/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/rss 九一星空无限 Tue, 06 May 2025 09:15:43 Z en /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-why-our-top-achievers-are-leaving/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-why-our-top-achievers-are-leaving/ I always find it amusing when officialdom is confused, and they seem confused, as to why so many of our brightest minds have bailed and gone off overseas.  This is the group of top achievers at NCEA level and the ones with international qualifications.  More of them than ever have left the country. Officialdom here doesn’t know if they are enrolled offshore or, and here is the critical point, why they left.  Fortunately, I can help. Well, at least a bit.  We had one leave the country to go off and study. We have a niece currently studying offshore and we also have a nephew who left, studied and graduated last year.  They were, or are, all bright and all got top marks, and here is officialdom's answer: all wanted to get the hell out of here.  Studying at an overseas university has become a “thing”.  In one way it is no different to the vast swathes of other New Zealanders who set records exiting in the past few years.  In simple terms, the brighter you are the more prospects you have. Part of your brain power and academic success will have led you to the realisation that there is a big world out there with a lot of opportunities and you want a slice of this action.  Anecdotally, as regards higher study post-secondary school, I can tell you the amount of Māori indoctrination at high school these days is not just absurd, but counter productive.  I know it isn't PC to say so and I know it's not scientifically fact-based. But I know what kids tell me and even in this current generation, which is far more willing and open to this type of bilingual Māori-based approach to learning, by the time you have had five years of it, you are done.  What they failed to grip when they went hell for leather, and this applies to broader life in New Zealand ranging from Māori names of Government departments to news greetings on the TV at night, is if you over-egg it, you get push back, which is where we are right now.  But I think there also must be some acceptance that as a small, insular country at the bottom of the world, when times are tough the world remains shiny and brains gets you access.  I would have once said that most come home.  But I look at our wider family and I'm not sure that’s actually true anymore.  Mon, 05 May 2025 22:58:32 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-the-great-man-that-was-sir-bob-jones/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-the-great-man-that-was-sir-bob-jones/ I was very sad to hear of the passing of Bob Jones - Sir Robert Jones. The last contact I had with him was last year when he sent me a copy of his latest book. They always came with a personal note. When I say personal, it was a letter that he would have dictated and had typed up and then signed himself. He was from a different era of sorts. I never received an email from him, only letters. The last time I dealt with him in person was in his office in Wellington overlooking the harbour. That too was from an “era”  - beautifully set up, but in a time-and-place kind of way. It was a lot of panelling, a lot of staff, his office was large and on a corner, and he smoked. That became a thing in the Helen Clark days when she was busy making rules around smoking in doors. Bob was having none of it because in his office he was the boss, if not the king. So last time I was in his office we had wine and sat amongst the swirling tobacco smoke coming out of his pipe. The art work was worth the trip alone. He had fantastic taste and a fantastic collection. He also had one of the best brains you will ever encounter. What was often lost by many in the barrage of cantankerous verbiage was the amount of knowledge and wisdom he had gleaned from a lifetime of reading and travel. There wasn’t a place he hadn't been. He had more stories than you ever had time to hear, or he had time to tell. I noted a small irony on Friday night when I watched TV1 and their coverage. They made much of the Rod Vaughn helicopter encounter, the irony being no one these days hires a chopper to go looking for a fisherman. And Three reflected the modern malaise as his passing was the second story behind the weather, even though the weather was the day before's news. It showed a lack of understanding of who Jones was and what he contributed to the country. That’s the problem with modern newsrooms - the institutional knowledge had left the building. From business, to politics, to public discourse, Jones was an invaluable addition to the national psyche. Unafraid, bold, brilliant with the language and fantastically funny because he was fantastically irreverent, even when irreverence was wildly more tolerated than it is these days. It was a great life. And he was a great man. Sun, 04 May 2025 22:14:12 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-will-the-covid-inquiry-submitters-get-the-answers-we-want/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-will-the-covid-inquiry-submitters-get-the-answers-we-want/ I think I'm encouraged by the numbers of submissions into the Covid inquiry.  This is Covid inquiry part two.  The second part is to try and rectify the stitch up that was Covid part one from the previous Government, who were determined to set criteria that would not expose the true damage they wrought upon most of us.  31,000 have had their say this time. It is pointed out they came from all ages, all locations and were both positive as well as negative.  Given Health NZ submitted on whether Wanaka should have a McDonalds, do not underestimate the establishment's ability to spend an indecent amount of time and money in putting a best-case scenario forward in a butt-covering exercise.  This part of the inquiry looks into masks and mandates, vaccines and lockdowns, and 31,000 submissions tells me we are still very much exercised about the historic nature of the event and our keenness to try and come up with something that sees nothing like a repeat of the last exercise.  I note the other day poor, old Chris Hipkins still tries to walk that very fine line between admitting they were in charge of a balls up and pretending it went mostly well.  He is in an unwinnable place. As the last sap left standing, given Jacinda Ardern and Grant Robertson are long gone, he has the sorry task of defending what really were some astonishingly poor decisions.  But that doesn’t mean the inquiry will come up with answers.  Answers such as will a pandemic be the same, or similar, or not similar at all? What sort of Government will be in? Will that Government be competent or experienced? What roll will the public service play?  Will epidemiologists become household names again?  Will New Zealanders sink into a myopic funk again waiting for a leader to tell them what sort of stuffed animal to put in the window?  What made last time so bad was the control, and out of the control, followed the anger and fear.  I'm not sure an inquiry can dictate answers or solutions around emotion.  But 31,000 submissions tells you the emotion is still very, very real.  At least in putting the second part of the inquiry on, we attempt to recognise how profound those dark and troubled days really were.  Fri, 02 May 2025 23:58:31 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mark-the-week-the-all-blacks-deal-is-a-nice-fit/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mark-the-week-the-all-blacks-deal-is-a-nice-fit/ 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.    Tory Whanau: 9/10  She scored it herself and why wouldn’t you, shouldn't you, when you are as brilliant as her? God, she deserves a holiday.    Donald Trump: 7/10  For the sheer madness, calamity and unbelievable amount of bullshit he has spouted in 100 days. You will never see the likes again, unless of course he runs for a third and fourth term.    Auckland FC: 8/10  You can't argue with that execution of success. Have a dream, get a team and win the competition. That's brilliant!    Canada: 7/10  Election of the year so far and will almost certainly beat tomorrow's in Australia, unless Dutton does a Morrison. And I'm not running odds on that.    Toyota: 7/10  The All Blacks deal is a nice fit. How good will Tamaiti Williams look in a Yaris?    James Meager: 3/10  For saying random stuff like he's looking into helping Air New Zealand into the regions and getting fares down. He's also looking to get butter under $4 a block.    LISTEN ABOVE FOR MIKE HOSKING'S FULL WEEK IN REVIEW  Thu, 01 May 2025 23:13:51 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-three-good-ideas-from-the-govt-this-week/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-three-good-ideas-from-the-govt-this-week/ Three prizes for three good calls this week by the Government.  1) Financial literacy coming to a school near you in 2027, and not a day too soon. In many respects it’s the more valuable end of the education spectrum. It's education you can actually use.  2) Nicola Willis and her cutting of the operating allowance from $2.4b to $1.3b. The $2.4b number already had headlines for being skinny, or unrealistic. $1.3b is rabbit out of a hat material.  I assume she is telling the truth when she says she has found billions in savings, because you can't run a country on thin air.  3) David Seymour, with more reality check reminders that we have too much Government. In his speech he alerted us to just how much - 82 portfolios, 41 departments and 28 ministers.  If ever you wanted an example of bloat, there it is.  The portfolio joke is about appeasing people. There isn't an issue or pressure group you can't appease by inventing a label.  The real issue is ministers. The good news currently, as Audrey Young in the Herald pointed out this week in her famous marking of ministers annual outing, is most of them are getting good scores and most of them are decent operators.  But it is not always the case and too often, with the last Government being your classic example, portfolios are used and/or invented to reward loyalty and/or give people pay rises. Whether you can do the job is secondary.  Good governments are run by a handful of talent. In David Lange's day it was the Prime Minister, Roger Douglas, Richard Prebble and David Caygill.  With Helen Clark it was the Prime Minister, Michael Cullen, Phil Goff and Annette King.  With John Key it was Key, Bill English and Steven Joyce.  This time its Christopher Luxon, Chris Bishop, Nicola Willis and Simeon Brown - multiple portfolios at the heavyweight end of the index.  Unlike the real world, you will note Cabinet and Government never downsize. The public service can be downsized, but the Government never is.  Sadly for Seymour, unlike the other two ideas this week, his isn't real.  Financial literacy will materially improve our kids’ future.  Willis and her austerity will materially improve our economy.  If Seymour somehow trims a single minister or ministry, it won't be an idea - it will be a miracle.    Thu, 01 May 2025 22:14:25 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mike-s-minute-financial-literacy-in-schools-about-time/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mike-s-minute-financial-literacy-in-schools-about-time/ Regulars will know school and I were never really that close.  It was a means to an end, and the end couldn’t come soon enough. The means was the skills required to get out into the world and get on with it.  One of the things it did help with was economics. I found it genuinely interesting and did quite well in it.  They taught me compounding interest. If you don’t know about compounding interest, you don’t know about life.  Economics is life and its lack of understanding is why so many people have so many difficulties with money.  As of 2027 financial education, it has been announced, will be compulsory in school in Years 1-10. I'd make it Years 1-13 but praise the Lord.  This is education you can use.  Geography, Latin, and physics are about career pathways and ideas you may, or may not, find interesting. As a result, you may, or may not, ever use them.  But finance is about life, about success and about navigating the world.  People who know what money, currency, interest, dividends, investment and returns are, do better in the world than those who don’t.  It raises the question as to what education is about. Is it about a pathway to university, to skills, or to understanding, or the power and value of learning, or the basics of life?  They used to do home economics, still do under different names. Is that a pathway to work with Alain Ducasse, or to make some scones on a rainy Sunday?  I figure if nothing else school should be useful. A lot of people don’t use a lot of what we got at school. Things like nomadic tribes of Africa in geography didn’t serve me all that well, but compound interest has.  Economics opened a door for me – a useful, beneficial and financially fruitful door.  The idea that all kids will get that going forward is no bad thing.  Wed, 30 Apr 2025 22:01:44 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mike-s-minute-tory-gave-herself-a-910-are-you-kidding-me/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mike-s-minute-tory-gave-herself-a-910-are-you-kidding-me/ In her seemingly never-ending ability to surprise, Tory Whanau fronts on the local 九一星空无限talk ZB morning show in her beleaguered capital yesterday and scores herself a 9/10.  If she had come from comedy I could have seen the joke she was making.  But she doesn’t come from comedy, which is not to say her reign hasn’t been comedic.  She is the Meghan Markle of local body politics - so self-absorbed and she doesn’t appear cognisant as to just how destructive and useless she is.  I wasn’t going to even comment on Whanau given it’s a local issue, she has announced she's off, and the sooner the Whanau era of terror ends the better.  But fly in the ointment: she is still standing for a seat and bringing potentially all her 9/10 madness with her.  Now the guard rails on this part of her future are of course in the hands of the public of the capital. You don’t have to have more of it. You can in fact vote for someone else.  As such she is free to take her record, put it in front of you and test it.  But it takes a special sort of narcissist to think of herself so highly, having just been bundled out of the big race because she knows she can't win.  If she is a 9/10, she should be bolting home. But that’s the problem with narcissists, isn't it? They continue to bluster even when they know the game is up.  She is also a wider problem by remaining as part of the wider picture. She puts people off.  Local body politics is crying out for decent, hardworking, competent contributors, but who in their right mind is interested in sitting round a table with buffoons?  A bunch of do-gooding lifers, who as often as not, are not actually able to get work in the normal world.  Not all of Wellington's many, many problems are on Tory. But she led the team that wrought the havoc and the stuff she inherited, she didn’t help.  Her advice to poor, old Nick Mills, who had to listen to this tripe, was every time you see a road cone, you see progress.  It's that sort of fairytale, fanciful nonsense most of us realise isn't remotely true.  Maybe that’s her ultimate problem. Maybe she lives in her head  In her head Wellington is a riviera and Tory is the queen of that riviera. The pipes didn’t burst, the city boomed, and Tory oversaw a renaissance.  Maybe that's how all narcissists delude themselves.  Tue, 29 Apr 2025 21:45:44 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-is-being-trump-like-still-good-for-politics/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-is-being-trump-like-still-good-for-politics/ For a while there being a tough guy was good for your credibility.  Look at Victor Orban, Javier Milei and Nayib Bukele. They all revelled, and succeeded, at the polls with their macho, Trump-esque persona.  The world was moving away from "Me Too" and progressivism. There has been a very distinct move to conservatism, especially in parts of Europe.  Being like Trump was, more often than not, good for your political aspirations.  Peter Dutton had a touch of that, but sadly in the length of an Australian campaign it's all changed. The more he has looked like Trump, talked about Trump, and promised policy that sounded like Trump, the worse it has got.  Chances are by Saturday night, he will be a loser.  In the meantime, in Canada, who are voting now, the reason Mark Carney is in the lead is twofold.  1) The bloke who ran the place before him was a progressive sap and was a victim of the movement against the left. But he also had been there a decade, and his clock had run out.  2) His replacement has made much ground in the new-found vein of political success of looking not at all like Trump, but being tough enough to stand up to him.  Mark Carney will most likely win today and if he does, the fortunes of his Liberal Party will be one for the ages.  The same anger, frustration and impatience that led Trump to victory over a hapless socialist, should have played out the same way —and was going to play out the same way— north of the border.  Yet in the space of a couple of months, the entire scenario has been tipped on its head.  Looking like Trump, like Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives do, is no longer currency. It's bad news.  They have tried desperately to direct the campaign towards the issues that had Canadians so upset for the past ten years; cost of living, cost of housing, and jobs.  But the tariffs and Trump and his insults have fired them up and off into a new direction, which is hating on America. Carney and the Liberals have seen it, grabbed it and run with it.  The last polls have a 3%-ish point gap to them. The Liberals have come back from 20 points down, it's astonishing.  Let's do the counting. But if they win, what's it say about the distaste for Trump? What's it say about a single-issue campaign?  And will there have ever been a bigger victory snatched from the jaws of defeat?  Mon, 28 Apr 2025 23:25:35 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-acc-and-their-race-based-policy/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-acc-and-their-race-based-policy/ It is being reported as a scrap, which I'm not sure is accurate. But if it is, it is a shame and probably a lesson for the combatants, who are both supposed to be on the same side. But under MMP, is anyone on the same side? Act are concerned about ACC and their current desire to solve safety issues in the manufacturing sector. But by putting a race-based lens across it, ACC want people who have answers, or programmes, for injuries to Māori and Pasifika. This of course is not what the Government is supposed to be about and a Cabinet edict says so. The shame of this is both sides, in fact all three sides, are at one on the issue. They campaigned on the issue and they campaigned on it because the last Government got so obsessed with Māori issues and language and acquiescing to everything cultural that a large swath of voters got thoroughly sick and tired of it. So why we are here after a year-and-a-half and a Cabinet instruction is beyond me. The fact ACC, or any Government department, are still trying this on is the real problem. It goes to a theme we have highlighted too often this term and that is that a public service don’t appear to be neutral, or operating under the instruction of the Government of the day, but rather to their own beat. There is no good news in two parties seemingly debating a formally agreed approach with each other and there is no good news in a department continuing to do something they shouldn’t. We have enough to deal with at the moment without previously agreed approaches being re-litigated or disavowed. Obviously work safety is not a race-based problem. It is an industry or sector problem and ACC should know this. Even if they didn’t, they should be following instruction. Act are on the right side of this. But they shouldn’t have to be given the point of Government is enactment of policy, not endless re-litigation. Sun, 27 Apr 2025 22:58:38 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mark-the-week-the-drop-in-teacher-numbers-is-hardly-a-surprise/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mark-the-week-the-drop-in-teacher-numbers-is-hardly-a-surprise/ 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.     Meteorological paranoia: 2/10   Between the MetService and the media, you would have thought Noah and his large ship were going to be needed, and yet...    Teachers: 6/10  God bless them, but it’s hardly a surprise when you see a drop in numbers, is it? Would you be a teacher?    Easter rules: 3/10   I'm not sure what’s worse, the shambles they’ve become, or the annual tedious debate about changing them… even though we never change them.    Hegseth: 4/10  Looks increasingly like a doofus, and I’m not sure he wasn’t a doofus to start with.    Canada: 7/10   Best election going right now – early voting at records, massive swing in the polls… could be one to remember.    Exports: 8/10  Good news story of the week. In March, this country hit it out of the park – that’s what we need more of.    LISTEN ABOVE FOR MIKE HOSKING'S FULL WEEK IN REVIEW   Wed, 23 Apr 2025 23:05:29 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-fascinating-polling-results-out-of-australia-and-canada/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-fascinating-polling-results-out-of-australia-and-canada/ Polls are funny things at the best of times, and despite plenty of evidence that they can be as wrong as they can be right, we still seem fascinated, if not obsessed, by them.  There are two races at the moment being heavily polled: Australia and Canada. Canada votes this Monday, Australia in a couple of weeks.  Canada is more interesting, if for no other reason than the incumbents were losing by so far it wasn’t funny, but are now leading.  The PM quit and the new bloke, Carney —who once ran the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England— is now chasing the top job.  On the surface, that change of leadership might have played a part in voters' minds – Trudeau was past his used-by date in a Jacinda Ardern “loved then hated” kind of way. More likely, south of the border, Trump got elected, tariffs became an issue, and Carney looks like the person who can better stand up to America.  Polling out yesterday says the Conservatives are closing as people refocus on local issues like housing and cost of living, but the gap is still 12 points. Which is an amazing swing given the gap was 20 points the other way until tariffs stole the headlines.  Meantime, in Australia it’s gone from a race where the incumbent would be lucky to survive, far less thrive. Where a hung parliament was probable, requiring any number of accommodations with Greens and Teals and Independents, given a minority was the best Albanese could hope for, to what increasingly looks like an easy romp home with a majority.  Marginal seat polling out yesterday shows Labor with a 3.5% swing in the past week. Another poll had 45% of voters saying they didn’t like Dutton’s personality, therefore wouldn’t vote for him.  Competence, cost of living, that apparently doesn’t count. You look at him, you don’t like him, he’s toast.  It hardly seems a sophisticated way to decide the future of your nation, but then that’s democracy, isn’t it?  One argument says Albo should win —first term governments don’t lose— haven’t since the 30s.  But Canada, if the polls are right, that would be a victory from the ashes. What happens in another country is so profound: the party that was getting thrashed has their fortunes completely reversed. That’s one for the history books.  Wed, 23 Apr 2025 23:04:09 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-i-wish-i-had-the-ministers-positivity-around-teaching/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-i-wish-i-had-the-ministers-positivity-around-teaching/ I wish I had the Minister's positivity around teaching.  As you will have heard, we are short of teachers. We aren’t training as many teachers as we used to, so increasingly, we’ll need to bring more of them into the country.  The Minister suggested—optimistically, I think—that it's about more than just pay. It's about resources and support, which I’m sure is true. But the question remain, does it solve anything?  Does anything solve anything?  Is teaching simply a profession —like so many others— that is no longer what it once was? And if that's the case, why would anyone choose to be a teacher today?  Kids can be difficult. And if they’re not, schools are riddled with social issues that no teacher should have to deal with – yet they do.  Teachers are more like social workers than educators now. Even with all the holidays, the numbers don’t lie: people aren’t enrolling in teaching like they used to.  The trouble is, while teacher numbers are dropping, the number of kids isn’t. In fact, student numbers are expected to peak next year. So the gap widens.  Bringing in teachers presents a twofold issue.   You have to find teachers in a world where everyone is looking for them. They have to want to teach here. Is New Zealand really a magnet?  I could try to reassure you by talking about the teachers I had – but we’re going back 50 years. They were, virtually all of them, ordinary. Even with age and some maturity, as I look back at the ones I remember, not a single one was exceptional or brilliant or even really, really good. They were average. In an average school. That turned out a lot of average kids.  Is it possible the great teachers are, and have always been, the exception? The ones with the calling, the drive? The rest have merely been okay.  Which, of course, doesn’t solve the problem.  We have a lot to do with it. Society is a mess these days: held back, held down by anxieties, concerns, divisions, anger, frustration. A sense of loss, bewilderment, and upheaval that occupies pretty much everywhere, globally.  And so we send our offspring —if we send them at all— to be shaped by a miracle worker. One we pay average money to. In what might be a leaky building. With minimal resources.  We are setting it all up for failure. It’s complex. But if the Minister is right, and she can turn it around, she deserves a medal. If not beatification.  Tue, 22 Apr 2025 23:00:39 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-the-unanswered-questions-around-the-reserve-banks-funding/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-the-unanswered-questions-around-the-reserve-banks-funding/ Some questions for you around the Reserve Bank and their funding.  Firstly, the Finance Minister is to be congratulated on her handling of the fiscal matters in reducing the expenditure by 25% – this is a DOGE like achievement.  In fact, if you have been following DOGE, what they said they would do and what they have done is like a lot of the Trump output so far, mainly hot air. So in fact, Willis leaves them somewhat in her dust.  Then came the revelation from the cabinet papers that a lot of the extra money the Reserve Bank had got hadn't been spent... this is possibly referred to as waste and was a good insight into how Adrian and Grant ran the place.  But despite the fact it hadn't been spent, all of a sudden just before Nicola came along, it did get spent. Budgets in areas like people and tech info and data were spending like drunks.  So clearly Willis has seen their scam, called their bluff, and got her way. Good on her.  But the bigger question is this, with all that money, tens of millions a year, were they any good, and did that money buy good results?  Were good people doing good work?  Well history shows us obviously the answer is no.  Our Covid response is now widely seen as inept. Our three recessions, the outworking of a complete and utter cock up when it came to handling a financial crisis.  We have smaller issues still at play like the reserves for commercial banks, an out working of the OCR paranoia.  For all that money we seem to have employed a Central Bank that did worse than most, to this day Treasury —and this might be on Treasury not the Reserve Bank— cannot work out the value of all that money flooding into the economy. What did it do? What was its value?  If they can't work it out, did the Reserve Bank know going in or were they panicked and flying blind?  Why did they give that free money to the banks with no restrictions on what happened to it next? There remain the unanswered questions years later, the out workings of which we economically are still paying for.  So the 25% cut is one story, the other is what we got for our investment. How would you describe a return that bad?  And given it went to the inept, is 25% enough?  Mon, 21 Apr 2025 22:10:06 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-were-essentially-at-the-halfway-mark-for-the-government/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-were-essentially-at-the-halfway-mark-for-the-government/ At the halfway mark, can we suggest things are starting to turn for the Government?  This week we have seen the Prime Minister at Ruakura with a multi-billion dollar investment that sells the Māori economy and showcases large amounts of foreign money, as well as the potential for huge productivity gains and economic growth.  On Monday there was more money for tourism. Tourism is coming back, it's too slow, but the tourist spend is up to post-Covid levels.  On Tuesday, Education Minister Erica Stanford was pumping more money into classrooms with savings made from the bespoke design nonsense and waste that the Labour Party trainwreck was in charge of.  Then the Prime Minister is back with the police and Justice Ministers, spruiking very good-looking numbers around victims of crime.  This comes on the back of three polls all of which show the Government being returned to office if an election was held today.  Slowly but surely specific bits are starting to fall into place. Things like the fact we had good GDP in the last growth stats.  Clearly from Tuesday's numbers, crime, which was as big an issue last election, is looking very much in a box. The gang patch laws are working with even the critics saying they're working. Surveys say people feel safer on the streets and the victim numbers look very good indeed.  Health remains an issue and there seems a determination among the unions especially to keep it on the front page.  But the key bits that sink or support Governments —the economy, education, crime and justice— look solid. If they can get health under control they will be rolling.  Obviously, the economic side is fragile and open to a lot of stuff that is beyond our control, so counting chickens is pointless.  On that note, you then come to this idea that’s gaining traction that the Trump fiasco could well be the making of our Prime Minister.  A bloke who has struggled to connect might well have settled nicely into his wheelhouse with an economic mess that could see the best of him shine when it's needed most.  If the polls play okay for them they way they do now, with glimmers of light, by the time we get to the end of the year momentum might well be theirs and an election may well be theirs to lose.  Fri, 18 Apr 2025 23:15:14 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-are-all-our-polls-doing-more-harm-than-good/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-are-all-our-polls-doing-more-harm-than-good/ I wonder if we are doing ourselves more harm than good when it comes to our finances, if not our general mental health, with what seems to be an industry in polling and surveys.  The latest IPSOS work has over 40% of us not happy about money and a decent chunk of us "struggling". What is "struggling"? It's open to a lot of interpretation, isn't it?  Mood doesn’t necessarily deal in fact, and in that is part of the issue.  The facts are, on average, our wages are outpacing inflation. What that means is we are, on average, better off, but the surveys don't show this.  We are in a funk and have been since Covid.  The other part of the problem is the "average" bit. None of us are average, either in our expenditure or income. So, unless you see it, and feel it, and live it, average means nothing.  The age-old question as to whether the price of a basket of groceries is too expensive has been, and forever will be, answered the same – yes it is.  That’s not about maths, or income, or affordability. That’s about mindset.  If you have made up your mind food is too expensive, or you don’t trust the media, or Luxon doesn’t connect with regular people, then evidence comes secondary to mood and vibe and feels.  Is traffic too bad? Is the country on the right track? Do you deserve more income? Does the council waste your rates money? I can line up any number of questions and if I word them the right way I can virtually guarantee you an outcome.  Having then produced the results, I need a compliant media to regurgitate them for an easy headline.  It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. You feel life is too expensive, you feel you are struggling, you read that other people feel like you and so you say to yourself "see, I told you it's true. It's news, it must be true", and around and around we go.  Which is not to say these things don’t have some element of truth about them.  But it's like punching yourself in the head. If you keep doing it what are the chances you'll have a headache at the end of it all?  Tue, 15 Apr 2025 22:09:59 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mike-s-minute-a-good-example-of-why-people-don-t-trust-the-media/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mike-s-minute-a-good-example-of-why-people-don-t-trust-the-media/ I have a good example as to why so many people don’t trust the media.  Like most things it's got complicated and a lot of it is fuelled by emotion.  So a simple survey, the likes of which was published by AUT over the weekend, can never come close to capturing exactly what the relationship between the industry and the punter really is.  But the US President had a medical over the weekend. It has been widely reported and in fact, I have read a number of the reports that states he is in pretty good shape.  The headline in the Sydney Morning Herald chose to frame it this way; "Overweight Trump has sun damage after 'frequent golf wins' medical report finds".  Now, you have several issues.  Firstly, the subject: a lot of what is reported about Trump is done with a slant and the slant is made more obvious by the fact that those who support Trump tend to be zealous and therefore will react to perceived misreporting more loudly than many others.  Secondly, the report does indeed say he is overweight. But it is not the main part of the report, or anywhere close to it, nor indeed is the sun damage. The sun damage is definitely there, but it's hardly a feature.  In fact, if the headline is supposed to convey the important parts of the medical report, it completely misses them. The important parts are that physically and cognitively he is in very good shape.  Why doesn’t the headline say that? What is the purpose of the headline, other than to mislead you or ridicule the President by presenting the report in the worst possible light?  That is trust, or lack of it.  That is a bad headline, a misleading headline, and a headline that shows us the newspaper has an agenda.  It's hardly the end of the world. It's not scandalous, it's not a lie, and there is worse to be found other days in other places.  But the paper is an esteemed rag with big readership and, I assume, a certain pride in their reporting.  In that lies the complexity. Take a lot of these sort of examples on any given day, from any given number of outlets and before you know it – lack of trust.  If like I did, you knew more than the headline alluded to, you very quickly concluded you couldn’t trust them for the full story.  Mon, 14 Apr 2025 22:12:52 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-waikato-tainui-is-a-wonderful-success-story/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-waikato-tainui-is-a-wonderful-success-story/ My ongoing advice to the Government is: don’t make big announcements on a Friday. I watched the Prime Minister from Waikato at the Ruakura Superhub. This is what the Government lives for. It's what they dream of. It's what they preach. The Superhub by the way is one of the great visions for this country. It services 45% of the population and 55% of GDP. It's part of what they call the "Golden Triangle" when it comes to business, servicing Hamilton, Tauranga and Auckland. Anyway, at the press conference was a representative from the company with a trillion dollars in assets under management. I'm talking about the local tribe, Waikato-Tainui, with the Prime Minister. Tuku Morgan from the tribe, who in another life became famous for expensive taxpayer funded underwear, spoke eloquently about what the Superhub means, how big it is, how massive the vision is and how transformational it all could be. So, not just a miss for the Government in terms of coverage for exactly what this country needs, but also the chance for us to see a part of the so-called Māori economy we don’t often see. Waikato-Tainui are a wonderful success. The sadness for me is I don’t see them as Māori. I see them as a business, and a good one. Race should not be part of business because performance is the key to business, not race. But there is no denying their money came out of the Treaty settlement process and they have taken it and run with it. Not only don’t we get to see the successful side of the Māori economy, we don't ask often enough how it is you can have that much success and yet still have so much Māori deprivation? That’s the news we do hear a lot about - poverty, addiction, violence and bad health. It's all bad news. Why? If Māori can do well why are we so obsessed with why they aren't? And if there is a way out for those who need it, and Māori have provided the blueprint, why is it still an issue? Māori are held back, we are told. Are they? Why haven't Waikato-Tainui been held back? Or Ngai Tahu? If you listen to the Willie Jackson's of the world, he will tell you colonialism has ruined the Māori dream. I didn’t see that on Friday. Quite the opposite. Sun, 13 Apr 2025 23:38:12 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-free-trade-will-survive-these-tariffs/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-free-trade-will-survive-these-tariffs/ Keir Starmer is fast becoming a new political hero.  For a bloke who stumbled into office not on his brilliance or a nationwide passion for the Labour Party, but more because the Tories had spent 14 years slowly messing the place up, he turns out to be quite the operator.  He is reforming public health because it's fat and useless. He is trimming welfare because there are too many layabouts.  He has handled Trump as well as anyone, and better than most, both on tariffs and the war.  Now he has rejected that hackneyed old sop of a patriotic "Buy British" campaign in response to America's moves.  Canada hasn’t. They are flat out hating on America, and in some senses, it's working. Tourism is down in America as Canadians go elsewhere. But all the rest of it is anecdotal as they pull American booze off shelves in a massive huff.  So the idea was, like it was here a number of times over the years and like it is currently in Australia as part of their election campaign, you run the flag up a pole, get everyone fizzed up about their country and their heritage and their ability to make stuff and whittle and dig and toil and sweat and the punter, so enamoured with your skills and graft, buys the locally made brilliance.  And we all live happily ever after.  There is value in patriotism and pride in some local stories.  But even in Britain, where a lot of stuff was born or invented, the world has moved on and Starmer knows it.  People buy on either quality or price and sometimes a bit of both.  They don’t buy blindly, they don’t want crap and they won't support their own for the sake of it. If they did Temu would never have been invented.  This whole tariff thing will pass and this Starmer gets. Free trade will survive, if not thrive. Starmer gets it. President Xi gets it.  Good ideas don’t die with the arrival of an economic Neanderthal. They may be paused or dented, but they don’t die.  Land Rover thrives because, yes it's British, but also because it's good, as do Fortnum and Mason and Barbour wax jackets.  Buying local is isolationism. Most of us worked that out a long time ago.  This is no time to regress. Fri, 11 Apr 2025 23:01:21 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mark-the-week-trump-is-a-complete-and-utter-chaotic-clown/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mark-the-week-trump-is-a-complete-and-utter-chaotic-clown/ 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: 1/10  Complete and utter chaotic clown. You don’t treat the world economy like this.    Clowns: 2/10  In order: Scott Bessent, Howard Lutnick, Pete Hegseth, and Karoline Leavitt.    The IRD: 6/10  Collected close to a billion dollars in unpaid tax, simply by looking – quite a good concept!    Paul Goldsmith: 6/10  Is it ingenious or worrying when you're asking the Mike Hosking Breakfast for policy ideas?    Wool: 8/10  Wool deserves a break. In pure economic terms I'm not sure this is on the Government to spin the line, far less the yarn. But it's Winston's baby and he's 80-years-old today so, why not?    Andrew Little: 6/10  Is he the answer for Wellington, or a retired politician looking for work?    LISTEN ABOVE FOR MIKE HOSKING'S FULL WEEK IN REVIEW  Thu, 10 Apr 2025 22:52:01 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-how-arrogant-of-the-waitangi-tribunal-to-ask-for-more-money/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-how-arrogant-of-the-waitangi-tribunal-to-ask-for-more-money/ Is it gall, is it cheek, or is it comedic?  The Waitangi Tribunal has been reviewed, and the review recommends it needs more people and more money.  It is strained, says the review. They are of course technically correct. It is strained because the Waitangi Tribunal is busy.  It is busy with “urgent”, and we use that word loosely, numbers of gripes and grievances around the general state and status of Māori, or more accurately, a small selection of Māori who have seen for years and decades now the Tribunal as an almost endless source of respite in their never-ending list of grievances.  This is a classic make-work programme.  Puff your chest out, inflate your sense of self-importance, busy yourself with a myriad of invented tasks and then in the review, guess what? You are overworked and under-resourced.  The Government is going to do something about all this and, unfortunately for people like me, they are not moving nearly fast enough.  As we have said a number of times, the Tribunal is well past its useful life.  The idea that it addressed historic wrongs has come and gone.  Deadlines should have been placed years ago on those wanting to argue their case, with expiry dates on applications and negotiations.  All Governments have failed miserably to this point on the discipline required in that area.  But now it's down to ongoing dabbling in matters of the day that carry no weight and have a growing amount of political agitation about them.  It's simply a jacked-up, grievance mechanism funded by the taxpayer to supply ammo to the gravy-trainers for an ongoing, if not neverending, list of woe.  It takes gall in a broke country with cutbacks all around you to then go and ask for yet more resource.  But then that’s the Tribunal isn't it? Political, wasteful, past its use-by-date and clearly arrogant.  Thu, 10 Apr 2025 22:47:26 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-should-the-government-force-you-to-buy-wool/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-should-the-government-force-you-to-buy-wool/ I am conflicted.  In the age of tariffs and free trade and making stuff that the world wants, how is it a Government can then argue that you have to buy wool?  If you are redecorating, or building, or refurbishing a major chunk of your consideration will be around cost.  Can wool outprice what might be your desire for the cheapest product going? No, it can't.  Can wool mount an argument that over time it pays its way? Possibly.  Then we come to the patriotic side. Should we support things that we are good at? I think yes.  If you are a regular, you will know no one loves wool more than me. I'd pay anything to support wool because I'm a natural fibre geek.  Polyester should be a crime and banned.  Funnily enough, I read a report yesterday about the return of fake fur. Fake fur is now so good you can't tell the difference, but it is made out of petrochemicals. So in banning the real thing to save the animals, we have simply set about trashing the Earth some more to quell the demand for fur that never went away.  The demand for cheap flooring is driven solely by price. Wool, for what it lacks in price, makes up for in vibe. It's amazing in both carpets and jerseys.  But is the Government picking winners or is the Government artificially backing one over another, and if they are in that business, where is the line?  Why is it okay to make you buy wool, but at the same time allow any number of new building products into the market to cheapen the price of building a house? Why aren't they making you buy GIB?  It's price one day and quality the next. There is an inconsistency in this.  The wool fan in me says go for it. Wool needs and deserves help. It's been badly treated and if this programme makes a difference, then we can all feel good about it.  But the purist in me says, for a free trader, we favour quality and wool is quality.  But the reason we don’t make a lot of stuff is because we can't make it at a price we want to buy it at, and that is smart, sensible business.  Wed, 09 Apr 2025 22:18:12 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-is-america-now-a-global-laughing-stock/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-is-america-now-a-global-laughing-stock/ Ken Langone started a small operation called Home Depot.  These days he is a billionaire and major donor to the Trump campaign and Republican Party.  He is, like all the rest of us looking on, incredulous, or furious, or in disbelief, or confused.  Yesterday for a very brief period, a rumour that appeared to come out of a very small 'X' account and somehow linked to CNBC, swept the market.  It said Trump was considering a 90-day pause on the tariffs. The market which had been continuing its downward trajectory, or “tanking” as some people called it, abruptly upped stick and reversed.  It surged by about 8%, which is a lot, until it turned out none of it was true. So it fell apart again.  As one article suggested, that was an off-ramp for the President. In other words, had the rumour been true and Trump decided it could all be a mistake, the markets would have forgiven him, put it all behind them and we would be on our merry way.  But back to Ken. Ken said "I don’t understand the goddamn formula". In that, he is not alone.  Many of the billionaires who backed Trump don't understand the formula. They also didn’t back the idea that Trump would trash the place and yet more of them, mainly headed by the bloke who runs BlackRock, think the US economy is already in recession.  If it is in recession Howard Lutnick will need to be rolled out to explain how that happened, given according to Lutnick, it wasn’t possible.  So once again we ask the simple question – if the brightest people in the room don’t understand the "goddamn formula", if Trump's closest allies and supporters don’t get it, who does?  Or worse, is it possible no one does? Is this thing a runaway train?  If it's not a runaway train, is it possible that yet another Trump backer is right when he suggests America is now a global laughing stock?  Tue, 08 Apr 2025 22:04:31 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-snobs-are-complaining-about-defence-force-criteria/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-snobs-are-complaining-about-defence-force-criteria/ A touch of the ol' intellectual snobbery reared its head with news that the Defence Force dropped education criteria last year.  As a person who had no time for school and could not wait to get out into the world, I was, and still am, very grateful for the idea that you choose the person and not the piece of paper when it comes to work.  When I started, School Certificate and UE were what you needed to get into the media, or at least to have a crack.  These days you need a degree. I can assure you the quality of those graduates has not changed one iota as a result of several years of study.  The military is an awfully difficult place to recruit for, especially in a country like ours.  Just what is it you are offering? We don't do a lot; we don’t have a lot of equipment and we don’t fight wars. We keep peace and patrol.  So in a world where work-life balance and work from home and 4-day weeks are commonplace, average pay, Waiouru, and a lot of early rises aren't exactly calling cards.  So you simply now need three years of school. You don’t even need Level 1 NCEA.  Here is the thing – some people aren't into school. I know this because I was one of them.  Not all life choices, work choices, or skills are gained by passing Year 11 maths.  The military is as much about attitude and aptitude – it's a structured environment and it is designed for a specific type of person.  In places like America, they recruit people who may well struggle to get regular work. That is the way it is and it's a simple truth. They offer dental and medical in a country where you may not be able to afford it.  They offer a career and travel and opportunity in careers and trades you may not have even thought of.  Here you can be an auto technician, plumber or diver. They are the jobs on offer in the military with no skills. Could you do that in civilian life? No.  Being good with an engine does not mean you are good in class.  These are doors of opportunity  If the military through necessity can make it work, who are these outside snobs who still believe that exams and results are the sole key to employment?  Mon, 07 Apr 2025 21:58:19 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-the-treaty-principles-bill-is-a-half-baked-deeply-divided-mess/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-the-treaty-principles-bill-is-a-half-baked-deeply-divided-mess/ The Treaty Principals Bill is on its way to the gallows as the select committee came back Friday and suggested it wasn’t getting its support. It was voted past first reading but it wont get past round two. What I learned out of it was several things. 1) This country is not up for much of a debate around complex or big ideas. We are myopic in our approach. We hate and we love and middle ground is irrelevant. There was a venom and aggressiveness to a lot of submissions. 2) From those who submitted that actually knew what they were talking about, as opposed to merely having an opinion, it very quickly became clear there is massive disagreement over interpretation. These were scholars and lawyers and historians, in other words, "experts". They couldn’t agree. That to me was the big clue. If the “learned” can't agree, surely that means we need something, legally speaking, to define what we are dealing with. There is a major case in Christchurch at the moment between Ngai Tahu and the Crown over water rights. It is in the court because there is nothing definitive in law as to what the Treaty does, and doesn’t, do. We seem to accept that Parliament is the ultimate court, yet on the Treaty we appear happy to litigate for decade after decade, have a tribunal that is wildly tainted and nothing like a proper court, and each and every time we dabble in this area you and I are picking up the tab. The other outworking of course is the ongoing grief and angst. This is a very divided nation. This is not a harmonious nation with an agreed legal stance around the Treaty. But putting it out to a vote the way Act wanted was a mistake It's too important for that. Pik N Mix democracy never works. The other thing I learned politically is it should never have seen the light of day if it wasn’t going all the way. This goes to the Chris Luxon negotiation skills. It should have been either dead before it started, or it got the full treatment. What we got was a half-baked, deeply divided mess that ended up achieving nothing. Even those who argue it started the debate are wrong. Because if it's floated for another day we won't carry on where we left off. We will have to start all over again. Sun, 06 Apr 2025 21:41:54 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mike-hosking-why-did-we-celebrate-the-covid-five-year-anniversary/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mike-hosking-why-did-we-celebrate-the-covid-five-year-anniversary/ Here was a headline to mark the day: "We aren't ready, the next pandemic is coming."  In that line of paranoia is everything that was wrong with the five year anniversary, if that’s the right word, of our first lockdown for Covid.  As two commissions have, or continue, to wade through any number of submissions, it's all a waste of time.  There are those who are determined to forecast doom and, as such, would do exactly the same next time as they did five years ago.  I noted Ashley Bloomfield popped up for a chat. He told us the bird flu is a worry, and he should have listened more. What's that actually mean? Listen more?  Does it lead to anything? Of course not. It’s a sop.  The epidemiologists who flooded our living rooms would unquestionably be no different in Covid 2.0 than they were with the original.  In fact, if anything should have come out of 2020 and lockdown it should have been we don’t mark anniversaries. We shouldn’t be allowed to interview either Hipkins, Bloomfield, or Ardern about Covid ever again. Hearing them whine is bad for your health. It is triggering.  One Covid report is already out. It was a reflection, ironically, of the Covid response itself, limited in its scope. It was a stitch up designed to look like a report.  You’ve had a bit of a look at how we handled it. But the terms of reference were very much designed not to illicit anything too dramatic.  Part two is being driven by the new Government, aghast at part one's scandalous limitations. They're working away feverishly as we speak.  But it doesn’t matter what it says. Nothing will come of it.  As I've said from day one, luck is your pre-determining factor.  Get a government of competence and you stand a chance. Get some interlopers the way we did, and you're done for.  If I learned anything, it is that warnings about doom from the likes of Bloomfield mean little, or nothing.  If any Government here ever tries half the stuff they did again, from the pulpit of truth to vaccine mandates, to lockdowns for spurious reasons, the reaction would be vastly different.  And you don't need a commission of inquiry to figure that out.  Fri, 04 Apr 2025 22:08:13 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mark-the-week-three-in-a-row-is-three-in-a-row/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mark-the-week-three-in-a-row-is-three-in-a-row/ 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 Māori Party: 1/10  They get a '1' because they are legitimately there because of votes, and that’s democracy. As for the rest of the performance, they are a joke and an embarrassment to this country.    The Greens: 2/10  They get a '2' and not a '1' only because they get more support in the polls. But the prospect of Labour letting them round a Cabinet table? Book my ticket out.    Trump: 3/10  One better than the Greens because to counter tariffs of others is not free trade, but it is understandable. As for the rest, he's mental.    The Warriors: 7/10  Because three in a row is three in a row. And two more points this weekend, which on the Mike Hosking scoresheet, is four in a row.    The America's Cup: 4/10  I never thought it was going to held here so I wasn’t surprised, or disappointed. Although, in the spirit of being open for business, I would have liked to have seen a bit more enthusiasm from the Government. Pleading poverty is a poor man's game, not a go getter's.    The jobs report: 2/10  Saddest story of the week for me. To have over half the country regretting their career is a study in lack of planning, or lack of action, or lack of living life to the full.    LISTEN ABOVE FOR MIKE HOSKING'S FULL WEEK IN REVIEW  Thu, 03 Apr 2025 21:31:35 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-i-have-loved-my-years-in-the-media-game/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-i-have-loved-my-years-in-the-media-game/ The irony was not lost on me this week as two things job related happened.  The first was the survey that suggested over half of us regret our career choice.  That struck me as profoundly sad. Say whatever you want about work and work-life balance, but a lot of hours are spent in a lifetime grafting. Virtually everyone, at least at the start, has to work.  Everyone of course should work because it's good for you. But to have a lifetime of regret is to not have really lived at all, or at least not to your full potential.  Juxtaposing that was the surprise, to me anyway, that I had been here at 九一星空无限talk ZB for 25 years.  A smaller surprise was on the same day, April 1st, Morning Report at Radio New Zealand was marking 50 years. I spent a short stint at Morning Report in moderately, although ultimately, I think, successful circumstances.  Without word of a lie I have loved every day, of every week, of every month, of every year. Not just at 九一星空无限talk ZB, but the 44 years I have been in this game.  Of course I had bad days. I had bad employers, I had ropy times and I've been sacked twice by morons, but I've never regretted picking doing what I do.  Which is a small miracle, given I have never really been able to tell anyone with any clarity why I picked this game in the first place, other than it seemed appealing.  I had no mentors or people I knew in media. As a kid I listened to the radio and thought that sounds fun. As it turns out, I was right.  The other small saviour has been the fact that not only didn’t I regret it, it worked out moderately well in terms of gainful employment, because at no stage in the past four decades have I been able to conjure up an alternative.  I literally cannot think of anything else I would want to do.  I would like to think though, and this goes to the survey, that if it hadn't gone well or I did regret it, I would have done something about it.  Because life's big lesson is life is short. And if you aren't rolling with it, you are fighting it.  And that’s no fun and it wears you out.  Thu, 03 Apr 2025 21:17:42 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-we-are-housing-snobs/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-we-are-housing-snobs/ A housing development for you.  A housing development that once again shows how reality beats theory.  Housing is a New Zealand obsession. We love housing and we long to own housing.  It encroaches on immigration and whether too many people lead to higher prices.  It encroaches on politics and the expectation as to what Governments do about housing and the prices of said housing.  It involves social housing, emergency housing, KiwiSaver, incomes, the Reserve Bank, deposits and LVR's. It is all encompassing.  In theory, if you could make building cheaper, we would be keen, wouldn’t we? Yes, I hear you say.  So what happened to Clever Core?  Clever Core is Fletcher's prefab house building factory.  The factory is closing.  Why, I hear you ask? Because, to quote Fletchers, "it had not worked".  Demand was the issue because there wasn’t enough of it.  If you had conducted a survey and asked, "could prefab housing help the so-called housing crisis in this country?" you would have got an overwhelming yes.  Yet, did we follow our enthusiasm up with sales? Obviously not.  Resistance from the building industry is another phrase Fletchers used.  You see, as I have said many times, we are happy to moan about the cost of building, the cost of GIB, how cheap it is in Australia and how much a deck out back for the BBQ would be. But prefab? Oh, no thank you.  Essentially, we are hosing snobs. It's sort of like with coffee - we moan about $6 for a flat white but pay it anyway.  Not that there is anything wrong with that. If you want to pay anywhere between $10,000-35,000 per square metre that’s great.  But what Clever Core reveals is we don’t actually want to save. Often, we don’t actually want solutions.  What we want is what we have, and like, except at a better price. We want what we can't have.  What we can have, we don’t want.  Ask Fletchers.  Wed, 02 Apr 2025 21:24:20 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-labour-are-the-ones-with-a-greens-issue/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-labour-are-the-ones-with-a-greens-issue/ As exercised as some have been this week about social media, the Greens and their behaviour, the bigger issue is not the Greens, but Labour and all who might support them into Government.  As much as we may froth and hyperventilate about any given issue of the day or small firestorm, who runs the country and how is what we all ultimately should be focused on.  We will not be going back to a single large party ever again, for two reasons.  One is because Covid is not repeating and, even if it did, I doubt we would panic again electorally the way we did.  Two is given when Labour was left to their own devices, they literally destroyed the place, most of us, for good or bad, have come to the conclusion that a mix of parties under this MMP system we seem to have voted for an accepted is here to stay.  So National need at least one player, probably two, and the same applies to Labour.  For now, National seem to have got lucky and/or well organised. Whether you support it or not, broadly speaking National, Act, and NZ First get along fine.  The media try to stir bits of trouble around minor matters periodically and we are yet to see a full-blown campaign post a first term, where the gloves are off a bit and a few punches might get thrown. But overall, things are cordial and well managed.  Labour on the other hand need certainly the Greens and possibly the Māori Party. Both are increasingly ropey.  Both are increasingly belligerent, both are increasingly fringe and both are an electoral nightmare for a so-called mainstream, left-wing party.  The Greens of James Shaw, Rod Donald, and Jeanette Fitzsimons are long gone.  The Māori Party of Pita Sharples and Tariana Turia are long gone  Both the current Greens and the Māori Party are anti-establishment disruptors who revel in a type of anarchy, almost as though they are outside the system. All of that is fine if you like that and want to vote for it.  But it is completely incompatible to running a country, even for a Labour Party that has become increasingly left-leaning and socialist.  If you don’t need, or want, to be in power, and I don’t think half the Greens or the Māori Party actually do, you can say what you want.  But Labour do want power, and their problem is they are going to end up having to answer for an increasingly unhinged rabble or at least try to dress it up as something they can handle.  That’s their problem. I don’t think they have the wherewithal to even come close to pulling that trick off.  Tue, 01 Apr 2025 20:54:57 Z /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-you-cant-beat-wellington-on-a-good-day-and-when-was-that/ /on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-you-cant-beat-wellington-on-a-good-day-and-when-was-that/ I sort of hinted at this the other day when the monitor for the Wellington City Council put out his second report.  My question was, given there was leaking and dysfunction and the punter was at their wits end, what now for Wellington?  Do we just get more reports?  Well, lo and behold, another Wellington operation has their own monitor in the form of the Commerce Commission who have been brought in to oversee the mess at Wellington Water.  The Minister has not seen any improvement, there's been no real change and unless stuff happens, there are rate rises galore for no real gain.  So once again we can ask, what do the Commerce Commission do? Do they write reports too?  If those reports tell us the place is still a shambles, how many reports does it take for someone, somewhere, to actually fire up a bit of action?  I can also add, and this is an overarching observation, just how dysfunctional does Wellington need to get before it literally implodes on itself?  The electorate changes last week were all in Wellington. Why? Because people have left and, to be frank, who can blame them?  Then we come to Tamatha Paul, who made what most observers seemed to suggest was one of the most extraordinary comments about police anyone had ever heard.  Her good friends in Labour called them stupid. The Prime Minister called her insane.  Yet she holds an electorate. The good people of Wellington central, and by no small margin I might add, looked at her credentials and decided they liked her enough to vote for her.  So Wellington, what's the story?  What level of madness and dysfunction are you willing to tolerate before change comes? Is change ever coming? Do you actually want change?  Do you mind paying a lot more than you need to for stuff that doesn’t work? Is a crummy council, a lot of broken pipes and a mad MP OK, as long as your cycleways are fun to ride on?  Oh, did I mention the trains?  You can't beat Wellington on a good day.  When, Wellington, was your last good day and why are you putting up with it?  Mon, 31 Mar 2025 21:31:13 Z