The Kākā by Bernard Hickey

TL;DR: Transport Minister Simeon Brown has written to regional councils and told Waka Kotahi-NZTA to immediately stop cycling and walking projects paid for from the Climate Emergency Response Fund (CERF) , which the National-ACT-NZ coalition is using to pay for early tax cuts for landlords. RNZ Robin Martin , Newsroom Marc Daalder The projects costing $22.5 million were designed to help achieve th...

TL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the last week included: * PM Christopher Luxon said the record-high net migration of the last year was “unsustainable” and he had asked Immigration Minister Erica Stanford to look at tightening settings, having argued during the election campaign f...

TL;DR: Aotearoa-NZ’s economy contracted unexpectedly in the September quarter, unleashing further falls in wholesale mortgage rates that mean banks could (should?) start cutting fixed mortgage rates before Christmas. (See more in updated charts of the day below) Elsewhere in the news this morning: * The new Government’s decision to scrap the Clean Car Discount discount scheme it calls the ‘ute tax...

TL;DR: The new National-ACT-NZ First Government announced yesterday it had cancelled a $3 billion plan to build two new ferries and terminals that would have supported growth in the numbers of passengers, cars and freight crossing the Cook Strait for decades to come. In effect, the decision will limit the ability of Aotearoa-New Zealand Inc to keep growing its population by 1.5%-2.0% and GDP by 3%...

TL;DR: Net migration hit a record high 128,900 in the year to October, which the new Government has decided is “unsustainable” and requires a review of settings to ensure it is “balanced” with the economy’s skills needs and infrastructure capacity. However, new PM Christopher Luxon has stopped short of a full strategic review of our immigration policies, suggesting tweaks in the short term would b...

TL;DR: It started with pomp, pageantry and a speech from the throne laying out the new National-ACT-NZ First Government ’s plan to turn back much of the legislative clock to 2017 and beyond. It ended with PM Christopher Luxon accusing former PM Chris Hipkins of being an arsonist and then Hipkins branding Luxon’s Government as having the most shambolic start in our political history. The first clai...

TL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the last week included: * New Finance Minister Nicola Willis set herself a very high bar for retaining confidence in her rhetoric by accusing Labour of “economic vandalism” in handing over a set of books ridden with ‘hidden’ “fiscal cliffs” worth b...

TL;DR The hygiene effects of direct sunshine are making some inroads, perhaps for the very first time, on the normalised ‘deficit of ecological integrity’ at the UN’s annual climate summit. Elsewhere in climate news this week: * Climate communications expert Ketan Joshi provided an excoriating break-down and analysis of the truth-revealing exchange between ex-Irish President Mary Robinson and COP2...

TL;DR: Just when most of the rest of the world’s inflation rates are falling, Aotearoa-New Zealand faces high inflation and mortgage rates for longer next year as record high net migration, rising rents and council rate hikes tolerated and provoked by the new National-ACT-NZ First Government’s policies inflate housing costs for all. Elected to lower the cost of living, the coalition’s policies are...

TL;DR: New Finance Minister Nicola Willis has set herself a very high bar for retaining confidence in her rhetoric by accusing Labour of “economic vandalism” in handing over a set of books ridden with ‘hidden’ “fiscal cliffs” worth billions, but without detail. Her first and last opportunity to ‘show us the money’ will be on December 20 (the last Wednesday before Christmas) when she releases her f...

TL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the last week included: * Christopher Luxon, David Seymour and Winston Peters signed coalition-forming agreements, announced a ministerial list, were sworn in, held their first Cabinet meetings and released a 100-day plan with 49 to-do items; See F...

TL;DR: The newly sworn-in Cabinet will today consider how to quickly unwind anti-smoking changes legislated at the end of last year in order to save hundreds of millions of dollars a year in tobacco taxes so it can go ahead with its income tax cuts. But the cost to the taxpayers and citizens in purely financial terms, let alone the estimated loss of 580,000 Health Adjusted Life Years (HALYs), is s...

TL;DR: COP28 kicks off on November 30 and up for negotiation are issues like the role of fossil fuels in the energy transition, contributions to climate financing and the role of people and nature in achieving the Paris Agreement targets. So, what signs of progress should we be watching out for at this year’s conference? * China and US agree to triple global growth in renewables in order to hasten...

TL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the last week included: * National Leader Christopher Luxon announced last night he had agreed policies and ministerial roles with ACT Leader David Seymour and NZ First Leader Winston Peters yesterday, with final signoffs from party boards expected...

TL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the last week included: * Vacuums formed in Government where there would usually be decisions by ministers and the Cabinet about ongoing issues. Public servants are now having to second-guess what they think potential ministers might want, going fr...

TL;DR: An unholy scramble for control of African forests is emerging in the run-up to COP28, where final negotiations on international offsets (Article 6 of the Paris Agreement) will take place. The cost of New Zealand’s emissions gap may depend on the availability of cheap offsets from emerging markets. (See more detail below) Elsewhere in climate news this week: * The road to climate hell will b...

TL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the last week included: * A new official report quietly buried by the Labour Government in its final months in power identifies over 300,000 people are now living in housing and energy poverty so severe that they are unable to afford the power need...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit thekaka.substack.com TL;DR: Opponents of wealth taxes and housing and energy market reforms often complain those reform…

TL;DR: With two months still to go, European Union scientists declared overnight that 2023 is on track to be the hottest in 125,000 years, with October a full 0.4 degrees celcius warmer than the previous record. That’s the equivalent of someone breaking Usain Bolt’ s record for the 100 metres of 9.58 seconds by half a second. The warming of oceans is also making it one of the wettest on record for...

TL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the last week included: * The Electoral Commission declared the final election results after counting special votes, including National (48) losing two election-night electorate seats to Labour (34), Te Pāti Māori (6) winning two more electorate se...

TL;DR: Our poorest young renters remain the most stressed in the world, despite high-profile reports that young home owners face rising mortgage stress. Defaults and forced sales are near record lows and overall mortgage stress is still well below levels from 2008. Here’s the rest of my 6 things at 6 am with more analysis and detail in my Dawn Chorus podcast above with the best background native b...

TL;DR: The key news in Aotearoa’s political economy today includes: * National appears set to push councils to move their water assets off their balance sheets in a very similar way to Labour’s Three Waters plan, just without the co-governance and as much compulsion, but still with the flawed idea that somehow off-balance-sheet borrowing is actually better for taxpayers and ratepayers in the long...

TL;DR: The key news in Aotearoa’s political economy today includes: * Non-profit Kiwisaver fund Simplicity is launching a fund to snare up to 5% of the $235 billion market for household savings in banks to raise the $12 billion needed to build up to 25,000 affordable homes in build-to-rent projects and via community housing providers ( Hear my interview above with Simplicity CEO Sam Stubbs and Com...

TL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the last week included: * National won last weekend’s election and has started talks to form a Government with both ACT and New Zealand First , although they’ll only start in earnest after the November 3 declaration of the final makeup of Parliamen...

TL;DR: Electoral Commission figures show there were just over 1.060 million missing voters in the election out of a total eligible population of 3.871 million, with enrolment data and surveys showing most were young renters. That meant the ‘quorum’ for the election was just under 73% of the voting age population, with the vast majority of those missing voters being under the age of 40. The voting...