant work visas in the last year. I wrote about it in Thursday’s email.

• A disturbing shift towards attack politics happened this week. I wrote about it in Friday’s email.

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What we talked about on ‘The Hoon’ on Friday night

In this week’s podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers at 5pm on Friday night:

• 5.00 pm - 5.05 pm - Bernard and Peter Bale opened the show with a discussion about National’s fundraising beating Labour by $7 to $1 early in the campaign.

• 5.05 pm - 5.20 pm - Bernard and Peter and

  Cathrine Dyer
  talked about the de-growth discussion on The Kākā this week, along with her five ideas to slash emissions and a look at the Government’s ad-hoc climate repair deals with Councils.

• 5.20 pm - 5.40 pm - Bernard and Peter and

  Robert Patman
  talked about the apparent assassination of Yevgeny Prigozhin and what it might mean for Vladimir Putin and the war in Ukraine.

• 5.40 - 6.00 pm - Bernard, Peter, Robert and columnist for The Post, Josie Pagani, talked about polarisation in politics and the expansion this week of the BRICS grouping to include Saudi Arabia and Iran, among others.

The Hoon’s podcast version above was produced by Simon Josey.

This is a sampler for all free subscribers. Thanks to the support of paying subscribers here, I’m able to spread the work from my public interest journalism here about housing affordability, climate change and poverty reduction around in other public venues. I’d love you to join the community supporting and contributing to this work with your ideas, feedback and comments.

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Quote of the week

What happens after you poll 29%

“We haven't been as negative or as critical about their approach. Maybe we should be a little more. We're going to be fighting back.” PM Chris Hipkins told reporters in Parliament as he described himself as the underdog now. Newshub

Charts of the week

Tipping points and feedback loops in our climate

Via Peter Dynes on X: “If you were to have an ice sheet collapse in Western Antarctica- you could have a 10 feet sea level rise over a period as little as 10 years. It has happened before. These changes aren’t usually linear. There are usually jolts in these systems if pushed hard enough.”

Map of the week

Ships delayed on both sides of the drought-affected Panama Canal

Other places I’ve appeared this week

My podcast for The Spinoff this week: Steaming to 100% renewable

This week in my weekly podcast via The Spinoff, When The Facts Change, I poke with SolarZero CEO Matt Ward about why Aotearoa's solar power boom is closer than we think.

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Some fun things

Cartoons of the week

Ka kite ano

Bernard