Holiday Breakfast

A trans-Tasman bubble loophole is Australia's problem - not ours.
Since March last year, Australian citizens and permanent residents have needed an exemption to travel overseas.
But it appears an Australian art teacher used the bubble last week to fly to Auckland and then onwards to a job in Moscow without the need for exemption.
Waikato University law professor Al Gillespie told Tim Dower this is more an issue for Australian officials.
"It's up to the other countries to let you in or out, it's not up to us to regulate where you go." 
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More school leavers are training to become builders, electricians and plumbers: apprenticeships in traditional trades have nearly doubled in the past year.
Data from the Ministry of Education shows the number of new apprentices under the age of 18 jumped from 460 in the six months from August 2019 to 810 for the same period in 2020.
This is supported by Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) data for enrolments in tertiary and vocational study that shows a 17.6 per cent increase from December 2019 to December 2020. The total numbers went from 45,155 in 2019 and 57,035 in 2020.
Some students are also leaving earlier in Year 12, rather than the final year of school, to train on the job in their chosen field.
The increase is a step in the right direction according to training institutes BCITO and The Skills Organisation. Demand for skills tradespeople is high and a skills shortage expected in the coming years.
Burnside High School in Christchurch saw a jump in the number of Year 13 students pursuing apprenticeships from one student in 2019 to 14 in 2020.
Principal Phil Holstein said eight school leavers went on to apprenticeships in building or electrical and six went on to study building and construction Ara Institute of Canterbury.
There was also a spike in the number of Year 12 students who left to pursue the trades in 2020. Ten left school for the trades with two going into apprenticeships and eight leaving school to study building and construction at Ara.
Holstein said there was a growing acceptance of an apprenticeship pathway as a choice for education, employment, and future opportunities.
When he joined the school five years ago a student leaving in Year 12 to become an apprentice was considered "dropping out". Those leaving for an apprenticeship in Year 13 were seen as "having a gap year".
"Now, students are proud to announce that they have work, or they have an apprenticeship."
The school offered a Dual Enrolment programme which allowed senior students to split their time between school and a trade-specific tertiary provider.
These students typically sign up for an apprenticeship on completion of their DE.
At St Peter's College in Auckland, the number of Year 12 boys leaving school to go into skilled trades has doubled from four to eight since 2019.
Principal James Bentley said Government incentives such as Apprenticeship Boost, which gave financial assistance to employers, had helped boost numbers.
"Apprentice Boost has opened the door and also parents are eager for their sons and daughters to have stability in their career path."
"They want them to take the opportunity now because in 12 months' time it might not be there."
Bentley said ideally students would stay until the end of Year 13 because of the added academic and social benefits to finishing school.
"We like to teach the students about giving back to the school community which they do in their final year but that being said we don't want to stand in the way if someone is presented with a fantastic opportunity."
"If there is a great option with an apprenticeship in the trades then we say go for it."
A paid apprenticeship meant avoiding a hefty student loan and gave on-the-job training Bentley said.
"For some of these young men and women, they end up fully qualified at 20-21 years of age with no student debt.
"They have the rest of their working lives ahead of them which puts them in a pretty amazing position."
Schools nationwide reported the same pattern with most seeing at least a doubling in the number leaving for apprenticeships.
Mt Albert Grammar principal Patrick Drumm said there had been a steady increase in school leavers pursuing a trade. Last year there were 31, up from 12 three years earlier.
"We encourage them to stay until the end of year 13 but if a door opens for them and it is the right opportunity then they are...

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The West Australian Premier’s demand the federal government use its own facilities for Covid-19 quarantine has been harshly dismissed, but it has agreed to slash the number of Australians returning to Perth.
Mark McGowan has previously taken aim at the Commonwealth over the issue, saying it had abrogated its responsibility to take care of quarantine, leaving the states to bear the burden, including the cost.
He reiterated his views on Saturday and again on Sunday in the midst of a three-day snap lockdown, sparked by a person who went to India for a wedding then passed it onto a Victorian man while they were quarantining at the Mercure Hotel in the Perth CBD.
Confirmation of the Victorian man’s case came after he had flown home to Melbourne.
He had spent five days out in the Perth community, during which time he infected a friend with whom he went to a restaurant, where another man contracted the virus.
There were no new locally-acquired cases confirmed on Sunday, but a man in his 50s tested positive in hotel quarantine after returning from India.
Mr McGowan said he was at the “end of his tether” at the lack of federal government help with quarantine, reiterating his previously expressed view there were various Commonwealth facilities that would be more suitable.
But in a statement on Sunday, a federal government spokesman shot down Mr McGowan’s demands, saying venues such as the Christmas Island detention centre and defence bases were simply unsuitable for quarantine.
“Defence bases are operational facilities and the risk to critical defence personnel is not acceptable,” he said.
“Defence bases also generally feature austere accommodation facilities with shared dorms and bathrooms making them unsuitable for quarantine purposes.
“In many cases, these facilities are not close to health and intensive care services.”
He also said Australia’s immigration network was at capacity, with individuals in detention including many the nation was seeking to deport back to their home countries after they committed serious crimes including sexual assault.
“Not only are the facilities at capacity, but it would inappropriate and logistically difficult for Australians to have to live alongside such individuals,” the spokesman said.
Defence Minister Peter Dutton dismissed Mr McGowan’s call on ABC Insiders on Sunday.
“There are eight or nine hotels that are working perfectly fine in WA at the moment,” Mr Dutton said.
He also said the Premier had “made a mistake with the Mercure Hotel” and “doesn’t want to be the next Dan Andrews”.
After those comments, Mr McGowan was asked by a reporter: “Why do you keep pushing ... when you know they won’t give in?”
“We keep pushing it because it is actually their responsibility and they do have facilities built for this purpose,” the Premier replied.
“I’ve lived in some of those defence facilities.
“I know what they’re like. Many of them were built with this in mind.
“When everyone pushes back against Christmas Island, just remember ... the Commonwealth used it in March and April last year for people coming back from Japan and China.
“So all I’d say is, look, it should be a joint effort here.”
Mr McGowan said the federal government wanted “to push it to the state and blame the state if anything goes wrong”.
He also revealed the Commonwealth had agreed to his call to halve the number of returning Australians into Perth, reducing the intake to just over 500 per week from Thursday.
Mr McGowan said he refused to return to current levels.
“We’ll advise the Commonwealth that we will not go back up to over 1000 per week because our system is put at too much risk when that occurs,” the Premier said.
“Especially when we learn that many of the people who are COVID positive are people who left Australia recently and went to COVID-laden countries.
“I’m just not copping that.”
Mr...

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An Oscars unlike any before will get underway today, with history on the line in major categories and a telecast retooled for the Covid-19 pandemic.
Here's everything you need to know about this year's ceremony.
When to watch
The 93rd Academy Awards will begin at 12pm NZ time today. Live red carpet coverage will begin from 10.30am.
Where to watch
Thanks to the Mondayised public holiday, you get to watch the Oscars live from your sofa. TVNZ 2 will begin broadcasting the red carpet live from 10.30am and the ceremony from 12pm. You can also watch it via TVNZ On Demand.
How it will all unfold
There will be no host, no audience, nor face masks for nominees attending the ceremony at Los Angeles' Union Station — this year's hub for a show usually broadcast from the Dolby Theatre.
In contrast with the largely virtual Golden Globes, Zoom boxes have been closed out — though numerous international hubs and satellite feeds will connect nominees unable to travel.
There will once again be a live audience but only 170 attendees will be permitted inside the station at any one time, and they will be rotated in and out during commercial breaks.
Show producers are hoping to return some of the traditional glamour to the Oscars, even in a pandemic year. The red carpet is back, though not the throngs; only a handful of media outlets will be allowed on site.
There will be no sweatpants allowed and actors will have to be out in their best frocks. "Formal is totally cool if you want to go there, but casual is really not," organisers said in a leaked email.
The pre-show will include pre-taped performances of the five Oscar-nominated songs.
The ceremony will look 'more like a movie'
Pulling the musical interludes (though not the in memoriam segment) from the three-hour broadcast — and drastically cutting down the time it will take winners to reach the podium — will free up a lot of time in the ceremony. And producers, led by filmmaker Steven Soderbergh, are promising a reinvented telecast.
The Oscars will look more like a movie, Soderbergh has said. The show will be shot in 24 frames-per-second (as opposed to 30), appear more widescreen and the presenters — including Brad Pitt, Halle Berry, Reese Witherspoon, Harrison Ford, Rita Moreno and Zendaya — are considered "cast members".
The telecast's first 90 seconds, Soderbergh has claimed, will "announce our intention immediately".
But even a great show may not be enough to save the Oscars from an expected ratings slide. Award show ratings have cratered during the pandemic, and this year's nominees — many of them smaller, lower-budget dramas — won't come close to the drawing power of past Oscar heavyweights like Titanic or Black Panther.
Last year's Oscars, when Bong Joon Ho's Parasite became the first non-English language film to win best picture, was watched by 23.6 million, an all-time low.
This combination photo shows poster art for best picture Oscar nominees, top row from left, "The Father," "Judas and the Black Messiah," "Mank," "Minari," bottom row from left, "Nomadland," "Promising Young Woman," Sound of Metal," and The Trial of the Chicago 7." Photo / AP
Small screen movies make it big in pandemic time
Netflix dominated this year with 36 nominations, including the lead-nominee Mank, David Fincher's black-and-white drama about Citizen Kane co-writer Herman J Mankiewicz. The streaming service is still pursuing its first best-picture win; this year, its best shot may be Aaron Sorkin's The Trial of the Chicago 7.
But the night's top prize, best picture, is widely expected to go to Chloé Zhao's Nomadland, a contemplative character study about an itinerant woman (Frances McDormand) in the American West. Should it be victorious, it will be one of the lowest budget best-picture winners ever. Zhao's film, populated by non-professional actors, was made for less than $5 million. (Her next film,...

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Covid-19 hit the media industry hard, but among the hardest hit was Bauer New Zealand.
It abruptly closed its doors just days into the country's level 4 lockdown, taking around three hundred jobs with it and iconic titles like The Listener, New Zealand Woman's Weekly, Metro and Woman's Day.
12 months on, not only have most of the magazines returned,  but we actually have more magazines than before.
Sido Kitchin is former editor of Woman's Day and the NZ Woman's Weekly. She joined Tim Dower to explain how the magazine industry has recovered over the past year.
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Residents of a Whangarei suburb want their noisy neighbour gone.
Northland's emergency rescue helicopter service is being forced to move from its base in Kensington, due to noise complaints.
Roger de Bray, one of the founders of the helicopter trust, is among those complaining about the noise.
He told Tim Dower the service had far fewer call-outs when the base was set up.
Mr de Bray says it's now too busy to continue operating in a no-fly zone.
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A New Zealand company's working to develop a Covid-19 vaccine to help protect people against variants of the virus.
Callaghan Innovation has put $400,000 towards developing it, and $5 million has been raised all up.
Covid-19 Vaccine Corporation chief executive Dr Robert Feldman told Tim Dower the vaccine would be administered using dissolvable beads and would only target the cells infected with the coronavirus, not healthy ones.
Feldman says it would work alongside existing vaccines to broaden or enhance their coverage.
He says the results from laboratory tests should be back in about six months.
"If the data's good, we will start requesting more overseas funding, because developing a vaccine costs hundreds of millions of dollars."
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Reassurances new drone technology won't be used against the public.
Dotterel Technologies has found a way to block out background noise, so drones can record aerial audio.
Its chief executive says up until now drones have essentially been flying binoculars.
Shaun Edlin told Tim Dower it'll help emergency rescuers, because a lot of people are found by voice.
"We will  be able to listen to people yelling over a large area - then get in close and find out their immediate needs and the location of other survivors."
Edlin says there's controls in place on how audio and video can be used.
He says applications where aerial audio can be utilised are primarily commercial.
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A staggering number of sexual violence crimes may be sliding by without repercussion.
Only 31-percent of people charged with rape last year were convicted, the lowest rate of conviction ever recorded.
Women's Refuge says many more cases don't even end up in court.
Chief executive Ang Jury told Tim Dower the whole justice system needs an overhaul.
She says courts, judges and juries are still buying into rape myths and blaming victims for what is happening to them.
Jury says most cases don't even make it to court.
"Police only lay charges under current prosecution guidelines, when they believe there's a reasonable chance of success."
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As New Zealanders prepares for a four-day working week, more businesses and governments are getting on board with making it permanent.
The Spanish Government is offering to cover the cost of four-day weeks at some businesses.
It follows trials of a 32-hour working week here in New Zealand, by Perpetual Guardian and Unilever.
Four-Day Week Campaign spokesman Joe Ryle told Tim Dower workers on four-day weeks are more rested, and motivated.
He says companies trialling the four-day week are getting more output from their workers.
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