The Mike Hosking Breakfast

As we watch Melbourne yet again on a knife edge, we are in our own complacent smug way watching a train wreck in front of our own eyes and not realising it.
13 MIQ operations here in February and March had snap inspections.
The fact we have snap inspections should be of some relief, but what they found shouldn’t.
Would it surprise you to learn a lot of faults were found, a lot was below par, a lot was less than what it should be or desirable?
Staff shortages, PPE supply problems, and a lot of mingling in hotel lobbies by returnees, no masks or eye protection for bus drivers, who either weren’t wearing them or refused to wear them.
Out of the report, the now famed Ministry of Incompetence formerly known as Health has released just the 100 recommendations.
And here’s the kicker: those 100 came on top of the praise offered for the improvements made in the snap audits in December and January.
So if February and March had 100, god knows how many December and January had.
Simple question: how is it possible after a year of this, they are still so useless?
How is it that all the promises that have been made around compliance and safety and supplies are yet again found to be BS?
How come if I had Hipkins and/or Bloomfield on, they would be saying things are fine?
How is it that people still support a department that is inept, a Director-General of Health that is dishonest and also inept, and a Minister who oversees this level of non-compliance, lack of performance waste of resource and astonishing level of risk?
Why is there no outrage?
Why do we put up with this? How can a government this woefully inadequate month in month out still be allowed to spin the sort of nonsense they do around the border?
A year in it should be rock solid, military, bullet proof and professional and yet it isn’t even close?
How many people have said our so called success has basically been luck and who now, with these reports, can possibly argue?
What would help is a vaccine roll out, but that’s as badly handled as MIQ: 112th in the world and as we see in Melbourne, just one more bumbling misstep away from level 3 and more economic carnage?
For the so called 52 percent in that Newshub poll who support this crap, just tell me, honestly: are you thick, don’t you care, or are you just asleep?

Police arrested three people in the cable car disaster that killed 14 people in northern Italy, saying workers placed a clamp on the emergency brake to deactivate it as a patchwork repair - one that prevented the brake from engaging when the lead cable snapped.
The revelations, obtained during an overnight police interrogation of the suspects, turned the horror of Sunday's disaster into outrage, given the tragedy appeared to have been entirely preventable.
Prosecutor Olimpia Bossi hypothesised that the operators of the sightseeing funicular, which had reopened after a wintertime COVID-19 closure, used the jerry-rigged clamp to avoid having to shut the attraction down for the more extensive, "radical" repairs that were necessary.
"We arrested three people who it turns out were directly involved in a concrete fact: The emergency brake mechanism of the cabin that fell onto the Mottarone slope was manipulated," Bossi told reporters in Verbania, adding that the severity of the disaster warranted their detention.
Bossi said it still wasn't clear why the lead cable snapped or whether it was related to the brake problem. But she said that the intentional deactivation of the brake, done several times over recent weeks for a persistent problem, prevented the brake from doing its job.
After the lead cable broke Sunday, the cabin reeled back down the line until it hit the pylon and pulled off entirely. It crashed to the ground and rolled over down the mountainside until it came to rest against some trees. Fourteen people were killed; the lone survivor, a 5-year-old boy, remains hospitalised.
Carabinieri Lt. Col. Alberto Cicognani said at least one of the three people questioned overnight admitted to what happened. He said the fork-shaped clamp had been placed on the emergency brake to deactivate it because the brake was engaging spontaneously and preventing the funicular from working.
The cable car line reopened from lockdown April 26 and was bringing sightseers to the top of the Mottarone peak overlooking Lake Maggiore on the first sunny Sunday since then. The jerry-rigged clamp was still in place on the brake Sunday morning, Cicognani said, citing information gleaned from the suspects themselves.
"Because of a malfunction, the brake was continuing to engage even when it wasn't supposed to," Cicognani told Sky TG24. "To prevent the cabin from halting while transporting passengers, they chose to not remove the dispositive that blocked the emergency brake."
"In this way, the brake couldn't function, and this brought about the fact that when the cable broke, the cabin fell backwards," he said.
Sky and the LaPresse news agency identified the three people arrested as the owner of the cable car service, the director of the lift and the service chief.
Bossi, the Verbania prosecutor heading the investigation, said the deactivation of the brake was clearly designed as a stop-gap measure to allow the funicular to continue operating. She told reporters that investigators think it was done with "the full knowledge" of the cable car company's owners.
The development, while the town of Stresa at the foot of Mottarone was still recovering from the trauma of Sunday's disaster, "is another blow," news reports quoted Stresa Mayor Marcella Severino as saying.
The investigation was continuing, but the mayor of the hometown of one of the victims, Serena Cosentino, announced that the city would pursue legal action against those responsible. The mayor said the city of Diamonte, in southern Calabria, would present itself as an injured party in the civil portion of any possible prosecution.
"The news, unfortunately, is showing a broad picture of responsibility and omissive guilt," Mayor Ernesto Magorno said in a statement.
The developments in the investigation came as doctors at Turin's Regina Margherita pediatric hospital reported that the lone survivor of the disaster, 5-year-old...

One of the great Kiwi motorsport exports is continuing to make his mark on the competition. 
Mitch Evans is currently battling it out for Jaguar Racing in the 2020-21 season.
He's sitting third at the standings at the moment - with the next event happening in Mexico in mid-June.
Evans joined Mike Hosking to discuss how the season has been like and how he is loving Formula-E.
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British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is being accused of overseeing a chaotic government whose failure to act quickly against the coronavirus caused thousands of unnecessary deaths.
The allegations come not from opposition politicians but from Dominic Cummings, the volatile adviser who until late last year was Johnson's most powerful and trusted aide.
In recent days, Cummings has directed a torrent of criticism at Johnson's Conservative government in an ever-lengthening string of Twitter posts. On Wednesday, he plans to make the claims in person, testifying on live television to lawmakers investigating Britain's handling of COVID-19.
Cummings accuses the government of sticking with a policy of "herd immunity" — allowing the virus to spread through the population while protecting the most vulnerable — until it was too late to prevent draconian lockdowns and many deaths.
The U.K. has recorded almost 128,000 coronavirus deaths, the highest toll in Europe, and had of the deepest recessions in the world when lockdown shut down much of the economy. A mass vaccination campaign started in December has brought infections and fatalities down sharply.
On Twitter, Cummings has alleged there was "total & utter chaos" in government as the virus swept Britain in early 2020. He claims a controlled outbreak leading to herd immunity was "the official plan" until early March 2020, when the government realized that would "lead to catastrophe."
He tweeted: "If we'd had the right preparations + competent people in charge, we wd probably have avoided lockdown1, (asterisk)definitely(asterisk) no need for lockdowns 2&3."
The government denies Cummings' allegations. The prime minister's spokesman, Max Blain, said "herd immunity from infection has never been government policy."
Cummings' critics are not surprised he is causing a fuss. The self-styled political disruptor has long expressed contempt for the civil service, many politicians and much of the media.
He was one of the architects of the successful campaign to take Britain out of the European Union, credited with coining the powerfully simple slogan "Take back control." He also hired a firm linked to Cambridge Analytica, which detractors say unleashed the poison of data-harvesting and social-media manipulation into the British political bloodstream.
When Johnson, co-leader of the Brexit "leave" campaign, became prime minister in 2019, Cummings was appointed his top aide, a powerful post that saw him dubbed "Boris's brain." He slouched around Downing St. in sweatpants and T-shirts and spoke of his desire to radically reconfigure government. He irked many politicians, who grumbled about unelected advisers wielding undue influence.
Cummings was thrust from the shadows into the spotlight in May 2020, when newspapers revealed he had driven 250 miles (400 kilometers) across the country after contracting COVID-19, despite a nationwide stay-at-home order. His defense — that he was seeking childcare help from relatives in case he got sick — rang hollow to many Britons who had made sacrifices and endured isolation to follow the rules.
Johnson resisted calls to fire Cummings for flouting rules the government had imposed on the rest of the country. But a few months later, Cummings quit, walking out of 10 Downing St. with a box full of possessions after losing a power struggle inside the prime minister's office.
He kept out of the public eye for several months, before unleashing his Twitter storm in recent weeks ahead of Wednesday's testimony to Parliament's health and science committees.
Sam Freedman, who worked with Cummings as an adviser at the Department for Education, told Sky News that Cummings wanted to distance himself from decisions, even though he was at the heart of government when they were made.
"He is a very acute analyst of problems, but he often doesn't apply that analysis to his own behavior," Freedman said.
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Today it will be announced who has the best tasting tap water in the country.
The 2021 Ixom Water Taste Test competition is held in today in Napier, where water suppliers will submit samples of their drinking water.
And even though they're hosting it, Hawkes Bay won't be submitting, which comes as no surprise after the brown water they've had.
So how do you judge a tap water tasting competition?
Former Water Industry Operations Group Chair Mike Monaghan told Mike Hosking there are a few factors that make great water.
“We’re looking for a number of things, we’re looking for clarity and we’re looking for odour and ultimately the best taste.”
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The Privacy Commissioner thinks individuals affected by the Waikato District Health Board data hack should be notified.
The DHB's still in crisis mode, as it continues to wrestle with the cyber-attack that hit last week.
The group claiming to be behind it is threatening to leak the information publicly.
Privacy Commissioner John Edwards told Mike Hosking he has received information that reveals the hackers do have sensitive patient data.
“In the scramble to get the systems back up and running, to try and understand what’s happened, we’ve got to remember that there are actual people involved here and we owe a duty to them.”
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A warning has come from Sir John Key that there are no guarantees when it comes to our post-Covid economic recovery.
The Reserve Bank is keeping the Official Cash Rate unchanged at a record low 0.25 percent, but is pointing to increases some time next year.
The former Prime Minister says households have been taking advantage of low interest rates to borrow more.
But Key told Mike Hosking many businesses have been reluctant to borrow, because of the ongoing economic uncertainty created by the pandemic.
“Maybe it’s all good, but, they’re also worried ‘what if there’s another variant’ or we keep getting locked down. There’s a lot of conservatism on the corporate side.”
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More than half the country's 20 DHBs don't know how many of their frontline health staff have been vaccinated against Covid-19, which an expert warns puts the country at further risk in any potential outbreak.
The Herald can reveal that 12 DHBs are not collecting data on whether their staff have received the Covid jab.
There is also no protocol in place across the DHBs requiring staff to be vaccinated while treating patients suspected or confirmed to have Covid-19.
This has drawn criticism from University of Otago epidemiologist Nick Wilson, who says it wastes the extra layer of protection vaccination provides frontline health staff.
National's Covid-19 response spokesman Chris Bishop was stunned by the revelations last night.
"I just find that astonishing, unbelievable."
The DHBs not collecting staff vaccination data are Hawke's Bay, Mid Central, Northland, Tairāwhiti, Taranaki, Waikato, Whanganui, Canterbury, Nelson-Marlborough, South Canterbury, West Coast and Southern (Southern DHB is currently planning to collect this data).
The remaining DHBs; Auckland, Bay of Plenty, Capital and Coast, Counties Manukau, Hutt Valley, Lakes, Wairarapa and Waitematā are actively collecting vaccination data on their staff.
A spokeswoman for DHBs, from a Wellington-based health sector advisory and programme management organisation called TAS, was able to provide vaccination data as at May 19 from six DHBs:

Lakes: 93 per cent of staff had received their first vaccine dose, 72 per cent had received two doses;
Auckland: 86 per cent of staff had one dose, 76 per cent had received two doses;
Counties Manukau: 86.1 per cent of staff had one dose, 69.7 per cent had received two doses;
Waitematā: 85 per cent of staff had received at least one dose;
Capital and Coast: 81 per cent of staff had received at least one dose;
Hutt Valley: 78 per cent of staff had received at least one dose.

The spokeswoman said the three Auckland DHBs began recording the data earlier than most, while others were expected to begin at some point.
She noted many DHBs were receiving staff consent to record their vaccination status in their Occupational Health Records, as they did for other vaccinations like influenza.
However, even for DHBs with recorded staff vaccination data, there was no protocol requiring a staff member to be vaccinated when treating a patient suspected or confirmed to have the Covid-19 virus.
Guidance on this matter was in the final stages of development, the spokeswoman said.
She emphasised that strict health and safety protocols were already in place to treat Covid-19 positive patients.
However, Wilson said protocols to ensure any suspected positive Covid patients were treated by vaccinated staff should have been confirmed months ago.
"That should be a national policy that any suspected Covid cases are managed by vaccinated staff," he said.
"If staff in hospitals and in frontline health service roles aren't vaccinated then they need to be assigned other roles where they're not at risk, not only them but the whole community, because we know personal protective equipment is not perfect and accidents happen."
But he pointed out that such a policy would be rendered useless if DHBs did not hold data on which staff were vaccinated.
The Herald asked Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins if vaccination data should have been collected sooner or whether a national policy should have been created, but he declined to comment.
National Party Covid-19 Response spokesman Chris Bishop Photo / Mark Mitchell
Bishop said DHBs were ultimately in charge of the vaccine rollout and should have this data at hand.
"I just find it staggering frankly, and another example of things that most reasonable people would expect the Government to be doing."
Bishop supported the idea of a national policy requiring staff to be...

Carmel Sepuloni is deflecting criticism over the number of people on the job seeker benefit.
There are currently 61-thousand who have been on the job seeker benefit for more than a year, an increase from 29-thousand in 2017.
Overall more than 115-thousand are on that specific benefit, as of May 21 which is a drop on previous figures from March.
The Social Development Minister told Mike Hosking benefit numbers overall are improving.
“Since January, the benefit numbers have been on the decline and we haven’t reached the heights of unemployment that we anticipated or had been forecast.”
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The trouble with Trump calling it ‘the China Virus is that it was Trump.
The trouble with Trump suggesting Covid came from the lab is it was Trump.
It’s one thing to say something but it depends who said it.
Now there are increasing reports and with them come increasing questions around China and its role in the virus.
Lab workers in Wuhan were hospitalised way earlier than originally declared, according to US intelligence just this week.
Dr Fauci, it is reported this week, is asking serious questions around the origin. He doesn’t know, he doesn’t rule out the lab, and he is happy with any investigation that chases answers.
An irony of this story is he said this weeks back, but it wasn’t widely reported.
I suspect once again it’s because Trump is gone and the conspiratorial reaction you got to anything he said is gone with him, and we’ve gone to sleep on the issue.
It wasn’t just Trump of course but anyone who said anything similar was Trump-esque and set to be cancelled.
Australia, of course, asked for an inquiry and is still paying the price to this day for doing so.
$20 billion and counting and a relationship with china that has never been worse
The mistake Australia made was to ask and get the WHO who, lets be frank, given what they came up with, which was essentially what you and I could have written without leaving the house, said everything and nothing.
And in saying that, further damaged their already damaged reputation as being an organisation that is way too political and quite possibly way too in the pocket of the Chinese.
And with the new news around Wuhan and hospitals and Fauci and intelligence, their report looks more and more either pathetic or jacked up.
Either way, the Chinese haven’t covered themselves in glory with their obfuscation when it came to access and their general denial of everything.
It looks increasingly likely that the questions around Wuhan, the lab, the Chinese, honesty, timings of answers, are genuine, were always genuine and today need responses and disclosure  as much as they ever did.
The fact it hasn’t been treated more urgently given the havoc is a crime in and of itself.
Imagine how much humble pie might need to get swallowed if Trump was onto it all along, and we weren’t interested just because we didn’t like the messenger.