When the Facts Change

Electricity is something we can't live without at this stage in global growth – but with expensive renewable supply, how do users and the industry match the demand? In this week's episode, Bernard Hickey speaks with Octopus Energy's Margaret Cooney about possible solutions to shift away from expensive peaks, and how an obscure law change might unleash a surge of retail competition, all in the hope...

If climate change projections make their way to Land Information Memorandums, owners of coastal properties may find themselves struggling to stay afloat long before waves start lapping at their door. Vulnerable properties will become uninsurable causing banks to withhold lending – suddenly passing on that slice of hot potato paradise will be near impossible. This week James Shaw joins Bernard Hick...

With unemployment now having climbed to 3.3% within the industry, builders are now crying out for workers. With this ascent and historically driven as a mostly male-dominated field, they’re getting serious about hiring the other half of the population. Bernard Hickey talks with Kiwibank economist Mary Jo Vergara about a surprise rise in employment growth for women in construction. Learn more about...

Imagine living in a society where details about everyone’s earnings and taxes are publicly available. With a gender pay gap of just 4%, Norway has operated under this system of pay transparency since the 1800s and some argue it’s time for a similar approach in Aotearoa. Join Bernard Hickey as he talks to AUT Professor Gail Pacheco, who heads the NZ Work Research Institute, about whether pay transp...

Half-price bus and train fares are good, but wouldn’t completely free fares be even better? Bernard Hickey talks to transport and urban planning academic Jen McArthur about the economics and the politics of free public transport. He even discovers some positives that make the idea more attractive to the usual opponents. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Businesses, hospitals and the opposition are pleading for a loosening of migrant worker restrictions to ease the intense labour shortages that are forcing cancellations and jury-rigged services up and down the motu. Bernard Hickey sits down to interview Productivity Commission chair Ganesh Nana to find out if a migration surge would solve our productivity problem, and why any decision to pull the...

For decades we've been warned of major slumps that never happened, but the Reserve Bank's new chief economist says this time, it's different. With a history of central bank governors and finance ministers making similar predictions that never came to pass, listen as Bernard Hickey challenges Paul Conway's view that the housing market’s ever-upward tide may be turning. Learn more about your ad choi...

Why do so few of our small businesses make the leap to become bigger, faster-growing engine rooms for economic growth and higher wages? Curiously, Aotearoa also has a long tail of older business owners that are comfortable bumbling along with sub-scale firms that would do better with bigger and more ambitious owners. This week Bernard Hickey talks to ABC Business Sales MD Chris Small about why so...

The employment landscape currently favours workers, yet we’re still reluctant to ask for a pay rise and fear being sacked. Bernard Hickey is joined by AUT professor Jarrod Harr to examine how work culture, pay, conditions and the power relationships between employers and employees have been transformed by the pandemic and try to figure out why workers still feel insecure and what employers can do...

It’s hitting food, petrol, rent, shipping and wages, but inflation hasn’t touched the housing market. Bernard is joined by Kiwibank economist Mary-Jo Vergara to unpack the surprisingly big and long spike of inflation that is cascading into every aspect of our day-to-day lives. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bernard Hickey (When The Facts Change; parliament studio) and Toby Manhire (Gone By Lunchtime; Auckland studio) join forces for a budget reaction crossover special. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Inflation has become the thief in our wallets for the first time in a generation and there are plenty of culprits to blame. The Ukraine War, supply chain disruptions and US$10t of money printing are the first and most obvious cabs off the rank, but there's a new and more insidious source of inflation developing: automatic inflation. These annual CPI-linked price increases from a range of companies...

In December 2021 the government made changes to the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act that were designed to protect borrowers – but had consequences that saw reports of people being rejected for lending because they had takeaways too often, had too many streaming subscriptions, and even because they made regular investments. Earlier this month, the Minister for Commerce and Consumer Affair...

The government’s decision to cut fuel taxes this week highlights just how hard it is for politicians and voters to deal with short sharp shocks to the system. The ‘lizard brain’ part of our body politic has evolved to recoil from a petrol price shock, but this type of ‘thinking fast’ will need to be replaced with ‘thinking slow’ if we are to engineer a just transition to carbon zero. To find out m...

Back in 2002, supermarket chains Foodtown and Woolworths were allowed to combine into the group now known as Countdown. That consolidated the market down to a duopoly of the Australian-owned Countdown and the local cooperative of Foodstuffs, which owns Pak’nSave, New World and Four Square. A new report published by the Commerce Commission this week found the duopoly has used its market power to su...

New Zealand has a lot of small businesses, but relatively few of them expand into larger, more productive operations. Strawberry farms are a good example of this – many don’t invest in technology or systems to grow scale or profits, because it’s more profitable to simply wait for the farm’s land value to rise instead. But there are some interesting exceptions out there too. This week, Bernard talk...

The Reserve Bank made its first big set piece decision of the year this week, releasing its monetary policy statement and raising the Official Cash Rate to 1.0%. So what does that mean for interest rates and house prices? In this week’s episode, Bernard Hickey asks Reserve Bank governor Adrian Orr about the property price boom and wage inflation, and talks through the implications of the Reserve B...

This year marks 50 years of the gay liberation movement in New Zealand – 50 years of fight, advocacy, celebration, progress and frustration in the Rainbow community’s struggle for equality and equity. In recognition of the Pride festival this month, Liz Knight, chief risk officer at Kiwibank and a proud member of the Rainbow community, and Jess Segal, senior manager of Leadership, and Diversity, E...

The price of aluminium has exploded in the last six months – so much so that Rio Tinto now wants to delay the closure of the aluminium smelter it owns at Tiwai Point beyond the planned end date of 2024. But this decision has thrown a big spanner into the works of climate change planners, investors and politicians, who had been working under the assumption that, come 2024, the 13% of the nation’s p...

Building a light rail line between Auckland’s CBD and the airport sounds like a good thing for the climate and reducing transport emissions. But the new plan to dig a long tunnel and lay a new railway line will actually generate an extra 400,000 tonnes of carbon emissions in its first 10 years, and take until 2040 before it starts being carbon negative. Still sound like a good idea? In this episod...

Who or what is responsible for all the price inflation we’ve been seeing lately? And how do we know when we’re paying too much? Bernard Hickey talks to economic consultant Donal Curtin (previously of the New Zealand Commerce Commission) and Kiwibank chief economist Jarrod Kerr. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All the political roads in housing and climate change lead to council chambers rather than parliament these days. This week, we look ahead to the high stakes local elections in October, which will decide whether much progress is made in the next decade to deal with our twin emergencies. Bernard talks to Wellington mayoral candidate Tory Whanau about how tough 2021 was in local politics, and the ma...

Against all expectations a year ago, the global economy ended 2021 wracked by inflation and a debate about whether it’s transitory (and so can be ignored by central banks) or bedding in (and should be beaten down with higher interest rates). Bernard talks with Kiwibank’s Jarrod Kerr about what’s happening in our housing market and how well our exporters have done to offset the collapses of interna...

Natalie Vincent is the chief executive of Ngā Tangata Microfinance Trust, which works with New Zealanders experiencing financial hardship to provide them with small, safe, interest-free loans and mentorship to help them get – and stay – out of debt. The last two years have been the busiest in the organisation’s history, and December 2021 brought the most referrals for support yet. Natalie tells Si...

Bernard Hickey is joined by Ockham founder Mark Todd to dig through a massive year for housing. They talk about the record high number of houses being built despite all sorts of supply chain grief and skills shortages, plus whether the ‘Townhouse Nation’ law changes rammed through Parliament will actually make a difference, or leave us regretting the prescriptive legislation in years to come. Lear...