Here’s my curation of the day’s top news, analysis, commentary, charts and cartoons from around Aotearoa and elsewhere about our political economy on housing, climate and poverty. This is only published in full for paying subscribers.
Firstly and briefly, here’s my summary of this morning’s top news:
National MPs have said PM Christopher Luxon needed to apologise for his ‘parent-child’ comments about the relationship between the Government and businesses, saying1 they had hurt “our people” and “had not come out right.”
Business leaders at the event in Rotorua on Friday where Luxon made the comments said they had landed badly, with the Rotorua Business Chamber President Paul Ingram saying: “I don’t think he meant necessarily to lecture it, but that’s really how it landed with us. It’s a bit tough when you’re already doing the very best you can.”
The Government is also under pressure from bigger businesses, who yesterday called for the Government-controlled gentailers, Mercury, Meridian and Genesis, and the publicly-listed and fully privately-owned Contact, to be broken up into retailing and wholesale generation arms, and for the creation of Long Term Energy Supply Agreements (LTESAs).
The Auckland Business Chamber, the Northern Infrastructure Forum and a ‘host’ of unnamed independent electricity generators yesterday published their plan2 titled: Unleashing New Zealand Power: A two-step plan to fix the energy market and drive transformative economic growth.
Illustrating tensions around how to move the political economy on from being a housing-market-with-bits-tacked, Labour MP for Mt Albert Helen White contradicted her leader Chris Hipkins and Finance Spokeswoman Barbara Edmonds yesterday by saying3 she wanted house prices to come down.
Hipkins said he didn’t want house prices to explode and different MPs had different views, while Edmonds pointed to National Housing Minister Chris Bishop’s comments about wanting lower house prices, at the same time as Luxon saying he didn’t want house price falls.
Both Labour and National are both under internal and external pressure this morning to rule out working with NZ First and its leader Winston Peters after his racist comments in Parliament. Anneke Smith reports this morning for The Post-$4 that Labour MPs are discussing ruling out NZ First totally (even though Peters has himself ruled out working with Labour), with Hipkins also saying5 yesterday he would not have Peters as Foreign Minister again. This came as Finance Minister Nicola Willis suggested National couldn’t fire Peters because it would bring down the Government6.
White made the comments above about house prices after being asked about the effect on house prices of the Opportunity Party’s 1.75% tax on urban land values, given Opportunity Leader Quilae Wong is standing in White’s Mt Albert electorate. If the results of Roy Morgan’s poll7 released last night were replicated on election day, Wong would not need to win the electorate to get the party into Parliament.
Roy Morgan found support for Opportunity rose 1.5 percentage points to 8%, well clear of the 5% threshold needed to get in Parliament under MMP. The poll also found a 2% fall in support for NZ First to 8.5%, its lowest level this year in the Roy Morgan poll. National rose to 32% from 31% in June, while Labour was unchanged at 25.5%. ACT fell 1% to 8.5%. That represented a net fall of 2% for the coalition parties to 49%. The Greens were unchanged at 13.5%, while Te Pāti Māori fell 1% to 2%. If Opportunity joined the Opposition grouping, Parliament would be evenly split 49% to 49%.
A study8 done for the new Ministry of Cities, Environment, Regions and Transport has found that removing the viewshaft restrictions on building height limits around Auckland’s volcanic cones near the CBD could lower overall Auckland land values by a net $67 billion, with inner-city land values rising by $95.1 billion, while outer city values fell by $162.3 billion. See Chart of the Day below.
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