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The Hoon

Bernard Hickey
The Hoon
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  • The Weekly Hoon: Rate cut to Govt & economy's rescue?; Trump's capitulation; Helicopters instead homes
    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 about the global economy, local and international politics, climate change and the future of trade. This week’s special guest is Ganesh R Ahirao.This week’s Hoon featured:* A discussion between Peter and Bernard about homelessness and helicopters, along with RNZ’s pivot to focusing on older listeners and the SIS’s annual security report. We referred to an analysis by Sanjana Hattotuwa via BlueSky and his own wordpress post about how 10,000 public sector job cuts threaten New Zealand’s national and human security.* A discussion with Cathrine about new evidence of ice loss in the Arctic and Antarctic, gas shortages in Aotearoa and the Government’s decision announced yesterday to further loosen emissions standards for vehicle imports.* A discussion with Robert about Donald Trump’s ‘Alaska Catastrophe’ summit with Vladimir Putin, New Zealand’s purchase of helicopters and jets announced yesterday, and Israel’s imminent invasion of Gaza.* A discussion with Ganesh about the Reserve Bank’s decision this week to cut rates and promise more, the Government’s economic (non) strategy of relying on rate cuts and Treasury’s ‘Back to the Future’ Long Term Fiscal strategy document published last week that focused utterly on debt reduction. We referred to Ganesh R Ahirao’s substack post on the Government’s dismemberment of the public sector.The Hoon’s podcast version above was recorded on Thursday night during a live webinar for over 200 paying subscribers and was produced and edited by Simon Josey.The Hoon won the silver award for best current affairs podcast in this year’s New Zealand Podcast awards. (This is a sampler for all free subscribers and anyone else who stumbles on it. Thanks to the support of paying subscribers here, we’re 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 in full. Remember, all students and teachers who sign up for the free version with their .ac.nz and .school.nz email accounts are automatically upgraded to the paid version for free. Also, here’s a couple of special offers: $3/month or $30/year for under 30s & $6.50/month or $65/year for over 65s who rent.)Ngā mihi nui.Bernard This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thekaka.substack.com/subscribe
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  • The Weekly Hoon: ACT leads Govt; Gaza & Palestine recognition; A new Yalta; The future of trade
    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 about the global economy, local and international politics, climate change and the future of trade.This week’s Hoon featured:* A discussion between Peter and Bernard about how ACT continues to dominate the agenda of the Government, and that ACT voters are the happiest with the Government’s performance on the economy and cost of living.* A discussion with Cathrine about whether Road User Charges and an Auckland Congestion Charging scheme will actually reduce climate emissions (spoiler: they won’t).* A discussion with Robert about the upcoming meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, and a look at New Zealand’s position on the recognition of Palestine.* A discussion with trade expert and former MFAT diplomat Steph Honey about the future of trade agreements in the wake of Donald Trump’s tariff policies.The Hoon’s podcast version above was recorded on Thursday night during a live webinar for over 200 paying subscribers and was produced and edited by Simon Josey.The Hoon won the silver award for best current affairs podcast in this year’s New Zealand Podcast awards. (This is a sampler for all free subscribers and anyone else who stumbles on it. Thanks to the support of paying subscribers here, we’re 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 in full. Remember, all students and teachers who sign up for the free version with their .ac.nz and .school.nz email accounts are automatically upgraded to the paid version for free. Also, here’s a couple of special offers: $3/month or $30/year for under 30s & $6.50/month or $65/year for over 65s who rent.)Ngā mihi nui.Bernard This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thekaka.substack.com/subscribe
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  • The Weekly Hoon: Kāinga Ora’s dismantling, Trump’s tariff blitz & how NZ pays for roads
    The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night features co-hosts Bernard Hickey and Peter Bale talking with special guests Felicity Roxburgh, the executive director of the New Zealand International Business Forum, and Patrick Reynolds, the transport activist and Auckland Council candidate.This week’s Hoon featured:* A discussion between Peter and Bernard about the dismantling of Kāinga Ora and the history of socal housing, given Peter’s feature about Kāinga Ora is due to be published in The Listener this weekend.* A discussion with Felicity about Donald Trump putting a 15% tariff rate on New Zealand exports and the future of globalisation.* A discussion with Patrick about Chris Bishop’s announcement this week about the replacement of fuel taxes with Road User Charges, and another blowout in the cost of the Ōtaki to north of Levin Road of National Significance to $2.1 billion.The Hoon’s podcast version above was recorded on Thursday night during a live webinar for over 200 paying subscribers and was produced and edited by Simon Josey.The Hoon won the silver award for best current affairs podcast in this year’s New Zealand Podcast awards. (This is a sampler for all free subscribers and anyone else who stumbles on it. Thanks to the support of paying subscribers here, we’re 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 in full. Remember, all students and teachers who sign up for the free version with their .ac.nz and .school.nz email accounts are automatically upgraded to the paid version for free. Also, here’s a couple of special offers: $3/month or $30/year for under 30s & $6.50/month or $65/year for over 65s who rent.)Ngā mihi nui.Bernard This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thekaka.substack.com/subscribe
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  • Mini-Hoon: How performative politics & the capture of democracies corrodes trust in Government
    I spoke with Victoria University of Wellington political scientist Natalia Albert this week about her excellent substack post titled: The Politics of Trust: What the Wellbeing Era Got Right (and Wrong). I highly recommend it, along with Natalia’s many previous posts on the quirks and features of Aotearoa’s deeply frustrating political economy. She wrote this week about trust in Government, in particular after the previous Labour Government’s detour into talking about ‘Wellbeing’ as some sort of governing framework. We got to talking about how the nature of politics has become increasingly performative, especially in our social-media-soaked worlds, which are now full of tribes shouting at each other to get attention in a time of dwindling attention spans. But why exactly has this led to an obvious erosion in trust in the arms of Government and other institutions of authority? We talked about these and other things in the video above, which is available to all, as part of my public interest mandate to cover issues in our political economy, such as housing, poverty and climate. I have always been surprised when I’ve asked Finance Ministers and Prime Ministers why the policies they won elections on just never seem to be implemented in full, or in a way that makes peoples lives better.They have often told me there was a wall of objections, frustrations and an enervating status quo bias inside ministries working in tandem with well-connected industry groups that made things much more difficult than they expected. The common reason they’re given when told to ‘talk to the hand’ is the policy would not allow the Government to return to a Budget surplus fast enough to keep debt down around a ‘fiscally prudent’ level of 20-30% of GDP, and that Government should aim to be no bigger than 30% of GDP. This rigorously enforced (by Treasury) set of financial guidelines has actually been the bi-partisan consensus for the last 30 years. It led to sinking lids being put on Education, Health, Welfare, Infrastructure and Housing investment and spending whenever possible, and has bred a culture of avoiding ongoing spending commitments that would lift the size of Government beyond 30% of GDP. Even the Greens agreed to this ‘fiscal responsibility framework’ before the 2017 election.Yet it’s never really been explained to either voters or to MPs and ministers themselves. They eventually learn it through a process of countless cabinet committee meetings, Treasury-advice-laden cabinet papers and the remorseless financial logic of everything, everything always having to serve the ‘Fiscal North Star’ of returning to surplus. Meanwhile, politicians and voters still believe all of the things they want can be achieved with the Government keeping public debt low, limiting itself to less than 30% of GDP and not taxing capital gains on residential land. In the end, politicians make the promises and don’t deliver.There’s a discussion of these conundrums and more in the discussion above.Many thanks to Natalia.Ngā Mihi Nui.Bernard This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thekaka.substack.com/subscribe
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  • The Weekly Hoon: NZ's Gaza stance; A key climate (over) ruling & Auckland's homelessness crisis
    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, plus special guest Auckland City Councillor Angela Dalton.This week’s Hoon featured:* a discussion about the events in Gaza and New Zealand’s position on recognising the Palestinian Authority as a state;* the Trump administration’s rescinding of the long-standing finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger human health, removing the legal foundation for U.S. greenhouse gas regulations (Reuters); and* evidence of a doubling of homelessness in Auckland presented to the Council’s Community Committee chaired by Angela Dalton on Tuesday (meeting Agenda pages 9-11)The Hoon’s podcast version above was recorded on Thursday night during a live webinar for over 200 paying subscribers and was produced and edited by Simon Josey.The Hoon won the silver award for best current affairs podcast in this year’s New Zealand Podcast awards. (This is a sampler for all free subscribers and anyone else who stumbles on it. Thanks to the support of paying subscribers here, we’re 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 in full. Remember, all students and teachers who sign up for the free version with their .ac.nz and .school.nz email accounts are automatically upgraded to the paid version for free. Also, here’s a couple of special offers: $3/month or $30/year for under 30s & $6.50/month or $65/year for over 65s who rent.)Ngā mihi nui.Bernard This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thekaka.substack.com/subscribe
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About The Hoon

Bernard Hickey's discussions with Peter Bale and guests about the political economy in Aotearoa-NZ and in geo-politics, including issues around housing affordability, climate change inaction and child poverty reduction. thekaka.substack.com
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