This government has some bad habits that it really needs to get rid of. 

This week a new report raised concerns about what it calls a deeply worrying decline in literacy levels. 

Less than 65 percent of 15-year-olds have basic proficiency in reading and maths.  

Or put another way, by the age of 15, two out of five Kiwi children are either only just meeting or failing to meet literacy standards entirely. 

Mike Hosking put this to Chris Hipkins this morning. 

The Minister said they are working on ways to fix the issue.  

He said he has been following the latest education reports and they will make an announcement on the topic tomorrow.  

It's a cheap shot that that was an announcement of an announcement but that is what it was. 

It's become such a cheap and easy shot because the government keeps on doing it. And surely someone in their camp would tell them to stop it. Because now everyone calls them out on it. It was what John Key hammered on Monday. 

But in the same interview, Chris Hipkins criticised the previous National Government and how they dealt with literacy. Something you can do in your first term but when you're 5 years in it doesn't travel well. 

It's something this government does time and time again. 

On Tuesday I interviewed Andrew Little about a report that said the Government's allocation of 1.9 billion dollars to Mental Health is failing to deliver. Before he came on air, I had numerous texts saying that Mr Little would blame the previous government. 

For 3 minutes he talked about 850 extra nurses and fixing facilities, but then he couldn't help himself and started banging on about the previous Government's failures. Undoing all the work at the start of the interview. Text reaction afterwards centred on this scapegoating. 

On the 14th of March, I interviewed Police Minister Poto Williams after a convoy of gang members on motorbikes left a man injured on the Waikato expressway. I asked her were gangs more brazen and whether the police were too soft on gangs. 

What followed was remarkable as the Minister talked about how many more police the government had funded and how bad the previous government was. 

These 3 examples happen too often. When you're well into your second term that's not what the public wants to hear. We don't want to hear what the past was, we want to hear about a better future. 

The government would do well to drop this tactic because it's beginning to highlight their own lack of progress.