The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night featured co-hosts Bernard Hickey and Peter Bale talking about geopolitics, the economy, climate change and politics.
It included regular guest Cathrine Dyer, plus special guests Auckland University Emeritus Professor Jane Kelsey, intensive care specialist Dr David Galler, who also publishes this substack david Galler, and Dr Malcolm Mulholland.
Jane talked about the challenge to New Zealand’s FTA with the EU by Both ENDS because of New Zealand’s climate policy backsliding.
David and Malclom talked about the ongoing crises in the health system because of decades of underfunding. They are doing The Roady on Public Health.
Bernard’s three things of note this week were:
* The Government and RBNZ are underestimating the chilling effect on the economy of falling house prices and falling real wages.
* Labour’s commitment to cap the size of Government at 33% of GDP means it can’t deal with our housing and health crises because Crown spending is already at 33% and an ageing population naturally pushes up NZ Super and health spending. Staying under the cap could only be done with massive cuts to other benefits and/or education spending.
* It’s great to see the climate backsliding come home to roost in the Both ENDS’ application to cancel NZ’s FTA with the EU. We’re in the ‘find out’ stage of ‘f*** around and find out’ strategy.
Peter’s three things of this week were:
1. Daniel Dale of CNN on his 10-years of factchecking Donald Trump: ‘His relentless dishonesty has become a central feature of US and world politics.’
2. Russia threatens Europe over Kaliningrad. FT-$ (gift): “Russia will be ready to use the entire arsenal of forces and capabilities at its disposal, including nuclear weapons, in order to defend its territory should Nato countries undertake any attempt aimed at isolating the Kaliningrad Region from the rest of the country,” the document stated.
3. An astounding White House statement that immigration from majority Muslim countries has fallen 96 percent from 2024.
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 last year’s New Zealand Podcast awards.
Listeners’ Choice nominations can be made at the NZ Podcast Awards site between now and 9th October, and then voting on the Listeners’ Choice award is open between 12th October - 26th November.
(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.)
Ngā mihi nui.
Bernard
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