When the Facts Change
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When the Facts Change
When the Facts Change, 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. When the Facts Change is currently on hiatus and is open for sponsorship. For...
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Going up after digging down
Billions has been spent on the construction of Auckland’s City Rail Link, largely at the cost of taxpayers and ratepayers. The current Auckland counci...
To cut or not to cut?
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 r...
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...
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, fe...
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: Ho...
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...
Budget special: When The Facts Change x Gone By Lunchtime
In the year of growth, Nicola Willis has presented a growth budget. But does the Investment Boost initiative, which speeds up depreciation for busines...
Let the Budget battles commence
Fresh off a pre-Budget speech that took aim at the recent changes to pay equity, Labour Party leader Chris Hipkins joins Bernard Hickey to discuss the...
Warmer, drier - and cheaper in the long run
In 2010, the NZ Green Building Council introduced the Homestar sustainability certification, a framework that aims to allow designers, architects and...
Housing market psychology 101
This week, Bernard Hickey dives into the psychology of the housing market and talks to realestate.co.nz CEO Sarah Wood about why so many home sellers...
How do we create the ‘2degrees Effect’ for supermarkets, banking and electricity?
More than half of consumer spending is dominated one way or another by a collection of monopolies, duopolies and quadropolies that generate higher pri...
An AI-powered startup
Bernard Hickey talks to the co-founders of Christchurch-based AI start-up, Contented. Lucy Pink and Hannah Hardy-Jones tell their story from meeting o...
The global aftermath of Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’
Donald Trump’s bigger-and-stupider-than-expected tariffs have upended the global trading system and are threatening to create a new financial crisis....
The green shoots and brown roots of our economy
If New Zealand’s economy was a grass paddock, it would be in pretty rough shape. We’re coming out of a pretty bad drought (economic recession) and the...
Planting the trees we’ll never sit under
For 30 years, a little-known number in government circles has quietly stymied investment for future generations. Set by Treasury, the ‘discount rate’...
New Zealand’s greatest invention: a monetary policy framework?
Bernard Hickey chews the monetary policy fat with returning guest Reserve Bank chief economist Paul Conway. Was inflation targeting (a policy framewor...
A handy Primer for the global AI economy
This week we dive deep into the worlds of AI, defence technology businesses and the great technological arms race between China and the US. Bernard is...
Shock and Orr
Adrian Orr resigned as Reserve Bank Governor this week after 7 years in the job, but three years early, effective immediately and without explanation....
Mortgage rates, braking and accelerating
Even as New Zealand’s economy was in the depths of a recession, the Reserve Bank kept a firm grip on monetary policy, only easing up in mid-2024. This...
The startup savant behind Trade Me and Xero
Described by The Spinoff’s Duncan Greive as “the most important figure in New Zealand technology you’ve never hear of”, Rowan Simpson has had a guidin...
‘Show me the money’: What Kiwi are buying this summer
Retail spending figures from shops, cafes, restaurants, hotels and holiday hotspots over December and January are the ultimate barometer for spending...
Rising tides and sinking boats
Free trade agreements are the global political economy’s hottest topics at the moment, especially since a tariff-toting Donald Trump recently argued (...
How do we measure the value of social investment?
Our social welfare system is complicated, expensive - and incredibly necessary. How do we know when it’s working properly? And when it’s not? ImpactLa...
Is 2025 the year to thrive?
Last June the economists at Kiwibank published an article titled “Survive ‘til 25”, outlining what they saw as a tough six months ahead for our econom...
What austerity actually means
In order to reduce debt, the coalition government wants to cut spending from 34% of GDP down to 30%. In practice, that means cutting spending on peopl...
A fast track to cronyism?
Political and economic debates in 2024 were dominated by the Government’s new fast-track legislation, a controversial bill that aims to speed up infra...
“Tariffs are beautiful. They’ll make us rich”
Donald Trump’s re-election was the defining moment (and the major shock) in the world of politics this year. His proposed tariff regime is set to upen...
It’s darkest before the dawn
Finally, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand started cutting interest rates this year, having moved before everyone else and stayed higher for longer than...
What’s on Aotearoa’s shopping list?
Kiwibank senior economist Mary Jo Vergara has dug through card-spending data to find out how retail spending has changed since Covid, and over the las...
Inside Wellington’s homeless crisis
Homelessness in Aotearoa has hit an all-time high, forcing organisations like Wellington City Mission to adopt innovative new strategies. Wellington C...
Home on the marae
Motueka might appear sleepy and remote to visitors, but like much of Aotearoa, it faces a severe shortage of rental housing—often far pricier than exp...
The OCR grinch has turned into Father Christmas
In 2022, Reserve Bank governor Adrian Orr told Christmas shoppers to “cool your jets”, as the bank scrambled to control inflation by hiking interest r...
How fair is our tax system?
Victoria University professor of taxation Lisa Marriott talks to Bernard Hickey about the fundamental flaws at the core of our tax system, how they ha...
Behind Porirua’s poverty
For decades, Pat Hanley has been a tireless advocate for the rights of beneficiaries, drawing attention to the persistent challenges they face. In thi...
The cost of prison
Our prisons are bursting at the seams. They cost at least $2 billion per year to run – and that’s before we consider the longer-term and wider-reachin...
How to give employees what they want, when they want it
Fintechs are changing the way we spend and save, but they are also set to change the way we could be paid for work, or more correctly, how workers are...
An economic spring in our step
The animal spirits of the economy are stirring back to life after a whopper of an interest rate cut - with expectations of one more to come. Bernard H...
The hidden battery in your home
What if your hot water cylinder could help solve New Zealand’s energy crisis? And how is an hour of free electricity helping with our notoriously prob...
Is Nicola Willis cutting costs or cutting growth?
Finance minister Nicola Willis is on a mission to crunch the size of government debt from well over 33% of GDP to under 30% within a few years, as wel...
We’re all getting older and something has got to give
As our national population grows older (and the superannuation system becomes increasingly burdened by the growing ranks of retirees), how will the go...