The Weekly Hoon: Helen Clark on why Winston Peters should be fired over his ’go home’ comments, & on NZ’s humiliation on a key UN vote

The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night featured co-hosts Bernard Hickey and Peter Bale talking with regular guest Cathrine Dyer about geopolitics, the economy, climate change and politics.

This edition also included discussions with special guests:

* Former PM Helen Clark on why PM Christopher Luxon should sack NZ First Leader and Foreign Minister Winston Peters over his ‘go home’ jibe in Parliament this week at Green MP Laurence Xu Nan.

* Clark also described as humiliating New Zealand’s decision under Peters this week to join Belarus in abstaining on a vote to reappoint the UN’s Human Rights Commissioner, after the US pressured UN members to do so.

* Janet H Anderson from the podcast Asymmetrical Haircuts, which covers international justice from The Hague. Janet, Helen and Peter discussed the UN vote and US pressure on the International Criminal Court.

* Peter talked about the Helen Clark Foundation’s launch of a this book edited by Peter Davis: Facing Up To Our Future: Challenges and Choices for New Zealand: New Zealand’s traditional “she’ll be right” optimism is no longer adequate to the challenges facing the country. This major collection brings together 21 of New Zealand’s leading thinkers to examine the decades-long problems no single government can solve alone.

* Bernard and Peter talked about local politics and the economy in the last 15 minutes of the show, including mentioning Opportunity Party Leader Qiulae Wong ’s appearance on The Hoon in November last year. She also did a mini-Hoon with Bernard last month when Opportunity got 6% in that month’s Roy Morgan poll.

* Peter mentioned SurfDogChampions as this week’s skateboarding dog story.

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. Regular guest Robert Patman will be back next week.

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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