The hoon for the week that was to March 25

This week’s UN IPCC report warned climate emissions will need to be cut by almost half by 2030, if warming is to be limited to 1.5°C. Bronwyn Hayward points out in The Hoon podcast how far behind NZ’s government and councils are now on climate action compared to the rest of the world. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The Kākā

TLDR: This week’s news in geopolitics and Aotearoa’s political economy covered on The Kākā included:

• The runs on Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic Bank on the west coast of the United States that forced the US Treasury, FDIC and Federal Reserve to intervene to promise full payouts to depositors, over and above the US$250,000 deposit guarantees legislated for, and lend tens of billions to banks to keep them liquid (Wednesday’s email and podcast);

• The orchestrated rescue and takeover of Credit Suisse last weekend by Swiss authorities working together in a frantic effort with UBS to stop the Swiss banking system from collapsing (Wednesday’s email and podcast);

• Rate hikes in the United States, Britain, Switzerland and Norway, but a softening of market interest rate expectations because of the banking crises (Wednesday’s email and podcast);

• Statistics showing little improvement in Aotearoa’s child poverty rates and a worsening of the stress on renters, even more so than the stress on mortgage payers (Friday’s email and podcast);

• A call from the Consumer Advocacy Council Chair Deborah Hart for an inquiry into bundling by gentailers of deals on broadband and gas, which she said may restrict competition by making it harder for customers to compare and switch providers (Thursday’s email and podcast).

• Reserve Bank (Te Matua Putea) Chief Economist Paul Conway’s fresh warning to firms and workers not to push for higher real wages and profits in anticipation of higher inflation (Friday’s email and podcast);

• Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown’s casting vote for Auckland Council to pull out of LGNZ (Friday’s email and podcast); and,

• TOP’s launch of a Teal Card and plan to stay out of ministerial roles and not agree to both supply and confidence for either of the main parties (Tuesday’s email and podcast). I also wrote about the Greens’ electoral strategy and performance in Monday’s email and podcast and talk about it with Green MP Julie-Anne Genter in this week’s bonus When The Facts Change podcast episode via The Spinoff.

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What we talked about on the ‘hoon’ this week

In this week’s podcast¹ of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers at 5pm on Friday night (which you can find up the top of this post) I talked with co-host

Peter Bale

and political science professors

Robert Patman

from the University of Otago and Bronwyn Hayward from the University of Canterbury about:

• Presidents Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin meeting in Moscow, along with the latest news and views of AUKUS’ military aspirations and Aotearoa’s adjacency to those;

• Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine and how close Xi actually is (or not) to Putin;

• this week’s UN IPCC report² warning climate emissions would need to be cut by almost half by 2030, if warming was to be limited to 1.5°C; and,

• this week’s review of the Emissions Trading Scheme announced by the Ministry for the Environment.

We also talked with Natalia Antelava, the Tblisi-based editor-in-chief and co-founder of Codastory about living in Georgia, a nation trying to exist under the shadow of Russia. She also produces the Undercurrents podcast for Audible here, which is about the struggle between tech, democracy, and dictatorship.

natalia antelava @antelava

And it’s live! Tech, Tyrants and Us, a @CodaStory podcast that will take you around the world as we explore relationship between tech & democracy. Masterfully produced by the amazing @Beckstatic with support of our brilliant partners at @audible_com audible.co.uk/pd?asin=B0BQ1C…

Other places I appeared this week

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 produced my weekly When the Facts Change podcast for The Spinoff on how the Government’s policy bonfire blew up the ETS, and there’s that bonus episode above with Julie-Anne Genter.

Scoops elsewhere this week

Farah @KiwiFarah

“documents, gathered over months by RNZ, show the government's claim that the average New Zealander has as much access to decision makers as those who pay for lobbying firms is untrue.”

rnz.co.nzHow well-connected lobbyists ask for - and receive - urgent meetings, sensitive information and action on law changes for their corporate c…‘Section 61 C needs to be deleted’: The former minister telling Beehive staff to change legislation for his clients.

Marc Daalder 😷 Wear a Mask @marcdaalder

NEW: After an anti-trans pressure campaign last year, the Ministry of Health scrubbed transgender health advice from its website. Internal correspondence now shows officials knew the advice was true but removed it "in the hopes it creates fewer queries".

newsroom.co.nzHealth advice scrubbed due to anti-trans pressureTransgender health advice on the Ministry of Health website was “no doubt true” but removed “in the hopes it creates fewer queries”, official correspondence reveals

David Williams @ddub_news

“It literally stunk and there was effluent smell and froth and scum in the water pumped in at this point ... Over the next three weeks we saw the black water slowly make its way upstream [and] with it a tide of dead birds, eels and carp.”

stuff.co.nzBlack, ‘stinking’ wastewater dumped near Waikato wetland - and it’s totally legalShocking photos show black, “stinking” wastewater discharged close to an important wetland where a disease outbreak has killed thousands of birds.

Chart of the week

Almost a quarter of NZ renters spend over 40% of income on rent

Stats NZ data

Quote of the week

‘I’m leaving the team because I’m more important than the rest of you’

“I’ve always felt that if you’re on your own, they (government) have to come and see us. They need us more than we need them.” Mayor Wayne Brown’s justification for voting this week to pull Auckland Council out of LGNZ.

Profundities, spookies, curiousities and feel-goods

Alex Armlovich 🏗️🌐🔰🚋 @aarmlovi

Basic US housing completion stats are just devastating to NIMBY talking points--and honestly, it surprised me too. America has never built so little housing per person since records began. We haven't yet surpassed historic lows of pre-2009 *recessions* fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgrap…

David Hood @Thoughtfulnz

Covid deaths vs Road toll

Longer reads and listens for the weekend

Here’s a few useful longer reads, scoops and podcasts for paying subscribers for the weekend.