/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/rss ¾ÅÒ»ÐÇ¿ÕÎÞÏÞ Fri, 20 Jun 2025 14:37:18 Z en /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mark-the-week-the-world-is-a-mess-isnt-it/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mark-the-week-the-world-is-a-mess-isnt-it/ 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.    Good ideas: 7/10  Not a bad week. Monthly inflation data, the census scrapped, the Housing Minister to overrule council and health targets improving. Things feel a bit like they're moving.    The Crusaders: 7/10  A great comeback story for Rob Penney, who was vilified a year ago, on the verge of being a hero this weekend.    Nico Porteous: 7/10  Story of the week in some ways for me. Living his dream, charting his destiny, and mature beyond his years. I wish him well.    Venice: 3/10  They're protesting the Jeff Bezos wedding. He has booked the place out, he is throwing money at the joint, and they are a tourist town. What is it you want?    Radio NZ: 4/10  They're looking for people to quit and that, sadly, is what you get when the Willie 'Snake Oil' Jackson rolls his circus into town to hand out lollies that can never be real.    The world: 4/10  It’s a mess, isn't it? This time last week yet another war started and where traditionally we have a country and a leader that rises to the occasion, sadly these days there's no such luck. He's too busy launching his gold phone.    LISTEN ABOVE FOR MIKE HOSKING'S FULL WEEK IN REVIEW  Wed, 18 Jun 2025 23:41:33 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-the-move-of-the-week-from-the-govt/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-the-move-of-the-week-from-the-govt/ I think this was the move of the week.  Housing Minister Chris Bishop dropped the bombshell on local body operators that the Government has decided to give him the power to intervene around housing in local body decision making.  Mind you, we could argue scrapping the calamitous Census was a good move, and indeed I'm a massive fan of reporting inflation data on a monthly basis, which sort of makes us look like a first world country. These are all good decisions.  But as regards councils and housing, in the broader interests of this small country finally getting its fiscal act together, this move cannot come soon enough.  The simple truth is we are over councilled. We have ludicrous numbers of local do-gooders in a vast array of fiefdoms making decisions that may, or may not, make any sense locally, far less incorporating themselves into the bigger national picture.  Part of the problem is too often councils have not been up to much. Too many councils are littered with acrimony and in-fighting, progress is stalled, or watered down, or major work is ignored in favour of more headline grabbing material that makes the local representatives look good.  Not all of course, but too many.  From Tauranga, to Wellington, to Christchurch, to Invercargill; the infighting and dysfunction has become legendary.  What you can say about central Government that you can't say about local Government is most of us took part in the democratic process and as a result this Government, rightly or wrongly, has a mandate to get on and do stuff.  Mainly, stuff that got cocked up by the previous Government.  If there has been a constant theme of this current Government, even from its broad-based supporters, it is that they haven't done as much as they might have.  They have plans and ideas and announcements and KPIs. What they don't have is a vast array of results.  They don't have tangible things that have been changed leading to us quite clearly being better off.  With the Bishop announcement it would appear that message and the lack of traction is finally hitting home, and they have sat around the Cabinet table and worked out they have about a year left to put some major runs on the board so that election time is about delivery and not more promises.  The country basically is too small for this many councils and committees. A lot of decisions have major national economic implications and as such, central Government has, or should have, a say.  They will hate it of course. They will gnash and wail and moan about local democracy. But guess what? Big picture economic success is more important.  The big picture, generally, is more important. The national story is more important.  Christchurch learned this last week over their intensification scrap, which lasted years and cost them millions, that this Government is serious and on a central vs local head-to-head, only one side is coming out on top.  Wed, 18 Jun 2025 22:47:43 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-the-real-world-is-catching-up-to-radio-new-zealand/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-the-real-world-is-catching-up-to-radio-new-zealand/ Now, perhaps the most startling thing of the news yesterday that our old mates at the state radio broadcaster have opened a voluntary redundancy programme, is that they've never done that before.   100 years they've been doing the business at Radio New Zealand. 100 years, never had a voluntary redundancy. Tells you something about how insulated the real world from the real world they are.   Mind you, I don't even know that's true actually, because Radio New Zealand used to be a whole different beast.   In my early days of broadcasting, Radio New Zealand encompassed commercial and non-commercial radio stations, and there was, I can tell you from personal experience, no shortage of carnage fiscally. The place was run by halfwits and we were permanently in a state of flux, if not carnage.   The most famous might have been a thing called Project Aurora, where we allegedly all took pay cuts – that was a scandal in and of itself.  So it's not like the media hasn't seen tricky days, and I think that's the ultimate point here, isn't it?   There's a tremendous amount of coverage of the media, too much, really. And if I can be a little bit blunt, a lot of the tough stuff in the industry is no more upsetting than the dark days for any number of industries.   Also, and this applies to Radio New Zealand, if you live in a false world, it will catch up with you eventually.   Yes, media like a lot of industries is changing, but then it always has. 44 years in and counting for me, I can tell you media has been in a constant state of change, if not upheaval – it's all I've ever known. No, it wasn't always Google or Facebook nicking the ad money, but it was video, or TV, or deregulation of licences, or rubbish management.   Having worked at Morning Report myself, you've never seen such a sheltered workshop of lavish staffing and indulgence. They enter the Radio Awards every year and apart from not winning, the joke in the industry is the number of producers they've got: 19. Are you serious?   For contrast, this show, which 1. wins and 2. has more listeners, has three. And that includes Glenn, which is debatable as to whether we should include him at all.   I wish no one ill will, don't get me wrong. I wish no one ill will. I wish boom times prevailed across the whole landscape. But equally, I wish people lived in the real world. And Willie Jackson handing out tens of millions is irresponsible politics, not a business plan.   Willie and his ilk, as always, never paid the price for this. The poor sap who took the new Radio New Zealand job will.   The money that pays for jobs has either earned or it's given. If it's given, it's always on a whim – in this case a political one. It is not their fault that Willie is an idiot.  Wed, 18 Jun 2025 01:16:10 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-our-economy-is-an-increasingly-large-hole/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-our-economy-is-an-increasingly-large-hole/ Right, let's deal to the economy.  There were two interesting things yesterday.  The first was the food price inflation number showed it is not contained.  Why it is increasing beyond broad inflation is a many and varied thing, and the upside of these numbers is we can control them to a degree.  You don’t have to buy chocolate, given cocoa is through the roof.  You don’t have to buy butter, or a lot of dairy.  Vegetables are up, but that is seasonal. Seasonal fruit and vegetables are always reasonably priced.  Water though, which was the second thing, is not a luxury. Our bill arrived yesterday and, yet again, the price is going up, this time by 7%.  It's like rates and electricity – they're all going up and they're all going up beyond the band of inflation.  The trouble with this is severalfold.  Firstly, this in and of itself is inflationary and it isn't productive. In other words, we are no better off. I still use the same water, it just costs more.  Ideally what you want is more stuff done to produce the income to afford the bills. So if the cost of living is going up 3% and your income is going up 5%, we are okay and are ahead of the curve.  This, sadly, is not happening.  So we most likely have no growth driving the economy and yet we have increasing costs to operate that non-productive economy. That my friends is called stagflation.  So, can we control Israel attacking Iran and the oil price spiking? No.  Can we control the cost of the ship through troubled Middle Eastern waters? No.  But can we control, to some degree, this incessant cost-plus accounting that’s going on domestically by people who got the taste of price increases during Covid and basically never stopped? You would hope so.  This is a central Government thing, especially given a lot of these businesses, weather and power companies, water agencies, or councils have a major central Government input.  If the banks were right yesterday upon the release of the services sector numbers when they said this was an economy in recession, again, price rises in food and water aren't helping what is becoming an alarmingly large hole.  Tue, 17 Jun 2025 22:33:46 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-i-admire-nico-porteous-call-to-retire/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-i-admire-nico-porteous-call-to-retire/ Last week when Shaun Johnson was in the studio, we were discussing retirement.  Not mine, but that’s of growing fascination to me these days.  When do you know? If you aren't getting cancelled, or run out of town, or falling apart, how do you know?  John Key famously had nothing left in the tank.  Johnson was explaining it was important for him to go out when he decided, not when he was dropped. The TV stuff he now does was something he was interested in, but didn’t know how it would unfold.  Johnson at 34 years old seemed young enough.  I look at people like Tom Brady in his mid 40's. One more season, one more chance at greatness, and he goes out a hero with another Super Bowl win.  I look at Aaron Rodgers, who has signed at Pittsburgh this year. He looks like he has gone a season too long. He looks like he is looking for work, when he should really be looking for life after football. Maybe this season will make a fool of me, but I doubt it.  But all of that pales in comparison when it comes to Nico Porteous. He is walking away from his snow sports career at 23 years old.  He doesn’t want to use the word retirement, but equally he won't be at the Olympics anymore.  As our most successful ever snow sport athlete, it is over. He also doesn’t know what he is going to do, or what his future looks like. But he has enjoyed videos and production so maybe that’s a path.  How do you decide that at 23 years old?  How do you know that it's right?  Who advises you? How do you know they're right?  Having spent your entire life aiming for the one big thing, sporting excellence, how do you pull the cord when you have, if you want, years to go?  Are you one of those people who can walk away from that level of exhilaration and success and not look back? Is now knowing what's next part of the thrill?  Will you keep the scrapbook of memories? Will you tell your kids or grandkids about the halfpipe? Will they ask how come Dad can do flips on skis when they first go to Cardrona?  What a big call with so much ahead of him. Or was what he did plenty? Is that a good way to see life?  I admire him. Is he reckless? Could be. Maybe he is an insightful genius. Either way, I admire him.  At 23 years old I would have tortured myself, and probably still wouldn’t have done what he has.  Mon, 16 Jun 2025 22:39:22 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-manufacturing-is-our-big-economic-red-flag/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-manufacturing-is-our-big-economic-red-flag/ As much as we tried to celebrate last week's excellent economic numbers regarding the food and fibre, the bullishness of Fieldays, the boost in elective surgery and the boom in teacher numbers, what you can't ignore is the manufacturing read for April. It hit a brick wall. It fell over six points and is below the 50 point expansionary mark. A couple of key things about that - while services and sentiment and spending figures have been bad manufacturing, for months now, has been on the increase each and every month. It has been above 50, it has been growing. It has been a significant green shoot in the overall economic picture. The other thing is employment. That is a sub category that had its biggest reversal in the history of the index. What makes this worse? For those of you saying "oh, it will be Trump", the experts don’t think it is. So the big question is, how much of it is the world? Remember the World Bank last week reduced global growth all over the place. So how much of it is the world vs how much of it is the U.S? Has New Zealand Inc hit a tough spot? For trainspotters it was suggested fairly far and wide at the time that April and May seemed to be an issue. All the momentum that we felt we had at the start of the year had suddenly run out of puff. These numbers would tend to suggest the vibe was real. Ironically this week we get the GDP figures for Q1, that’s January, February and March, and the broad consensus is that we will have seen good growth. They think about 0.7% for the quarter. If you annualised that out it gives you a number very close to 3%, which anyone would take in this troubled and turbulent world. But we can't annualise it out, not with manufacturing numbers like this. It might be short term. It may involve the Reserve Bank and that idea they had that things were a bit neutral and therefore not needing a gee up. They may well be hopelessly wrong. Politically it’s a hole in the head the Government don’t need, because its not like they aren't pedalling fast. But when one of your major economic reads that was good, now isn't, it doesn’t take an economics degree to recognise a big, fat, red flag. LISTEN ABOVE Mon, 16 Jun 2025 02:10:48 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-its-revealed-adrian-orr-left-with-little-dignity/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-its-revealed-adrian-orr-left-with-little-dignity/ It's hardly a surprise, is it? Adrian looks at what Nicola is offering to run the place, packs a sad, and is off.  It’s a pathetic end to a tumultuous period in which we, the people who paid him, deserved an awful lot better.  The fact this information on the Orr resignation had to be dragged out of the bank by way of the Official Information Act, the rules of which were ignored as the bank failed to meet deadlines, shows you just what sort of place we are dealing with.  How you conduct yourself is critical. It's critical to all of us and even more critical the further up the totem pole you are.  There's nothing wrong with Adrian quitting if he genuinely believed the money being offered to run the bank wasn’t enough.  But you do it with some dignity.  You quit, you serve out your period, you offer reasons for you quitting and you move on with life.  In doing it that way you give us all an insight into what sort of human being you are. And in this case, you might well have been able to give us insight into how your organisation runs, what its thinking is, what the gap is between the bank and the Government and why you might be right, and they might be wrong.  It doesn’t have to turn into a scrap or a fallout. Just a series of adult ideas as to why people might see things at odds to each other.  If Covid taught us nothing else, it taught us the critical role of a central bank and what sort of people run it.  The way Adrian ran it is well documented and the general view held by many is widely traversed. But the sudden departure was another insight into why Adrian did things the way he did.  He is petulant. You don’t leave out of the blue and in silence. You don’t bail on hosting an international finance conference having said you were looking forward to it.  It's toys and sandpits with Adrian and then obfuscation from the bank when a few simple questions were asked.  If you can't conduct yourself, and the bank can't conduct themselves, with any great level of clarity, transparency and professionalism, is it any wonder the economy got run over the way it did?  Ol' Adrian won't be missed. But you would have hoped for something a bit more sophisticated on the way out.    Fri, 13 Jun 2025 23:27:51 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mark-the-week-the-warriors-cant-stop-winning/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mark-the-week-the-warriors-cant-stop-winning/ 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.    Ryan Fox: 9/10  Living the dream by winning. It rarely gets better, and another chance at a big one over this weekend.    Greta Thunberg: 2/10  Not kidnapped, just fantastically annoying. She is a good example of where your annoyingness outweighs your effect on your cause.    Adrian Orr: 4/10  Local disappointment of the week is both him and the Reserve Bank over their petty mucking around over simple questions. When its petty at the top, it leads nowhere productive. They should be embarrassed.    The Warriors: 8/10  Can't stop winning. Another two points this weekend with the bye and two more after that against the Panthers. This is the journey to the promised land. This is our year.    Los Angeles: 3/10  Was that an overreaction looking for a skirmish, or what? You can only show us an intersection of a few hundred masked try hards and pretend it’s a "thing" for so long.    Businesses and franchises: 7/10  Record sales. We're selling businesses like hotcakes. That's got to be a good sign for confidence.    LISTEN ABOVE FOR MIKE HOSKING'S FULL WEEK IN REVIEW  Thu, 12 Jun 2025 23:10:09 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-the-census-work-numbers-give-me-hope/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-the-census-work-numbers-give-me-hope/ The Census, and some of those numbers released this week, really are a treasure trove of not just fact and stats but, I would have thought, hope.  That astonishing move south, with the tens of thousands who have headed to the South Island and particularly Christchurch, is a framework for what the whole country could be.  A few choice decisions, a bit of get-up-and-go, a bit of cooperation and a bit of vision. There are parts of this country that clearly have it right and are clearly magnets in their own right.  Then there were stats around work. That very word "work" is a problem  It's reported as a negative. "More and more people are working longer", indicating you want to stop.  You want to stop of course because of the pension. You can stop anytime you like. There is no law around age and work.  But the stats and the reportage of work and age are increasingly out of date. As we live longer, of course we are going to work longer. Why wouldn’t we?  Work is actually good for us. Work is fun. Work is rewarding, financially and emotionally.  We are challenged by work. Work should not be a thing that you expect to end. It’s the same as health and fitness, or diet, or leisure.  50% of us are working between the ages of 65 and 69. A quarter of us are working between ages 70 and 74. Even 10% of workers are over 75.  And why not?  If you resent it and have to work, fair enough. If psychically you are knackered, sure, play bowls.  But the days of Grandad and a gold watch and one company for life and the company pension are long gone.  We need to break the psychological hold Superannuation has over us. It's not even a lot of money.  If it was lotto I'd get it. But it’s a bare minimum and it speaks, sadly, to this country's productivity and work ethic that too many are too reliant on it.  Working longer will actually lead to better health outcomes.  Hopefully the kids, who the Census tells us are working more as well with teenagers having never been more employed, will enter the workforce with a view that work is for life, because we see work for the good, not work for the drudgery.  If you happen to be working into your old age and doing it in the South Island, that’s not a bad life at all. Thu, 12 Jun 2025 22:39:26 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-labour-has-completely-turned-farmers-off/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-labour-has-completely-turned-farmers-off/ As part of Fieldays, Federated Farmers have done the most interesting survey.  It is a snapshot, like them all. But the numbers for one lot are so stark, alarm bells should be ringing.  So, who would a farmer vote for? You would say National and you would be right.  Broadly the farming community is conservative, always has been.  That, partly, is because they are their own masters, they are hard workers, they are self-reliant, they are at the cutting edge of the economy, and they know how life works.  So 54% said they'd vote for National and 19% said ACT.  Here is where it gets interesting and/or alarming.  8% said they'd vote for NZ First. They're the only party with farmers at about the same level as they are nationally.  Labour is on 3%. How bad is that? Even with a margin of error, even with a massive margin of error, Labour should be shocked at that figure.  Every party has their sweet spot, some parties more overtly so, e.g. the Greens and environmentalists, or communists.  ACT have some upmarket urban liberals. New Zealand First having a provincial number higher than the city wouldn’t surprise me  But National and Labour, as major parties should be, by their very nature are broad-based. After all, it is Labour and National, and Labour and National alone, that will lead any given Government on any given day.  You have to at least have a half-decent level of support even in your weakest areas.  Farming is particularly important, given we are a farming nation, the foreign receipts we get from the land and the value of our free trade deals.  To have a major party so out of touch with such a large sector strikes me as being astonishing, if not embarrassing, if not unheard of.  My suspicion is the current version of Labour is particularly unpalatable, and this is going to be their major issue next year.  For all voters the damage done to the country is still fresh in most of our minds, but no more so than farmers. The climate obsession, special land area designation, Three Waters with Māori overreach, no gas, and more paperwork.  Farmers hated it. A lot of us hated it.  But in general polls Labour are competitive. On the land they are pariahs.  At 3% that is a massive hill for Hipkins and co to climb between now and October next year.  Wed, 11 Jun 2025 22:27:47 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-the-council-valuations-are-crap/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-the-council-valuations-are-crap/ So, the great rates upset has begun to unfold.  Auckland this week got its long-awaited council valuations.  Why people get excited about them, I have no idea.  It's a rough guesstimate by a council. It takes into account the broadest of criteria, but people seem to live and die by them.  The upset of course has come from the fact that the value of a lot of properties has dropped, while the rates bill is going up. So we get the cost-plus-accounting scandal that is council economic policy exposed.  This is happening all over the country and it's a specific and broad-based problem. It's broad-based because it's inflationary and it's specific because depending on where you are depends on how bad the scandal is.  Auckland properties are down 9% while rates are up over 7%.  In Wellington values are down 24% and rates are up 16%.  Nelson values are down 9% and rates are up 6%, so this whole idea that rates are linked to value is of course complete crap and always has been.  In short, councils are inept and will spend forever, will waste your money forever, will plead poverty forever and will always find something that is critical and needs doing now.  For example, Christchurch got shafted last week by Chris Bishop, when the council rejected the Government's intensification plan.  The council didn’t like it, spent three years and millions of dollars to go back and forward and to achieve what? Nothing. That's council for you.  As Auckland mayor Wayne Brown said, "it is what it is". He's right because he knows a couple of home truths; no one is turning up for local body elections, so very few people will be held to account, and he also knows a lot of people will moan but ultimately do nothing about it.  If ever there was a reason to get exercised over the way we are being played, this is it.  Your asset has dropped but the bill is up. The bill, in theory, is based on the asset value. Nowhere else in life is this scam played and gotten away with, apart from local body politics.  We have too many councils, too much representation, too many boards, too much incompetence, and every year the bill for it rises.  Democracy only works if you take part.  What better reason can there be this year than to get your voting paper, look at the value of your property, look at your rate rise, put a name to the con and vote them out.  Tue, 10 Jun 2025 22:09:40 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-we-are-too-reliant-on-pine-trees/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-we-are-too-reliant-on-pine-trees/ The problem with committing to things that may well come back to haunt you, is down the track, at some point, the mistake starts to hit you in the face a bit and some hard decisions are required.  My sense of it is we have become too reliant on pine trees to meet the Paris climate target.  The sheep farmers have worked that out as the protests around land conversion have once again been reignited, with posters put up by the Meat and Wool folk with the line: "I am not the problem".  Since 1982 we have gone from 70 million sheep to 25 million.  In the last seven years a quarter of a million hectares has been swapped from sheep to trees.  This of course was always going to happen. What's the easiest way to meet a target on carbon? Trees.  Cutting and slashing, whether its farm production or the economy, in general was never going to be palatable. So trees were easy.  But you might have noticed a couple of major things have happened;  1) Paris looks increasingly shaky in terms of people meeting targets, or indeed people even being interested in meeting targets.  2) Stuff grown on the land with legs is fetching very good money all over the world and as far as us earning a living goes, we have never made more from farming.  Carbon offsetting, which is what planting trees is called, has restrictions in other countries. But I bet you anything you want that other countries aren't as reliant on sheep and cows as we are.  We used to have tourism back us up. But last week's numbers tell the sad story - dairy is worth $20 billion, while tourism is at $12 billion. Even offal comes in at $9 billion.  Tourism used to vie for first place, hence the Government threw another $13 million at it yesterday to try and attract another 70,000 or so new visitors.  Trees also kill communities. Farming is life. A forest isn't.  As laudable as Paris was all those years ago, if we had thought about it, if we had been less evangelical, we might have stopped to think just what it was we were asking of a small economy.  And the simple truth is we were asking so much, a quick shortcut like trees was always going to be adopted with alacrity.  Saving the planet, as people get tossed off the land, is not an equation we should be proud of. As the protest poster with the photo of the sheep says, I am not the problem. And it's right.  The zealots are. Mon, 09 Jun 2025 22:17:48 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-hospo-a-boom-or-a-bust/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-hospo-a-boom-or-a-bust/ We got the press release recently from the Restaurant Association where they said there were flat sales, cost pressures and regional divergence was the theme. I have changed my mind a bit on hospitality. More broadly, I wonder whether there are too many vested interests in this country who get in the way of real progress. The hospitality story has been a long, arduous and well told one. We hear hospitality is shot, hospitality is a disaster, no one makes money and no one wants to work in hospitality. Yet my increasing observation is that is not true. If you take a very large industry as a whole and average everything out, you might well be able to find some dour times. But what is increasingly obvious, not just from personal experience but a lot of anecdotal expert opinions as well, is a lot of hospitality is not only fine, it's actually going quite well. The thing about hospitality is it is malleable. You are not a log exporter reliant on a single market to either buy, or not buy, your tree. In hospitality you can vary what it is you are offering and what I see is a lot of people doing really good things and, as a result, they are doing very nicely thank you. It took us over a week to get the last table for lunch the other day at a local that, in our experience, has changed hands and boosted their product and offering and as a result has gone from a quiet, regional operator to a booming tourism business rushed off its feet. Same place, same name, new product - whole different result. The other thing about hospitality is it doesn’t require any skill to enter. Anyone can buy a café, and a lot do, and I have seen them, often immigrants, as it's an easy entry point. They take over a going concern and wreck it, change a menu, employ the family, kill the service and they're dead in a week. We are over supplied of course. So in your area where you have a choice of a dozen places, only two have to be good before they boom and the others wilt. So the Restaurant Association telling us things aren't flash is not the real story. Bits aren't flash, but then if you are not up to much in the first place - they never will be.   LISTEN ABOVE Mon, 09 Jun 2025 01:16:56 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-why-do-we-still-listen-to-polls/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-why-do-we-still-listen-to-polls/ The polling industry, whose only answer to fairly obvious questions seems to be “this is just a snapshot in time”, may have trouble explaining the past week of polling in this country.  There was one on Tuesday night and one on Wednesday morning. They have completely different results.  One has Luxon as the most popular leader.  One has Hipkins as the most popular leader.  One has National leading Labour.  One has Labour leading National.  One has the current Government as the current Government.  One has a new Government, with the current Government out.  It doesn’t get a lot more contrasting than that.  Even if you accept a lot of the numbers are tightish, some of the numbers aren't even within the margin of error.  It's almost as though the polls aren't accurate.  It's almost as though you could ring up 1000 people and get one answer, then ring up another set of 1000 people and get a completely different answer.  If you can do that, why would you pay money to people who will tell you these things mean anything?  At least TVNZ use commercial money to pay for this stuff.  Radio New Zealand, who seem to have taken over from TV3, use our money. And given they have just had a budget cut and given they are losing their audience at a rate of knots, I'm not sure this can be classed as quality expenditure.  I went to their website yesterday. The headline was "What the polls are telling us in 7 charts".  And there they were. There was lots of colour, lots of lines up and down, and squiggles.  But I already knew, given I had seen the charts from the night before, that either their charts meant nothing, or if they did mean something, then the other guy's charts weren't up to much.  Or quite possibly if we did this charade for a third time, they would both be exposed as having shonky numbers.  But remember: "they are only a snapshot in time". Except given they were done at the same time, they aren't, are they?  So what are they, other than a very large waste of time and money?  Fri, 06 Jun 2025 22:58:20 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mark-the-week-polls-are-the-joke-of-the-week/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mark-the-week-polls-are-the-joke-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.    David Seymour: 7/10  In Britain, debating as we speak. But last weekend he ascended to Deputy Prime Minister and gave an excellent speech about what our country can be. It was uplifting, and uplifting is good.    Chris Bishop: 7/10  Was at the music awards and expressed an opinion. People of the left didn’t appear to like opinions. That's not as uplifting.    Mitch Barnett: 3/10  Professionals get injured, but a season ender is a cruel blow, especially given this is our year.    The Waiuku raised crossing: 2/10  Because it's bollocks, but at least it's on hold.    Polls: 1/10  Joke of the week. Buy a dartboard and pretend it means something.    Six million: 7/10  Our population prediction by 2040. I like more people because more people brings growth. I've always thought we are way too small.    LISTEN ABOVE FOR MIKE HOSKING'S FULL WEEK IN REVIEW  Thu, 05 Jun 2025 22:47:17 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-ive-struggled-with-the-jacinda-ardern-book/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-ive-struggled-with-the-jacinda-ardern-book/ I've struggled with a couple of authors this week – Jacinda Ardern and Jake Tapper.  What I struggle with is one of them is making money out of the fact they made an astonishing hash of their job, quit, bailed out of the country and is now collecting money for retelling what happened in a way that would suggest no carnage was left behind.  The other is making money by exposing what he watched unfold in front of his eyes for four years and really did nothing about.  I'm not sure who the bigger fraud is.  The Ardern book is widely traversed and has been marketed very well internationally. My wife showed me a snippet from Oprah.  Let's be frank: post WeightWatchers and Ozempic Oprah is not exactly reputationally untouched herself. She's fascinated with Ardern, and it appears to be around kindness. I bet you anything you want Oprah doesn’t have the slightest idea about how the country was wrecked under Ardern.  She sees what Ardern wants you to see: fragile, huggy people who run things with good vibes.  In the meantime, at CNN, I have no idea what Jake Tapper was watching between 2020-24 because we all watched the same thing. Except CNN wasn’t spending a lot of time saying "hey, have you noticed the old guy is getting worse by the day?".  Given that was CNN's job is it any wonder they rate the way they do? But for Tapper to then go out and monetise what he was already, allegedly, being paid to do, seems a new low of sorts to me.  But back with Ardern. In one review former Labour Party leader David Cunliffe runs the classic line of "I have a different recollection”. That's in response to Ardern's attack on him whereby she essentially calls him a fraud and how she couldn’t understand how he got the top job and not her mate Grant.  You had to, she said (probably in tears), question his authenticity.  Are you serious? Authenticity? From Jacinda Markle? The only bit of marketing that seems to have been missed along with the hand-wringing interviews on Radio New Zealand and TVNZ is some Ardern jam or cake recipes.  If she had just been useless, it might have been alright. Hopeless, but didn’t break the china.  But she wasn’t. She was dangerous, she was the pulpit of truth, she was a control freak, and she was a narcissist dressed up in Kate Sylvester pretending she wrote back to all the kids.  She wrecked the joint then collected the dough in Boston.  Tapper and Ardern made money for failing to do their job.  There should be a law against it.  Thu, 05 Jun 2025 22:21:24 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mike-s-minute-was-smokefree-a-failure-or-partially-successful/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mike-s-minute-was-smokefree-a-failure-or-partially-successful/ There seems to be increasing reportage, based around some new research, that our dream of being smokefree is up in smoke.  2025 is the year when we were aiming to be smokefree. By smokefree, it would have been reduced to 5% left smoking.  To meet that goal, the research says about 80,000 more people need to quit. They won't.    As always, the fact they haven't, or won't, is somehow the Government's fault, who haven't done enough. Or worse, this particular Government, who they say have been shocking, led by New Zealand First and Casey Costello who is a devil and in the pocket of the tobacco companies – or some such gibberish those like the Labour Party spend a lot of time trying to suggest.  Where it went wrong was twofold.  The first was the belief, and this was classic Labour under Helen Clark, that you could force people to do something they didn’t want to, and there were always going to be people who didn’t want to.  Where it worked, and we can be grateful, was in the public space part of it. No longer are you forced to inhale if you don’t want to, or smell like a smoker, or stand in a group, or be trapped by it.  But beyond that, once the hardcores were on the footpath, some were never giving up.  The second thing that went wrong was vaping, a shocking miscalculation that it was a cessation tool, when what it really was a gateway for kids. A whole new generation got easy access, and the slippery slope was never going to get stopped.  Governments could have nipped it in the bud but didn’t. They could have made vapes script only like Australia, but didn’t.  The Labour Party under Ayesha Verrall, a medical professional from the party who invented smokefree, hurled their best wet bus ticket at the vaping market. So nothing happened.  History will show they were out of the gates, Clark-style, with gusto. There was early progress on public spaces and a general change in attitude to the habit, followed by the predictable malaise and hardcore resistance, leaving us 25 years on with a change in society but well short of what was envisioned.  Good crack, failed on the follow through.  I'd give it 7 out of 10.  Wed, 04 Jun 2025 22:10:57 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-some-good-energy-news-for-winter-for-once/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-some-good-energy-news-for-winter-for-once/ Christmas came early for Tiwai Aluminium Smelter.  They get to do business. In fact, they get to do business in a country where you would have thought doing business is to be encouraged.  They have been prevented from doing all the business they can because they have a deal with their power company, Meridian, whereby they have to contain themselves if things are a bit tight in the old power department.  It is indeed a weird, old world where we revel in ideas like AI and crypto and data centres, and yet we don’t have the slightest idea where the power to make it all work is coming from.  Big tech is under pressure globally. It is claimed they have data centres running and using things like water in areas of the planet where water is scarce.  New Zealand wants to be a data centre hub, and yet we can't allow an aluminium plant to run to its capacity because it didn’t rain enough.  The good news is it has rained a bit lately so the southern lakes look solid, which means, they think, we might not be as pinched as we have been in other winters.  The idea that you aspire to run a power grid that is reliant on things you have no control over is a very modern version of insanity.  We need it to rain, we need it to blow, and we need the sun to shine. We have no control over any of these things so we convince ourselves we aren't idiots by thinking we will build options.  So if the sun isn't out, the wind will be. Or if it doesn’t blow, at least it will rain.  But when it doesn’t do any of those things, which it hasn’t, we need Tiwai and your average punter to take it easy on the cold mornings.  And that's with, right here, right now, hardly any AI, crypto not really being a thing here, and data centres at a minimum. Imagine how stuck we would be if we had actually got any of these things up and running?  Gas would help. But Labour stopped all that and our re-opening of the market is only just beginning. We really do look very 1987.  In the meantime, the coal comes in from Indonesia, defeating the entire purpose of the climate exercise of renewables.  Cart before horse, anyone?  They say it will all work out, eventually. We will have so much renewable capacity, and we will have all bases covered, apparently. Do you believe that?  Do you believe a country that makes its biggest power user limit its capacity every time winter comes around, really is a country that deals successfully in big picture thinking?  Tue, 03 Jun 2025 22:17:30 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-the-govt-cant-rule-on-run-it-straight/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-the-govt-cant-rule-on-run-it-straight/ If the headline is right, and I hope it isn't, the Government are seeking advice on what to do about Run it Straight.  If the Government is seeking this advice, they have been sucked in.  Unless of course they are saying they are seeking advice so everyone shuts up for a bit, because the whole thing has got hopelessly out of control.  We need to break the ongoing grip too many New Zealanders have with Government, or the ongoing spell that too many are under, that Governments run our lives and it is only Government that can do stuff.  Ardie Savea, God bless him, got it spot on last week. He spoke for all of us in trying to balance a sensible observation about an activity, while balancing the reason for the angst for the tragedy that led to the heightened upset around it.  What happened was a tragedy. But accepting that, we seem unable to separate out tragedy from Government, or accident from rules, or mishap from common sense.  We fail to recognise the most obvious lack of connection – Run it Straight the competition, the organised sport, was not involved in a death.  The death happened at a 21st party. As the Prime Minister pointed out, no law is stopping a 21st.  We want desperately to stop stupidity. We would like to find a way to prevent young men, mainly, doing dumb stuff young men do.  But as Ardie quite rightly put it, the athletic side of the activity is part of contact sport. We have all in our own way, whether it be bullrush, or league, or union, or MMA, all done something like it.  Savea and his brother did what many, many, many, young men do in backyards: try to run each other over. Why is his brother called 'Bus', do you reckon?  The heat I took on this last week when I said similar things was interesting. There seem a group who feel if they spray, or get aggro with a person like me, that makes them feel better.  Maybe psychologically they can absolve themselves for feeling helpless.  Tragedy generally leaves us helpless.  But looking to a government is pointless and a government looking for advice is even more pointless.  Mon, 02 Jun 2025 21:51:56 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-the-reserve-bank-didnt-inspire-me/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-the-reserve-bank-didnt-inspire-me/ Call me superficial, but to watch the Reserve Bank heavyweights lined up, as I did Wednesday post their cash rate decision, I did not see dynamism.  These people outwardly do not fill you with any sense of excitement.  The Reserve Bank is in a spot and, as a result, so are we as a country.  A couple of semi-interesting things happened and also one very interesting thing.  They voted 5 to 1 to cut. They don’t vote that often.  They also offered alternative scenarios, which they haven't done for five years. Alternative scenarios are not a good sign. If you have enough of them, you are literally making stuff up.  Anyone can drum up alternative scenarios. What I want to hear more of from experts is what is actually going on.  The important stuff is they have no bias on further cuts.  A lot of people thought we would get a cut yesterday, followed by one, possibly two, more.  The so-called "neutral rate", that's the cash rate settling at 2.75% or 2.5% – that now seems to be off the table.  Why?  They argue inflation, which is what drives them. That's their mandate.  The trouble with that is inflation is only just in the band. It's heading more towards the top of the band and here is the really big part – growth, or large dollops of growth, are not driving this inflation.  We are barely growing, if growing at all. Yet inflation is still a thing. That's not good for an economy and it's not good for the Government.  The Government, namely Willis and Luxon, leap, and have leapt, on each announcement talking about the money coming back into the economy as the interest rates drop. If the bank isn't cutting, then rates aren't dropping, and we aren't spending or feeling remotely bullish.  The Reserve Bank doesn’t care that much because they are fixated on inflation, whether it's driven by factors beyond our control —like insurance, shipping or councils— or growth.  Yes, we had growth in Q1. It was quite good growth too. The live GDP tracker has Q2 up a bit, but not much.  But it has annual numbers negative and inflation trending up.  What we need is help. We are in a quagmire we need to extricate ourselves from.  The Reserve Bank doesn’t look like they are that interested.  Fri, 30 May 2025 23:03:28 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-has-the-political-divide-gotten-worse/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-has-the-political-divide-gotten-worse/ I cannot recommend a piece of reading enough in the Listener, and reproduced elsewhere, on a longitudinal study that now spans 35 years and 12 elections.  It's gripping.  A couple thousand people each election are given dozens of questions.  Its weakness is some of the questions are vague enough to throw up responses around things like health care and public services. We like them and we want more, no surprises there. But how much more? What if the money is wasted?  We don’t get to know that stuff.  The David Lange Government of 1984 blew it big time, went way too far and upset too many people. I remember it well.  We love strong leaders. We are more socially conservative than you might think.  The electoral system doesn't represent what we actually want, or like. We like the death penalty, yet we've never had it.  There are two highlights for me: Labour's moves around Māori and introducing Treaty of Waitangi principles into some legislation.  The majority of us, decades ago, didn’t want it. We don’t have the 2023 results yet, but I bet you nothing has changed.  Which I would have thought would lead you to ask, why hasn’t it been fixed?  It's a bad idea that's been allowed to fester and cause ongoing angst and upset for decades.  Secondly, there are signs of increasing dissatisfaction, concern and unhappiness. The authors say it's not like the 90's.  I remember the 90's. It was Ruth Richardson and Jenny Shipley. It was welfare reform, the mother of all Budgets, the burning of effigies on Parliament grounds. You can see the edginess these days with similar discourse and protest.  But it's suggested political polarisation has declined over the past decade.  Really? Do you believe that?  I don’t. I don’t think we have ever been more divided and never been more stark in our views of the country and the world.  Social media, distrust, fake news, polarising views and stands – I have no idea how they've concluded this. Read it and see if you disagree.   But on most stuff, we haven't changed. The times change, the circumstances change but, broadly, we don’t.  I'm not sure if that’s good or bad.  Thu, 29 May 2025 22:27:17 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mark-the-week-trump-looks-ropier-by-the-day/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mark-the-week-trump-looks-ropier-by-the-day/ 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.    Fonterra: 9/10  It is literally raining money. Record farmgate, record profits, and the milk price starting at $10 for next year. Go buy a ute.    Port of Auckland: 2/10  Everything that’s wrong with New Zealand – putting prices up because you can.    Auckland FC: 7/10  Falling when they did took the shine off, but up until then there was a lot of shine to enjoy.     Trump: 4/10  He looks ropier by the day. The meme dinner, the court blocking the tariffs, the ceasefires that haven't happened. It looks rambling, ill-disciplined, and insane. Oh, and that’s before you get to Harvard.    Coffee: 4/10  $10 a cup and Al Brown is selling filter. It's not right.    Radio NZ: 4/10  All that money for all those listeners to wander off to places like the Mike Hosking Breakfast. What's worse value – public radio you don’t want or a Waiuku crossing you can't afford?    LISTEN ABOVE FOR MIKE HOSKING'S FULL WEEK IN REVIEW  Thu, 29 May 2025 22:01:33 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-heres-my-advice-for-hipkins-and-labour/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-heres-my-advice-for-hipkins-and-labour/ I am here to help the ol' Chipster.  The Chipster, aka Chris Hipkins, was in the building this week. I said hello to him.  He asked me when I was dropping the blacklist I have on him appearing on this show.  I said he had appeared once already this year and that was plenty. We both laughed.  What I like about him is that he doesn’t seem to take any of this personally.  He knows I think he's hopeless and he knows I think he wrecked the country. But he is playing the long game and he knows I know he will be back next year in the election campaign and, if he wins, he will be back as a regular.  Which brings me to the help.  In Australia this week their Labor Government approved the extension of a massive gas project – Woodside are Australia's largest gas producer.  Before the word came from the Government, the company had launched a fairly vigorous, and as it turns out, effective campaign reminding us all that if you want to look at Spain the other day, and indeed various parts of Europe that have been spending increasing periods of time in the dark, you will find they became obsessed with renewables and that obsessions led to blackouts.  Continuity and consistency of supply, Woodside argued, is just as important as where you get your energy.  Anyway, Labor gave them the tick. Yes, the conservationists are upset, but aren't they always?  The point for Hipkins is this: this is a Labour Government that did this. A Labour Government that romped home in an election just the other day. A Labour Government with a gargantuan majority.  Why? Because it's what you'd call here a Labour Government of old. It's a centrist Labour Government.  It's not a woke, handwringing, ideologically obsessed Labour Government of, say, 2020-2023.  Blair Hawke and David Lange are your Labour Governments of success.  Hipkins is your Labour Government of failure.  Albanese has clearly learned the lessons of history and worked them nicely to his favour. Yes, he can be centre left, but the lights will always be on.  Last time the Chipster was in charge we stopped looking for gas altogether and, as far as I know, he wouldn't start looking again.  That’s the sort of thinking that leads to blackouts and an electorate that doesn’t see you as viable.  Wed, 28 May 2025 22:13:02 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-christian-hawkesbys-difficult-job-today/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-christian-hawkesbys-difficult-job-today/ To give you an insight into just how hard Christian Hawkesby's job is today, have a look at what the shadow board says.  The NZIER has a monetary policy shadow board. It’s a bunch of economists and their view as to what should be happening.  Some say drop by 25 basis points, one says 50, and some say don’t do anything.  How do you deal with that?  These are experts. They know what they are doing. Or do they?  So no matter what Christian does some of them are going to go "what on Earth was he thinking?"  Think about the difference between 50 basis points and nothing.  50 basis points is a lot. 50 means things aren't good, and we need to fire the place up a bit.  If we don't move it means things are just where we want them.  Are they where we want them? No, is my answer. But then I'm not an economist.  Most of them say things like "boy this is tricky". My word is "uncertainty" – the watch word of the day.  It's through this murky mix of "who the hell knows what's going on" that Christian has to wade and produce something that will see us head into a half decent Christmas.  Of course that’s part of the mess we are in. There is a lot of water to go under our beleaguered bridge before Christmas, and a number of decisions from the Reserve Bank, along of course with the much-dissected commentary.  What does 25, or 50 basis points, or nothing, mean? What's old Christian thinking?  I'll tell you this for nothing – a big part of this equation is mood. It’s the same with the Budget last week and the depreciation measures.  You have to want to get amongst it. You have to take your mortgage rate cut and do something with it. You have to want to buy your tractor, or ute, and depreciate it by 20%.  If you are in a funk and you're not spending, then depreciating 20% of zero is nothing and no one gains.  Christian, or Nicola for that matter, can't do it all. At some point we have to believe. We have to have our arm twisted. We have to see a bit of light.  The most powerful factor in any economy is us, and mood.  At some point a switch has to go off, a decision has to be made, and we need to look forward to better days.  Let's hope today is a part of that story.  Tue, 27 May 2025 21:58:19 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-the-pressure-is-on-christian-hawkesby/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-the-pressure-is-on-christian-hawkesby/ The pressure is on the new Reserve Bank fill-in Governor tomorrow.  Although given it’s a committee, in theory he is more of a messenger.  It's reported that we have increased calls for a 50 basis point cut.  Why? Because things aren't flash.  If you read business results in the current reporting season, a lot of commentary tells us the recovery is underway. Things are looking better.  We can certainly see that, for example, with retail spending. The numbers produced just last Friday for the opening quarter of the year are up, and in some parts of the sector they're up quite a bit.  We have seen manufacturing expanding for several months in a row now.  So those are the fact-based statistics. The other measures, like confidence, have dropped. We see people in the doldrums.  But that is a vibe.  Can you find people who are in the doldrums? Of course you can. But does a vibe lead to a lack of action or a lack of spend? Or do we say one thing and do another?  We also read a lot about this “uncertainty”. The uncertainty is of course Donald Trump, because Trump is increasingly seen as insane.  It may well all end in tears, threatening tariffs on Europe one day then delaying it all until July the next.  Against this, the Reserve Bank Governor has to work out whether to drop the OCR by 25 or 50 basis points. If it's 50, does that gee us all up and out we go and fire things up? If so, then next thing you know inflation is sparked up.  Does he go 25 and hint at another 25, and may even another 25?  What does he say about inflation and its uptick already, not just here but globally? Do we have the growth to support any such uptick? Is the uptick driven by actual activity, or still people just putting their prices up?  As someone said, who on Earth would want to be Reserve Bank Governor? And our one isn't even under the constant threat of being fired.  Thank the good Lord that we indisputably have an export-led recovery of sorts. Meat and wine and kiwifruit are doing the business.  But that’s over there, over here we are still in a funk.  So, what to do? Your move Christian.  No pressure then. Mon, 26 May 2025 22:30:20 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-luxon-might-be-fighting-the-wrong-battle-with-super/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-luxon-might-be-fighting-the-wrong-battle-with-super/ It is suggested Peter Dutton in Australia lost the election because of his nuclear issue and work from home policies. I personally think he lost because they ran a hopeless campaign. But it is more than possible that he floated a couple of ideas that the voter simply could not stomach. I am wondering if Chris Luxon is heading in a similar direction here with superannuation. Nuclear makes sense. Working from home hinders productivity. But the voter is always right and being a voter beats logic. Will the voter be right here on superannuation? Are there enough New Zealanders who have landed on the simple truth that 65-years-old, as a pension age, is no longer sensible, nor affordable? $28 billion is the bill each year, and growing. That seems worse now because we are broke. But even in good times it’s a stunning amount of money. National will take it to the vote next year. They may be saved from themselves by NZ First, if they are still in the mix, because it will be a bottom line. But we reach the interesting point where logic and emotion collide. For many, superannuation is untouchable. It’s a lifetime's worth of work. "i paid my taxes" they say, even though that line isn't actually real because we spent your taxes years ago and then borrowed a bit more to keep the lights on. 65-years-old is the new 50-years-old and, post-Covid, older workers have never been in more demand. The days of being out to pasture are increasingly gone. 65-years-old is not old. Imagine a day where you enter the workforce knowing you need to take care of yourself. Yes, if you strike trouble the pension is a welfare payment, not an entitlement. But we either have to change the narrative and mindset from entitlement to welfare, or we need to up the age. In upping the age over time, even giving years worth of notice, it's still a very big call. It underlines our desire for free stuff, or perceived free stuff. Once you set a precedent with money it is fantastically hard to undo. But Luxon, apparently, is keen to give it a crack. He calls it a no brainer. First clue - there aren't many who think it’s a no brainer. Labour learnt the hard way over the capital gains tax. Luxon may be about to learn something similar. Sun, 25 May 2025 23:03:24 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mike-hosking-is-the-butter-debate-really-supermarkets-ripping-us-off/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mike-hosking-is-the-butter-debate-really-supermarkets-ripping-us-off/ I hope you are following the butter debate, specifically the Costco part of it. Why? Because it's an insight into how the world works, especially the economic world, and why Nicola Willis and her crusade to convince us supermarkets are ripping us off might be wrong. Willis sighted Costco the other day when she once again reminded us she is back to business on the supermarkets and looking to break them up, or twist their arms, or regulate them where it hurts, so we can all feel so much better about the price of a trolley full of goods. What she knew, she said, was competition is good for prices. As I tried to say, that is school cert economics and, although partially right, isn't the whole answer. Butter at Costco is $10 per kilo. Elsewhere you can pay $10 and get half that. In that very example is part of the story - it costs different amounts all over the place on any given day, depending on where you go, or when you go. It’s a bit like petrol. Also a bit like petrol, the end price is driven by international pricing. We pay international prices because we make the stuff and sell it. Its how we make a living and we should be celebrating this. If farmers weren't doing so well we would be truly stuffed. Costco, because they are large, as in globally large, buy more of anything than anyone here locally. Because of that their price per unit drops and their margins are smaller. Scale counts Also, as the consumers group pointed out, it’s a loss-leader for Costco. In other words they are losing money on every pack they sell. Why? Because it gets you in the store to buy other stuff. Remember, at Costco you have already paid a membership fee to be there. So their butter isn't really $10 per kilo. They are eating the difference, as Trump would say, in the hope you buy stuff in aisle eight. Lots of supermarkets run loss leaders. They also put chocolate biscuits at eye line to tempt you. It’s a clever business. But Costco and their butter is not a real economic equation. And there is no magic in their pricing, the way Nicola seems to think there is. Sat, 24 May 2025 04:23:37 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-this-was-a-classic-centre-right-budget/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-this-was-a-classic-centre-right-budget/ It's likely, and indeed forecasted, that if this Government is re-elected next year it will end its second term in 2029 having never run a surplus. Now, that either means they spent too much, or they inherited a gargantuan mess. The latter we know to be a fact. But the former is a bit debatable. Depending on how you measure things, the forecast surplus in 2029 is so thin it might be less than nothing, and that’s the optimistic way of measuring things, which the Government now favours. I wonder why? The traditional way of measuring things still has a $3 billion hole by 2029. The pay equity money turns out to be about $2.5 billion a year, which shows you how hopelessly loose pay equity became. Primary teaching is not a pay equity issue, the same way nursing isn't. It’s a union pay grab. The opposition will still try and convince you otherwise, but they're wrong. What we do know is the Government found $5 billion a year from savings and equity, which is a lot of money, but money that still allegedly needs spending, hence the ongoing deficits. The dept-to-GDP keeps going up. It's too high. But under my way of doing things, the little there was handed out, or redistributed, yesterday wouldn’t have even been there. But I suspect the politics of an approach that austere was too much to stomach. But here is their issue; a conservative Government can only run things in the red for so long before the public quite rightly asks whether they actually know what they're doing. Getting rid of KiwiSaver freebies for the so-called wealthy is a good move. Getting rid of Best Start freebies for wealthy families is also a good move. Means testing wealthy families on jobless teenagers is common sense. It's already done on student allowance. Depreciation for business assets is a good move. It encourages people to spend and take a punt - more of that please. In the end it was a simple document because the Government has limited room to move and Governments should not be the home of all good ideas, bum wiping and problem solving. They should set the mood and clear the run way. It’s a classic centre-right Budget written in tough times. What they need politically is people to understand just how tough it is and to give them leeway and some patience to ride this out. As for those who dug us this hole in the first place - the less we hear from them the better. Thu, 22 May 2025 22:50:29 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mark-the-week-the-greens-shouldnt-be-let-near-a-calculator/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mark-the-week-the-greens-shouldnt-be-let-near-a-calculator/ 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. The Budget: 7/10 In totality she did quite a lot with next to nothing and the intent and messaging, I hope, gave hope. Because boy do we need hope. Oh, and also a surplus. The Green's budget: 1/10 They shouldn’t even be allowed near a calculator. When nurses get pay cuts because of tax you know you are dealing with nutters. The Privileges Committee debate: 6/10 Because at last the committee came to the party on rule breaking and at least attempted to right the egregious mess the place has become. The Warriors: 8/10 They just keep on winning. And this weekend at home against the Raiders - what a lip-smacker! The Golden Dome: 6/10 Is it even real? Can you build a dome in three years and, if you can, how come we can't build a road in that time? Smith & Caugheys: 2/10 That is what arrogance, incompetence, blind ideology and lack of vision does for a city.  LISTEN ABOVE FOR MIKE HOSKING'S FULL WEEK IN REVIEW   Thu, 22 May 2025 20:46:37 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-what-i-hope-from-the-budget/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-what-i-hope-from-the-budget/ What I hope for today is a sign and a sense that what we are facing economically as a country is real, and it's real bad, and the Government see it, accept it, and chart a path forward that gives us some sort of hope.  The damage done by Jacinda Ardern, Grant Robertson, Chris Hipkins, and Adrian Orr is now years long.  You can't invent money in that volume without spending the ensuing years trying to dig yourself out of it.  The start has been made.  The cutbacks have begun and the screaming, wailing, and upset has ensued. But there is a lot more where that came from.  The seeds of recovery are real, manufacturing is expanding, and has been for several months, but services aren't. Sentiment isn't.  The farmers have struck gold, but the weather has been exceptionally kind, as have Americans with their passion for burgers.  Our debt is shocking. We are not running a surplus on an annual basis and still won't be for years.  The Finance Minister today has virtually nothing to play with; no excess, no lolly, and no largesse.  She has, I hope, found a fortune in savings and she will redirect that to better places.  I pray she isn't borrowing on top of what we have already incurred. If she has, she may well be making a generational mistake, given Treasury says 50% debt by way of GDP is it, and we are close enough to that to worry the conservatives.  In a sense today should wrap some numbers and forecasts around the rhetoric, being we are open for businesses, we are pro-growth, we are big on infrastructure and most importantly, fiscally as well as economically, we are not going to die wondering.  Today is not a day for a dollar here and a dollar there. It is not an itch-scratching exercise.  It should be a document that lays an ongoing foundation for the major project that is the economic resuscitation of the New Zealand economy.  Wed, 21 May 2025 23:05:56 Z