The Kākā by Bernard Hickey

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 guests Cathrine Dyer and Robert Patman and special guest Helen Clark about the news of the week. This week’s Hoon featured: * a discussion about research showing East Asia’s cleanup of its atmosphere has accelerated climate warming. * a discus...

Briefly for all subscribers on Friday, July 18, the key scoops, breaking news, deep-dives, editorials, analysis and other news links in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy around housing, poverty and climate today are: * Politicians are scrambling for excuses and scapegoats over a fresh surge in living costs in recent months, ranging from a 46.5% rise in butter prices from a year ago, a 10.4% rise in...

Briefly for all subscribers on Thursday, July 17, the key scoops, breaking news, deep-dives, editorials, analysis and other news links in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy around housing, poverty and climate today are: * Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka is delaying the release of a regular Housing and Urban Development Ministry (HUD) report on homelessness, saying he wants more advice. Labour...

Briefly for all subscribers on Wednesday, July 16, the key scoops, breaking news, deep-dives, editorials, analysis and other news links in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy around housing, poverty and climate today are: * Chris Bishop said yesterday he wanted to break the nation’s psyche and belief that the economy could only grow if rising house prices were increasing household wealth. He said that...

Briefly for all subscribers for at 7 am on Tuesday, July 15, the key scoops, breaking news, deep-dives, editorials, analysis and other news links in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy around housing, poverty and climate today are: * The services sector joined the manufacturing sector in contracting in June, a new BusinessNZ-BNZ survey found yesterday. BNZ downgraded its Q2 GDP forecast to a contracti...

Briefly for all subscribers for at 6am on Monday, July 14, the key scoops, breaking news, deep-dives, editorials, analysis and other news links in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy around housing, poverty and climate today are: * Another slash catastrophe unfolded over the weekend in the Nelson/Marlborough/Tasman region as the second ‘one-in-one-hundred-year’ flash flood in two weeks unleashed a tor...

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 Cathrine Dyer about the week’s news in geopolitics and climate, along with special guests Professor Jonathan Boston from Victoria University of Wellington and Professor Wolfgang Rack from University of Canterbury. This week’s Hoon featur...

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Briefly in the news from Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, poverty and climate on Tuesday, July 8: * On the eve of an expected pause in rate cuts, the Reserve Bank’s new ‘ NowCast ’ real-time measure of economic activity shows GDP has fallen back into recessionary territory in the last three months. See more in The Lead and Chart of the Day below the paywall fold, and hear more in the p...

Briefly in the news from Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, poverty and climate on Monday, July 7: * Finance Minister Nicola Willis is considering changing the tax settings for banks in Budget 2026, possibly including an Australian-style ‘Major Bank Levy,’ the NZ Herald-$ reports this morning. See more in The Lead below the paywall fold and hear more in the podcast above. * Women in the...

Briefly in the news from Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, poverty and climate on Friday, July 4: * Police Minister Mark Mitchell says people who sleep rough in Rotorua are making ‘a lifestyle choice’ and should be moved away from shopfronts by five new beat cops — ‘for their own safety’. See more in The Lead below the paywall fold and in the podcast above. * A Salvation Army expert on...

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 guests Robert Patman and Cathrine Dyer about the week’s news in geopolitics and climate. This week’s Hoon featured: * a discussion over research showing the sensitivity to climate change of extreme weather events in Aotearoa-NZ. * a chat about...

Briefly in the news from Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, poverty and climate on Thursday, July 3: * Deputy PM David Seymour has forced Finance Minister Nicola Willis to back down on her plan for a long-debated policy costings unit to referee disputes over ‘fiscal black holes’ in election campaigns. Seymour says he doesn’t always trust the officials. See more in The Lead below the payw...

Briefly in the news from Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, poverty and climate on Wednesday, July 2: * The NZIER’s QSBO survey published yesterday showed businesses remain stubbornly confident about the wider economy and their own businesses, despite their own ‘experienced activity’ in the June quarter being much, much worse than they had expected just three months ago. See more in The...

Briefly in the news from Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, poverty and climate on Tuesday, July 1: * Extreme floods hit the top of the South Island over the weekend, unleashing a wall of media coverage on the ‘unprecedented’ scale of the disaster, but there was no coverage of modelling showing each degree of climate warming increases the intensity of weather events in the region by 10-2...

The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night features co-host Peter Bale talking with regular guests Robert Patman and Cathrine Dyer about the week’s news in geopolitics and climate. This week’s Hoon featured special guests: author, historian and a former colleague from Reuters, former Tehran bureau chief Jonathan Lyons; professor of international law Tre...

Briefly in the news from Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, poverty and climate on Tuesday, June 24: * ANZ economists have slashed their June quarter GDP growth forecast to 0.1% from 0.4% after a range of leading indicators sagged in June, and just ahead of another cost-of-living shock from an oil price surge as Iran finally attacked US bases in the Gulf states overnight. See more in The...

Morena and glad to be back online after a couple of weeks of leave. Briefly in the news from Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, poverty and climate on Monday, June 23: * Chris Bishop says he wants to unleash a housing supply shock and last week announced the Government would force councils to allow more houses if they kept saying no, adding to a swathe of repeals and reforms he has launc...

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 guests Robert Patman and Cathrine Dyer about the week’s news in geopolitics and climate. This week’s Hoon featured special guests: * author, historian and a former colleague from Reuters, former Tehran bureau chief Jonathan Lyons ; * Noted aut...

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 guests Robert Patman and Cathrine Dyer about the week’s news in geopolitics and climate. This week’s Hoon featured special guest New Zealand freelance journalist Andrew Gunn speaking from Kyiv. The Hoon’s podcast version above was recorded on...

The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night features co-host Peter Bale talking with regular guests Robert Patman and Cathrine Dyer about the week’s news in geopolitics and climate. Bernard couldn’t get on because of technical issues. This week’s Hoon featured special guests Jamie Shea from Chatham House and Auckland Uni’s Treasa Dunworth. Peter mentione...

News last week that Auckland Council had confirmed plans to charge housing developers $6 billion worth of Development Contributions (DCs) over the next 30 years to partly pay for $19 billion in capital spending on parks, public transport and water infrastructure didn’t get nearly enough attention. Not because it was surprising or unusual or unexpected. It wasn’t. It’s now the standard way for coun...

The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night features co-hosts Bernard Hickey & Peter Bale talking with regular guests Robert Patman and Cathrine Dyer about the week’s news in geopolitics and climate. This week’s Hoon featured special guest Janet H Anderson from the podcast Asymmetrical Haircuts , which covers international justice. Peter mentioned these...

The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night features co-hosts Bernard Hickey & Peter Bale talking about Budget 2025 with: Vic Uni political scientist Lara Greaves ; CTU Economist Craig Renney ; and, Tax commentator Terry Baucher . The Hoon’s podcast version above was recorded on Thursday night during a live webinar for over 200 paying subscribers and was...

The six key news items from Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate and poverty in the week to Saturday, May 17 were: * Labour committed to the same Government debt and surplus targets as National . * The Greens proposed an alternative budget with $88 billion of new wealth and income taxes to improve publicly-funded incomes, health and housing. * The last major independent electricity...