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:
National won last weekend’s election and has started talks to form a Government with both ACT and New Zealand First, although they’ll only start in earnest after the November 3 declaration of the final makeup of Parliament after the counting of special votes. National didn’t win quite enough seats on election night to govern comfortably alone with ACT so will have to so something with Winston Peters, even if it is peripheral, outside Cabinet and includes a few baubles such as the Foreign Ministry and a new version of the Provincial Growth Fund. Sunday’s email.
Rents are so stressful for working poor and beneficiaries that it is forcing 600,000 people to have to use food banks regularly, up more than third since Covid, the NZ Food Network said on Thursday. Yet there were 214,749 new temporary work visas issued in the 12 months to the end of September and our population grew 105,900 in the year to June, with most of those migrant arrivals trying to settle on arrival in Auckland, where rents rose 9.4% and only 18,003 building consents were issued last year, down 16% on a year ago. Friday’s email.
Agents and brokers reported rental property investors surged back into the market in the days since National’s election win, confident of more advantageous tax rules and hopeful interest rates won’t rise because of lower inflation and less Government borrowing. Wednesday’s email.
National’s appointment of a foreign minister is shaping up as a key decision in Government-forming negotiations, and not just as a way to get Winston Peters to agree to a confidence and supply deal. Our Five Eyes partners are uneasy about the relatively more pro-China views of National’s Foreign Affairs spokesman Gerry Brownlee and have preferred Peters in the past, given his track record of championing the ‘Pacific Pivot’ now seen as a key strategy in the contest between the United States and China. Tuesday’s email.
Electoral Commission figures show there were just over 1.060 million missing voters in the election out of a total eligible population of 3.871 million, with enrolment data and surveys showing most of that missing 27% of voters were young renters from Maori, Pasifika and recent young immigrant backgrounds. Monday’s email.
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 -
and Peter Bale opened the show with a discussion about the election and the Israel-Hamas war.5.05 pm - 5.20 pm - Bernard, Peter and
talked about a new paper on Greenland’s ice sheet melting, new bans on cruise ships in Europe, and how to measure methane’s impact on the climate.5.20 pm - 5.55 pm - Bernard, Peter,
and talked about the Israel-Hamas war, politics and benefits of localism in Government.
The Hoon’s podcast version above was produced by Simon Josey.
The articles and interviews we talked about on The Hoon included:
a new paper in Nature forecasting Greenland’s melting will accelerate abruptly if the average global temperature rises above pre-industrial level by as little as as 1.7 degrees to 2.3 degrees;
An interview on the Rest is Politics podcast between Rory Stewart and Israeli historian Yuval Noah Hariri about the war in Gaza and Israel; and,
Josie’s column in The Post-$$$ yesterday on the need for public sector transformation.
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.
Chart of the week
What happens when I move to a place…plus climate change
Other places we appeared this week
I interviewed Giacomo Caleffi from Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners for When The Facts Change via The Spinoff about its plans to build a 1GW windfarm offshore in South Taranaki with the NZ Superannuation Fund.
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
RIP Tony Husband
Ka kite
Bernard
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