The Reserve Bank gets another chance to cut interest rates next week. So far 2025 has seen the RBNZ make three consecutive cuts to the official cash rate, which was widely expected by economists up and down the country. But next week, for the first time this year, there’s doubt.
Kiwibank economist Sabrina Delgado joins Bernard Hickey to assess our central bank’s options leading into next week’s monetary policy statement.
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20:17
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20:17
Post Covid hybrid work
Many bosses now want their workers back in the office full time, but for a while in the immediate aftermath of Covid, workers had the power to demand the flexibility to stay home. Now the jobs market has sagged, the balance has shifted and a new hybrid way of working is becoming more common. Bernard Hickey speaks on this week’s When The Facts Change with Robert Half NZ MD Megan Alexander about these trends, including those younger workers who prefer a nice open plan office to a pokey, mouldy flat.
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33:13
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33:13
How big do we want to be?
It’s no secret that Aotearoa is facing a range of monumental infrastructure challenges — much has been made lately of the state of our water pipes, ferries, railways and roads. Successive generations of decision makers have kicked the infrastructure maintenance can down the road, and now we are facing a huge bill if we want to keep pace with our growing population.
Infrastructure NZ chief executive Nick Leggett joins Bernard Hickey to discuss the scale of the infrastructure challenge facing New Zealand, and how overseas countries have approached similar issues.
Ultimately, it all comes down to one key question: how big do we want our population to be in the future?
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33:49
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33:49
An abundance of energy
‘Abundance’ is the hottest word in the political economy right now all around the world. A book by Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein called ‘Abundance: How we build a better future’ argues the centre-left should adopt urbanisation and electrification as central aims to improve affordability of housing and transport, rather than framing emissions reduction as an expensive and painful necessity that the right has successfully weaponised into electoral suicide. This week on When The Facts Change, Bernard Hickey talks to Rewiring Aotearoa about what could be done right now to electrify our transport fleet and the cost of living savings within our grasp.
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36:12
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36:12
Dissension in the RBNZ ranks
The Reserve Bank cut the Official Cash Rate this week, as expected, but one of the six members of the bank’s rate setting committee voted to hold the OCR. That surprised markets and pushed up the wholesale interest rates that drive fixed mortgage rates. Bernard Hickey speaks with Kiwibank’s Mary Jo Vergara about a very uncertain outlook for rates in the wake of Donald Trump’s Liberation Day shock.
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Hosted by journalist Bernard Hickey, When the Facts Change is your essential weekly guide to the intersection of economics, business and politics in Aotearoa New Zealand. Presented by The Spinoff together with Kiwibank.
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