The Weekly Hoon: Budget 2026, a climate scandal, Saudi Arabia & Iran & disinformation flooding NZ's political debates

The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night featured co-hosts Bernard Hickey & Peter Bale talking with regular guests Cathrine Dyer from Wellington and Robert Patman in Dunedin about geopolitics, the economy, climate change and politics.This edition also included discussions with Arab News Editor in Chief Faisal Abbas and disinformation researcher Sanjana Hattotuwa.This week:* Bernard and Peter began with a chat about the Government’s Budget delivered yesterday afternoon.* Bernard, Peter and Cathrine then talked about the Government’s failure to disclose lobbyist contact on behalf of Z Energy and Fonterra with the PM’s Office over a rewrite of climate laws that shut down a climate lawsuit against Z Energy, Fonterra and others. See the background on that here.* Then Bernard, Peter, Robert talked with Faisal Abbas about the Iran conflict.* Bernard and Peter finished with a discussion with Sanjana about disinformation flooding into New Zealand in election year, including his report this week on how it has spread and deepened since 2023. We also mentioned this Microsoft report from 2022 that showed on page 79 how Russian troll farms flooded 30% more anti-vaxx disinformation into New Zealand in late 2021 and early 2022 than pumped into Australia and the United States.The Hoon’s podcast version above was recorded on Thursday night during a live webinar for over 200 paying subscribers and was produced and edited by Simon Josey. The Hoon won the silver award for best current affairs podcast in last year’s New Zealand Podcast awards. (This is a sampler for all free subscribers and anyone else who stumbles on it. Thanks to the support of paying subscribers here, we’re able to spread my public interest journalism here about housing affordability, climate change and poverty reduction other public venues. Join the community supporting and contributing to this work with your ideas, feedback and comments, and by subscribing in full. Remember, all students and teachers who sign up for the free version with their .ac.nz and .school.nz email accounts are automatically upgraded to the paid version for free. Ngā mihi nui.Bernard This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thekaka.substack.com/subscribe