
The week that was to Nov 20
Including the weekly ‘hoon’ co-hosted by Bernard Hickey & Peter Bale with guests Josie Pagani & Robert Patman on National’s boot camp plan & Luxon’s polling plateau; Xi vs Biden & Trudeau
TLDR: This week in geo-politics, the global economy and Aotearoa’s political economy, we learned:
the Government’s RMA replacement will take 10 years and keep distracting us all from the magical thinking of the last 30 years that low taxes and investment co-exist with high population growth; Thursday’s Deep Dive
a new report showed the big electricity gentailers paid out $3.7b in excess dividendss in the last eight years, starving investment in renewable generation and delaying our emissions reduction; Tuesday’s Deep Dive
three opinion polls showed National’s lead over Labour narrowing and Christopher Luxon’s personal popularity continuing to plateau as Labour targets him personally;
TOP proposed an alternative to Three Waters for planning and funding water infrastructure that uses existing structures and avoids balance sheet separation and centralised co-governance; Friday’s Dawn Chorus and,
China distanced itself from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by signing up to a G20 communique denouncing an era of war and declaring the use of nuclear weapons inadmissible.

What was in this week’s Hoon
We talked with Dominion Post columnist Josie Pagani about polls showing Labour and the Greens reducing their deficit to National and ACT, along with the plateauing of Christopher Luxon’s personal popularity. We talked with University of Otago Foreign Relations Professor Robert Patman about the Russian-built missiles fired by Ukraine that strayed over the border into Poland, and President Xi Jinping’s hopeful appearance at the G20 and APEC summits. Our apologies, but the promoted appearance of Adam Jasser was a bit too ambitious. We hope to get him back another week.
Peter and I also talked about Elon Musk’s week of chaos at Twitter, the implosion of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX and look ahead to the final interest rate decision of the year by the Reserve Bank this coming Wednesday.
Some longer reads and listens for the weekend










Profundities, spookies, feel-goods and curiosities

Have a great Sunday
Mā te wā
Bernard
The week that was to Nov 20
Hate speech reforms drastically watered down
The Government has scrapped plans to ban violent threats against women and rainbow and disabled communities, Marc Daalder reports
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/hate-speech-reforms-drastically-watered-down
"
However, Allan said, the scope of the reforms is now severely curtailed. Only religion will be added to the list of protected grounds and no further changes will be made to hate speech law.
Last year's proposals would have banned threats of violence against many groups of people, like LGBT or disabled people. The 2017 case of homophobic threats by Auckland pastor Logan Robertson, in which he said he was "not against [gay people] getting married as long as a bullet goes through their head the moment they kiss", was cited as the sort of language that would be prohibited.
Under the changes revealed by Allan on Saturday, that statement would still be legal.
"
Marc Daalder Wear a Mask
@marcdaalder
https://twitter.com/marcdaalder/status/1593705843928596480
"The Government launched a review of hate speech laws in March 2019. More than three and a half years later, almost all the substantive stuff is now being punted to the Law Commission. Why bother with all that policy work in the meantime?? #nzpol"
My take on all of this...
Maybe the problem is calling the lies "hate speech" instead of declaring the act of lying about a class/group of people as defamation. Introduce a criminal defamation class action where the defamers will be put in front of a Judge.
https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1992/0105/latest/whole.html
All it needs is a robot skateboard.