The Kākā by Bernard Hickey

TL;DR: National (38.9% and 50 seats) won the election overnight and will now have to decide how it forms a Government with both ACT (8.98% and 11 seats) and New Zealand First (6.46% and eight seats). National didn’t win quite enough seats to govern comfortably alone with ACT so will have to so something with Winston Peters, even if it is peripheral, outside Cabinet and includes a few baubles. The...

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: * Population growth from immigration of temporary workers to replace and supplement emigrating resident workers rose to more than 2% in the last year, without nearly enough infrastructure built or planned for two decades at...

TL;DR: Population growth from immigration of temporary workers to replace and supplement emigrating local workers rose to more than 2% in the last year, without nearly enough infrastructure built or planned for two decades at that level, and without any real debate just days before an election. Meanwhile, the last polls before Saturday’s election showed a last minute rise in support for the Labour...

TL;DR: National’s tax switch plan creates a direct wealth transfer from beneficiaries to landlords totalling $2 billion over four years, CTU analysis out this morning finds, including mega-landlords with over 200 rentals each getting $1.3m. Each. The proposed tax switch of changing interest deductibility rules and reducing the bright line test for capital gains from rental property trading in exch...

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 failure of yet another pre-fabricated house builder and a legal threat against our biggest council to force more greenfields development showed how our economy and society are now just a residential land market with bi...

TL;DR: The failure of yet another pre-fabricated house builder and a legal threat against our biggest council to force more greenfields development are two more signs, if we needed them, that our economy and society are now just a residential land market with bits tacked on. These two latest events again demonstrate the massive skew in our tax settings in favour of housing land ownership has so ch...

TL;DR: Richie Poulton , the director of the world-leading Dunedin longitudinal study showing how devastating poverty in early life is, died yesterday. With his final words, he lamented the lack of debate about solving child poverty in this year’s election debate. Elsewhere in the news today: * Winston Peters promised to sack Jack Tame in an interview with Jack Tame; * Chris Hipkins is likely to ha...

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: * Labour presented a climate manifesto that aimed to claim the high ground on climate action vs National, but did so at the same time NZTA/Waka Kotahi cut $50 million from funding for cycleways from the Climate Emergency Res...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit thekaka.substack.com TL;DR: The election campaign took an ugly turn yesterday, and in completely the wrong direction. All three of the parties on track to win Government in 17 days time ramped up their policies to label and punish beneficiaries as undeserving bludgers. Instead, they should have been proposing how to vastly increase the...

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: * Treasury published the Pre Election Fiscal Update (PREFU) on Tuesday, including a one-year delay in Labour returning the Budget to surplus to 2026/27 and an extra $9 billion in borrowing over the next four years. But it al...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit thekaka.substack.com TL;DR: In the 2011 and 2014 election campaigns then- National PM John Key shredded Labour Opposition leaders Phil Goff and David Cunliffe with the simple challenge to their tax revenue estimates: ‘Show me the money.’ Finance Minister Grant Robertson did the same last night in the finance spokespeoples’ election deba...

TL;DR: National Finance Spokesperson Nicola Willis has signalled a National Government would produce a lower debt track than Labour, but has yet to say what it is forecasting or how it would pay for infrastructure investment necessary for ongoing population growth of 2%. Willis told reporters in a standup yesterday after a speech to a KangaNews conference for bond investors and traders in Auckland...

TL;DR: Treasury published a PREFU yesterday that exposed the Opposition’s claims about the Government being ‘addicted to spending’ and presiding over a ‘fiscal catastrophe’ as both hollow and dangerous, given these politicians are quite likely to be in charge of those same finances in just over a month, and will need to assure foreign investors the Government’s credit is good. But the PREFU isn’t...

TL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā for paying subscribers in the last week included: * I interviewed Labour Leader and PM Chris Hipkins about Labour’s pitch for re-election for When The Facts Change , which was published yesterday here in video form . * National Leader Christopher Luxon and Hipkins laid out their visions...

TL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā for paying subscribers in the last week included: * I interviewed Labour Leader and PM Chris Hipkins about Labour’s pitch for re-election for When The Facts Change , which was published yesterday here in video form . * National Leader Christopher Luxon and Hipkins laid out their visions...

TL;DR : In our first formal edition of The Kākā Project for Election 2023 , we examine the parties’ policies on publicly-funded dental care and make the case for universality. The podcast above includes an interview with Max Harris from ActionStation , one of the campaigners for universal dental care. He details how the campaign formed and how and why the ‘Overton Window’ was widened to include pu...

TL;DR: National announced this week it would create a ‘climate dividend’ that simply re-purposes over $2 billion of Emissions Trading Scheme fund cash for tax cuts generally. (Resent with fixed audio in podcast above) The Kākā’s Climate Correspondent Cathrine Dyer spoke to independent ETS expert Christina Hood about: * how Aotearoa’s ETS doesn’t currently direct all its revenues to the existing Cl...

TL;DR: National announced this week it would create a ‘climate dividend’ that simply re-purposes over $2 billion of Emissions Trading Scheme fund cash for tax cuts generally. The Kākā’s Climate Correspondent Cathrine Dyer spoke to independent ETS expert Christina Hood about: * how Aotearoa’s ETS doesn’t currently direct all its revenues to the existing Climate Emergency Response Fund (CERF) becaus...

TL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā for paying subscribers in the last week included: * National launched its Election 2023 plan for $14.6 billion of tax cuts paid for with government spending cuts, a raid on climate funds and a few new taxes on home-buying migrants and migrants paying for visas. I previewed the plan in We...

TL;DR: The Labour Government announced $4 billion of spending cuts over four years late yesterday, just 12 hours before the release of an IMF report calling for a tighter budget, either through spending cuts or taxes on capital gains. Labour chose the spending cuts, although they amount to less than 0.3% of GDP or the equivalent of $10 per household per week. They’re also unlikely to lead to actua...

TL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā for paying subscribers in the last week included: * We launched The Kākā project for Election 2023 in Friday’s email . * The Government agreed 50:50 funding deals with Auckland Council and Gisborne District Council to buy back land and repair infrastructure damaged by Cyclones Hale and G...

TL;DR: The costs of climate change are already bearing down on councils and Governments, forcing decisions on the run about who pays and how they pay, but leaving the issues of intergenerational fairness and long-run climate liabilities unaddressed. The NZ Herald reports this morning Auckland Council is set to agree a 50:50 cost sharing deal with the Government to buy out land deemed unliveable by...

TL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā for paying subscribers in the last week included: * Reports emerging that hundreds of migrants on new Accredited Employer Work Visas paid as much as $30,000 for their visas, only to find no work and ending up stranded in overcrowded rentals. Eventually, after weeks of denial, Immigration...

TL;DR: Our latest wave of accidentally-on-purpose temporary worker migration is causing all sorts of grief, for some in the short run, and everybody in the long run. Cases of fraud and overcrowding comitted against temporary workers in Auckland by ‘accredited employers’ was reported by Newshub’s Nick Truebridge here and here this week, but follows multiple reports by Lucy Xia at RNZ last month her...

TL;DR: Aotearoa’s desperation for cheap, easy and temporary labour has turned us into the Dubai of the South Pacific, constantly churning out renting residents to live in Australia, and replacing them with migrants on barely-policed work visas that allow them to be abused, sucked dry and then spat out. Welcome to our ‘Churn and Burn’ economy. This state of the nation was reinforced yesterday by mi...