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:
PM Christopher Luxon said the record-high net migration of the last year was “unsustainable” and he had asked Immigration Minister Erica Stanford to look at tightening settings, having argued during the election campaign for looser settings to boost the economy. Wednesday’s email
The new Government cancelled plans for two new ferries and terminals for the Interislander, rejecting a $1.5 billion funding request from Kiwirail and sending it back to the drawing board for a project that had doubled in cost to $3 billion. Thursday’s email.
GDP fell 0.3% in the September quarter, which was much weaker than economists and the Reserve Bank had expected, causing wholesale interest rates to fall sharply. Today’s Dawn Chorus.
Countries at COP28 agreed to try to reduce fossil fuel use, but failed to get fossil-fuel producing countries that dominated the conference to agree to phase out or phase down fossil fuel use, which needs to happen very quickly to avoid temperatures rising to dangerous levels of 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels. Yesterday’s Hoon.
The new Government pushed ahead with urgent legislation to repeal changes made by Labour Government to the Reserve Bank Act, to reform the RMA and to create Three Waters, but without fresh economic analysis of the wider impacts. It also refused to immediately release official analysis showing how repealing the ‘Ute tax’ would increase emissions and fuel import costs dramatically. Today’s Dawn Chorus.
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 no longer using X.5.10 pm - 5.20 pm - Bernard, Peter and
talked about the end result at COP 28 and the Climate Commission’s recommendations to the new Government; and,5.20 pm - 6:00 pm - Peter, Bernard,
and Josie Pagani talked about the new Government’s first couple of weeks, the events in Gaza and their key events of 2023.
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. We have a couple of special offers on at the moment.
Items mentioned on The Hoon
During the Hoon we discussed various articles on The Kākā above and Peter recommended an article by Masha Gessen in The New Yorker-$$$.
Other places I appeared this week
I talked to Kiwibank Economist Mary-Jo Vergara for When The Facts Change via The Spinoff about the economic effects of 2023’s record-high net migration, including on rents, inflation, interest rates and house prices.
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.
Chart of the week
Mortgage profit margins are up about 100 bps ($2-3b/yr) in 6 weeks
Cartoon of the week
Oil lobbyists and climate finance execs swamped COP 28 this week
Ka kite ano
Bernard
The Hoon around the week to Dec 15