When the Facts Change

Why do so few of our small businesses make the leap to become bigger, faster-growing engine rooms for economic growth and higher wages? Curiously, Aotearoa also has a long tail of older business owners that are comfortable bumbling along with sub-scale firms that would do better with bigger and more ambitious owners. This week Bernard Hickey talks to ABC Business Sales MD Chris Small about why so many business owners won’t jump up, or out, and why it’s holding back the nation as a whole. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The employment landscape currently favours workers, yet we’re still reluctant to ask for a pay rise and fear being sacked. Bernard Hickey is joined by AUT professor Jarrod Harr to examine how work culture, pay, conditions and the power relationships between employers and employees have been transformed by the pandemic and try to figure out why workers still feel insecure and what employers can do to combat the great resignation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s hitting food, petrol, rent, shipping and wages, but inflation hasn’t touched the housing market. Bernard is joined by Kiwibank economist Mary-Jo Vergara to unpack the surprisingly big and long spike of inflation that is cascading into every aspect of our day-to-day lives. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bernard Hickey (When The Facts Change; parliament studio) and Toby Manhire (Gone By Lunchtime; Auckland studio) join forces for a budget reaction crossover special. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Inflation has become the thief in our wallets for the first time in a generation and there are plenty of culprits to blame. The Ukraine War, supply chain disruptions and US$10t of money printing are the first and most obvious cabs off the rank, but there's a new and more insidious source of inflation developing: automatic inflation. These annual CPI-linked price increases from a range of companies, utilities, government departments and regulated services are fine when inflation is "normal" and stable around 2%, but this year’s 6% increases are turning into a nasty feedback loop of inflationary pressure that will hurt those on the lowest disposable incomes the hardest. Bernard Hickey goes on the hunt for these inflation robots in this last episode of this season of When The Facts Change. He asks Finance Minister Grant Robertson whether the likes of Chorus should lift its prices in line with inflation and finds out from Paul Fuge, who manages Powerswitch.org.nz for Consumer NZ, how electricity companies are pushing through increased rates amid a confusing welter of regulatory changes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In December 2021 the government made changes to the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act that were designed to protect borrowers – but had consequences that saw reports of people being rejected for lending because they had takeaways too often, had too many streaming subscriptions, and even because they made regular investments. Earlier this month, the Minister for Commerce and Consumer Affairs, David Parker announced that the Government plans to make further changes to the CCCFA to help avoid these unintended outcomes. To understand where we are at with bank lending – and what the changes are designed to achieve – Jo Kupa, Kiwibank Mortgage Area Manager and Madeleine Allen, Mobile Mortgage Manager for Kiwibank joined The Spinoff’s Simon Day on the monthly bonus episode of When The Facts Change, brought to you by The Spinoff Podcast Network together with Kiwibank. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The government’s decision to cut fuel taxes this week highlights just how hard it is for politicians and voters to deal with short sharp shocks to the system. The ‘lizard brain’ part of our body politic has evolved to recoil from a petrol price shock, but this type of ‘thinking fast’ will need to be replaced with ‘thinking slow’ if we are to engineer a just transition to carbon zero. To find out more, Bernard talks to political scientist Bronwyn Hayward, environmental sociologist and public health researcher Kirsty Wild and economist Rosie Collins about how to replace thinking fast with thinking slow in our climate change actions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Back in 2002, supermarket chains Foodtown and Woolworths were allowed to combine into the group now known as Countdown. That consolidated the market down to a duopoly of the Australian-owned Countdown and the local cooperative of Foodstuffs, which owns Pak’nSave, New World and Four Square. A new report published by the Commerce Commission this week found the duopoly has used its market power to suck profits from either side of them in the grocery supply chain to make an estimated $430m a year in superprofits. To help unpack the report’s findings, Bernard talks to Sarah Balle, the founder of online grocery startup Supie.co.nz, about how hard it is going up against such a powerful duopoly, and Food and Grocery Council CEO Katherine Rich explains the fight supermarket suppliers face to be treated fairly. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

New Zealand has a lot of small businesses, but relatively few of them expand into larger, more productive operations. Strawberry farms are a good example of this – many don’t invest in technology or systems to grow scale or profits, because it’s more profitable to simply wait for the farm’s land value to rise instead. But there are some interesting exceptions out there too. This week, Bernard talks to strawberry scientist Geoff Langford and Kiwibank business banking manager Wayne McEntee about the sorts of choices small businesses face around going up, going out, or just remaining stagnant. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Reserve Bank made its first big set piece decision of the year this week, releasing its monetary policy statement and raising the Official Cash Rate to 1.0%. So what does that mean for interest rates and house prices? In this week’s episode, Bernard Hickey asks Reserve Bank governor Adrian Orr about the property price boom and wage inflation, and talks through the implications of the Reserve Bank’s decisions and outlook with Kiwibank chief economist Jarrod Kerr. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices