The Hoon

The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night featured co-hosts Bernard Hickey and Peter Bale talking about geopolitics, the economy, climate change and politics with special guests, including:* International affairs expert Dr Geoffrey Miller, the author of the Gulf States Insights substack, talking about the recent Mecca Agreement; and,* Andy Reisinger, an Associate Professor at Australian National University, and lead author of the mitigation chapter of a new UN Environment Programme (UNEP)report titled: Limiting Overshoot, which finds the climate is set to overshoot the 1.5°C of global warming the world agreed not to go over, and will need to cool it down ASAP.Regular guests Cathrine Dyer and Robert Patman took a break this week, but will be back next year.During the podcast, we pointed to Geoffrey’s most recent piece:Also, Peter referred to this New Yorker podcast during the discussion: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

The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night featured co-host Peter Bale talking with regular guests Cathrine Dyer and Robert Patman about geopolitics, the economy, climate change and politics. Bernard was taking a break.In this week’s edition:* Author and polymath Turi Munthe was on from Rome to talk about his new book: Why We Think What We Think: The Unexpected Origins of Our Deepest Beliefs. It will make you think. If you like the work of Yuval Noah Hariri you will love Turi. 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

The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night featured co-hosts Bernard Hickey and Peter Bale talking with regular guests Cathrine Dyer and Robert Patman about geopolitics, the economy, climate change and politics.In this week’s edition:* Bernard and Peter talked about developments in New Zealand’s political economy in the last week, including the winter flu crisis stress on an already-stressed hospital system, along with the deaths from cold of three homeless people;* Peter, Bernard and Catherine then talked about Cathrine’s article for The Conversation with Massey Uni’s Robert McLachlan that asked: Why is NZ spending far more on responding to climate disasters than on reducing future risk?. Cathrine talked about this paper on blame avoidance.* Peter, Bernard and Robert then talked about the latest US sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC) and New Zealand’s shameful silence on the issue, along with the latest SIS report on China’s espionage in New Zealand.* Peter mentioned this book by Sam Dalrymple: Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia.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

The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night featured co-hosts Bernard Hickey and Peter Bale talking with regular guests Cathrine Dyer and Robert Patman about geopolitics, the economy, climate change and politics.This edition also included discussions with special guests Jonathan Lyons, PhD on Iran and NZME’s Fran O’Sullivan.* Bernard and Peter talked about the developments in New Zealand’s political economy in the last week, including PM Christopher Luxon’s second win in a caucus confidence vote in four months.* Peter, Bernard and Catherine then talked about the Climate Commission’s latest report on where the Government was failing to achieve its legislated emissions reduction goals, and the idea of Jevons Paradox. Cathrine referred to this IMF paper on the issue. * Peter mentioned this article from the FT-$ (gift) article from Pilita Clark on ‘How to stop global warming.’* Peter, Bernard, Robert and Jonathan then talked about Iran’s apparent victory over the United States, which Jonathan will be writing about on his Substack Signal to Noise: History. Philosophy. Commentary. * Peter, Bernard and Fran then talked about the National Caucus’s leadership debate and the differences between Helen Clark, John Key and Christopher Luxon. They discussed Fran’s column in the NZ Herald-$ on how Clark handled Foreign Minister Winston Peters when they were in Government together.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

The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night featured co-hosts Bernard Hickey and Peter Bale talking with regular guests Cathrine Dyer and Robert Patman about geopolitics, the economy, climate change and politics.This edition also included discussions with special guest Don Christie, the MD of Catalyst IT, who talked about Catalyst’s manifesto for Election 2026, and the need for sovereignty around Aotearoa’s data and resilience around our data centres.* Bernard and Peter talked about the developments in New Zealand’s political economy in the last week, including PM Christopher Luxon’s surprise decision yesterday to commit National to holding a referendum on MMP, without talking to his coalition partners or his caucus about it, and the latest figures showing youth employment under-utilisation of 37%.* Peter, Bernard, Catherine and Don then talked about the implications of big data centres in New Zealand, and the need for local data sovereignty and resilience.* Peter mentioned articles from The Guardian and FT-$ (gift) as useful reads on the Ceuta migration issue.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

The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night featured co-hosts Bernard Hickey and Peter Bale talking with regular guest Cathrine Dyer about geopolitics, the economy, climate change and politics.This edition also included discussions with special guests:* Former PM Helen Clark on why PM Christopher Luxon should sack NZ First Leader and Foreign Minister Winston Peters over his ‘go home’ jibe in Parliament this week at Green MP Laurence Xu Nan.* Clark also described as humiliating New Zealand’s decision under Peters this week to join Belarus in abstaining on a vote to reappoint the UN’s Human Rights Commissioner, after the US pressured UN members to do so.* Janet H Anderson from the podcast Asymmetrical Haircuts, which covers international justice from The Hague. Janet, Helen and Peter discussed the UN vote and US pressure on the International Criminal Court.* Peter talked about the Helen Clark Foundation’s launch of a this book edited by Peter Davis: Facing Up To Our Future: Challenges and Choices for New Zealand: New Zealand’s traditional “she’ll be right” optimism is no longer adequate to the challenges facing the country. This major collection brings together 21 of New Zealand’s leading thinkers to examine the decades-long problems no single government can solve alone. * Bernard and Peter talked about local politics and the economy in the last 15 minutes of the show, including mentioning Opportunity Party Leader Qiulae Wong ’s appearance on The Hoon in November last year. She also did a mini-Hoon with Bernard last month when Opportunity got 6% in that month’s Roy Morgan poll.* Peter mentioned SurfDogChampions as this week’s skateboarding dog story.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. Regular guest Robert Patman will be back next week.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

The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night featured co-hosts Bernard Hickey and Peter Bale talking with regular guests Robert Patman & Cathrine Dyer about geopolitics, the economy, climate change and politics.This edition also included discussions with special guest:* Simplicity Chief Economist Shamubeel Eaqub on his third annual construction industry report for the New Zealand Chinese Building Industry Association (NZCBIA).This week:* Bernard and Peter talked about Peter moderating a panel for the Helen Clark Foundation’s launch of a this book edited by Peter Davis: Facing Up To Our Future: Challenges and Choices for New Zealand: New Zealand’s traditional “she’ll be right” optimism is no longer adequate to the challenges facing the country. This major collection brings together 21 of New Zealand’s leading thinkers to examine the decades-long problems no single government can solve alone. * Bernard mentioned this substack post by Dr Andrew Dickson on NZ’s Number 8 wire mentality: The Productivity Gap is a National Fantasy. The number 8 wire legend and the productivity lament are two sides of the same coin. Why New Zealand’s economic architecture is built on lack.* Bernard, Peter and Cathrine then talked the Climate Commission’s warning in its annual emissions report this week that the Government needed to double its emissions reductions to comply with the law.* Bernard recommended listeners sample the videos now uploaded on the website for the Reality of Everything conference that Cathrine helped organize.* Then Bernard and Peter talked with Robert about China, the international rules based order, the Houthis and Saudi Arabia.* At the end, Bernard and Peter talked with Shamubeel about the NZCBIA report, Shamubeel’s LinkedIn post on inflation, and his T-shirt advertising the NZ Kiwi Hatchery near Rotorua.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

The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night featured co-hosts Bernard Hickey and Peter Bale talking with regular guests Robert Patman & Cathrine Dyer about geopolitics, the economy, climate change and politics.This edition also included discussions with special guest:* Green List MP Francisco Hernandez, talking about the Government’s tabling of its Climate Adaptation Bill this week, which again delayed a decision on cost sharing between Government and Councils.This week:* Bernard and Peter talked about PM Christopher Luxon’s popularity. They referred to this interview with Christopher Luxon by Nic Fildes for FT-$ (gift): New Zealand PM warns against Ardern-era ‘sugar rush economics’* Bernard, Peter and Cathrine then talked about the global and local backlash against data centres and AI.* Then Bernard and Peter talked with Robert about America’s pushback against talk of a ‘Middle Powers’ strategy.* Bernard and Peter then talked with Francisco Hernandez about the Government’s non-decision this week on climate funding. 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

The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night featured co-hosts Bernard Hickey and Peter Bale talking with regular guests Robert Patman & Cathrine Dyer about geopolitics, the economy, climate change and politics.This edition also included discussions with special guest:* Green MP for Wellington Bays and Green Transport Spokesperson Julie Anne Genter, talking about the Government’s RONS U-turn yesterday.This week:* Bernard and Peter talked about America’s 250th anniversary. They referred to this FT-$ (gift) article by Simon Schama about the US Declaration of Independence.* Bernard, Peter and Cathrine then talked about Climate Minister Simon Watts’ letter to mayors saying they shouldn’t use ‘high impact emissions scenarios’ in their investment planning.* Then Bernard and Peter talked with Robert about China’s missile test in the Pacific.* Bernard and Peter then talked with Julie Anne Genter about the Government’s RONS U-turn yesterday.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. Peter Bale will be back next week.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

The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night featured co-hosts Bernard Hickey and Peter Bale talking with regular guests Robert Patman & Cathrine Dyer about geopolitics, the economy, climate change and politics.This edition also included discussions with special guest:* Author and journalist Rebecca Macfie about the gutting of safety reforms put in place after the Pike River disaster. Rebecca wrote Tragedy at Pike River: How and why 29 men diedThis week:* Bernard and Peter talked about the climate in Europe, social housing policy in New Zealand and the political news of the week locally.* Bernard, Peter and Cathrine then talked about the Reality of Everything symposium Cathrine helped organise last week and the excess deaths caused by Europe’s heat domes last month, which were worsened by climate change.* Then Bernard and Peter talked with Robert about the 60th Otago Foreign Policy school in Dunedin last weekend, which Robert helped organize and Peter attended and spoke at. Peter’s reports from the conference are linked to below.* Bernard and Peter then talked with Rebecca about the health and safety law rewrite.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. Peter Bale will be back next week.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

The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night featured co-hosts Bernard Hickey and Peter Bale talking with regular guests Cathrine Dyer from Wellington and Robert Patman from Dunedin about geopolitics, the economy, climate change and politics.This edition also included discussions with special guests:* Transport analyst Connor Sharp talking about Greater Auckland’s call for the Te Hana to Warkworth section of the Northland RONS to be rescoped; and,* Public Theologian and Civic Technologist Brittany C Farbo on the role of religion in the Ukraine War and Russia’s attacks on churches in Ukraine.This week:* Bernard, Peter and Cathrine talked about Wellington’s Golden Mile decision and South Dunedin’s attempts to deal with climate retreat.* Then Bernard and Peter talked with Robert about the Iran conflict MOU.* Bernard and Peter then talked with Britt about Ukraine.* They finished with a chat with Connor about the RONS and transport policy.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. Peter Bale will be back next week.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

I spoke with Victoria Crockford from the Coalition to End Women’s Homelessness this evening. She detailed the findings of the Coalition’s latest report, ‘Children and Young People Experiencing Homelessness,’ published today, including:* there are 33,000 children and young people experiencing homelessness and they face significantly higher rates of harm across multiple areas of their lives;* Children and young people experiencing homelessness are nearly three times more likely to have experienced abuse;* Young people experiencing homelessness are more likely to disengage from education and interact with the justice system;* Children under five experiencing homelessness are two times more likely to never have been enrolled with a Primary Health Organisation; * Children under five experiencing homelessness are 1.6 times more likely to never have been enrolled in early childhood education;* Children under five experiencing homelessness are significantly more likely to experience preventable hospitalisations, including respiratory illness and vaccine preventable disease; and,* Māori and Pacific children continue to be disproportionately impacted by homelessness and most of the tamariki are located in Auckland, Northland, or Gisborne.“What this research tells us about is who we are as a society, and I don’t think you can even read the headline and believe that enough is being done.” Victoria Crockford, co-lead of Coalition to End Women’s Homelessness.Thank you Kaimataara, Andrew Riddell, Max Du Frene, Alex Clarkson, and many others for tuning into my live video with VictoriaC! Join me for my next live video in the app. 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

The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night featured co-hosts Bernard Hickey 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 Louisa Wall, a former Labour MP and member of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China. This week:* Bernard and Cathrine talked about Guyon Espiner’s interview on RNZ with Johan Rockstrom on economic growth’s ‘saturation point’ and this week’s UN report on the footprint of data centres.* Then Bernard talked with Robert and Louisa Wall about Donald Trump’s latest moves to add tariffs to countries not complying with US standards for imports made with forced labour, and China’s sanctions on four MPs who visited Taiwan.* Bernard referred to this FT-$ article on China’s repression of people in its western provinces. * Bernard finished by mentioning this Reuters article about the discovery of the New World screw worm in Texas. 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. Peter Bale will be back next week.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

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

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 historian and author Jonathan Lyons, PhD on the conflict with Iran and Tex Edwards from Monopoly Watch NZ about bank competition.This week:* Bernard and Peter began with a chat the Government’s social housing spending cuts and shuffles announced yesterday, along with its pre-Budget announcement about cutting 8,700 jobs.* Bernard, Peter and Cathrine then talked about Luke Kemp’s interview with Jack Tame on Q+A last weekend about ‘limitarianism.’* Then Bernard, Peter, Robert talked about the latest in the Middle East and China with Jonathan.* Then Bernard and Peter finished with a discussion with Tex about bank competition. They mentioned Tex’s scheduled appearance at this Auckland University debate this coming Wednesday evening: Rebalancing Markets: Competition, power, and a fair economy.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

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 includes a discussion with former Productivity Commission Chair and now independent economist Ganesh R Ahirao about his substack post referring to PM Christopher Luxon’s speech on Wednesday, which included comments on migration and previewed a $300 million cut in Budget 2026’s operating allowance. This week:* Bernard and Peter began with a chat about Christopher Luxon’s speech on migration and the Budget.* Bernard, Peter and Cathrine then talked about the Government’s move to legislate to override civil legal action against Fonterra and others over the climate actions, the Government’s recognition of voluntary nature credits markets, and its proposal to reform the Conservation Estate. Cathrine referred to these comment pieces by Marie Doole via Linked here and here.* Then Bernard, Peter Robert talked about the latest in the Middle East, China and the global rules based order. Bernard referred to an analysis about Donald Trump’s late-night social media habits.* Then Bernard and Peter finished with a discussion with Ganesh about migration and productivity.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

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 includes a discussion with special guest Iain Walker, who is an expert in deliberative democracy and Executive Director of the newDemocracy Foundation (nDF) in Australia. He is visiting Wellington, Queenstown and Auckland next week for public meetings on deliberative democracy. Here’s the details.This week:* Bernard and Peter began with a chat about the global situation and how the Reserve Bank and the Government were sleepwalking into tightening fiscal and monetary policy into the face of a global supply shock.* Bernard, Peter and Cathrine then talked about yesterday’s report from the Climate Commission about priorities for climate action.* Then Robert talked about the latest in the Middle East, China and New Zealand’s food-for-fuel deal with Singapore.* Then Bernard and Peter finished with a discussion with Iain about deliberative democracy.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

The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night featured co-hosts Bernard Hickey & Peter Bale in Auckland talking with regular guests Cathrine Dyer from Wellington and Robert Patman in Dunedin about geopolitics, the economy, climate change and politics.This edition also includes a discussion with special guest Paul Spoonley about his report this week with Peter Gluckman and Georgia Lala for Koi Tū (Centre for Informed Futures) titled: People, Place & Prosperity - The case for a population strategy.This week:* Bernard and Peter began with a chat about the conflict in the Middle East and the fuel crisis, along with Christopher Luxon’s clash this week with Winston Peters over Luxon’s initial plan to express New Zealand’s support for the US attack on Iran.* Bernard, Peter and Cathrine then talked about this week’s warning from Earth Sciences NZ about a formidable El Niño later this year and this report showing Europe’s climate warming twice as fast as the rest of the world.* Then Bernard finished with a discussion with Paul about population strategy.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

The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night featured co-hosts Bernard Hickey & Peter Bale talking with regular guest Cathrine Dyer about geopolitics, the economy, climate change and politics.This edition also includes discussions with with special guest Geoffrey Miller, a strategic analyst with a PHD in New Zealand’s relations with the Middle East.This week:* Bernard and Peter began with a chat about the conflict in the Middle East and the fuel crisis. They also talked about Bernard being in Wellington for the Kia Tika, Kia Pono—For A Just Society conference organised by Vic Uni’s Stout Research Centre for New Zealand Studies.* Bernard, Peter and Cathrine then talked about research via James Hansen about a Super Duper El Niño, and research on an increased risk the AMOC will collapse early.* Bernard, Peter, Robert and Geoffrey talked about events in the Middle East.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. Also, here’s a couple of special offers: $3/month or $30/year for under 30s & $6.50/month or $65/year for over 65s who rent.)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

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

The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night featured co-hosts Bernard Hickey & Peter Bale talking with regular guest Cathrine Dyer about geopolitics, the economy, climate change and politics here, along with special guests Edward Miller and Max Rashbrooke, who are researchers and commentators.This week:* Bernard and Peter began with a chat about electric cars, a surfeit of news and Donald Trump’s speech yesterday. Peter recommended the last two episodes of the podcast Past, Present and Future . Bernard and Peter referred to the case that referred to NZME’s largest shareholder, Jim Grenon, and this article in Newsroom from Tim Murphy: Thumbs down for NZME’s Grenon in high-stakes court fight over tax* Bernard, Peter and Cathrine then talked about how the responses to the fuel crisis were bedding in fossil fuel dependency.* Bernard, Peter and Robert then talked about Trump’s speech and the events in Iran and the Middle East.* Edward Miller then joined the show to talk about his Op-Ed in The Post-$ this week titled: ‘We’ve been left dangerously exposed by the failure to build a public diesel reserve’. He also recently wrote this on his substack: As oil prices surge, how realistic is a worst-case inflation scenario of 3.7%?* Max Rashbrooke from The IDEA Charitable Trust then joined to talk about his columns: How to protect the poorest during a fuel crisis and The government’s fuel crisis package looks weaker with each passing dayThe 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. Also, here’s a couple of special offers: $3/month or $30/year for under 30s & $6.50/month or $65/year for over 65s who rent.)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

I recently hosted a ‘Mini-Hoon’ on Substack Live previewing The Reality of Everything symposium to be held at Victoria University of Wellington on June 26, which will examine the interconnected crises of climate change, energy, water & food constraints, economic instability & public health.I was joined by substacker Catherine Knight and academic Mike Joy to talk about the symposium, which Catherine is helping organise and Mike is speaking at.We started by talking about the need for the Symposium and referring to the National Emergency Briefing held in the UK last year, including an address on food security by Paul Behrens. The video of his address is below via Youtube.Here’s recent posts on substack by Mike Joy and Catherine Knight on these topics.Here’s Catherine’s substack post announcing the conference.Thank you Lou Nash, Pauline Arnold, Terry A, Greg Nalder, and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. 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

The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night featured co-hosts Bernard Hickey & Peter Bale talking with regular guest Cathrine Dyer about geopolitics, the economy, climate change and politics here, along with special guest Roger Dennis, an independent strategist.This week:* Bernard and Peter began with a chat about the rise of reactionary and nationalist political parties globally, including in New Zealand.* Bernard and Cathrine talked about the latest WMO report on the climate in 2025 and why New Zealand’s oil consumption rose to a five-year high last year.* Bernard, Peter and Robert talked about the latest news in the Iran conflict.* Bernard, Peter and Roger talked about the preparedness of New Zealand organizations for such a crisis.* Peter referred to this video by LedbyDonkeys as the skateboarding dog.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. Also, here’s a couple of special offers: $3/month or $30/year for under 30s & $6.50/month or $65/year for over 65s who rent.)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

The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night featured co-hosts Bernard Hickey & Peter Bale talking with regular guest Cathrine Dyer about geopolitics, the economy, climate change and politics here, along with special guest Dileepa Fonseka , who is a columnist and reporter for BusinessDesk-$.This week:* Bernard and Peter began with a chat about the Iran war, the fuel crisis and Winston Peters’ move to block a ‘globalist’ WHO measure.* Bernard and Peter then spoke with Cathrine about increased demand for EVs and whether the fuel crisis represented a tipping point for climate action.* Then Bernard, Peter and Dileepa talked about the fuel crisis.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. Also, here’s a couple of special offers: $3/month or $30/year for under 30s & $6.50/month or $65/year for over 65s who rent.)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

Last week I hosted a ‘Hoon’ on Substack Live previewing The Reality of Everything symposium to be held at Victoria University of Wellington on June 26, which will examine the interconnected crises of climate change, energy, water & food constraints, economic instability & public health.I was joined by regular Hoon guest Cathrine Dyer, conference speaker and Vic Uni Professor of Climate Change James Renwick and climate scientist Andy Reisinger, speaking independently and not in his role as a Climate Change Commissioner.We started by talking about the need for the Symposium and referring to the National Emergency Briefing held in the UK last year, including an address by Zennström Professor of Climate and Energy at Uppsala University and Chair of Energy and Climate Change at the University of Manchester, Professor Kevin Anderson. The video of his address is below via Youtube.We talked about the intersection of climate change with other crises, the realities of climate science, the urgency of action, and the systemic changes needed to address the climate crisis.Here’s Catherine’s substack post announcing the conference.And a follow-up post with the latest details.Here’s the chapters in the video above:00:00 Introduction to Climate Change and the Reality of Everything Conference01:25 Overview of the Reality of Everything Conference02:17 Insights from the UK National Emergency Briefing04:49 The Current State of Global Warming07:31 The Impacts of Climate Change and Tipping Points10:58 Radical Transformations Required for a Sustainable Future14:12 The Reality of Climate Change and Public Awareness16:57 The Necessity of Rapid Change19:33 The Consequences of Inaction22:18 Engaging Politicians and the Public24:44 The Role of Corporations and Governance27:15 Exploring Solutions at the ConferenceThank you Susan St John, Mike Joy, Paul Singh, Melanie, Brian Rathbone, and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. 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

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 and Robert Patman about geopolitics, the economy, climate change and politics here, along with special guest Helen Clark.This week:* Bernard and Peter began with a chat about the Iran war, New Zealand’s looming fuel supply issues and Marsden Point.* Bernard then spoke with Cathrine about new research confirming an acceleration of climate change, about research showing a rise in carbon dioxide in bloodstreams, and the links between the Middle East conflicts and climate change.* Then Bernard, Peter, Robert and Helen talked about the current mess in the Middle East, New Zealand’s weak response, our health system and an upcoming play about Helen Clark called ‘Helen Clark in Six Outfits’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. Also, here’s a couple of special offers: $3/month or $30/year for under 30s & $6.50/month or $65/year for over 65s who rent.)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

I spoke with Green Co-Leader Chloe Swarbrick last night in a Substack Live Video for over 150 subscribers about the urgent need to decarbonise & provide housing, along with challenging the bipartisan assumptions about the size of Government and Government debt to GDP — the ‘30-30’ rule. We also talked about migration policy and population growth.The full interview is above for all.Chapters00:00 Introduction and Context Setting07:22 Fuel Crisis and Government Response10:43 Housing Crisis and Emergency Solutions13:20 Economic Policy and the 30-30 Rule19:19 Debt Management and Economic Stability24:15 Electrifying the Economy and Climate Change27:28 Population Growth and Migration PolicyCheersBernard 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

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 and Robert Patman about geopolitics, the economy, climate change and politics here, along with special guest historian and author Jonathan Lyons.This week:* Bernard and Peter began with a discussion about deaths of a record 129 journalists reported in 2025 by the Committee to Protect Journalists, mostly in Gaza, and the risks of it worsening in an extended war in the Middle East.* Bernard and Peter talked about New Zealand’s lack of resilience to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz for both diesel and fertiliser.* Bernard, Peter and Cathrine talked about the impending dropping of clean car standards and the connections between war and climate change.* Bernard, Peter, Robert and Jonathan talked about the implications from the widening war in the Middle East, including Israel’s role and Iran’s history.Jonathan has written these books on Iran: The House of Wisdom: How the Arabs Transformed Western Civilization, and, Islam Through Western Eyes: From the Crusades to the War on Terrorism.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. Also, here’s a couple of special offers: $3/month or $30/year for under 30s & $6.50/month or $65/year for over 65s who rent.)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

This week I hosted a ‘Hoon’ on Substack Live previewing The Reality of Everything symposium to be held at Victoria University of Wellington on June 26, which will examine the interconnected crises of climate change, energy, water & food constraints, economic instability & public health.I was joined by regular Hoon guest Cathrine Dyer, substacker and symposium facilitator Catherine Knight, conference speaker and epidemiologist Professor Alistair Woodward from the University of Auckland, and fellow public health specialist Associate Professor Caroline Shaw from the University of Otago.We started by talking about the need for the Symposium and referring to the National Emergency Briefing held in the UK last year, including an address by Professor Hugh Montgomery, a Professor of Intensive Care Medicine at University College London. The video of his address is below via Youtube.We talked about the intersection of public health and climate change, emphasizing the urgent need for a comprehensive approach to public health in the face of climate, resource and economic crises. We talked about tobacco control as a precedent for health policy, the social determinants of health, and the benefits of e-bikes. The conversation concludes with recommendations for policymakers to prioritize health and well-being in climate action.Here’s Catherine’s substack post announcing the conference.And a follow-up post with the latest details.Here’s the chapters in the video above:00:00 Introduction to the Reality of Everything Symposium02:43 Understanding the Interconnected Crises05:36 Climate Change and Health Risks07:18 Tobacco Control as a Model for Climate Action11:41 Social Determinants of Health and Climate Change15:29 Transport, Health, and Climate Change Solutions18:10 Rethinking Emergencies and Public Health19:05 Transport Policies and Health Implications21:20 Access Over Infrastructure: A New Perspective22:19 The Hidden Health Costs of Transport24:23 E-Bikes: A Healthier Alternative25:34 Policy Solutions for Health and Climate Change29:18 Public Health as Climate Action31:48The Economic Case for Climate ActionThank you Susan St John, Mike Joy, Paul Singh, Melanie, Brian Rathbone, and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. 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

This week a speculative post on Substack by Citrini about ever-faster AI tools creating a self-reinforcing doom loop of fewer jobs & lower wages for humans -- while AI owners win big -- shook global stocks. A link to the post is below.So I decided to have a Substack Live with Ben Reid, who writes about tech and AI for Memia. The resulting chat is above.Thank you James Wilkes, Nicola Francis, Summerhaze, David, Elaine, and many others for tuning into my live video with Ben Reid! Join me for my next live video in the app. 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

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 and Elaine Monaghan about geopolitics, the economy, climate change and politics here, along with special guest Associate Professor Polly Atatoa Carr from Waikato University’s Te Ngira Institute for Population Research.This week:* Bernard and Peter debated the Clerk of Parliament deciding to stop using X.* Bernard and Cathrine talked about a paper showing climate policy inconsistency depresses economic growth and employment, along with another paper showing the social cost of carbon at over US$1,000/tonne, and a survey for The Post-$ showing voters here want flood protection projects, rather than motorways.* Peter and Elaine talked about covering autocracies in Eastern Europe and Donald Trump’s State of the Union address.* Bernard, Peter and Polly talked about how the Government’s ‘move-on’ orders are likely to affect young homeless people, and why ramping up Housing First by even more would be a better solution. 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. Also, here’s a couple of special offers: $3/month or $30/year for under 30s & $6.50/month or $65/year for over 65s who rent.)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

Independent economist David Skilling gave a stark public presentation to Treasury officials and others yesterday that painted a brutal picture of New Zealand’s labour productivity and real wage catastrophe since 2010, pointing out our economy remained stuck in a low-investment rut with weakening trade connections.Skilling’s presentation in video form below is a must-watch and should be seen as a landmark moment ‘calling b******t’ on at least three decades of economic reforms focused on squeezing down the size of Government and keeping capital gains tax free at all costs.I spoke with David in a Substack Live this morning, referencing his presentation below.Thank you Ant O'Brien, Michael Sharpe, Steve Glicken, MD, James Wilkes, John Smart, and many others for tuning into my live video with David Skilling! Join me for my next live video in the app. 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

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 Robert Patman and Cathrine Dyer about geopolitics, the economy, climate change and politics here, along with special guests Simplicity Chief Economist Shamubeel Eaqub and Coalition for More Homes Spokesman Scott Caldwell.This week:* Bernard, Peter and Cathrine talked about the week’s news in climate change, including criticism of the Government’s climate non-action by outgoing Tower Insurance Chair Michael Stiassny, Marc Daalder’s piece for Newsroom on climate preparedness, the US move to wipe out a climate change finding and remove all regulation of emissions, and the impending shutdown of the Ministry of the Environment here.* Bernard, Peter and Robert talked about Donald Trump’s ‘coercive’ approach to diplomacy with Iran, and the risk of imminent US strikes on Iran, which would trigger damaging Iranian counter-attacks on Israel.* Bernard, Peter, Shamubeel and Scott talked about Chris Bishop’s watering down yesterday of housing intensification plans in Auckland and the Infrastructure Commission’s final 30-year plan presented earlier this week.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. Also, here’s a couple of special offers: $3/month or $30/year for under 30s & $6.50/month or $65/year for over 65s who rent.)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

The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night featured co-hosts Bernard Hickey & Peter Bale talking with New Zealand journalist Andrew Gunn in Kiev and Rewiring Aotearoa CEO Mike Casey in central Otago.We talked about:* Bernard’s time at the NZ Association of Economists’ forum at the University of Waikato on Thursday and Friday;* Nicola Willis’ announcement of a new inquiry into the RBNZ’s actions over Covid;* The Government’s announcement of a levy on all electricity consumers to pay for LNG import infrastructure;* Whether solar panels and batteries would do a better job than LNG.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. Also, here’s a couple of special offers: $3/month or $30/year for under 30s & $6.50/month or $65/year for over 65s who rent.)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

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 and Robert Patman, along with special guest David Farrar, talking about his Op-Ed in the The Post-$ arguing it’s time New Zealand became the seventh state of Australia.We talked about:* The water treatment plant problems in Christchurch and Wellington;* The gutting of the Washington Post’s newsroom;* The effects of climate change on biodiversity, including the deaths of dugongs in Thailand, the deaths of bats in Western Australia, the freezing of iguanas in Florida;* Insurance retreat in New Zealand; and,* Rare earth minerals and a possible deal between New Zealand and the US;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. Also, here’s a couple of special offers: $3/month or $30/year for under 30s & $6.50/month or $65/year for over 65s who rent.)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

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 and Robert Patman, along with special guest historian and author Jonathan Lyons.We talked about:* Likely issues in Election 2026 due on November 7, including anti-migration comments from Winston Peters and his comments backing Donald Trump on withdrawing from the World Health Organisation;* The dramas this week in Global Financial Markets around the reserve currency status of the US dollar and another stalling in the New Zealand economy;* The fallout from this month’s extraordinary weather events made worse by unaddressed climate change, and some solutions, including this EECA report on shifting power demand off-peak and this Manu Caddie post;* Donald Trump’s latest threats to attack Iran, along with the history of revolutions in Iran and the situation there now, including Jonathan and Robert. Jonathan has written these books on Iran: The House of Wisdom: How the Arabs Transformed Western Civilization, and, Islam Through Western Eyes: From the Crusades to the War on Terrorism.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. Also, here’s a couple of special offers: $3/month or $30/year for under 30s & $6.50/month or $65/year for over 65s who rent.)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

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 and Robert Patman, along with special guests Auckland University Emeritus Professor Jane Kelsey and intensive care specialist Dr David Galler.We talked about:* Likely issues in Election 2026 due on November 7, including anti-migration comments from Shane Jones in the wake of protests against rockpool harvesting (RNZ) and the economy’s struggle to generate growth most can feel;* This week’s extraordinary weather events made worse by unaddressed climate change, including this new UK paper on the environment and national security and the measures that should be taken to make Aotearoa more resilient;* Trump’s latest rupturing of the global world order, including Mark Carney’s speech at Davos and Donald Trump’s latest threats to invade Greenland;* How New Zealand adapts to the law of the jungle; and,* What’s happening in our health system, and how to improve it, including discussions about this Andrea Black paper, this Deloitte paper and the launch this week of Kaitiaki Hauora, which is a national coalition of workers, iwi, union, and advocacy groups wanting to strengthen public health that includes David Galler.Jane Kelsey has written these pieces for The Conversation on geopolitics so far this year:* Trump is threatening more tariffs over access to critical minerals – will NZ be targeted?* The World Trade Organization is on life support. Will Trump’s new rules finish it off?Robert Patman has written this piece for The Conversation this year: * As Trump rewrites the rules in Venezuela, NZ faces a foreign policy reckoningThe 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. Also, here’s a couple of special offers: $3/month or $30/year for under 30s & $6.50/month or $65/year for over 65s who rent.)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

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 and Robert Patman.We talked about:* US President Donald Trump’s attack on the US Federal Reserve’s independence and why it matters to us;* RBNZ Governor Anna Breman’s defence of the Fed’s independence;* NZ First Leader and Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ criticism of Breman, despite his votes in favour of central bank independence over the years;* How Trump’s strike on Venezuela is upending ever more global norms;* record-high sea temperatures and how climate change is already a major part of the affordability story; and,* a rocky election year ahead of misinformation in the absence of 3News, Sunday, Fair Go and a larger number of climate journalists.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. Also, here’s a couple of special offers: $3/month or $30/year for under 30s & $6.50/month or $65/year for over 65s who rent.)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

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 and Robert Patman.Our special guests this week were Philippa Yasbek, who heads Gun Control NZ and Doyen: NZ Jews Against Occupation, and Lee Feinstein, former US ambassador to Warsaw and senior diplomat under Democratic administrations, Dean of the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies at Indiana University Bloomington, long-serving board member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.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. Also, here’s a couple of special offers: $3/month or $30/year for under 30s & $6.50/month or $65/year for over 65s who rent.)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

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 and Robert Patman and special guest Sanjana Hottotuwa about the importance and meaning of Donald Trump’s new US National Security Strategy document for Aotearoa and the world.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. Also, here’s a couple of special offers: $3/month or $30/year for under 30s & $6.50/month or $65/year for over 65s who rent.)Ngā mihi nui.BernardPS: Here’s a cookie recipe Peter recommends. Apropos of some good news. 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

The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night featured Bernard Hickey talking with regular guest Cathrine Dyer and special guest Lawyers for Climate Change Executive Director Jessica Palairet about this weeks news on climate change. Bernard also talked with tax policy expert and accountant Terry Baucher about the IRD’s announcement yesterday it wants to tax company loans to shareholders as dividends if they’re not repaid within a year. As of March 31, 2024, 119,000 companies are owed $28 billion by 165,000 shareholders. Terry has a podcast on Interest.co.nz.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. Also, here’s a couple of special offers: $3/month or $30/year for under 30s & $6.50/month or $65/year for over 65s who rent.)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

The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night featured co-hosts Bernard Hickey and Peter Bale talking with regular guests Cathrine Dyer and Robert Patman and a special guest about the economy, politics, geopolitics and climate change.This week’s special guest was new leader of The Opportunity Party, Quilae Wong.This week:* Bernard and Peter talked with Quilae ‘Q’ Wong about The Opportunity Party’s name change, her background, her ambitions, the party’s land tax policy, the ‘Abundance’ agenda and the issue of wasted votes.* Bernard and Peter talked with Robert about Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin’s latest attempt to railroad Ukraine into a capitulation, along with Europe’s reaction.* Bernard and Peter talked with Cathrine about New Zealand giving up on phasing out fossil fuels (Marc Daalder’s piece in Newsroom), the abandonment of a big carbon capture scheme ( Kate Newton’s piece for RNZ), and Kirsty Johnston’s deep-dive for RNZ about the oil and gas industry capturing the Government’s climate policies.* Bernard talked about the RBNZ’s rate cut and the economy’s outlook, along with the tragic loss of the first contributory pension scheme in 1975.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. Also, here’s a couple of special offers: $3/month or $30/year for under 30s & $6.50/month or $65/year for over 65s who rent.)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

The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night featured co-hosts Bernard Hickey and Peter Bale talking with regular guests Cathrine Dyer and Robert Patman and a special guest about the economy, politics, geopolitics and climate change.This week’s special guest was Drive Electric Chair Kirsten Corson.This week:* Bernard and Peter talked about Peter’s work on a CEO profile special series of articles for BusinessDesk-$, including that Brian Roche’s favourite book was by Jo Nesbo.* Bernard, Peter and Cathrine talked about the Government’s decision this week to slash penalties for importing high emissions vehicles to save buyers of double-cab utes hundreds of dollars.* Peter and Robert talked about Donald Trump’s attacks on the rules of international law, referring to this article by Philippe Sands in The Guardian. They also talked about the latest secret peace deal for Ukraine agreed between the United States and Russia, but which didn’t include Ukraine or Europe.* Bernard and Kirsten talked about the state of climate policy in the wake of the shredding of the clean car discount scheme.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. Also, here’s a couple of special offers: $3/month or $30/year for under 30s & $6.50/month or $65/year for over 65s who rent.)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

The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night featured co-hosts Bernard Hickey and Peter Bale talking with regular guest Cathrine Dyer, and a special guest about the economy, politics, geopolitics and climate change.This week’s special guest was The IDEA Charitable Trust’s Max Rashbrooke Our topics this week were:* Bernard and Peter talked about the BBC’s crisis.* Bernard, Peter & Cathrine talked about the COP30 conference and Cathrine’s article on it for The Conversation. * Bernard, Peter and Max talked about IDEA’s proposal for a Kids Kiwisaver.* Bernard, Peter and Max talked about Max’s column for The Spinoff this week on how the left’s arguments against the Government’s debt aversion aren’t working, and what ‘jujitsu’ tactic might work better.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 this 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. Also, here’s a couple of special offers: $3/month or $30/year for under 30s & $6.50/month or $65/year for over 65s who rent.)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

The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night featured co-hosts Bernard Hickey and Peter Bale talking with regular guests Robert Patman and Cathrine Dyer, and a special guest about the economy, politics, geopolitics, climate change, New York’s new mayor Zohran Mamdani, the gutting of Aotearoa’s Zero Carbon Act this week and revelations the Government is ‘move-on order’ legislation to allow Police to move homeless people out of CBDs for a day.This week’s special guest was Auckland City Missioner Helen Robinson.Our topics this week were:* Bernard, Peter & Robert talked about the election of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and what it means politically inside, and potentially outside, the United States. * Bernard and Peter talked about this week’s climate change policy changes with Cathrine.* Peter and Robert talked about the latest crisis in Sudan.* Bernard, Peter and Helen talked about this week’s ‘move-on order’ news around homelessness in our CBDs.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 this 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. Also, here’s a couple of special offers: $3/month or $30/year for under 30s & $6.50/month or $65/year for over 65s who rent.)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

I spoke with Simplicity Co-Founder Sam Stubbs about plans announced this morning to launch InfraKiwi, an NZX-listed vehicle funded from KiwiSaver and borrowing to buy new and existing infrastructure such as water companies, lines companies, airports, ports, hospitals, roads, public transport operators and schools from the Government and councils.Stubbs sees an oppotunity to use upwards of $295 billion of KiwiSaver funds available over the next 25 years to kick-start a ramping up of investment in building, rebuilding and properly maintaining the infrastructure needed for Aotearoa to grow.The problem we’re trying to solve is how do we get all this KiwiSaver money into the infrastructure that we use and operate and get good risk-adjusted returns for investors, for KiwiSaver members, and the public generally. And how do you generate also economic growth and jobs and get the infrastructure built that we need? Simplicity Co-Founder Sam Stubbs.InfraKiwi would be seeded by an investment from Simplicity, but open through the NZX for all New Zealand-based investors and funds to invest in a company buying and running infrastructure assets the Government and councils chose not to own or invest in over the long run. It would be able to borrow on its own behalf to buy existing assets, often shortly after they were built, and then own them over the long-run for stable dividends to investors.In my view, it creates a pathway for the Government and Councils to solve the problem they currently believe they have, which is:* they need to borrow and invest to build and properly run infrastructure to cater for still-fast population growth; but,* they don’t want to take the debt onto the Crown’s or council balance sheets because they fear it will increase interest rates and leave future taxpayers vulnerable if there is a new financial or physical economic shock.The solution pursued by both National-led and Labour-led Governments over the last 30 years is to try to get the private sector to fund the building and running of the assets, either by selling them individually in whole or partially to local investors or foreign investors (Air New Zealand, BNZ, Telecom, Genesis, Mighty River/Mercury, Meridian, Contact etc), or trying to structure Infrastructure Funding and Financing deals and Public Private Partnerships to get private funders to do the borrowing, investing, building and owning of the assets (Wiri Prison, Transmission Gully).The trouble is, in my view, these deals are so complicated, slow, expensive and subject to political, market and technical risks that they don’t happen often fast enough or at the necessary scale to solve Aotearoa’s $30 billion-a-year infrastructure deficit.InfraKiwi doesn’t want to take on the risks of initially funding or building new assets, but sees itself assuring any Government or Council it would buy the asset once built for a certain price, giving Governments, ratepayers and taxpayers some assurance that they wouldn’t be stuck with the long-term debt. In my view, this process does solve a big current problem that funds building up in KiwiSaver, NZ SuperFund and ACC very fast are running out of things to buy in New Zealand, but New Zealand Governments feel they ‘can’t afford’ to build the infrastructure needed to grow and solve many of our deficits. I think it’s a solution that’s more expensive for taxpayers in the long run, but does reduce the risks of creating new dividend or interest cost streams and drains in our current account deficit from sales to foreign owners or borrowing internationally.If Governments of both flavours persist, as they are now, in believing they have to constantly drive the size of Government/GDP and Debt/GDP back down below 30%, then this is better than the alternative of pretending or promising to invest to cope with population growth, climate change and ageing, but never actually doing it. I have published this article and the video interview above for all to read and watch as part of my public interest mandate covering our political economy. Paying subscribers support this work. You can too by subscribing. A lightly edited transcript of our conversationThis a lightly-edited and cut-down version of our 30 minute conversation above for brevity and clarity. A PDF of the presentation referred to in the conversation above is attached below.I firstly asked Sam what InfraKiwi would be and what problem it was trying to solve.“We have this massive infrastructure deficit in New Zealand. The Infrastructure Commission says it’s $210 billion. It’s a massive amount of money and a lot of work. And yet on the other side, we have already $130 billion worth of KiwiSaver money saved,” Sam said. “And our economist, Shamabeel Eaqub, has calculated that in 25 years, if KiwiSaver managers keep their investments in New Zealand at 30%, we will have another $295 billion to invest in New Zealand. The problem with that is that there’s kind of nothing to invest in. It’s very hard to commit a lot of money in that way. So it tends to go overseas. And when it’s invested overseas, that’s fine. You still get the returns, but you don’t generate the jobs or the economic growth than if you have it invested domestically.”NZ shareholders only and with a Golden ShareSam said he and others had spent two years iterating 50 versions of the fund.“We’ve landed on setting up a company called Infra Kiwi. So, Infra for infrastructure, Kiwi for KiwiSaver and Iwi. We’re trying to create a vehicle that makes it as easy as possible for all New Zealanders, KiwiSaver managers, individuals, to invest in infrastructure via this company,” he said.“The intention is that it will be New Zealand-only shareholders. So foreign investors not required or offshore capital not required in this case, because there’s so much there. That will then allow Kiwi to buy what we would call sensitive assets that might otherwise be unavailable for sale to offshore owners and own and operate it for the long term.“I don’t want a New Zealand where we’ve saved hundreds of billions of dollars in KiwiSaver and it’s building roads in Aussie. I want that money building roads and buying power stations and operating the water here in New Zealand and creating jobs here and creating growth here.” Sam StubbsSimplicity would start by making the initial seed investments and then once it got to a critical mass it would list on the stock exchange, be restricted to New Zealanders, and have a ‘Golden Share’ preventing it from being sold to single and/or foreign interests.“That means it’s liquid. It means all KiwiSaver managers can invest in it. It means the nature and purpose of the company couldn’t change now you and I are old enough to know the Fay Richwhite issue, which is to slice and dice these assets for the benefit of few to the cost of many.“The nature and purpose of the company remains the same over the long term. And then it invests in operating infrastructure. So it’s not interested in building the power station, but it might be interested in buying it once it’s built. And then it focuses on very long-term ownership and operational efficiency. And if it’s existing old infrastructure, additional capital will refurbish or maintain the infrastructure as well. But it’s all about owning. “I’d like this to be the biggest and most boring company in the country. Which means that it’s really big. It addresses that huge pool of money that New Zealanders will have now to invest in what we need. And it just focuses on owning and operating these assets for the very, very long term.”‘It won’t take big development risks’ Sam says InfraKiwi wants to own and operate assets, rather than develop them, to make it easier to value on the stock market.“It’s not taking big development risk But the other thing it could do is go to governments and say if you build it, we’ll buy it, and that means it’ll actually get built, because it’ll be a contract between the government and the community to get this thing built. I then asked about the potential scale of InfraKiwi and who could invest.“It’s designed for people to participate in several ways. Once the company lists on the stock exchange, Simplicity will step away and be just another shareholder. So it will operate as its own independent company, own board of directors. But because it’s listed on the stock exchange and hopefully big enough to be in the index, all the other KiwiSaver funds will be able to buy it. And typically, if it’s in the index, they will own it so they’ll own at least a benchmark position,” he said.“So people could participate via their KiwiSaver funds, in the sense all KiwiSaver managers are investing in it. Or, because it’s listed on the stock exchange, if you are a New Zealander, registered New Zealander, for investment purposes, then you can buy and sell shares directly as well. So you could buy and sell it directly via your broker or Sharesies or any platform that sells individual shares as well. So the idea is to make it very broadly available.”‘We’re not interested in PPP-style financial engineering’Sam said he’d been in talks with the NZX and Standard & Poor’s to make sure InfraKiwi could only have New Zealand shareholders, which meant it would be able to buy sensitive assets that no one else could for the long term.“We’re not interested in doing what a lot of PPPs want to do, which is financially engineer the acquisition so that they can exit within a fairly short period of time and have made a lot of money,” he said.“What we want to do is make a very fair return over a long period of time, which is fair to the investors and the company, but also means that the vendor of the asset knows that you’re not trying to basically maximize return because these are community assets, they’re sensitive assets. Some of them will never make enough money to ever be investable propositions. So for example, a regional airport that only has two or three flights a day is probably unlikely to ever be an economic asset. That council just has to subsidise that from general rates.“But there are a whole lot of assets where ultimately New Zealanders have to pay. And whether they pay once when it gets refreshed and built, like water assets, you can either have a massive rates bill to refresh it, or build new, or you can run the asset down over 30 years. Or you can own this and actually maintain it and get a fair inflation adjusted return over a long period of time. ‘It’s sort of like public ownership’Sam said KiwiSaver funds were naturally attracted to long-run assets with constant cashflows. He also compared such funds to the likes of Singapore’s Temasek.“If InfraKiwi got listed and it was in the index, as soon as it bought something, about 3.5 million New Zealanders would own it from the day it bought it. That is sort of like public ownership, but without government. He said ownership by such a fund would depoliticise the issue of asset sales.“If the asset is owned by millions of New Zealanders, the attitude towards the government in terms of regulation will be sensible. And the attitude we will take towards the ownership and operation of the business will also be very sensible too, because when you own something for the long term, you’ve got to maintain it. “You’ve got to spend money on it. You’ve got to keep the water flowing and the lights on. It’s a different attitude than if it’s a political decision. That’s a sort of pressure, but in a different way. And it’s not the attitude of a short-term owner. A short-term owner doesn’t care about it. They just want to run down the asset and fool the next buyer into taking it at the highest possible price.”Sam said he had done over 50 public meetings and 90% of people had said they would be happy if a KiwiSaver funded owned the water pipes or the power lines.“That’s because KiwiSaver is a very popular brand. It’s actually serving a lot of New Zealanders very well.”‘We are where Australia was in 1985’Sam compared New Zealand now to Australia in 1985, just before its savings ramped up under its soon-to-be-launched compulsory pension system. “We’ve never had this option before. Previously, we’ve always had to go to central or local government to fund our infrastructure or at the margin, these PPPs, typically where the money is provided by offshore players. We now have a new reality, which is that we now are where Australia was in 1985. “We’re just about to see this huge increase in domestic savings, but we have to create the mechanisms by which it gets invested in the economy. And that’s what InfraKiwi is all about. It is trying to bridge that gap.”Why not just borrow from the Crown’s balance sheet?I then asked why the infrastructure could not be simply built with funds borrowed by the Government.“If there’s a $200 billion infrastructure deficit, the government borrows another $200 billion. That’s about 45% of GDP. And that would take our central government debt up by about 45% of GDP. That is a possibility, no doubt about it,” he said.“It doesn’t seem to be what any one of our political parties or government wants to, because effectively what you’re doing is increasing your sovereign risk rating and debt levels and cost of funding. But for whatever reason, they haven’t chosen not to do this. “But even if you have the option of central government doing it, local government is really starting to get stretched. And so another source of funding would be useful. I’m not pretending InfraKiwi will supplant everything that central and local government would do, but it’s another source of funding. And it’s very long duration capital.”Here’s the presentation referred to in the interview above Ka kite anoBernard 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

The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night featured co-hosts Bernard Hickey and Peter Bale talking with regular guests Robert Patman and Cathrine Dyer, and a special guest about the economy, politics, geopolitics, climate change, The Kākā’s future and how to fund the building of social housing by Community Housing Providers (CHPs) and others.This week’s special guest was Home Capital Partners CEO James Stewart.We talked about:* The Kākā’s future after Bernard published a State of The Kākā Nation report for 2025 showing falling subscription revenues and the loss of the sponsor for the weekly When The Facts Change podcast via The Spinoff.* The release of the first comprehensive and nationwide flood maps forecasting how climate warming of one degree, two degrees and three degrees would affect households and infrastructure in the event of one-in-one-hundred-year floods.* Bernard, Peter & Cathrine also talked about the potential for community assemblies to agree solutions to climate adaptation and mitigation.* Robert Patman talked with Bernard and Peter about this week’s meetings between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, and Donald Trump and Christopher Luxon.* James Stewart talked about Home Capital Partners’ launch of its new Home Capital Partners’ $185 million fund to accelerate building of over 250 medium density affordable and social homes.* Bernard and Peter then talked about Labour’s Capital Gains Tax proposal.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 this 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. Also, here’s a couple of special offers: $3/month or $30/year for under 30s & $6.50/month or $65/year for over 65s who rent.)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

Just briefly, I spoke last night with Standard & Poor’s Global Ratings Director of Government Ratings Anthony Walker last night about a research note S&P Global published yesterday titled: ‘New Zealand Water Reforms Don’t Guarantee Rating Relief For Local Councils.’He told me there was no guarantee the current Government’s ‘Local Water Done Well’ reforms would alleviate the negative outlooks S&P Global had on many councils’ credit ratings, even though the creation of separate water authorities in accounting terms appeared to lessen their apparent exposure to big new debt-funded water infrastructure investments.“In capital markets, off the books doesn’t always mean off the hook. As New Zealand local councils pursue new water service models, we think shifting assets and liabilities “off-balance sheet” may ease the optics, but not the underlying credit risk.” Standard & Poor’s Global Ratings Director of Government Ratings Anthony WalkerIn my view, that’s a problem for councils and the Government, who may have hoped the creation of the new water authorities would reduce the exposure of ratepayers and taxpayers to new borrowings for water and free them up to expand without the need to use the Crown’s or council balance sheets. The hope that ‘off balance sheet vehicles’ can do the heavy lifting underpins the Government’s entire housing growth strategy. It has enabled the Government to remain committed to not borrowing directly through the Crown’s balance sheet.The first cab off the rank, Watercare, has been able to separate completely from the Auckland City Council and has been promoted as the model, but it is the exception because it has its own specific Act of Parliament, which actually puts the Crown on the hook, Anthony said.In my view, this S&P analysis that the other water authorities are still tied to Council balance sheets, has put a major spanner in the works of the entire infrastructure funding strategy the Government is relying on.I have published this article and video for all to read and watch as part of my public interest mandate covering our political economy. Paying subscribers support this work. You can too by subscribing. A lightly edited transcript of our conversationFirstly, I asked Anthony to expand on the details of the note.“It’s designed to highlight the analytical issues that we see when it comes to the local water reforms when it comes to councils. The councils have been provided up to six options by the Crown via a DIA (Department of Internal Affairs) guidance document. And what we’ve done here is gone through how we would view each of those six. Now, only three of them are being pursued by councils,” he said.“What we’ve found is that there’s 22 councils doing business as usual, another eight doing a single owned entity and another 38 potentially merging into 12 big entities. And their ratings outcomes do depend on which option is chosen. As you highlight, some will be better off, some will be worse off, and some will be somewhere in the middle. And what we’ve done here is we’ve found that, or we’re showing the market and the councils right now that if you are going to go out there with financial guarantees, it’s not going to be off the books for credit ratings.”‘You can’t really have your cake and eat it too’I then asked him why in capital markets “off the books doesn’t always mean off the hook,” and what were the gradations used by S&P to decide how much ‘on the hook’ councils were.“One of the things to say here is that we don’t rate to accounting standards. Accounting standards, they vary from very good to very bad across the world. And we work in all systems globally. And even in New Zealand, we don’t think the accounting standards are as holistic as others. Operating leases and capital leases are a prime example. That’s debt in every other market in the world, advanced market we work in. So we put those on balance sheet, even though the accounting standards in New Zealand say no,” he said.“You can’t really have your cake and eat it too. You’re going to get cheaper interest rates because you’re guaranteeing it. Well, then the government is going to have to bail it out when something goes bad.” Anthony Walker“And that’s what we talk about when we say in capital markets, off the book doesn’t always mean off the hook ,because accounting standards might say it’s not there, but when councils are guaranteeing it, it is there. “We’ve had people say to us, well, we’re only going to guarantee it because we don’t think it needs to be guaranteed. Well, capital markets and investors don’t believe that. That’s why they want the guarantee. So you can’t really have your cake and eat it too. You’re going to get cheaper interest rates because you’re guaranteeing it. Well, then the government is going to have to bail it out when something goes bad.”‘Labour’s involvement of Iwi helped create greater separation’Anthony said S&P also looked at the activity of the new entity, and whether it was an essential service.“Is it a port? Is it a commercial business, or retail business? Or is it doing an essential service like water where people can’t live without? Are there other providers of water in the system in your area? And if the answer is no, and this is the only water provider that gives you water to live on. Obviously, when the council are owning it, obviously it’s going to be very essential,” he said.“And then the other thing we look at is the role and the linkages between the council. And this is where the Three Waters from the former Labour government tried to separate this Iwi ownership. I know that wasn’t very popular throughout the country, but that was why they went down this path, to try to dilute the linkages with council control. “Because if the council is controlling it, they’re appointing managers, they’re appointing boards, they’re signing off statements of intent, signing off decisions and now they’re guaranteeing them, then this is a council entity. They can’t just wipe their hands and say, it’s not my fault, not my responsibility, and by the way I have a watertight guarantee (to back that up).” he said.“These things will come back to bite you. They’ve (bond investors) seen them around the world. In fact we have seen many governments around the world step in to bail out businesses which are not guaranteed, and they’re not water providers so this is why we kind of look at a holistic approach about what may or may not happen.Why Watercare is differentAnthony then talked about Watercare, which has been cited as a model, and why it was different.“So Watercare, we have separated from Auckland’s balance sheet and that’s specifically because legislation bans Auckland from providing any financial support at all. So we believe that if something goes wrong with Watercare. It’s going to be the Crown who’s asked to step in to support it,” he said.“And these are different things because maybe a smaller council, we could pull water off the balance sheet of a small council under that rule, but how would that entity go and borrow? It can’t borrow in the same terms as Watercare. It just can’t do it from the sheer size.”I then asked about the impressions voters and politicians might have had about how Local Water Done Well had created a way for them to avoid having the debt on Crown and Council balance sheets, and therefore to have cheaper rates with lower interest rates, all other things being equal.Anthony said the biggest determinant of council interest costs was whether they borrowed through the Local Government Funding Agency (LGFA), which is a Government-backed joint borrowing vehicle, which sets the rules for councils about how much debt they can have relative to their income.“The biggest determination of council debt caps or the limits of borrowing is not a credit rating. They can keep borrowing. we’ll keep rating them. We might rate them in the triple B category in a decade’s time if they borrow massively. They can still borrow. The biggest pull-back on the leverage of the sector is actually the LGFA debt caps,” he said.“So if the LGFA was to loosen those, they could still borrow through the LGFA, which is still rated AAA on the local currency scale. So that is one area where credit ratings can have an influence, but the credit rating is an outcome. It’s not an input.”What is the point of all this asset shuffling to create new vehicles then?I then asked if Local Water Done Well and the creation of the new accounting vehicles would actually reduce borrowing costs, or was it just a lot of shuffling?“There is a lot of shuffling. Some of these reforms do have an impact. They do matter. They mean that some councils can borrow more under certain structures than they would otherwise at the same rating. But if you look at the cost of debt, the cost of debt for the Crown is the cheapest. Councils are the second cheapest. Non-councils are the third cheapest, whether that’s a water utility or a bank or something else. “Given that a water utility, particularly a small one, which most of these councils would be, would likely be standalone credit profile maybe in the Triple B, maybe Double B. It means that the council guarantee which would lift that back up towards the council level, would actually be very vital for it to get cheaper financing,” he said.“But then again, if it was all in the balance sheet for the council and the council was one notch lower on the rating, it may still be cheaper that wa,y because the LGFA is the ultimate determination here of the credit quality and the credit rating.”Anthony said the role of the LGFA was crucial.“So while we did lower 18 Council ratings this year, the LGFA rating wasn’t impacted because they were actually kind of countering that with higher capital requirements and higher assets to kind of shore up their credit quality.“So they are managing that risk. What happens when the councils borrow through the LGFA and the councils own the LGFA? So they are ultimately the decision makers here. The LGFA will increase the cost that they borrow from the market. They borrow at 3%. They’ll lend it onto councils potentially at 3.25%. If you’re a better rated council, maybe you get at 3.1%. So they actually determine the difference in outcomes here when it comes to council interest rates rather than what the rating may do if councils were borrowing directly in the capital markets. ‘It all depends on the LGFA, which sets the rules with Crown backing’“The credit rating would have a much bigger impact on cost of debt in New Zealand if these councils were borrowing outside the LGFA.”“Earlier this year, sorry, we downgraded 18 councils. Going from a AA to AA, AA plus and AA rating had no impact on their interest costs. Going one notch below that from a AA to AA minus increased their interest costs on new borrowings, not the existing debt, but new borrowings by 0.05%. So five basis points.“If we lowered by one notch again because they doubled their debt levels from 180 % on average to 360%, we potentially may have another 0.05% or a five basis point increase in costs.”I then asked Anthony about whether all the shuffling to change the ‘optics’ for Councils and the Government would actually improve costs much.‘Shifting ‘off balance sheet’ doesn’t change our view’“This is what this note is partly there to tell councils and investors. It’s explaining how we look at the six options provided, whether they would be outside our credit rating or not. But if you’re shifting something to an in-house business unit, where you’ve got staff sitting on the floor next to you and you’re shifting to a single-owned entity, with ratings and revenues quarantined, They think they may have a separate business structure, but ultimately, they’re probably the same people doing the same job for the same people and probably having the same cost base. “They may actually have a bigger cost base if they’re going to ramp up their spending. So while it might shift it from the parent accounts under New Zealand accounting standards, they’re likely to be captured under the group accounts. So they’re still on the broader balance sheet that most governments don’t focus on.”Ka kite anoBernard 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

The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night features co-hosts Bernard Hickey and Peter Bale talking with regular guest Robert Patman and special guests about the economy, politics, geopolitics, climate change, Jim Bolger’s funeral, Treaty of Waitangi issues and yesterday’s ‘mega-strike’ by doctors, teachers and nurses.This week’s special guests were Lawyers for Climate Action Executive Director Jessica Palairet, former Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations Minister and Chris Finlayson and Association of Salaried Medical Specialists Executive Director Sarah Dalton.We talked about:* The Government’s gutting of climate reporting requirements and its shifting of its methane emissions reduction goalposts.* The latest moves by the United States and Europe to sanction Russian oil and gas exports to try to force Russia into a ceasefire in the Ukraine War.* Jim Bolger’s legacy on Treaty of Waitangi issues, and his National-led Government’s differences with the current one. We discussed Chris Finlayson’s obituary for Bolger in the NZ Herald-$ and his interview with columnist Audrey Young in the NZ Herald-$.* The Marine and Coastal Area Act, which passed into law last night, and why Finlayson opposes it.* Yesterday’s marches by over 100,000 supporters of nurses, teachers and doctors, who went on strike the 1% pay increases offered by the Government. We discussed pictures of signs at the marches, including the ones below. We discussed this research report on fiscal rules for the ASMS by Ganesh R Ahirao and this research report for the ASMS on health economics by Marilyn Waring.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 this 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. Also, here’s a couple of special offers: $3/month or $30/year for under 30s & $6.50/month or $65/year for over 65s who rent.)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

I spoke with Labour Finance Spokeswoman Barbara Edmonds last night about Labour’s first big policy idea for the 2026 election: a new sovereign wealth fund to invest in New Zealand infrastructure and growth businesses. It would be seeded with an initial grant of $200 million and topped up regularly with dividends from state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and potentially partially-owned SOEs such as the gentailers and Air New Zealand, although that wasn't confirmed due to ‘commercial sensitivities.’I asked her what problem it solved and why other tax and more direct Government investment policies couldn’t solve it better. Here’s a lightly edited version of the conversation below, just in case the video above is too sketchy to watch. We had some connectivity issues and then the AWS wrecked my usual backups. A PDF of the policy is also attached below.People are saying we want to see a long-term vision, we want to see a plan for the country. So this is a first step for us. Barbara Edmonds.Edmonds said she couldn’t say which assets would be included because of commercial sensitivity and fair disclosure reasons.“Ultimately, the fund is purpose-built to back Kiwi ideas and our small innovative businesses, and basically is here to create wealth for New Zealand, by New Zealand, for New Zealanders,” she said.I asked what problem Labour was trying to solve.“When we look across the world, future funds are set up to help countries recycle their wealth and help to back and grow within their own economies. New Zealand doesn’t lack talent and skills and ideas, but what we lack is backing. So one of the key things that the Productivity Commission talked about before it was collapsed by this current government is that we have shallow pools of capital,” she said.“We want to set up this wealth fund at arm’s length to the government, similar to how the Super Fund works. But actually, it has a different purpose, which is to create wealth in New Zealand to help secure jobs, transition to clean green energy, to help us back our innovators in tech industry, and to help us build a resilient infrastructure.”I then asked if New Zealand actually had shallow capital pools, given there was $123 billion in KiwiSaver funds as at the end of March, the NZ Super Fund has $88.6 billion and counting as of today, the ACC had $51.1 billion in funds under management of June 30 this year, and there was $302 billion in bank term deposit and savings accounts as of the end of August this year. Why aren’t those $565 billion being invested here?I asked why those funds weren’t being deployed into New Zealand infrastructure, businesses, jobs, new technology and jobs, and whether another fund would make a difference.“Ultimately, there are different funds for different purposes. And what we’re saying is this wealth fund is solely dedicated to reinvesting back in New Zealand. The Superfund, for example, they invest around 11%-18 % of their funds in New Zealand. However, they’ve got a very different purpose. Their purpose is to maximize returns to help with future superannuation costs,” she said.“We’re saying it’s a model that works well for the Superfund. However, for the future fund, we need a different pool with a different purpose to back Kiwis.”I asked whether this fund was being announced instead of changing the fundamental savings incentives for households, which mean buying leveraged residential land was vastly more attractive in risk-adjusted and after-tax terms than in businesses, pension funds or infrastructure, given pension funds don’t receive any significant incentives, as pension funds overseas do, as in Australia.“We will have a savings and investment policy, which we will announce in the future. However, this is just the first step to realize New Zealand’s potential. And again, it’s about backing Kiwis and making sure those that get away and see the world, there are opportunities for them to come back to. That pullback to New Zealand is diminishing,” she said.“We have 200 people leaving every day to find opportunities offshore. People are saying we want to see a long-term vision, we want to see a plan for the country. So this is a first step for us.”I then asked how big the fund could be and what assets it could include.“Top of the list of the types of assets we will see the fund with will be a lot of those publicly owned commercial assets that the government owns. We also set aside $200 million one-off capital costs to go into the fund. And again, the governance of this will be at arm’s length to the politicians because it will be looked after by the Guardians of the New Zealand Superfund.“It will grow every year, depending on the assets that are put in, the dividends that come back to it. But also, we want to be able to use those dividends better. Currently, at the moment, those dividends come back to the crown coffers. Ministers can spray that wherever they want to. “There may not be any strategic use of it, or for example, they may be trying to go into clean energy but then they’re doing an underwrite for gas subsidies. Whereas this is different. This is saying that those dividends should remain in the fund, be reinvested into the country, and depending on what the assets are, that’ll determine the growth.”Why not just borrow and invest directly?I then asked why the Government shouldn’t just use its balance sheet to borrow to invest directly, which would be much cheaper.“At the moment, the politicians are are fiddling around too much with this. Ultimately, we have government assets. We believe that they should be managed with a commercial approach. The dividends should be reinvested in New Zealand. Ultimately, where the fund will go will be set out in legislation. We want it to be reinvested back for the public good.“Yes, the Crown may lose money because we may forego some dividend in relation to it. But ultimately, the money is staying back in our economy so that it can grow in New Zealand, as opposed to us having to wait for foreign investors and speculators to come and save us. So we truly believe for us this is about a future made in New Zealand. It’s one where we want to make opportunities for the next generation to want to stay here, or come back here because there are opportunities for them.”So is this a good idea?In my view, a Future Fund is try to solve problems that would be better addressed more directly, faster, cheaper, more efficiently and with more honestly and transparency by:* firstly, the Government simply borrowing with its own balance sheet and investing directly in publicly-owned infrastructure, staffing and systems to improve housing, health, education, skills and training; and, * secondly, changing the tax incentives that currently mean households have ploughed $1.6 trillion into residential housing, and are choosing to leave $302 billion in term deposits, ready to be deployed with yet more mortgages to make more tax-free capital gains in residential housing.Changing those incentives would involve:* taxing the unearned wealth bogged down in New Zealand’s housing market through a wealth or capital gains tax, and not just on the family home, given a big chunk of that $1.6 trillion is embedded in those family homes and exempting them will leave the incentive intact; and,* providing a tax incentive to save in pensions funds, as is the case in Australia and other developed markets with much higher investment in their businesses, much better productivity and higher real wages.For example, New Zealand’s housing market value is seven times bigger than our stock market’s value. Australia’s housing market is three times bigger than its stock market. America’s housing market is actually worth slightly less than its stock market. Australia and the United States have (imperfect but substantial) taxes on capital gains and incentives for investing household savings into businesses. New Zealand has neither. Still wedded to the catastrophic 30/30 rule?My concern is that Labour remains embedded in the view it and National have shared for 40 years: that the size of Government and the size of Government debt should not be larger than 30% of GDP. With both the size of Government and its debt currently above those self-imposed, unnecessary, unjustified and failed limits, both National and Labour are still contorting themselves into states of magical thinking that private investment in infrastructure and the private provision of housing, health, education and transport would be both better for the economy than the Government doing it.Without proper changes to tax incentives for households and without a fundamental reassessment of the 30/30 rule, this Future Fund appears to be another performative, mostly ineffective and expensive distraction from the fundamental failings of the 30/30 rule to invest in the infrastructure to support our still-fast-growth and still-ageing population, let alone catch up on decades under-investment and under-maintenance and under-replacement of both new and existing infrastructure. Labour may well have have taxation and fiscal strategies to change that view that are yet to be announced. This first policy release has a dispiritingly familiar look about it. It is suggesting New Zealand’s investment problems can be solved at arms length from politicians and the Crown’s balance sheet. It is suggesting that the current incentives and use of the Crown’s balance sheet are working. They are not. They have been disastrous for a generation, who are indeed voting with their feet, rather than their votes, at a rate of 200 day. The Future Fund mimic versions of the NZ Super Fund (which has less than 20% invested in New Zealand), NZ First’s proposed sovereign wealth fund and various Government venture capital and green funds. It gives the impression large amounts of domestic investment is possible without political involvement and in a way that would improve the performance of the New Zealand economy and leave the Crown’s balance sheet untouched.It reeks of performative politics and magical thinking that fail to address the elephants in the room:* $1.6 trillion worth of mostly unearned wealth in housing has to be taxed;* there has to be incentives for households to invest in businesses;* the Government has to be larger than 30% of GDP in the long run to provide the public services, benefits and infrastructure we believe are essential with the population structure and growth we have; and,* there is no good reason why the Crown can’t use its balance sheet to invest in the infrastructure, services and health of the generations that are both retiring and on the verge of abandoning the country.Subscribe in full as a paying subscriber for more detail and analysis in the full videos and podcasts that go out with my Early Bird and Daily Chorus email newsletters. Paying subscribers support my work being done in the public interest here, and via my appearances on other media such as RNZ & 1News. Paying subscribers also get early and full access to our webinars and our chat room, and can comment on articles.Ka kite anoBernard 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