The Weekly Hoon: Eastern European history & NZ; Election 2026; the RBNZ’s surprise hold & limited fiscal choices

Thank you Virginia McMillan, PixieMatt, Alistair Schorn, Gill Franklin, Toni S, and many others for tuning into my live video with Ganesh R Ahirao! Join me for my next live video in the app.

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 Robert Patman talking about Donald Trump’s friendly relations with Vladimir Putin, events in the Middle East and what’s at stake for New Zealand. This week’s special guests were Drs david Galler and Malcolm Mulholland from Kaitiaki Hauora. They have just finished a ‘roady’ series of local meetings campaigning for public healthcare. Here’s a few reports from the trip from David on his Substack as well. Bernard’s three things of note this week were: 1. We should all contact all the 18-24 year olds and make sure they’re enrolled. 2. Luxon keeps digging himself an ever deeper hole by saying he won’t deal with Opportunity. 3. I have a podcast recommendation. The Rest is Classified’s interview with Bourne series director Paul Greengrass about Spycatcher, the book he ghost wrote with Peter Wright. Peter’s three things to note this week were: ⁠1 - Israel may be preparing to attack Iran which could have effect of delaying looming Israeli election and saving Netanyahu from defeat and prosecution. 2 - Elon Musk proposes merging Tesla and SpaceX in what would be the biggest merger ever. Supposedly independent committees of each firm looking at it. Madness. 3 - Oracle, Larry Ellison, appears may be overstretched in its huge investments in AI and his son’s takeover of Paramount. Could be the trigger for a much bigger retreat on markets and an unravelling of the AI market boom. (Peter holds a tiny amount of Oracle through Sharesies). 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. (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

I talked in the video above last night with Elliot Crossan about about his analysis of Labour’s fiscal plan, including how its National-like focus on returning to Budget surplus and cutting debt will force big real cuts in welfare and other Government spending. I have asked Labour spokesperson Barbara Edmonds for an interview. Here’s the essence of what Elliot is saying (bolding mine): Labour and National are both promising to increase real, per-capita health spending by 2.1% per year and 1.8% per year respectively; the Clark and Ardern governments both put nearly 5% per year into the healthcare system. This will not be enough to save our cash-starved health system. Outside of healthcare, Labour’s spending plans mean it will have to cut real, per-capita spending on public services by 1.6% per year. This will shrink the public sector, excluding health, to its smallest share of GDP in at least 30 years. This is not accounting for the new spending (excluding health and welfare spending) promised in Labour’s fiscal plan, nor for pay equity. All new spending and all spending on pay equity settlements will have to come out of existing departmental budgets. Labour may have to make deeper service cuts than Nicola Willis is currently planning in order to pay for pay equity (though not if National is seriously planning to double defence spending as a share of GDP). Labour’s fiscal plan is not only significantly more conservative than what the party promised in 2017 under the Labour-Green Budget Responsibility Rules, under which Ardern & Robertson promised to maintain the size of government at its existing level; Labour is promising a bigger reduction in the size of government than Bill English was planning in 2017. Here’s Elliot’s summary chart, but his analysis linked below has much more. Thank you Paul Singh, Alex Clarkson, Rana Hemi HUATA, and many others for tuning into my live video with Elliot Crossan! Join me for my next live video in the app.

I talked with Dr Mona Krewel in the video above about how New Zealand’s political parties and leaders are using Facebook so far in Election 2026. She is the director of the Internet, Social Media and Politics Research Lab at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington and was reporting back after the first week of the 2026 New Zealand Social Media Study, including analysis of 544 Facebook posts from the week of October 5 to 11. There’s a full text report here on the university’s website. Long story short: Monica told me National is doing the most posts, Labour is focusing on cost of living, the biggest spenders get the biggest impact, advertising spend matters more than sophisticated micro-targeting and that election campaign effects are real, but typically modest, short-lived, and dependent on the voter. We aim to talk again in the last week of the campaign to see how Facebook was used through the rest of October. Thank you Kaimataara, Kate, Andrew Riddell, Luke Maker, Kath, and many others for tuning into my live video with Mona Krewel! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. Here’s the post from Rosie we discussed.