TL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the last week included:
Christopher Luxon, David Seymour and Winston Peters signed coalition-forming agreements, announced a ministerial list, were sworn in, held their first Cabinet meetings and released a 100-day plan with 49 to-do items; See Friday’s email
National, ACT and NZ First agreed to drop National’s plan for a foreign buyers tax and adopt ACT’s plan for faster tax cuts for landlords, to be paid for by dropping a Working For Families tax cut and reversing anti-smoking measures which, if successful in reducing the number of people smoking, would have cost up to $1 billion a year in lost tobacco tax revenues; See Monday’s email
Public health experts accused the new Government with choosing to sacrifice thousands of (more often) Māori and Pacifika lives and impose an extra $5.3 billion in extra public health costs for the sake of faster tax cuts for landlords; See Monday’s email
Building consents kept falling and councils put on hold plans for new water and transport infrastructure that would underpin new house building because of the new Government’s plans to abandon Three Waters and review funding for Waka Kotahi and Kainga Ora; and, See Wednesday’s email
The Reserve Bank surprised markets and economists by warning it could raise interest rates again early next year because of higher housing costs from record-high migration and a lack of new homes, and the stimulatory effects of the new Government’s tax cuts. See Thursday’s email
What we talked about on ‘The Hoon’ on Thursday night
In this week’s podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers at 5pm on Thursday night.:
5.00 pm - 5.10 pm -
and Peter Bale opened the show with a discussion about the new Government and its plans;5.10 pm - 5.20 pm - Bernard, Peter and
talked about the COP conference just starting and the latest climate research; and,5.20 pm - 6:03 pm - Peter, Bernard,
and talked about the death of Henry Kissinger yesterday, the new Government’s plans and Winston Peters accusing journalists with taking bribes from the Public Interest Journalism Fund.
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.
Items mentioned on The Hoon
During the Hoon we discussed various articles on The Kākā and elsewhere including:
Other places I appeared this week
I talked to Kiwibank Chief Economist Jarrod Kerr for When The Facts Change via The Spinoff about the Reserve Bank’s hawkish decision this week and when interest rates might start falling.
We also produce this 5 in 5 with ANZ daily podcast and Substack for ANZ Institutional in Australia, which you can sign up to via Spotify and Apple and Youtube for free.
Cartoon of the week
Ka kite ano
Bernard
The Hoon around the week to Dec 1