The Latest from Opinion https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/ NZME 2024-03-28T12:20:38.171Z en Mark the Week: Russell Coutts was the hero of the week https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mark-the-week-russell-coutts-was-the-hero-of-the-week/ https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mark-the-week-russell-coutts-was-the-hero-of-the-week/ At the end of each week, Mike Hosking takes you through the big-ticket items and lets you know what he makes of it all.    Donald Trump: 7/10  He floated and made a fortune and got a bond reduction with more time to pay. Stormy turned out to be a bit of an issue, but all in all he's had worse weeks.    The Chinese: 3/10  The US, the UK and New Zealand all say essentially the same thing and the Chinese deny it all. It redefines the term 'high farce'.    The Russians: 3/10  ISIS blow up a hall, kill people and get arrested. The Americans told them about it, but still it’s a Ukrainian conspiracy?    Princess Kate: 8/10  Done sadly for the wrong reasons, given she got flushed out a bit, but an astonishing piece of raw emotion that hopefully made the conspiracy peddlers and jokesters sick to their stomachs.    Russell Coutts: 7/10  Hero of the week. He laid it out plain and simple and told a few home truths.    The budget update: 4/10  Man, do we need the money. This lot really have inherited the most astonishing fiscal incompetence.    The Warriors: 7/10  We are underway. Beating the top side in the competition is but a sign of things to come.    LISTEN ABOVE FOR MIKE HOSKING'S FULL WEEK IN REVIEW  2024-03-27T21:30:14.000Z Mike's Minute: Hipkins is a hypocrite on tax https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-hipkins-is-a-hypocrite-on-tax/ https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-hipkins-is-a-hypocrite-on-tax/ I've been surprised this week by the amount of coverage Chris Hipkins managed to get himself around tax.  If you think about it, he didn't say anything specific, and certainly nothing new. The left generally argue the tax system is not fair.  The trouble is he had a chance to do something about it but, living up to the ongoing reputation of his and Ardern's Government, failed to deliver.  Part of the story about the story is, I suspect, two things were at play. The first is that it has been a very quiet week locally for news.  And two is the media, in general, are still sympathetic to the Labour cause.  The Labour Party have also moved onto the Disability Minister Penny Simmonds, who made a hash of the detail around funding and has since apologised.  But she's also been humiliated by her own party, who now require decisions in the area to be passed by Cabinet.  That has led to Hipkins calling for her to be sacked, which of course isn't going to happen.  Simmonds is the new target after the original target, Casey Costello, basically stared Labour down over tobacco by turning out not to be the shambles in terms of information requests they tried to make her out to be, then announcing that crackdown on vapes last week that basically put Labour to shame, given it's exactly the sort of thing they should have done but, once again, failed to deliver on.  Which brings us back to tax. Whether because of a quiet week, or by sympathy, surely someone other than me needed to ask themselves why you would give the level of coverage you did to a thought bubble, given the thought bubbler was the abject failure who failed to introduce and make law the very thing he is now bubbling about?  Talk about a hypocrite.  You long for Government to make the changes, to espouse, only to fail to do so, then in the first major speech you give you re-espouse the core topic that you did nothing about, by moaning about it some more!  What's worse, the media cover it as though it's worth a discussion, despite the fact it got discussed and has been discussed for several elections in a row and still nothing has been done.  It's like there is an industry in hot air.  2024-03-27T21:30:38.000Z Mike's Minute: Why are we surprised about China? https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-why-are-we-surprised-about-china/ https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-why-are-we-surprised-about-china/ It was hard to watch the China spying coverage yesterday without wondering what all the fuss was about.  It had an air of breathlessness about it, as though this had come as some sort of surprise.  Does the fact China spies on people honestly come as news to anyone? I guess hacking, as the PM suggested, is new, but spying and hacking... it's all nefarious skulduggery, isn't it?  Have a look at the 60 Minutes Australia piece over the weekend, or the associated coverage in the Sydney Morning Herald or The Age on the story of the plane landing in Fiji loaded to the gunnels with police from China, who then went and rounded up a bunch of people and took them back to the mainland.  Have a look at the Chinese in places like the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea with their security services.  Have a look at the ongoing tit for tat between the United States and China, or the UK and China. China are bad actors all over the world and have been for years.  And I would be equally surprised if those that had the wherewithal, like the Americans, like the British, like any major player in Europe, weren't doing exactly the same thing.  When the GCSB or SIS speak, which isn't often, the cyber activity of all sorts of people raises a lot of eyebrows. Not by the fact it's happening, but the fact it's so common.  The ASIO head in Australia is a bloke well worth listening to given he pops up periodically and tells the same story with real flourish, his last report just a month or so back revealed there was an ex-MP who was busy undertaking nefarious activity.  He refused to name them, much to the chagrin of all MPs who claimed to have been tainted by association.  The simple truth in all of this is the Chinese are not to be trusted, but then I assume they would say the same about us.  But beyond that we are happy to be friendly in each other's company and exchange a serious amount of goods which is the two way street that is trade.  For a country like America they can make much of the spying activity. They can call the Chinese out, they can threaten and impose sanctions. People like Trump collect votes on the rhetoric.  Poor old New Zealand?  No such luck. We are between a rock and a hard place. We have no choice. Which is why you have seen the Government do nothing, because they can do nothing.   Aus got up Chinese noses by posing embarrassing questions about Covid and the sanctions got slapped on so fast it was only last week the last of them around wine looked like they were getting lifted.  China spies. China has a big global ideology and a desire to influence a lot of the planet. This is not new.  2024-03-26T23:07:10.000Z Mike's Minute: Some thoughts on the public service cuts https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-some-thoughts-on-the-public-service-cuts/ https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-some-thoughts-on-the-public-service-cuts/ As the political battle unfolds with the public service over savings, it is worth remembering a couple of things.  As much heat as the Government is taking over the so-called cuts, and to be honest I am not sure that there is in fact a great deal of heat outside of Wellington, it might be worth remembering that the previous Government was the one who handed out the jobs like there was no tomorrow.  When you artificially stack the deck the way they did, you must in your heart of hearts know that it can never last.  So, what the current government is doing is not heartless but realistic. It was always going to happen, and if we were a bit more honest about these things, we all knew it.  Secondly, it has never ceased to amaze me how much work people take on without ever really asking the question about its long-term viability.  The media and its various trials and tribulations at the moment is full of people who have been seemingly genuinely shocked that the department or programme they are working for is closing, yet those of us from the outside looking in saw the writing on the wall months, or in some cases, years ago.  And that’s before you get to the debate, that I thought had been going now for years, and that is a job is not for life and hasn’t been for ages.  You will have many jobs. Jobs come and go, along with boards, and management, and mergers, and sales, and floats, and divestments, and changes of direction.  And then the bit that really hasn’t been covered at all, have a look at how many of the jobs being cut are a combination of jobs that simply haven't been filled, and jobs that will give you a cheque on the way out.  Voluntary redundancy has been, and in this case, is being widely used.  In other words, many of the people who are losing their jobs have stuck their hands up and said yes please, I’ll take that deal.  And I can tell you for nothing, getting paid to get out can be a revelationary and uplifting experience.  Doors open, opportunities arise, fresh perspectives become present, it might well be one of the best things that ever happened to you.  As in most things in life, the commentary we are currently seeing and hearing is very one sided and needlessly emotive.  Life is what you make it. The growth comes from the tough times, and not all tough times are as arduous as you might have thought.   2024-03-25T21:49:15.000Z Mike's Minute: The conspiracy theorists should be ashamed https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-the-conspiracy-theorists-should-be-ashamed/ https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-the-conspiracy-theorists-should-be-ashamed/ You would like to think that the haters and the conspiracy theorists  felt sick to their stomach when the Princess of Wales went public with her cancer battle.  No, it wasn’t a Brazilian bum lift. No, it wasn’t an affair and yes it was her at the farm shop at Windsor.  I am not sure there is anything that can be done per se, but if you read the Australian E-safety Commissioner's report out last week Julie Inman Grant describes just how astonishingly relaxed the social media giants are when it comes to the filth they allow on their platforms.  Somewhere along the way we have decided free speech trumps all. Worse, the people who run the platforms have decided making money out of it is good business, while at the same time pretending they care and are working hard to be decent corporate citizens.  There are questions too I would have thought, to be answered by every advertiser, and that includes local advertisers in New Zealand, who spend millions on platforms that are largely unregulated and pedal the worst of us. How do you defend putting your product and brand next to the sort of muck so readily available on your nearest screen?  The Commissioner's report dealt a lot with paedophilia and criminal activity. The Princess of Wales doesn’t fall anywhere near that. Indeed, the sort of behaviour we have seen isn't even illegal, it's just stupid and nasty and low rent.  But it is a lesson in the human condition. When left to our own devices, collectively, we aren't up to much.  If I have one criticism of the family, the quid pro quo of who they are is there is engagement with the public and once you have set the precedent you can't manipulate it to suit your circumstances. The relationship is built through good times and bad.  You can't put out the Christmas message, then vanish. Look what happens. So they would have been wise to say earlier what they have finally got around to saying.  That doesn’t make the vacuum that got filled with filth right. But it is a two way street.  The King was praised for his forthrightness and the help and comfort it would bring to millions of fellow sufferers. The Princess will now most likely achieve the same thing.  But the King doesn’t have young children and the King doesn’t have the bulk of his life ahead of him. So you'd be heartless not to have given the Prince and Princess the room they needed to navigate what, for the rest of us, is often a deeply shocking and difficult time.  As much as they could have got out earlier with this, you were left with the impression they got flushed out by the onslaught of sheer horribleness that pervades too much of the social landscape.  2024-03-24T22:30:49.732Z Mark the Week: Winston Peters got exactly what he wanted https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mark-the-week-winston-peters-got-exactly-what-he-wanted/ https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mark-the-week-winston-peters-got-exactly-what-he-wanted/ At the end of each week, Mike Hosking takes you through the big-ticket items and lets you know what he makes of it all.    Common sense: 7/10  You can't beat a good dose of it - the Kainga Ora crackdown, part of a growing trend where a lot of ideological gobbledygook gets put right. And you can add the vape decisions to this week's offerings      The plug-in hybrid back down: 6/10  When you overreach you see it and fix it. That's almost as good as common sense.    Conspiracy theories: 2/10  The blight of the age. I can't work it out. Even when you saw the video at Windsor people still questioned it. Is it stupidity? It's wilful stupidity, mesmerising stupidity, mixed with a next level gormlessness.    Winston Peters: 7/10  He got exactly what he wanted. Surely even he must be surprised that a trick that old still works.    The recession: 2/10  The second one now. That’s called a double dip recession and brought to you by the same people that oversaw the aforementioned crime stats.    The French: 7/10  First in the world to pass laws around fast fashion. I doubt they will work but the intent deserves credit.    Ryan Fox: 8/10  Tournaments, prize money and trophies come and go. But a hole in one on the greatest hole in golf is forever.    LISTEN ABOVE FOR MIKE HOSKING'S FULL WEEK IN REVIEW  2024-03-21T21:24:57.000Z Mike's Minute: The world is looking at us for what not to do https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-the-world-is-looking-at-us-for-what-not-to-do/ https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-the-world-is-looking-at-us-for-what-not-to-do/ So, a recession it is then.  Another one.  We had one at the end of 2022, going into 2023. Remember those good times? It got revised initially and the Government of the day said "see, told you it wasn't a recession".  Then we got the final read and, yes, it was indeed a recession - two solid quarters where we went backwards.  That’s bad enough. Recessions in modern economies are rare. Normally we argue about growth not being strong enough.  No such luck for us.  And now, to break the record, another recession. The third quarter of last year and the final quarter of last year were another two quarters of negative activity. Another recession.  The record? Well, there isn't a modern Western economy that has done what we have.  Britain fleetingly went into a single recession and Germany has had trouble. But Australia, the US, in fact, most countries have not only skirted a recession, they increasingly look like they are going to pull off this famed term we refer to - the soft landing.  Even those who have struggled and, let's be honest, everyone has and is having a hard time, but no one, not a single one, has managed to go backwards twice, except us.  We are the worst of the lot and that, despite Grant Robertson saying it's not a contest, it is unforgivable.  The ongoing issue is that, as well as going backwards, we are still stuck with inflation that is far too high. Now, the commentary will tell you inflation is coming down, which it is. But not enough and not fast enough.  This was the role of the Reserve Banks - get inflation down by applying a level of tightness to the economy without crashing it. Squeeze, but not so hard you choke people. Well, we are at less than zero, turning red in the face with the lack of oxygen.  But inflation is nowhere close to where it needs to be.  They say it'll be later this year before it reaches the target, the midpoint, and we can look at rate cuts.  Will it? I don't think they really know. But what we now know for a fact is we failed the experiment abysmally.  As history is starting to be painted all over the world with all the individual stories of the reaction to Covid, New Zealand now officially stands out as the example of what not to do.  What a legacy. What a reputation.  What a cluster.  2024-03-21T20:56:08.000Z Mike's Minute: The gig economy has never been compulsory https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-the-gig-economy-has-never-been-compulsory/ https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-the-gig-economy-has-never-been-compulsory/ There is a court case going on in Wellington over Uber drivers and their so-called rights.  It's on the back of a massive case last week in Australia, which Uber lost, over the impact on the market their arrival had.  That’s on the back of any number of cases all over the world where unions have tried to muscle in and change the rules because they see them as unfair.  Along the way Uber has had trouble turning a profit and the ride share business in general has been fraught with difficulties.  The Uber experience for me is largely contained to our kids who have grown up knowing nothing else but apps and rides. What luddite would ring and book a cab?  But as their experiences have shown over and over again, ringing and booking a cab actually works as opposed to their experiences which involve, in no particular order, surge pricing they weren't expecting, Ubers that cancel on them for no reason and the ensuing charge issue around it, Ubers that accept rides then as you wait you watch the arrival time go from one minute, to three minutes, to five minutes, to who knows when.  And that’s before you get to Uber Eats, where you are on the tail of four other deliveries and your meal is a combination of the wrong order, not their fault, and cold, which is definitely their fault.  What I don't get about the court cases is the Uber model is not, and has never been, compulsory.  What the unions want is overtime and mealtimes and holiday times. They want to make it a regulated job and it was never meant to be that.  They never said it was going to be that and the people who work for them never expected that or wanted that.  The whole gig economy idea was predicated on flexibility - work when you want, for as long as you want, for whoever you want.  Why does a union, and by extension a court, have a right to rearrange a series of deals that were entered into by all parties perfectly happily?  Why does a court get to fine a company hundreds of millions of dollars for bringing a new service to a marketplace?  If they do, which they have in Australia, why doesn’t every business or industry have a case against any other business who rolls into town, or the country, and disrupts stuff by way of a competitive edge?  What Uber offers is choice and the thing about choice is you don’t have to engage.  If you want to, fine. If you don’t want to, also fine.  You reckon when they dreamed it up in 2009 they envisaged 15 years later they would only have just turned a profit but still be in court all over the world?    2024-03-20T20:39:07.000Z Mike's Minute: Luxon needs to wake up to Winston's hijinks https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-luxon-needs-to-wake-up-to-winstons-hijinks/ https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-luxon-needs-to-wake-up-to-winstons-hijinks/ I am not sure how it is, well over a quarter of a century into MMP, that we still have this mad idea that just because you are the head of one party, you are the boss of another party.  Christopher Luxon is somehow supposed to be having a word with Winston Peters over the comments from the weekend, not to mention yesterday.  Problem number one is the media walked right into the trap and it's not even a new trap. It’s a tired old game Peters has played for years. He says something emotive, cue the outrage and then milk it for as long as you can.  In many respects it’s the great shame about Peters, because in some areas he is actually a bright, experienced operator.  It seems from his turn this time around as Foreign Minister, like the last time he played the role, he is actually quite good and quite effectual.  It's just, given the vagaries of MMP, he has to run the populist lines around race to get the required 5% to keep him and his mates in work.  So, you have this dichotomous mix of a loudmouth, headline grabber and senior operator in heavyweight areas like foreign relations.  Anyway, back to the Prime Minister.  What people clearly forget is this is a deal of convenience. They are not natural bedfellows and Luxon, despite the fact he holds the top office and despite the fact his party has the most members in the deal, is not the boss.  I am sure he would like to think he is. But here is the MMP reality; can he govern without Peters?  No. So who really has the power?  Dare I remind you that I was quite vocal in saying during the campaign that the smartest thing Chris Hipkins did was rule Peters out. Luxon, having been gifted the perfect “out”, failed to follow suit and look what happened.  A simple truth about our system is you make do with what you’ve got. And what Luxon and Seymour have is a potential problem.  This is merely months old and if you think there isn't more where this came from you haven't followed the Peters playbook for the past three decades.  Say whatever you want about the bloke, but what you cannot accuse him of is being inconsistent.  Race has been his ticket to relevance and will continue to be because there has been, and always will be, enough New Zealanders who swallow the bait hook, line and sinker.  If Luxon is just waking up to that now it's going to be a very, very long two and a half years.  2024-03-19T21:15:24.000Z Mike's Minute: It was our fault Covid turned into a "thing" https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-it-was-our-fault-covid-turned-into-a-thing/ https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-it-was-our-fault-covid-turned-into-a-thing/ I watched an interview the other week with Marama Davidson.  It came after the elevation of Chloe Swarbrick to the leadership. Davidson wasn’t at the press conference, Chloe told us, because it turns out she had Covid.  In watching the interview, although Covid ridden, Davidson looked and sounded perfectly well, although she was isolating, which is what we do, isn't it?    Well, some of us do. A friend of the kids had Covid the other day and hopped on a plane, the way I am sure many people do, and have done, for ages.  But the power of the narrative is still on display by some because we were convinced, or have convinced ourselves, that Covid, although affecting the vast majority of us in exactly the same way as any other flu-like, viral type condition, is different.  And one of the outworkings of getting Covid is some people ended up with what has become known as long Covid. Now, the research out this week from Queensland's Chief Health Officer is that long Covid does exist, but we need to stop calling it that.  Because, to use their words, it creates unnecessary fear and it's probably harmful. In other words, we have freaked ourselves out needlessly.  They studied more than 5000 people and found similar functional limitations a year after the event as they found with those who had seasonal flu or other respiratory illnesses.  In other words, it didn’t matter what you had, some people still felt the effects 12 months on, the same way it didn’t matter what you had at the time of infection, it still hit you the same way.  You might have lost your sense of smell, or you might not have. You might have been fatigued, or you might not have been.  But the fact you could take a swab and get a red line gave us all a chance to say "oh it's Covid, I'll isolate" for whatever the current rules were.  If it wasn’t Covid we reacted completely differently, the same way we had our entire lives until Covid came along, got a massive Government backed tag and reputation and messed with our sense of common sense.  We turned it, because we were allowed to, if not told to, into a “thing”.  Well, slowly, as common-sense returns and a slightly more real-world perspective evolves and the test results come in, we can increasingly see this period as some sort of out-of-body experience where we let fear play far too great a role.  2024-03-18T22:21:21.000Z Mike's Minute: The Significant Natural Areas decision is a relief https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-the-significant-natural-areas-decision-is-a-relief/ https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-the-significant-natural-areas-decision-is-a-relief/ Of all the things that the new Government has done in their first 100 days, the Significant Natural Areas decision might just have brought the most relief.  It's not a major issue in the cities, but in rural New Zealand it has been a nightmare.  It is like so many other ideas that on a piece of paper might have had some merit. But once out in the field it caused harm, worry and upset as officials went nuts. Now, post the instruction to councils to not bother carrying on, it was pointed out that there needs to be a law change and the Government might have got ahead of themselves.  But guess what? The Government make the rules and laws and if a law needs changing to enact their desires that is exactly what will happen, therefore the kerfuffle over the weekend is pointless.    A major part of the issue was, and is, it was councils who did the deciding and, given we have too many councils, we have too many interpretations.  Until you own a chunk of land, as in acreage, you don’t truly understand its effect and hold on you, and your investment and care of it.  That was probably  the most egregious part of the whole idea.  The people who came up with the concept were mainly from the city and, given it was the Labour Party, they had little, if any, real connection to farming or farmers.  It was predicated around the idea that somehow farmers are environmental thugs and their main objective in the morning is to ruin the landscape, abuse the stock and wreck the future of the property.  There was also an overlay of the cultural outlook that plagued so much of what Labour did. Was there something from years ago that may be of significance? Well, you can never be too careful.  There was no understanding that farming is hard work and farmers are professionals who take their job and their property seriously and, just broadly, the idea of setting out to destroy your business, which is what land is, is stupid anyway.  The bloke who made the announcement was Andrew Hoggard, the associate environment minister and a bloke who knows a bit about farming. He, by the way, is the sort of person we need more of in life and politics - people who speak from experience and have been there and done that.  A person's land is sacred. Its ownership, and therefore stewardship, is intricately tied up in who they are.  But then along came Wellington, via a local council, and started telling you what you could and couldn’t do with what you had forked out for and put toil and sweat into.  The fact the inventors of that idiocy couldn’t see the practical and real world outworkings of their ideology is why they are now no longer running the place.  2024-03-17T21:30:27.000Z Mark the Week: The tax treatment for landlords is a return to status quo https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mark-the-week-the-tax-treatment-for-landlords-is-a-return-to-status-quo/ https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mark-the-week-the-tax-treatment-for-landlords-is-a-return-to-status-quo/ At the end of each week, Mike Hosking takes you through the big-ticket items and lets you know what he makes of it all.    Tax treatment for landlords: 6/10  A return to the status quo, despite all the gnashing of teeth from the luvvies who still haven't got their heads around the election result.    Labour's claim over landlords and millionaires: 2/10  The fact they couldn’t get basic facts right, and that the facts they put out were so obviously absurd and they didn’t spot it or question it, tells you all you need to know about their connection to economic reality.    Hurricanes rugby: 2/10  Said it wasn’t acceptable then rolled over for a good spanking the next weekend.    First 100 days in Government: 7/10  This time last week they ticked it off, they delivered what they said they would... not perfectly, but not bad at all.    Peter Boshier: 4/10  He's a good person who is the victim of dumb rules. We need to get out of our own way more.    Shane Jones: 7/10  Politician of the week, taking on the courts activism and taking on the Treaty overreach. He's only marked down on the ski money. When you say there is no more you actually have to mean it.    The Kate photo: 4/10  The conspiracy theories that exploded as a result of them trying to quell a conspiracy theory.    LISTEN ABOVE FOR MIKE HOSKING'S FULL WEEK IN REVIEW  2024-03-14T22:25:53.000Z Mike's Minute: This is why we hate councils https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-this-is-why-we-hate-councils/ https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-this-is-why-we-hate-councils/ This is why we hate councils.  On December 15th last year we received a letter from our local outfit claiming that the bore we have is not official, it has not been signed off and we have 28 days to rectify it.  This coming so close to Christmas is not good news and requires a level of attention that makes a mad part of the year even madder.  We purchased our house, complete with bore, a year after it had been finished so this was all news to us.  We replied, suggesting the tone of the letter was needlessly aggressive and that 28 days was potentially an issue, given Christmas and all the various stat days, as well as the fact the council wouldn't be open, and no one would be contactable.  We got a sort-of apology about the tone and was told 28 days might be a bit of an issue and to do what we could.  What we didn’t know at the time, but found out later, was there was nothing wrong with the bore or the signing off of it. What had happened was the council had lost the files and they had decided to make it our issue.  This alone was a re-enforcement of an attitude you tend to get when you are dealing with a statutory monopoly - they do and say what they want and what are you going to do about it?  Anyway, a number of phone calls later, we found what we were looking for. There was no issue with the bore, there was never any issue with the bore, it was drilled properly by people who take their job and their duties seriously and they, along with the various other water people we dealt with, were not impressed, yet again, with a council who throws their weight around.  So, after proof was gathered, photos taken and paperwork filed we were told, indeed, our bore was now legit.  Like most things councils do nothing had changed and nothing had actually happened. The bore was no more or less safe, it was just acknowledged on some piece of paper, or on some file somewhere, to the satisfaction of some bureaucracy  That was 3 months ago. Then this week we got another letter from the council.  It contained a bill for $279.  What for? For filing the documentation around our bore.  So, the file they lost, the work we did to rectify that, is now costing us close to $300 for them to patch up the mistake they made in the first place.  At no point was there recognition of the fact we were doing their work, that our work had gone unpaid and that if it wasn’t for us, none of it would have been fixed.  But the energy they put into writing to us, bullying us and forcing us to fix their issue would now cost us $279, thank you very much.  And you wonder why we hate them.    2024-03-14T21:17:50.000Z Mike's Minute: Even more so now, age is but a number https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-even-more-so-now-age-is-but-a-number/ https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-even-more-so-now-age-is-but-a-number/ I stumbled upon an article yesterday about Lyn Slater.  The headline was ' I’m 70 years old — why shouldn’t my clothes convey my sexuality, and sense of style?’  Lyn Slater is a former model, influencer, writer, and professor, she is indeed a very stylish woman, and the question she asks about clothes is a fair one.  Age, for reasons I can’t fathom, still seems to be an issue in this Western society, and we found that out this week with Peter Boshier, the Chief Ombudsman who is two years older than Lyn, and because of that has to quit his job.  It's also the talking point in American politics at the moment, because the two contenders for the most powerful job on earth are old.  Which I assume leads you to ask: how come you can be President of America but not Chief Ombudsman of New Zealand?  How come Lyn can ask questions about her sexuality and style but poor old Peter is too old to turn up to the office?  We went through a period a decade or so back as well, remember when Hollywood actresses complained of having no work because they’re too old? That’s all reversed, or at least partially has been reversed.  But, remarkably, we don’t seem to know whether age is an issue or not.  And the problem is we have made it a problem because of a number, not because of competence, which should be the real measure.  Surely your ability to do whatever it is you want to do is the criteria, not the chronology?  We spend our time espousing the fact 60 is the new 40, and yet it doesn’t play out in terms of old-fashioned laws.  The ombudsman law is from 1975. I was 10. There was no internet, no cell phones, and 65 to me seemed old. Because when I was 10 my mum was a bit over 30 and my grandparents were in their late 50s, and that seemed old.  Now I am in my late 50s and because society has changed I am nowhere near being a grandparent, and I don’t feel old. And if there was an age limit in my time in this job as opposed to the measure they do use, audience and revenue, I’d be pretty pissed off.  I supposed Peter Boshier went into it with his eyes open. He knew the rules.  But that doesn’t make the rule right, and it doesn’t make the attitude that drove the rule right.  Talent, skill, brains, determination, acumen, experience, these are the measures of value, that’s why they say age is but a number.   Look up Lyn Slater and tell her she's too old.  2024-03-13T23:44:47.000Z Mike's Minute: The carbon market is a scam https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-the-carbon-market-is-a-scam/ https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-the-carbon-market-is-a-scam/ The carbon market is worth following, if for no other reason than it’s a very good example of voodoo economics - and it's highly entertaining.  We talked yesterday to Steven Joyce about James Shaw's desire to have our liability on carbon emissions put into the books so we can all see what sort of effect it would have on our finances.  The key lines in Joyce's explanation were that we can't do that because we don’t actually know what the figure is, remembering of course we promised to reduce emissions in the Paris Accord by a certain amount in a certain timeframe.  He also quite rightly pointed out that there is no one to pay it to, and the reason there is no one to pay it to is because the whole thing is invented. Which brings us back to the Climate Change Commission, who have put out their latest advice. And their latest advice advises the Government that they have their settings all wrong.  The previous Government had their settings all wrong as well, given the carbon auctions last year were a complete and utter bust. The carbon auctions happen four times a year but it's another invention - if you're a polluter you buy credits to offset your emissions.  The trouble was at each and every one of the auctions last year no one bought anything. Not one carbon credit. Nothing.  As each auction came and went the unsold credits got added to the next auction, so work out the ol' supply and demand equation and guess what happened? That's right - nothing.  Four auctions and not a single sale. The Government could have got $2billion-ish but they got nothing.  The commission says we need to do something about it because there are too many credits, there is too much uncertainty and we run the risk of not meeting our obligations.  Small question - what exactly happens if we don't meet our obligations? The answer, my bet, is nothing.  Very few, if anyone, is meeting their obligations. China certainly isn't, or America, or India, the world's actual polluters.  We have got ourselves caught up in a faux fight, with a market we invented, in a non-enforceable deal. All propped up by the idea that you should hand over money to an imaginary group, or organisation, or people if you burn coal.  Could it be the fact no credits were sold at our auctions last year and the commissions concerns over settings is largely because this is a scam? And when push comes to shove people don't mind espousing hot air about it, we love a bit of greenwashing.  It's just we are not so keen on handing over actual money.  2024-03-12T22:13:52.000Z Mike's Minute: Two areas where the Government might have trouble https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-two-areas-where-the-government-might-have-trouble/ https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-two-areas-where-the-government-might-have-trouble/ There are two areas where the Government has, or might have, trouble.  As a result of their first 100 days you get the summation, the round up, how they did and so on.  Forget the policy and whether you like it - what they have going for them is twofold, for at least the first term.  They won the election, so have the numbers, and a lot of what they are enacting is not just the opposite of the last lot for the sake of it, but because a lot of the last lot's record is indisputably a mess.  Think light rail, housing, the deficit etc. So, a new path is not a path about change because of ideology. It’s a path about correction or fixing what is broken.  But a lot of what they campaigned on was the wokeness and the Māorification of the system.  This, apparently, was going to change. Well, has it?  Not at the Reserve Bank. They are advertising for a diversity adviser, someone to put a Te ao Māori lens across matters. Now, as ACT quite rightly pointed out, this does not help bring down inflation, which is exactly what they are supposed to be doing. And if you compare them to many a trading partner, they're not doing it very well.  Now, it is this very sort of activity that was supposed to end. Not just because we didn’t like its flourishing presence under the last Government, but because its wasteful and money we don’t have.  So why is it still happening? ACT say the Reserve Bank is independent, which it is. But the issue is in opposition ACT would point this sort of madness out and get easy headlines for it.  The difference now is they are the Government and can fix it, yet they aren't. They are offering excuses and that starts to weigh on your credibility and popularity after a while.  The second issue is the Prime Minister's so-called radar. The consensus among the commentariat, if that in fact means anything, was Luxon's political radar is off.  Certainly, the weekend's poll, showing a crash in personal support, would lead you to believe that the $52,000 accommodation allowance was a mistake. There has also been no shortage of observations about Luxon looking like he was getting schooled by Peters and Seymour.  Now, here is the trouble. I don’t think it's as bad as they make out, but numbers are numbers. In this case observation can very quickly become reality.  The trouble is the Government remains popular. In fact, support is growing and yet support for the Prime Minister is doing the opposite.  That's not a reason to panic in March, a handful of months into a new term. But time runs quickly in Government and if this doesn’t change it will be a problem before you know it.  2024-03-11T21:20:17.000Z Mark the Week: The Premier House drama is a fuss about nothing https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mark-the-week-the-premier-house-drama-is-a-fuss-about-nothing/ https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mark-the-week-the-premier-house-drama-is-a-fuss-about-nothing/ At the end of each week, Mike Hosking takes you through the big-ticket items and lets you know what he makes of it all.    Donald Trump: 7/10  A Supreme Court win and a race that is essentially over. That's not a bad week.    EV's: 3/10  The sales figures for February back up the sales figures for January, in that there weren't many of them. And they think this month will be about the same.    Toyota: 7/10  Thanks for the honesty. They are right, there are real questions around the value of second hand EV's and it's good for people to know that.    Premier House: 4/10  It's a fuss about nothing. It has no architectural merit, it's not a beloved national institution. It's an old house in a flash neighbourhood. So whack it on OneRoof and maximise the return.    The haka: 2/10  One of the low points of the week. Professionals acting as amateurs in a heavily subsidised operation, where good will, professionalism and determination are required, not mad-cap politics.    Business start-ups: 9/10  Stat of the week. Of those that started during Covid, 92% are still going.    The Crusaders: 4/10  Hmmm. Maybe Razor was quite good.    The Warriors: 8/10  Here we go! Has there been a season with so much talent, off the back of a fabulous 2023 and so much expectation? This is our year.    LISTEN ABOVE FOR MIKE HOSKING'S FULL WEEK IN REVIEW  2024-03-07T21:46:02.000Z Mike's Minute: The annals of history wont be kind to the 2017-23 Government https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-the-annals-of-history-wont-be-kind-to-the-2017-23-government/ https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-the-annals-of-history-wont-be-kind-to-the-2017-23-government/ A couple of fun facts that weren't covered in the Government's transport plan, given we all got exercised about registrations and fuel taxes.  The Road to Zero has been dumped as part of it. And the Te Huia train is under review.  You can add these two projects to the Labour Government's litany of shambles that, essentially, came to nothing.  The poverty figures that went backwards, the Fees Free programme that got no one they wanted into university and now Road to Zero, surely the stupidest of titles, finally put out of its misery.  In fact, is Road to Zero as stupid as Let's Get Wellington Moving? It's a close-run thing.  But like Road to Zero, Let's Get Wellington Moving didn’t work either. You’ve never seen such a lavish array of hot air and thought bubbles getting enacted at such a price.  Te Huia is a classic New Zealand story. At its heart, on a piece of paper, the concept of shuffling people between Hamilton and Auckland is not the end of the world.  But in typical fashion, at the start it didn’t stop in Auckland, it stopped out of Auckland. Then you had to change trains or get a bus. Then it ran red lights and got pulled.  Then no one used it, and when they used it a bit, it turned out they used it on weekends. So it turned into a touristy "let's visit Auckland on a Saturday" sort of thing.  All the while it was losing money hand over fist. Last time we talked about it they were expanding the number of services. Normally you expand the number of services because of demand, but not Te Huia. No, they just expanded it for the sake of it.  $90 per person per trip is what we all pay for this folly.  As for the Road to Zero, it isn't at zero and it's not close to zero. It will never be at zero and as the agency who oversees this stuff announced just this week, they are now looking at recidivist behaviour to see if it’s a hard core who are causing all the trouble on the roads.  Small hint - it is. It's like crime, it's a handful of troublemakers causing the issues, so all that advertising about seatbelts and speed and drinking never hit the mark, because the mark doesn't care.  The big question is the longer-term issue. By the time this Government undoes all the nutty stuff, will there be anything left at all of the Labour Government of 2017-23?  And if there isn't, how bad in the annals of history does that make them?  2024-03-07T21:00:59.000Z Mike's Minute: Accountability comes to the emergency housing sector https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-accountability-comes-to-the-emergency-housing-sector/ https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-accountability-comes-to-the-emergency-housing-sector/ You can argue a lot about what the Government has announced this week, the school lunches, the military-style boot camps, and yesterday's housing shake up.  But they have one critical advantage. What they are addressing, indisputably, has not worked under the other Government's view of the world.  The school lunch programme is hundreds of millions of dollars of waste.  The crime rate got hopelessly out of control, especially among young people and the poverty figures did not improve, in fact they went backwards.  It is a demonstrable failure in a variety of areas, which is why in part we have a new Government, and a new Government gets to have a crack at these issues and do it their way.  Emergency housing is arguably the biggest disgrace of all.  One million dollars a day spent, places like Rotorua ruined by reputational damage - and after years of it are we any better off? No.  So, we've got a new way and the critical part, and the bit that gives this lot the best chance of success, is getting the private sector involved.  If ideology was on display at its most inept, it was this idea that the Labour Government had that they are the ones who could build all the houses and meet all the demand.  They couldn’t and they didn’t.  The rigour went by the wayside years ago and the expectation on the tenants was long forgotten.  Behaviour fell, issues arose, contributions that were supposed to be made never were by way of rent, no one got evicted and nearly no one got held to account. It is a shocking, embarrassing, cataclysmic disgrace.  So, a change.  Put the worst to the top of the list.  Bring in accountability. Have you made an effort? Have you avoided paying your share? Have you caused trouble? It's not onerous by way of expectation I wouldn’t have thought.  The private sector is being called in to do what they do best - supply.  Is it a magic bullet? Of course not  But it's hard to believe it isn't going to be a marked and impressive improvement on the social stain Labour called a policy.  2024-03-06T21:27:32.000Z Mike's Minute: The next chapter of EV won't be pretty https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-the-next-chapter-of-ev-wont-be-pretty/ https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-the-next-chapter-of-ev-wont-be-pretty/ Along with the honesty from Toyota around the value, or lack of it, in the second-hand EV market here, we got February's figures for new car sales.  January was a bust, February was barely any better and the industry is expecting March to be slow as well.  The EV story is revealing its next chapter and its one many purchasers and early adopters will not like.  What drove the fizz was a couple of things - hype and free money.  Governments have decided EV's were a climate answer and got on board with rules and regulations around emissions that basically forced the industry into electric, whether they wanted it or not.  When the consumer didn’t join in, they handed out incentives.  The uptake improved but in most countries, it still didn’t really take off. America has them but they haven't worked, Australia has little, if any, appetite for them and New Zealand got a bit enthused but that’s all over with the change of Government.  So, there were regulations and bribes, and they still couldn't do it and now if you look all over the world Governments and industries are backing away. Everyone from Jaguar Land Rover to Ford are focusing on plug-in hybrids. Britain has backed away from banning combustion engines and Ford in America are re-investing in new engine factories and capacity.  People lost their sense of objectivity and Toyota here has highlighted that this week with their warning over used values.  What is a used EV worth? We don’t really know yet because the market hasn’t been established. And in that is the fear.  Markets are driven by demand. You can create demand artificially, the way we did with subsidies, or you can create demand by value, or performance, or sometimes hype.  The EV is plagued today with what it has always been plagued with; range, anxiety, price, re-charging issues and the unknown. When you compare an EV with a petrol car, the petrol still stacks up. Not in running costs but in convenience, distance, reparability and resale value.  All of this might, might change with solid state batteries or charging stations on every corner. But what we are fast learning is we jumped the gun, Government's jumped the gun, the industry jumped the gun, and the enthusiasts jumped the gun.  Sales don’t lie and worse - if the re-sale story turns out to be a dog, you watch the love affair with internal combustion go to a whole new level.  2024-03-05T22:35:11.000Z Mike's Minute: The gender pay gap is water cooler chat https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-the-gender-pay-gap-is-water-cooler-chat/ https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-the-gender-pay-gap-is-water-cooler-chat/ If you want to laugh, have a look at the shambles that unfolded this week in Australia as a result of the new law that makes companies publish their gender pay gaps.  It turns out there is one, in some industries it's worse than others and it proves what those of us who have argued against such measures were right all along.  If you know what the other person earns, in some way, shape or form, your head is going to explode.  It is of course, and this is the real story, based on a falsehood.  There is no such thing as a gender pay gap in the sense wages are not handed out for gender. They are handed out for a job and/or experience and/or skill, sometimes also age.  Wages also vary depending on the business, specifically, and the industry, generally.  Where you get the so-called gender gap is by comparing apples with spanners and thinking it makes sense.  Women often choose careers and jobs and hours for different reasons than men. That’s not right or wrong, nor is it black or white.  What it is, is individual and everyone is allowed to choose what they want for themselves.  Some examples this week; they went to town on fashion brands where there was a pay gap and where management was largely male, and sales were largely female. This was presented as a problem.  What they failed to ask, as they always fail to ask, is why were there men in management? Had they deliberately rejected all females because they were females, or was the male who happened to be in the job the best person who applied?  A gender pay issue is only an issue if you overtly because of gender deny a person a job. That, most of the time in this day and age, does not happen.  They have taken a nuanced and complex problem and the Government, for reasons best known to themselves, most likely woke, decided to make a law that will cause needless angst and solve nothing.  Good for headlines though and water cooler chat, which is what Australia has busied itself with this week.  2024-02-29T21:06:34.000Z Mark the Week: Good riddance to the Māori Health Authority https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mark-the-week-good-riddance-to-the-maori-health-authority/ https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mark-the-week-good-riddance-to-the-maori-health-authority/ At the end of each week, Mike Hosking takes you through the big-ticket items and lets you know what he makes of it all.    Adrian Orr: 6/10  The cash rate holds and he is nowhere near as hawkish as they thought. All of that is good. He just needs to be right.    Trump: 6/10  Won South Carolina, won Michigan and the Supreme Court will hear his immunity case.    Ginny Andersen: 6/10  Apologised on this station twice and both times I judged with genuine sincerity. An apology puts a lot of stuff right.    Newshub: 3/10  A mixture of sadness tinged with writing on the wall. It wasn’t the surprise some made it out to be.    NCEA: 2/10  More results of more people failing and that's a massive social and moral stain on this country and its future.    The Māori Health Authority: 6/10  Gone and good riddance. Race-based policy is racist, divisive and destructive.    Gang patches: 6/10  A simple and demonstrative part of an overall approach that is six years overdue.    Stuart Nash: 8/10  Truth bomber of the week.    LISTEN ABOVE FOR MIKE HOSKING'S FULL WEEK IN REVIEW  2024-02-29T20:45:28.000Z Mike's Minute: Newshub's demise is sad, but context is needed https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-newshubs-demise-is-sad-but-context-is-needed/ https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-newshubs-demise-is-sad-but-context-is-needed/ While fully accepting these are difficult days for the media in this country, it is important to put the Newshub news into a little bit of context.  You can still be successful in this country, and to take one sad case and lump it in with everybody else is to fail to understand the nuance of the landscape.  For a start, this country, as Adrian Orr pointed out yesterday, has massive economic troubles.  The media, or the commercial, non-taxpayer funded media are at the sharp end of that, always have been.  Also worth remembering, the story is being played out all over the world at the moment, everyone from Time Magazine to Vogue to the LA Times is laying people off, and that's before you get to the Disneys and Paramount and BBCs.  The Newshub story of yesterday is, in many respects, the TV3 story of the past several decades.  They have never really been loved.  Owners have come and gone.  Owners have owned them for the wrong reasons.  Owners have tried to sell them unsuccessfully.  Ask yourself why.   The company was split recently after they couldn't sell it as a combined going concern, hence it became Discovery and MediaWorks, the radio arm, went their own way.  Discovery has issues or Warner Brothers Discovery has issues for themselves all over the world, see, a tiny player at the bottom of the Earth would not have been high on their old ‘let's bail them out scale.’  The politicians weighing in largely had it right, I thought, National said there was basically nothing they could do.  Hipkins was also right when he said it's problematic that the linear TV landscape now is solely, or the news division anyway, solely operated by TVNZ.  The last thing TVNZ needs, I can tell you, is the laziness that inevitably ensues when you have the place to yourself.  Which is why radio remains as robust as it ever has.  There's plenty of competition, and competition keeps you sharp.  If we're to be a little bit blunt, you might want to look at some of the decisions MediaWorks, TV3, Clear Channel, the equity companies, all the various owners have made over the years.  It's been a bumpy old ride, basically for three long decades.  TV3 news, in many respects, never really got a hold of the New Zealand psyche, it was never really that successful.  TV1 killed and kills them every night by some margin.  Yes, they did some innovative things, but at the end of the day, numbers count. Numbers in audience and numbers in revenue.  This company, for example, NZME is profitable, I'm told the years got off to a good start.  Sky TV is profitable, their results came out last week, they look more than solid.  TVNZ is losing money, and if Seymour gets his way, we'll have to pay some sort of dividend to level the field, that's no bad thing.  Lord knows what's happening to Stuff and what they're up to, if you've seen their new website, but they're private, so we don't know.  Minor players like the Spinoff and Newsroom still seem to keep their head above the water, magazines still seem to be available to read.  So, it's not the end of the world, and it's not the end of the media.  It's how you do it, that's clearly the difference.    2024-02-28T21:42:54.000Z Mike's Minute: Labour's behind the scenes look reveals all https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-labours-behind-the-scenes-look-reveals-all/ https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-labours-behind-the-scenes-look-reveals-all/ We could spend some time on the ineptitude of Jan Tinetti, who may well go down as one of our most ineffective education ministers.  The blow out in school buildings, as the Prime Minister suggested, borders on a crisis and, according to Labour, that’s just the price of stuff going up.  Which leads you to ask - were they setting traps for a new Government knowing they were going to lose, or were they genuinely thinking they could win and, if they did, they would worry about paying the ever-mounting bills another day?  But some real insight from former minister Stuart Nash who, in an irony of ironies, turned out to be a big Government supporter in their gang crackdown.  As the media set about finding every man, woman and dog to tell us how cracking down on gangs was a mixture between a stunt and a gimmick and a waste of time, forgetting of course most of last year's outrage over violence, what we got from Stuart was the proof of what Mark Mitchell had been banging on about for a year or so.  There's a limit set on what police could grab as a result of moneys earned by nefarious means.  The limit set by the previous Government on assets police can seize was $30,000.  Mark, and the rest of us, asked why?  Your chopper is $25,000 so you keep it, despite the fact you sold drugs to fund it. Why?  It turns out Stuart was busy in cabinet fighting for a zero target and he was being overruled by Hipkins and Ardern. In that revelation is an insight, or perhaps a confirmation, of what we suspected.  Labour are soft on gangs. Labour let people out of prison. Labour funded an industry in cultural reports. Labour encouraged the judges to go soft, and what we got was rampant crime and anti-social behaviour.  So much of it that it became somewhere between the number one or two issue in the election.  I don't blame Stuart. He always struck me as being at the more sensible, practical end of the party. But look at what he was dealing with.  This new Government has been left with the equivalent of an unexploded World War II bomb in a major built-up area and they're looking at how to defuse it and take it away.  It's almost daily at the moment.  And the more we get, the more we see the mess, the carnage, the tragedy, the abject failure and fiscal incompetence of Labour 2020 - 2023.  And with the more we know, surely the further from power they should be kept.  2024-02-26T21:51:33.000Z Mark the Week: Ginny Andersen ends the week looking increasingly isolated https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mark-the-week-ginny-andersen-ends-the-week-looking-increasingly-isolated/ https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mark-the-week-ginny-andersen-ends-the-week-looking-increasingly-isolated/ At the end of each week, Mike Hosking takes you through the big-ticket items and lets you know what he makes of it all.    Grant Robertson: 7/10  Witty, decent bloke. He lightened the mood.    Grant Robertson, the Finance Minister: 2/10  Buggered the economy and that, sadly, is his legacy.    Ginny Anderson: 1/10  With a fulsome apology still pending, she ends the week having blown up her reputation, damaged her party and looking increasingly isolated in the hole she dug herself.    Air NZ: 6/10  Result not so flash but telling us fees from Auckland Airport is going to stop us flying is bollocks. You can smell the PR department a mile away there.    The 'Never Surrender" hi-tops: 8/10  They are actually cool.    The fitness report: 4/10  We are a divided nation. Too many of us are fat. But it's in a world where increasingly a lot of us actually work at it and want to improve, proving there is no excuse if you want something bad enough.    Taylor Swift Australian styles: 10/10  It's like nothing I have ever seen. The size, the scale, the income, the hysteria. We have seen individual components from others over the years but this is a new league. It's next level and you've got to admire it.    LISTEN ABOVE FOR MIKE HOSKING'S FULL WEEK IN REVIEW  2024-02-22T21:14:51.000Z Mike's Minute: Labour's approach to poverty was a dismal failure https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-labours-approach-to-poverty-was-a-dismal-failure/ https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-labours-approach-to-poverty-was-a-dismal-failure/ The poverty figures out yesterday confirm once and for all that what the previous Government tried to do was all theory and no reality.  We are going backwards, and no amount of free money was going to fix it.  Poverty reduction was Labour's calling card, it was the Jacinda Ardern nuclear moment. She was the minister in charge of it and yet, they failed.  For all those bleating and worrying about the new Government's approach to welfare you might want to ask yourself why you are so upset at a change of approach, given the previous one has been proven to be an abject failure.  Even Carmel "it's complicated” Sepuloni admits now they will not reach their three-year goals.  The figures out yesterday entirely encompass the Labour Government approach.  We saw increases in minimum wages like we had never seen. We saw an increase in Jobseeker numbers at a time no employer could actually find workers because the borders were closed.  We saw state or social housing, we saw every welfare lever pulled in a way that advantaged anyone who wanted help, or food, or housing, or an excuse as to why they couldn’t actually get on with life.  If you wanted the state to wipe your bum, Labour was your Government. It was all designed to deal to poverty. Their ideology, their progressive, caring approach to your plight was going to sooth, if not cure, your ills.  Yet, it didn’t. It got worse.  In that is the lesson of simple maths vs mad welfarism. It's crazy, left-wing, voodoo economics. Free money, printed money, handouts, no expectations and no incentives. Just scratches for itches.  I would have thought it proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that a state cheque, no matter how well intentioned, does not solve your long-term problem.  Work does. Accountability does. Expectation does. And that’s the change we are about to see.  Yes, it's harder than taking free money. But I think you will find, because history shows, it works.  Kindness, and six years of it, got us going backwards. The numbers don’t lie.  It was a failed experiment, so the trick now is to fix it and never repeat it.  2024-02-22T20:49:52.000Z Mike's Minute: My thoughts on Ginny and Mark https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-my-thoughts-on-ginny-and-mark/ https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-my-thoughts-on-ginny-and-mark/ It's one of life's oddity's when it comes to things playing out publicly, that what might have exploded one day, doesn’t on another.  The tragedy of Efeso Collins quite rightly became yesterday's political story, and in doing so, saved Ginny Anderson from greater scrutiny and, perhaps, embarrassment.  The house was paused after speeches. Mark Mitchell quite rightly didn’t want to talk about it given the focus on Collins' passing.  But what he did say was she had texted him to say she had overstepped the line. Chris Hipkins said she had overstepped the line.  He also said she had apologised, which she hadn't. Saying you overstepped the line and saying sorry are two different things.  Your reaction has been forthright and voluminous.  There is no doubt Mitchell deserves a heartfelt apology. What unfolded on this programme yesterday was gobsmacking.  It was an innocent conversation about past work, as a result of the Grant Robertson resignation and whether MPs should bring more real-world experience to the house and therefore running the country.  Anderson raised Mitchell's past security work and company, and if she had kept her head, that would have been that.  But it wasn’t.  It was like something snapped and she passed the point of no return.  Live radio, or live broadcasting of any sort, especially unscripted, is hard. You have to keep your wits about you, you have to know when enough is enough, or indeed when it isn't enough and push a little further.  We all make mistakes. Many, many a time I have sat here thinking "how close to the line am I here?"  What Anderson did was personal. Not just personal, but ill-informed too. Once she crossed the line it got brutal and was an unbridled attack of jaw-dropping proportions.  A saving grace is they are both politicians who live in an, at times, ugly business.  But that doesn’t make yesterday right, or excusable, or even close to it.  The ball is in Mark's court. If he wants an apology, he should get one. I'm sure he could find a lawyer or two who would be more than happy to pursue matters elsewhere.  The best and most obvious thing Ginny could do is unreservedly say sorry. Accept it was a moment of madness, it was completely uncalled for and reflected badly on her and her party.  I'm looking forward to this Wednesday.  2024-02-21T20:24:06.000Z Mike's Minute: The record on Grant Robertson https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-the-record-on-grant-robertson/ https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-the-record-on-grant-robertson/ There are several questions you can ask about Grant Robertson bailing now.  1) Why not on the night, or shortly afterwards?  He seemed to give some indication post-election he would hang around for a while to see how things were travelling.  But the clue was there last year when he pretended that you couldn’t be a Finance Minister and an electorate MP at the same time, despite having been a Finance Minister and an electorate MP at the same time.  I've watched him this year at question time. He has fired a couple of probing inquiries to Nicola Willis but the gusto, the wit, the energy, and the joie de vivre is well and truly gone.  In fact, the air has gone out of the tyres of the whole party. They look flat, bored, bewildered and with eight press releases so far and a poll that has Chris Hipkins dropping 10% in preferred Prime Minister.  Some of which is to be expected. They got hammered, they got rejected, and they got a message over an approach to life I suspect came as a genuine shock to some of the more idealistic of them.  2) Who wrecked the economy the most? Muldoon or Robertson?  As much as National are playing to the crowd over what they have been left with, it's actually real. In some cases, it's dangerous.  This country is in a number of fiscal areas in a shocking state and that is on the former Finance Minister.  His co-conspirator, Ms Ardern, you will note is long gone, never to be questioned again. So, in that respect I suppose you could say he deserves an element of credit for hanging around the place to watch the outworkings of the vote.  But politicians are measured in legacy and records.  The ultimate aim is to leave the place better off than when you found it. The reality for Grant Robertson is so far from that it is tragic.  He will defend at least some of it because some of it is ideological. But whether it's pipes, trains, ferries or debt welfare the numbers don’t lie and the numbers are desperate.  He softened it with his wit, humour, and personality. As I have said many times, I always liked him, and I enjoyed talking to him.  But let the record show the Grant Robertson era was as ruinous as any you will ever see.  2024-02-20T22:09:04.000Z Mike's Minute: Our immigration reset needs to happen now https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-our-immigration-reset-needs-to-happen-now/ https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-our-immigration-reset-needs-to-happen-now/ The good news from the new immigration minister is that a reset on numbers is coming.  I think the major issue is not that too many people are coming, it's that too many of the wrong people are coming.  You need to ask yourself why.  If every genius, billionaire, and entrepreneur was beating a path to our door, the 120,000 odd we are growing by would not be an issue.  But the fact that most of them are out of India, the Philippines, and China indicates there is some sort of escapism going on.  People coming here to work in hospitality says a couple of things about us.  The first is that it’s a crime we have to import people to do hospitality. But the 13-year average for Jobseeker is your reason why. We are ankle, if not knee, deep in laziness and a lifelong form of bludging.  The second is the fact these people arrive looking to work in hospitality is not a good sign they're just waiting for the next opening at Rocket Lab.  So, when we reset stuff, and I assume that will come with some sort of bomb put under the Immigration Department who literally everyone in the industry tells me are a major issue in themselves with their processing, or lack of it, but when we reset, we might actually find ourselves in trouble.  My suspicion is it will look a lot like tourism, where saying we are open and having people actually turn up are two different things.  Tourism is at 79% of what it was and what it was is now five years ago and counting.  What if we tighten up the immigration criteria and tell the world we are after the best and the brightest? Small clue - like every other country.  What if our reputation, because of Covid, precedes us?  What if the world looked on aghast at our maniacal closed border approach and thought that is not a country, I want anything to do with?  What if they went elsewhere where the processing was easy, the welcome was big and the salaries were bigger, and we miss out?  I hope I am wrong. But increasingly, the Covid damage continues to be exposed, whether its lack of holidaymakers or merely a flood of under-skilled waiters looking to escape their homeland.  In the meantime, the bright and the young Kiwi takes off. Good ones leaving with ordinary ones arriving is no formula for first world success.  2024-02-19T21:25:52.000Z Mike's Minute: The country is fragile, no pressure Luxon https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-the-country-is-fragile-no-pressure-luxon/ https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-the-country-is-fragile-no-pressure-luxon/ I watched the Prime Minister's State of the Nation speech yesterday. It's one of the advantages of modern communications. The livestream brings a level of detail and information to us on any given day that used to be the domain of the six o'clock news. In its own small way, it’s the devolution of the wider media and its years long role of telling us what happened from their cut down "we wont bore you with too much detail" view of the world. Anyway, Chris Luxon rolls out the line about $200 billion worth of unfunded projects left from Labour. All of this may well be true. But the trouble he increasingly faces is the conversation he needs to have with the country as to just how much trouble we are in. The answer, is a lot. As I have said any number of times over the years, history will show the previous Labour Government was one of the most ruinous of the modern age. Although the polls tell a good story for this current Government, they had two in the past week both showing postive signs for all parties and National in particular, plus they are also backed up by the confidence polls, both for the public and business. It's off a low base and remains constrained, but they are trending up. Despite that, political honeymoons always end, like 100 day plans end. Rubber hits the road and at some point we turn our attention to those making the decisions here and now and start to wonder out loud how come things are still broken. So Luxon's job is to explain just what sort of mess we are in and, more importantly, how a lot of this is a long way from being fixed. You only have to look at Auckland or Wellington with the pipes, the transport and the general carnage to know this is an increasingly backward country. Look at the ferries we can't afford, the deficit that becomes a surplus Lord knows when, the inflation Adrian Orr keeps making speeches about, the power system that can't handle a cold morning, far less an surge of EV's, the roads that still aren't fixed a year after a storm and the towns that still aren't fixed a year after a storm. There is little in this country that is future proofed. There is little in this country that gets done without a budget and timeframe blowout. We have many, many areas in a parlous state and fundamentals take time. The danger of the political cycle is people tend to think in three year blocks. This is no time for three year thinking. What this is, is a time for genuine, clear-headed, bold leadership involving some very hard decisions. That’s Luxon's job this year. No pressure then. LISTEN ABOVE 2024-02-19T01:27:18.819Z