The Weekly Hoon: Nicky Hager’s book; OIA avoidance; Attacks on the UN; Cost of living & Election 2026

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 with regular guests Robert Patman and Cathrine Dyer, plus special guest:

* Former NZ Herald Editor Gavin Ellis, who talked about his article on the Official Information Act, the future of media and Nicky Hager’s new book Dirty Work.

During the show:

Bernard mentioned this chart on the recent collapse in visits to US mainstream news sites

Gavin mentioned this example of officials ‘lying in unison’ from 2003 and Bernard pointed to this Audrey Young article in the NZ Herald on the issue. He also talked about a lack of party policies on media so far in the campaign. He wrote about that here

Peter talked about Donald Trump and Javier Milei attacking the UN at the UN, referring to this article in The Guardian.

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

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