Wednesday's Chorus: Performative power politics

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit thekaka.substack.comBriefly for all today in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, poverty and climate:* The Lead: The Government has this morning announced a series of measures to try to get the mostly state-owned gentailers to build more electricity generation and try to restrain double-digit power price inflation. * The Sidebar: But the moves fall far short of the transformational reforms called for by consumers, and small and large businesses alike. Instead, they largely repeat the performative and ineffective moves made under the 2017-2023 Labour-led Government, which included writing stern letters to industry players, carrying out reviews and setting up taskforces, and tweaking rules that embed the status quo. See more detail below.* Solution of the day: Last night the CTU proposed buying back the privately-owned 49% stakes in Meridian, Mercury and Genesis with those dividends, in the absence of a massive ramp up in using the super-profit cash to build new renewable electricity generation. * Number of the day: 18.9%. The vacancy rate for shops in Newmarket in the June quarter, up from 13% a year ago, Colliers reports* Chart of the day: ANZ’s Business Outlook survey for September showed confidence about the overall business outlook remains much stronger than expectations of firms’ own activity, which is still much stronger than experienced activity. Construction and retail confidence remains very weak, with growing concerns about non-wage inflation from rates, government fees and charges and electricity prices.* Deep-dive of the day: Kira Carrington has done an excellent job reporting on the housing crisis in Blenheim via RNZ here: ‘Spike in homelessness overwhelms region’s services’Subscribe in full as a paying subscriber for more detail and analysis below the paywall fold and in the full video and podcast above. Paying subscribers support my work being done in the public interest here and in my appearances on other media such as RNZ & 1News. Paying subscribers also get early and full access to our webinars, our chat room and can comment on articles. A performative embedding of monopoly rents