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:
Labour presented a climate manifesto that aimed to claim the high ground on climate action vs National, but did so at the same time NZTA/Waka Kotahi cut $50 million from funding for cycleways from the Climate Emergency Response Fund. Friday’s email.
National and ACT unveiled policies to label and sanction beneficiaries, just as fresh research emerged showing the need for many, many more social houses to deal with a decades-long housing crisis. Wednesday’s email.
The RBNZ looks set to rain on National-ACT’s victory parade by hiking on November 29 to cool down a housing market threatening to surge again as soon as the victory is confirmed. Tuesday’s email.
National Leader Christopher Luxon said he would talk to NZ First Leader Winston Peters after the election if he needed to. We talked about that in last night’s Hoon.
Labour pledged to build 6,000 more state houses, while National said it would stop with the 3,000 currently being built by Kainga Ora. More than 40,000 are needed. 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 about5.05 pm - 5.20 pm - Bernard, Peter and
talked about an IEA report showing a 30% cut in fossil fuel use is needed in six years to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees.5.20 pm - 5.40 pm - Bernard and Peter and
talked about Ukraine’s latest strikes on Russia and the prospects for a summit between Xi Jinping and Joe Biden.5.40 - 6.00 pm - Then Josie Pagani joined the panel to talk about the election, politics and the return of Winston Peters.
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.
Chart of the week
Other places we appeared this week
I interviewed Alex Birch from XYSense on Wednesday for When The Facts Change via The Spinoff. We talked about how office life is changing after covid.
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.
Some fun things
Cartoon of the day
Ka kite
Bernard
The Hoon around the week to Sept 30