The Hoon Bernard Hickey

TL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers features talking with:
* The Kākā’s climate correspondent talking about the latest reports on a warming climate and the UN’s call this week to ban fossil fuel advertising;
* talking about the growing disquiet globally over the United States’ support for Israel in Gaza, plus the latest from Ukraine;
* Association of Salaried Medical Specialists executive director Sarah Dalton on the health funding crisis;
* Queenstown Lakes District Housing Trust CEO Julie Scott on social housing and the shortages of housing and transport in and around Queenstown; and,
* Commercial Communications Council CEO Simon Lendrum on the UN call for a boycott of fossil fuel money in advertising, PR and the media.
The six things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about in the Hoon above and via The Kākā and elsewhere in the last week included:
* Politics: Public and media reaction to Budget 2024 zeroed in on National’s breaking of election promises to fund 13 new cancer treatments and 50 new doctor training places, to not cut sick leave and holiday entitlements for part-time workers and to not cut funding for first-home buyer grants. See more in Monday’s email.
* Climate: Transport and Energy Minister Simeon Brown pushing ahead quietly with plans to water down emissions reduction rules for car imports. This move and the already-banned Clean Car Discount scheme could increase Aotearoa-NZ’s climate emissions by 30 million tonnes by 2030, which could cost taxpayers $680 million extra to buy emissions credits overseas, or risk the nation reneging on our Paris climate agreements in a way that would lock our farmers’ exports out of the European and UK markets. See more in Thursday’s email.
* Various cases emerged this week of ‘penny wise and pound foolish’ decisions by the Government to freeze or block funding for water infrastructure and public transport infrastructure that will dramatically slow the building of new homes, in direct opposition to the Government’s avowed ‘going for housing growth policy.’ See more in Monday’s email.
* UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres used the release of key reports this week on the warming climate by the World Meteorological Association (WMA) and the European Commission’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) to call in speech for a ban on all advertising by fossil-fuel companies, and for media agencies and media companies to stop working for such companies. See more in Thursday’s email. Also, see more in the weekly climate wrap from Cathrine and myself out this morning.
* Calls grew this week for deeper, more wide-ranging and more independent inquiries into Te Pati Maori’s use of data obtained during the Census and covid vaccination programmes by organisations associated with TPM President John Tamihere to promote voting for TPM.
* Ports of Auckland began telling clients last week it plans to increases its peak-time container pick-up fees by 84% to $175 per container. All because the Port has been told by Auckland Council to pay more dividends, again because both flavours of Government won’t fund councils properly for all the population growth Government has enabled. It’s another example of administered prices driving up domestic inflation, which is forcing the RBNZ to keep rates high for even longer.
The Hoon’s podcast version above was produced by Simon Josey. Regular co-host was off this week travelling.
(This is a sampler for all free subscribers. Thanks to the support of paying subscribers here, I’m 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.)
Other things we did elsewhere
We produced an episode of When The Facts Change via The Spinof

TL;DR: Here’s the top six news items of note in climate news for Aotearoa-NZ this week, and a discussion above between Bernard Hickey and The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer:
* A year of record-breaking surface temperatures has spawned a month of global extreme weather chaos in May, including howler monkeys falling dead from trees in Mexico during a ferocious heatwave that is also threatening to run Mexico City dry of water
* Meantime, Brazil has more water than it can handle as biblical-scale floods displace more than half a million people in the state of Rio Grande do Sul.
* Tornado-spawning thunderstorms killed 21 people, destroyed hundreds of buildings and disrupted Memorial Day weekend traffic in the US. The so-called‘kitty cat’ storms (as opposed to ‘nat cat’ for nationally catastrophic storms) have sent the insurance industry reeling at the accumulated scale of losses.
* North India has been suffering through an intense heat wave that experts say has surpassed 50˚C on the heat index (the apparent or experienced temperature) due to high levels of humidity. Hospitals in Delhi have been forced to set up special facilities to treat the increasing numbers of patients experiencing heat-related illnesses.
* And then there was the devastating landslide in Papua New Guinea that buried an entire village, part of a series of landslides driven primarily by the country’s unique geography. However, experts warn that climate change, particularly in the form of intensified rainfall events, can overwhelm the landscape’s ability to cope and contribute to landslides.
* Climate change could be producing more diarrhoea-causing cryptosporidium outbreaks in Aotearoa, according to a new study from the University of Otago.
(See more detail and analysis below, and in the video and podcast above. Cathrine Dyer’s journalism on climate and the environment is available free to all paying and non-paying subscribers to The Kākā and the public. It is made possible by subscribers signing up to the paid tier to ensure this sort of public interest journalism is fully available in public to read, listen to and share. Cathrine wrote the wrap. Bernard edited it. Lynn copy-edited and illustrated it.)
Monkey fall from trees, water runs short in brutal heatwave
What follows a year in which average surface temperatures exceed the pre-industrial average by more than 1.5˚C, adding energy equivalent to four Hiroshima bombs (or Hiros) per second to Earth’s climate system? That massive pulse of energy, amplified by the effects of El Niño will take some time to dissipate.
In May alone we have seen extreme weather events unleash chaos in multiple locations around the world. Howler monkeys were falling from trees in Mexico, dead from heatstroke and dehydration as they suffered under a brutal heatwave that has killed at least 26 people since March.
“Wildlife biologist Gilberto Pozo counted about 83 of the animals dead or dying on the ground under trees. The die-off started around 5 May and hit its peak over the weekend.
“They were falling out of the trees like apples,” Pozo said. “They were in a state of severe dehydration, and they died within a matter of minutes.” Already weakened, Pozo says the falls from dozens of yards (meters) up inflict additional damage that often finishes the monkeys off.
Pozo attributes the deaths to a “synergy” of factors, including high heat, drought, forest fires and logging that deprives the monkeys of water, shade and the fruit they eat.
“This is a sentinel species,” Pozo said, referring to the canary-in-a-coalmine effect where one species can say a lot about an ecosystem. “It is telling us something about what is happening with climate change.” The Guardian
The effects of climate-driven drought, heatwave and low precipitation are combining with Mexico City’s long-running infrastructure problems to create a crisis in which the sprawling metropolis could run out of water entir

TL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers features co-hosts and talking with:
* The Kākā’s climate correspondent about extreme heat in India and Mexico and the prospects climate migration to Aotearoa-NZ;
* CTU Chief Economist and founder Max Rashbrooke about Budget 2024; and
* Community Housing Aotearoa (CHA) Deputy CEO Chris Glaudel about Kāinga Ora and social housing.
The six things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere in the last week included:
* Housing, Climate, Poverty and Economy: The new National-ACT-NZ First Government unveiled its first Budget on Thursday, deciding to go ahead with long-promised tax cuts despite a weaker economy that is forcing $68.3 billion of net new borrowing by mid-2028. The income tax cuts cost $14.7 billion over four years and debt will rise by $12 billion more than Treasury forecast in December. Willis argued the tax cuts were ‘fully-funded’ by spending cuts and tax increases, and therefore it was not borrowing to pay for tax cuts. That would be true if the economic forecasts had not changed between the election and the Budget, but they have in a way that means there’s less money to spare. See and hear my full analysis in the podcast above, in Friday’s email and Friday’s podcast here featuring a discussion with …
There’s also this discussion with in a Budget Special ‘co-pro’ with Gone by Lunchtime for my weekly When The Facts Change podcast:
* Housing: Kāinga Ora’s board released the feedback it gave in April on Bill English’s review of the state-owned house-builder and landlord, criticising his comments about KO’s financial sustainability and performance as variously ill-informed, wrong and/or based on anecdotes, as also reported by Newsroom’s Tim Murphy. Newshub’s Jenna Lynch reported on Tuesday that Chris Bishop arranged for English to lead the ‘independent’ review in a series of text messages. See more analysis from me in Tuesday’s email and in comments I made on The Detail broadcast on RNZ and Newsroom on Thursday, and also listenable here directly.
* Housing and Economy: The Reserve Bank confirmed plans to limit mortgage lending for loans worth six and seven times the income of owner-occupiers and landlords respectively from July 1. These DTI limits won’t reduce lending much now because lending at those multiples is currently low, but will stop most high DTI lending growth in future as interest rates fall. It affects landlords more than first home buyers because loan to value limits are the main restraint on their borrowing. LVR limits were also loosened a bit from July 1 to offset any effects of the new DTI limits. See more analysis from me in Wednesday’s email.
* Housing and Economy: Key leaders in housing and infrastructure construction sent a joint letter to the Government pleading for more project certainty and warning its funding freezes for councils, water reform and transport projects had significantly damaged confidence and risked driving staff overseas,  Newsroom’s Fox Meyer reported on Tuesday. See more analysis in Tuesday’s email.
* Cost of living: The Commerce Commission announced its draft decisions on regulated electricity transmission costs for the next five years. It decided the nationwide transmission and local lines distribution costs will rise 48% in the next five years to a combined $17.8 billion. These costs make up 37.5% of power bills and mean that monthly bills will rise around $15 from July 1, 2025, followed by $5/month hikes in each of the following four years. See Thursday’s email.
* Poverty: The Fairer Futures advocacy group and the Disabled Persons Assembly published a report titled A Thousand Cuts that estimated a disabled person could already be up to $256 per fortnight or $5,742 a year worse off because of the Government’s changes to disability support, bus subsidies, benefi

TL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers features co-hosts and talking about this week’s Kainga Ora and first home loan news, along with regular guest on China’s warning to New Zealand and special guests on the riots in New Caledonia and Giorgi Lomsadze on the escalating protests in Georgia against Russian influence.
The six 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:
* Housing: The Government extended its freeze on new housebuilding by Kainga Ora into next year after releasing a report on the state house builder and manager by former National PM and Housing Minister Bill English that said its rapid expansion over the last five years was financially unsustainable. Housing Minister Chris Bishop also announced the cancellation of first home buyers’ grants to save $245 million over four years, of which $140 million would be used to fund 1,500 new social housing places by Community Housing Providers (CHPs) and to help pay for tax cuts for landlords. See Thursday’s email.
* Economy: The Reserve Bank held the Official Cash Rate at 5.5% as expected, but extended out its forecast for a first cut by three months to August 2025 after also increasing its forecast for inflation. The central bank blamed sticky domestic services inflation, mostly from rents, council rates and Government fees and charges, and insurance premiums, which tighter monetary policy is unlikely to influence much. The announcement dampened hopes for mortgage rate cuts this year and questions the Government’s decision to freeze funding for councils in a way that forced them to hike rates dramatically, as well as various decisions to impose new fees and charges on motorists, migrants and importers. See Thursday’s email and Wednesday’s email.
* Geopolitics: China’s ambassador to New Zealand, Wang Xiaolong, told PM Christopher Luxon at the annual China-NZ Business Summit in Auckland this week that relations between China and New Zealand were at a ‘critical juncture’ because of New Zealand’s consideration of joining Aukus II, which the ambassador said directly supported the nuclear-powered Aukus I. He said Aukus was targeting China and New Zealand joining Aukus II would mean we were ‘taking sides.’ Luxon said he didn’t think joining Aukus II would hurt New Zealand’s trade with China much, and that New Zealand wanted to diversify its trade in a strategy he described as: ‘China and…’. The risk for New Zealand is diversification will be difficult when any trade agreement with India would have to exclude dairy and meat exports, and our recently signed EU and UK trade agreements include clauses forcing New Zealand to abide by its Paris emissions reductions commitments, which the current Government has challenged with a series of emissions-increasing decisions on EVs, motorway building, railway cancellations and farming rules. (See more in the podcast above)
* Climate: The massive offshore wind project backed by the NZ Super Fund has told ministers in a briefing it can't operate off the Taranaki Coast if seabed mining is allowed to go ahead. It said the dredging of 10m of sands was incompatible with building turbine platforms and running power cables to shore. It was based on this study released in March. See Tuesday’s email.
* Climate: Energy Minister Shane Jones announced a strategy of mining more coal and precious minerals on Department of Conservation-controlled land and other areas to double such exports by 2035. The announcement did not mention climate once and the strategy did not detail if any climate emissions analysis had been done. EU and UK farmers will find this interesting.
* Economy: Global funds management behemoth BlackRock said it thought central bank rate hikes designed to tame inflation actually worsened inflation because higher interest rates give savers

TL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for subscribers features co-hosts and , along with regular guest and special guest former PM Helen Clark on Aukus II and much more. We also spoke with Ngāti Toa CEO Helmut Modlik about why his iwi opposes the Fast-track Approval bill.
The six 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:
* Housing & climate - Opposition to the Government’s Fast-track approvals bill mounted in submissions to the Environment Committee this week. Helen Clark warned in the podcast above of the dangers of placing so much power in the hands of the executive. Helmut Modlik warned of a repeat of the top-down damaging of the long-term prospects of Ngāti Toa and the land around Porirua, just as happened with mass house-building in the 1950s and 1960s.
* Infrastructure - The pressure on Council finances from Government funding freezes and a fundamentally borked system of infrastructure financing for fast population growth is becoming so intense it is forcing them to sell assets sales and force unsustainable dividends, as evidenced by a shock resignation of Christchurch’s asset management company and intense debates in Auckland and Wellington about selling airport shares. See more in Thursday’s email.
* Economy - Aotearoa’s biggest and last-best-hope of being a global business, Fonterra, announced plans yesterday to sell its global consumer brands businesses and 17 of its remaining factories overseas, including brands such as Anchor, Anmum, Anlene, Fernleaf, Mainland and Kapiti. The assets up for sale employ capital of $3.4 billion and generating $190 million or 20% of its earnings in the first half of the year. I spoke in this week’s Hoon above about how this represented the final victory for the housing market in its quest to focus spare capital on investing in land appreciation for tax-free capital gains, rather than real businesses and assets that increase real wages and real business wealth.
* Population - Stats NZ reported this week a record-high 52,496 New Zealand citizens left the country permanently in the year to the end of March. That equates to about one full A320 leaving each weekday, with just over half of those citizens going to live in Australia. They were replaced by people on temporary work and student visas (with work rights) from India, the Philippines and China, in that order. See Wednesday’s email.
* Environment - ECan reported this week more than half of the wells monitored in its annual survey last year showed nitrate levels were likely to be increasing, with water from 35 of the 349 wells having nitrate levels above the maximum acceptable value for human health. South Canterbury has the highest incidence of bowel cancer in New Zealand. See Wednesday’s email.
* Economy - Surveys this week showed the economy is settling into a state of suspended animation as the Government’s funding freezes and job cuts chill confidence and combine with stubbornly high interest rates to extend the recession of late 2023 through the rest of the year. See Tuesday’s email
What we talked about on ‘The Hoon’ on Thursday night
In this week’s podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers at 5pm on Thursday night:
* 5:00 pm - 5:10 pm - and opened the show with a discussion about Fonterra’s decision to sell its global brands and give up on its global value-added ambitions.
* 5:10 - 5:40 - Peter and Bernard talked with and Helen Clark about whether Aotearoa should join Aukus II and how the new Government was performing.
* 5:40 - 6:00 pm - Peter and Bernard talked with Ngāti Toa CEO Helmut Modlik about why his iwi opposes the Fast-track Approval bill, as he detailed in this Op-ed via The Spinoff.
The Hoon’s podcast version above was produced by Simon Josey.
(This is a sampler for all free subscribers. Thanks to the

TL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for subscribers features co-hosts and , along with regular guest on geopolitics, and special guest Jesse Richardson from on a big victory for YIMBYs in Wellington this week.
The six 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:
* Housing: In a big win for YIMBYs over NIMBYs in the nation’s capital, Housing and RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop approved almost all of the Wellington City Council’s recommended zoning changes to allow many more apartments and townhouses in its inner-suburbs. He went even further on densification than the council by allowing six-storey apartments in Kilbirnie, but decided not to strip the derelict Gordon Wilson flats of their heritage status. See Thursday’s email.
* Poverty: Associate Education Minister and ACT Leader David Seymour announced the continuation of the Healthy School Lunches Programme known as Ka Ora, Ka Ako for two years, but with cheaper packaged food for intermediate and secondary school kids at lower decile schools, rather than hot meals. He said it would save $107 million. See Thursday’s email.
* Tax: Finance Minister Nicola Willis announced in her first pre-Budget speech in Wellington an expansion and renaming of the Social Wellbeing Agency (back) into the Social Investment Agency. She also said the Budget would include “meaningful, but modest” tax cuts that would increase the take-home income of 83% of New Zealanders over the age of 15 and 94% of households.
* Climate: A cold snap increased power demand and forced Transpower to warn of potential shortages this morning. Wholesale prices leapt 50-fold. Meanwhile, Genesis Energy is resuming coal imports because of gas shortages and a lack of investment in the last decade by (mostly) state-owned gentailers who have prioritised high profits, high dividends and capital returns over investment in (already consented) wind farms. See Thursday’s email.
* Poverty: MSD cut funding for budgeting services, debt restructuring advisors and helping Christchurch attack survivors, surprising those working with poor families stuck with loan shark debt and survivors struggling to rehabilitate. Willis confirmed in her speech this week the Government had found $1.5 billion of savings to help pay for lower taxes for landlords. See Thursday’s email.
* Climate Minister Simon Watts announced this morning the Government had agreed that Parliament’s Finance and Expenditure Committee would conduct an inquiry into climate adaptation. This followed the Environment Committee’s inquiry into climate adaptation last year, which reported back in February.
What we talked about on ‘The Hoon’ on Thursday night
In this week’s podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers at 5pm on Thursday night:
* 5:00 pm - 5:20 pm - and opened the show with a discussion about climate change, school lunches, woke sushi and Christopher Luxon’s very, very bad week.
* 5:20 - 5:50 - Peter and Bernard talked with about the latest moves in Gaza and a growing lack of confidence in US leadership.
* 5:40 - 6:00 pm - Peter and Bernard talked with Jesse Richardson from
on a big victory for YIMBYs in Wellington this week .
The Hoon’s podcast version above was produced by Simon Josey.
(This is a sampler for all free subscribers. Thanks to the support of paying subscribers here, I’m able to spread the work from my public interest journalism here about housing affordability, climate change and poverty reduction around in other public venues. I’d love you to join the community supporting and contributing to this work with your ideas, feedback and comments.)
Other things I did elsewhere
I produced an episode of When The Facts Change via The Spinoff, including this interview with Otago University public health Professor Nick Wilson on the true co