The Weekly Hoon: A rupturing world order, a changing climate & an election

The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night featured co-hosts Bernard Hickey & Peter Bale talking with regular guests Cathrine Dyer and Robert Patman, along with special guests Auckland University Emeritus Professor Jane Kelsey and intensive care specialist Dr David Galler.

We talked about:

* Likely issues in Election 2026 due on November 7, including anti-migration comments from Shane Jones in the wake of protests against rockpool harvesting (RNZ) and the economy’s struggle to generate growth most can feel;

* This week’s extraordinary weather events made worse by unaddressed climate change, including this new UK paper on the environment and national security and the measures that should be taken to make Aotearoa more resilient;

* Trump’s latest rupturing of the global world order, including Mark Carney’s speech at Davos and Donald Trump’s latest threats to invade Greenland;

* How New Zealand adapts to the law of the jungle; and,

* What’s happening in our health system, and how to improve it, including discussions about this Andrea Black paper, this Deloitte paper and the launch this week of Kaitiaki Hauora, which is a national coalition of workers, iwi, union, and advocacy groups wanting to strengthen public health that includes David Galler.

Jane Kelsey has written these pieces for The Conversation on geopolitics so far this year:

* Trump is threatening more tariffs over access to critical minerals – will NZ be targeted?

* The World Trade Organization is on life support. Will Trump’s new rules finish it off?

Robert Patman has written this piece for The Conversation this year:

* As Trump rewrites the rules in Venezuela, NZ faces a foreign policy reckoning

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. 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

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