Bernard Hickey Journalism / The Kākā

01/08/2024

Our weekly wrap of climate news:

Cathrine Dyer & Bernard Hickey chat about the week's big climate news, including research on methane's contribution to climate change, and Air NZ becoming the first airline to abandon targets and SBTi

01/08/2024

Our hoon around this week's news:

Co-hosts Bernard Hickey & Peter Bale discuss the week’s news with Cathrine Dyer on climate and politics, plus special guests Vic Crockford on housing and Dr Gary Payinda on the health crisis

27/07/2024

Our weekly climate wrap is here:

Cathrine Dyer & Bernard Hickey chat about the week's big climate news, including increasing scrutiny of carbon offsets, and the unravelling of our Government's pine forests plan

22/07/2024

Decades of underinvestment at the same time as record-high population growth have stressed housing, water, education and health infrastructure to breaking points all over the motu, which the new Government’s spending freezes are exposing and worsening

Biden pulls out of Presidential contest; Chasing our tails inside our housing, water, health, and education infrastructure crises; Includes Bernard’s Dawn Chorus podcast plus some fun things

19/07/2024

Cathrine Dyer and Bernard Hickey detail the latest climate news, including how the Government's 'least cost path' on climate will mean we fail to meet our Zero Carbon Act and Paris Agreement targets

Cathrine Dyer and Bernard Hickey detail the latest climate news, including how the Government's 'least cost path' on climate will mean we fail to meet our Zero Carbon Act and Paris Agreement targets

19/07/2024

My top six things to note around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the week to July 20

Including my Saturday morning podcast reflecting on the six things that mattered this week, and Charts, quotes & cartoons of the week, plus my weekend reading and scoops of the week selections

12/07/2024

Govt flounders while ocean temps soar: Cathrine Dyer and Bernard Hickey detail the latest climate news, including accusations of policy incoherency by the new Government alongside evidence of rapidly accelerating ocean surface temperatures
https://thekaka.substack.com/p/govt-flounders-while-ocean-temps

12/07/2024

Our hoon around this week, featuring Helen Clark, Robert Patman and Patrick Reynolds

Featuring the Hoon podcast hosted by Bernard Hickey & Peter Bale, with Cathrine Dyer on climate news and Robert Patman on geo-politics, plus special guests Helen Clark and Patrick Reynolds

14/06/2024

The big climate news in Aotearoa this week is the Government’s announcement that they will be introducing new legislation this month to ensure that agricultural emissions (including the on-farm emissions of agriculture, animal processors and fertiliser companies) are not priced in the ETS in 2025.

Cathrine Dyer & Bernard Hickey chat about the week's big climate news, including the coalition government's removal of farming from the ETS and its aggressive restarting of oil and gas drilling

14/06/2024

Catch up with this week's hoon around the news:

Featuring the Hoon podcast hosted by Bernard Hickey & Peter Bale, with Cathrine Dyer on climate news and Robert Patman on geo-politics, plus special guest Paul Taylor on Macron's mess

14/06/2024

Seymour says speed restrictions 'drained the joy from life" - but in the announcement here was no indication in their announcement he and Transport Minister Brown had considered the likely health, safety or emissions effects. There was no evidence they had considered the financial costs to the public health system of more accidents with more serious injuries, higher repair costs to roads pounded by heavy trucks at higher speeds, or the Paris Agreement liabilities to the Crown from higher emissions.

120km/hr speed limit proposed without checking human, financial or climate costs; Coal use up 99% in Q1, but big jump in solar, wind softens emissions jump to 21.5%; Job ads slump to 2016 low

08/06/2024

As winter descends, frustration is growing at the short-termist ‘penny wise and pound foolish’ decisions from the Government and councils

Govt spending freeze on classrooms & pipes driving up rents & inflation, stopping rate cuts that other countries started this week; Cancer patients & GPs lament broken promises & health underfunding

08/06/2024

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.

Featuring the Hoon podcast hosted by Bernard Hickey, with Cathrine Dyer on climate news and Robert Patman on geopolitics, plus special guests Sarah Dalton, Julie Scott and Simon Lendrum

08/06/2024

New evidence is increasingly pointing at efforts to reduce marine pollution being the main cause of abrupt increases in ocean temperatures experienced since 2023.

Cathrine Dyer & Bernard Hickey chat about the week's big climate news, including new evidence that the abrupt increases in ocean temperatures could be an untended consequence of tackling pollution

30/05/2024

Willis is dancing not-so-daintily on the head of a fiscal pin when she describes the tax cuts as ‘fully funded’ by spending cuts and a few little revenue increases.
https://thekaka.substack.com/p/willis-borrows-an-extra-12b-to-pay

23/05/2024

This week on The Hoon - including a discussion of how there was less sharing of the joy this week than at the Chinese New Year celebrations in February. China’s ambassador to NZ (2nd from right above) has told Luxon that relations between China and New Zealand are now at a ‘critical juncture’

Featuring the podcast of our weekly Hoon, hosted by Bernard Hickey & Peter Bale, with Robert Patman on China’s warning to NZ on Aukus; plus Michael Field on New Caledonia & Giorgi Lomsadze on Georgia

23/05/2024

https://thekaka.substack.com/p/how-much-climate-reality-can-the?initial_medium=video

Cathrine Dyer & Bernard Hickey chat about the week's big climate news, including businesses' failure to meet voluntary emissions cutting goals, AI becoming an energy hog, & increasingly bumpy flights

16/05/2024

This week on The Hoon, Helen Clark joined us with her thoughts on whether Aotearoa should join Aukus II. Plus her frank assessment of how Luxon and the new Government are performing...
https://thekaka.substack.com/p/the-hoon-around-the-week-to-may-17

10/05/2024

Our power system almost blacked out because gentailers chose dividends over building 1.5 GW of already consented wind farms. Making the market competitive & unleashing solar + batteries might fix it
https://thekaka.substack.com/p/why-we-almost-blacked-out-and-how?initial_medium=video

09/05/2024

The week that was on The Kaka - including a win for pro-densification in Wellington.
https://thekaka.substack.com/p/the-hoon-around-the-week-to-may-10

07/05/2024

Ratings agency Standard & Poor’s is pushing back hard at suggestions that carving Watercare out of Auckland Council can be done easily and cheaply without clear guarantees on the new Watercare bonds from the Government or Auckland Council.

Simeon Brown's deal to carve Watercare out of Auckland Council is vague about the Crown's backing of Watercare's bonds & S&P is warning of rating downgrades costing Aucklanders many millions each year

30/04/2024

I’ve documented in recent months a collapse in confidence about the Government’s direction in ‘right track-wrong track’ polls and in business and consumer confidence polls. These, at least initially, weren’t reflected in support levels for individual parties. That lag ended last night when 1News-Verian published its latest poll.

Coalition slumps behind Opposition in poll after just 5 months in power; RBNZ warns banks on climate risk; Landlord building plans at record lows, while 80% plan rent hikes, despite tax reversal

29/04/2024

The Government's constant talk of inheriting a financial mess, its freezes on transport, housing and water project grants and decisions, and a cavalcade of state sector job cuts has unnerved businesses and consumers into snapping shut their own wallets. It’s a reversal from late last year, when spenders and investors had expected better things from a change in Government.
https://thekaka.substack.com/p/coalitions-dirge-of-austerity-and

21/04/2024

A crescendo of opposition to the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill is growing beyond Parliament and including iwi, political columnists, editorial writers, legal scholars and campaigners who fear it gives three ministers more power than Robert Muldoon.

Opposition to Fast Track Approvals Bill widens beyond Parliament; Already-rejected projects jump onto once-secret list revealed at last minute; NGOs prepare for legal challenges; Austerity hits health

11/04/2024

Cathrine Dyer and Bernard Hickey talk through the week's big climate climate news, including the temperature leap shocking Antarctic scientists and a big human rights ruling on climate change inaction
https://thekaka.substack.com/p/antarctic-heat-spike-shocks-climate

11/04/2024

The Government, which was elected with a ‘Going for Housing Growth’ platform that ‘supercharges’ community housing providers, has refused a community housing provider’s request for funding help to build 42 apartments in Hamilton because it said a $100 million fund was fully allocated

Bishop blocks funding plea from Community Housing Provider for 42 social homes in Hamilton as $100m capital fund was 'used up', despite Govt spending $4b each year on rent subsidies and grants

04/04/2024

By the end of the decade, the fossil fuel industry plans to almost quadruple the number of new developments (and the amount of oil and gas extracted) compared with 2023.
https://thekaka.substack.com/p/new-oil-and-gas-to-quadruple-by-2030

04/04/2024

A Roy Morgan poll taken last month and published last night shows confidence in whether the country is on the right track or wrong track collapsed by 17 percentage points in March from February, which is more than it fell during any of the covid lockdown months in Auckland in late 2021.

Voter confidence about whether NZ is on the right track or wrong track collapsed in March by more than during the late-2021 lockdowns, but has yet to move party support levels much

28/03/2024

Treasury expects an economic slowdown to reduce forecast income taxes by $13.9 billion over the next four years. That means the Government’s borrowing programme over the next three years will have to be $10b -$15b bigger than forecast last December - if it goes ahead with its promised $14.9 billion worth of tax cuts over the same period, which Nicola Willis again committed to broadly, describing it as “responsible tax relief.”
https://thekaka.substack.com/p/borrowing-15b-more-to-pay-for-149b