The Mike Hosking Breakfast

A proposed ‘pan tax’ in Gisborne could see the city's schools reducing the amount of toilets they have.
The council wants to change the wastewater rate, which would see schools charged on a ratio of one toilet, or pan, per 20 students and staff.
It's estimated to cost the city's schools an extra $150,000 a year, money they couldn't get back from the Ministry of Education.
The rationale is that the council want to make those who have more of a burden on the system pay more; schools argue they aren't as big of a burden because they are only open for half the year.
Gisborne Councillor, Larry Foster, told Mike Hosking they are just doing what everyone else is.
"All schools, hospitals, retirement villages and motels all pay the pan tax to the council so we're just keeping up to date with what everyone else is doing."
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The Children's Commissioner has set out his three priorities for the Budget.
Finance Minister Grant Robertson will reveal the country's economic plan this afternoon.
Andrew Becroft told Mike Hosking benefits should be increased, as they haven't recovered since Ruth Richardson's mother of all budgets in 1991.
He says that would give more money to children.
Becroft says secondly, the accommodation supplement could be increased, but landlords shouldn't be able to gobble it up.
“Thirdly, I’d love to see free medical care going straight to children, as their birthright, up to the age of 18.”
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Air New Zealand is proudly owning the title as our country's most reputable brand - for the seventh year running.
The latest Colmar Brunton Corporate Reputation Index ranks the national airline first among 50-companies for responsibility, trust and leadership.
Air New Zealand chief executive Greg Foran told Mike Hosking it's off the back of many years of hard work.
“We’ve been able to build up some positives in the back, and that probably turned down last year so my focus is now to get some positives back in there.”
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After a year away, Las Vegas is back baby.
At the start of May, officials announced that nightclubs and bars could reopen, capacity could increase to 80 percent and social distancing was dropped from six feet to three.
And now the all-important Vegas residencies have been named.
Bruno Mars, Usher, Barry Manilow, Billy Idol, Katy Perry, Luke Bryan, Carrie Underwood and, of course, Celine Dion.
Las Vegas Review Journal's John Katsilometes told Mike Hosking that Vegas is getting ready to go.
"We're seeing a great deal of demand for the shows. So far, they are selling well and there is a great deal of anticipation and we are climbing out of the pandemic on the Strip."
The next horizon is going to be focusing on the international market and bringing in tourists from countries like New Zealand. 
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There is confidence from a Labour Minister that the Covid-19 vaccine roll-out will be successful.
Auditor-General John Ryan says there needs to be a significant scale up for the Government to hit its vaccine targets.
Stuart Nash told Mike Hosking the roll-out will be done incredibly professionally.
He says the Pfizer vaccine has been proven to be the best vaccine with the highest efficacy.
"We have got enough Pfizer vaccine to immunise and vaccinate the whole country."
However, National MP Mark Mitchell claims we're falling behind the world and will lose key opportunities.
"We're not going to be able to capitalise on the good response in the country we have had because we're going to be stuck here unvaccinated."
Meanwhile, Mitchell is throwing his support behind Judith Collins.
The National party leader's dipped in the latest poll to 5.6 percent support as preferred Prime Minister.
Observers have decided Waikato MP Tim van de Molen wasn't emphatic enough when asked whether Collins would still be leader in 2023.
He told reporters he doesn't have a crystal ball to predict whether that would be the case.
Mitchell told Mike Hosking van de Molen was in a media scrum, where three or four questions are often fired at the same time.
"At the end olf the day, it's quite simple that the caucus is 100 percent behind Judith, she is our leader and will be our leader heading into 2023, it's as simple as that."
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I think I have got to the nub of the Silver Lake issue. David Kirk gave himself away yesterday.
That’s not said in a negative way, but I got an insight into what is driving, at least his view, of where rugby goes in this country.
It's about patriotism.
He didn’t seem to have any issues with the cultural side of the game, the issues around the haka and so on, that have been raised as potential stumbling blocks. He said everyone is attuned to where we are at. And he seemed confident that no matter how this plays out, that side of the equation would be fine.
But he made a comment as an individual, which of course he can't really make, given he is an ex All Black and at the very firm who dreamed up the IPO idea. But his issue is, he's miffed we haven't done this ourselves. Why are we relying on foreign venture capital to do what we should be doing ourselves?
He thinks we have the DNA to solve our own problems, and it's awfully tempting to get on board with that because who wants to admit he is wrong. Of course we can, we can do anything, we are the little country who could, and we are the number eight wire geniuses.
As uplifting, aspirational, and patriotic as that may be, my first question to him is, if we can, why haven't we? Why is it that we have a national sport that doesn’t make money? Why have we watched for years our national sport that we are so good at, scrape by? Why does it take a Silver Lake to see what we should have?
Could it be we were complacent? And could it also be that we don't actually have the skills and the reach to do what a Silver Lake can?
The other part is the stake versus hire. Kirk wants to hire help. But anyone who has ever owned anything knows full well, working for the man isn't the same as being the man.  When the skin is in the game, a lot more gets done and the desire for success is stronger.
Do they take a risk that Silver Lake gets bored and bails? Yes. But in the same way anyone who ever invested in anything took that risk.
Overall the impression I got from Kirk is he's nervous, and it's nerves based on love. He loves the game, it's served him well.
And he seems fearful that foreigners with only money and a bottom line can't love it the way he does. And if they don’t, they might treat it badly. I get that.
But short of a deeply compelling alternative which he doesn’t have, rugby needs help. And it's bottom line that needs help, not a lot of well-intentioned people who adore the game but until now have watched it from the sidelines haemorrhage.

The cyber attack on the Waikato District Health Board should have been anticipated.
The attack's crashed phone lines and computers - blocking all IT services except email in Waikato, Thames, Tokoroa, Te Kūiti and Taumarunui hospitals.
Elective surgeries have been postponed and patient notes can't be accessed.
IT security expert Daniel Ayers told Mike Hosking they were sitting ducks and there's no excuse for it.
"You have to ask yourself, what sort of incentive do we need to encourage managers and organisations, and the government, to prevent this from happening."
"This is serious business when this impacts a hospital."
He says cyber criminals are targeting the health sector at the moment.
"There has been a number of health organisations attacked in the last month [or so], but I think they will be attempting this against a lot of health organisations and succeeding against relatively few."
The problem is not expected to be resolved until the weekend at the earliest.
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Farming parents want their children belted in on school buses to prevent more injuries.
A petition with thousands of signatures from Otago farmer Philippa Cameron is going to Parliament today, asking for a law to make seatbelts in buses compulsory.
Federated Farmers vice president Karen Williams told Mike Hosking her daughter has seat belts on her school bus, but her best friend doesn't.
She says that's not right and it's time to change the rules.
"A lot of worry, concern. Kids, they have been in accidents and they have smashed their teeth on the seat in front or they have been thrown into the stairwell because they are not harnessed in."
She says it's time to stop "the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff" and put the focus on injury prevention.
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In agreeing to hear a potentially groundbreaking abortion case, the Supreme Court has energized activists on both sides of the long-running debate who are now girding to make abortion access a major issue in next year's midterm elections.
For many evangelicals, the case could serve as a validation of more than four decades of persistent work and a sometimes awkward relationship with former President Donald Trump, whose three Supreme Court appointments sealed a 6-3 conservative majority. If those justices unite to uphold a Mississippi law banning abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, it would mark a first step toward the possible demise of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which established a nationwide right to abortion at any point before a fetus can survive outside the womb, roughly 24 weeks.
Abortion rights advocates, meanwhile, are urgently warning that the case is the biggest threat to decades of rulings that have consistently upheld, with some caveats, a woman's constitutional right to decide whether to end her pregnancy.
Since the Roe decision, abortion has become a defining theme in American politics, emerging as the sole issue that some voters use to assess which candidates they'll support. The Mississippi case could emerge as another turning point — with unpredictable results. Abortion opponents may become further emboldened if their long-desired goal moves closer to reality, while an unfavorable decision could spur supporters to intensify calls for dramatic changes to the judiciary.
For now, both sides say they are fully engaged.
"This is huge — it's saying that for the first time in a long time that we have a pro-life majority on the Supreme Court," said Katherine Beck Johnson, a lawyer with the conservative Family Research Council. "It will encourage the voting base to get out and vote Republican."
Jennifer Dalven, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Reproductive Freedom Project, said the high court's decision to hear the case was "really alarming."
"For more than 40 years the Supreme Court has said states can't ban abortion prior to viability," Dalven said. "There is simply no way for the court to rule for Mississippi without gutting Roe v. Wade."
The case probably will be argued in the fall, with a decision likely in the spring of 2022 during the campaign for congressional midterm elections. Many abortion-rights groups urged their supporters to start mobilizing now.
"There's never been a more important time to elect Democratic pro-choice women to local and national office," said one of those groups, Emily's List. "If the Supreme Court strikes down Roe v. Wade, we'll need all the help we can get."
Even if the court does not explicitly overrule Roe, a decision favorable to Mississippi could lay the groundwork for allowing more restrictions on abortion. Bills have been enacted in multiple Republican-governed states that would ban abortion as early as six weeks, and also in cases where a decision to abort was based solely on a diagnosis of Down syndrome.
Nationwide polls have repeatedly shown that most Americans support the premise of Roe v. Wade. An April poll from the Pew Research Center found that 59% of Americans think abortion should be legal in most or all cases, while 39% think it should be illegal in most or all cases.
Some abortion opponents, noting those surveys, are skeptical that the Supreme Court would fully overturn Roe.
"The Supreme Court has never led public opinion but followed it when it comes to major issues like slavery, gay marriage and women's rights," said the Rev. Robert Jeffress, a Dallas megachurch pastor who has been a close ally of Trump.
"As long as 70% of the American people oppose the overturn of Roe, it will never happen," he said. "Realistically, conservatives can hope that the court uses the Mississippi case to chip away at unrestricted abortion in our country."
Charles Camosy, a professor of...

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has slammed Virgin Australia chief executive Jayne Hrdlicka for saying Australia’s borders needed to reopen even though “some people may die”.
The Virgin Australia boss said if vaccination levels were high enough and vulnerable people were protected, the federal government should take the risk of opening its international borders sooner than June 2022.
The government’s gloomy revision for international travel was projected in last week’s federal budget after Australians put hopes on an initial target to reopen in October this year.
On Monday, Ms Hrdlicka said: “COVID will be part of the community, we will become sick with COVID and it won’t put us in hospital, and it won’t put people into dire straits because we’ll have a vaccine. Some people may die, but it will be way smaller than with the flu. We’re forgetting the fact that we’ve learnt how to live with lots of viruses and challenges over the years, and we’ve got to learn how to live with this.”
On Tuesday, the Prime Minister labelled the Virgin boss‘s comments as “insensitive”.
“Nine-hundred-and-ten Australians have lost their lives,” Mr Morrison said on Tuesday. “Every single one of those lives was a terrible tragedy, and it doesn‘t matter how old they were.
“They were someone‘s mum, someone’s dad, someone’s aunty, someone’s cousin, brother, sister, friend.
“So, no. I find it very difficult to have any part of what was said there.”
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian also distanced herself from Ms Hrdlicka’s comments.
“Look, I don't know whether those comments were taken out of context or not,” she said.
“I think we need to be very sympathetic and mindful to the fact community safety always comes first.
“But in NSW we've demonstrated you can keep the community safe but also push ahead with economic openness, and it’s that right balance that has kept NSW where it is.
“We intend to keep that right balance.”
There have been growing calls for the federal government to reopen borders and accept a certain level of COVID-19 in the community once the vaccine has been rolled out.
But Mr Morrison was defiant in responding, “I‘m not going to take risks with Australians’ lives.”
Ms Berejiklian said she did not have a threshold of COVID-19 hospitalisations that was acceptable.
“Please, no death is acceptable, please don’t put words in my mouth,” she told a reporter.
“I’ve never said that and I never would. We have worked hard in NSW to protect life to keep communities safe and that’s what we’ll do.
“(But) there’s no doubt the vaccine program is key to our freedom.”
However, Ms Berejiklian did suggest June 2022 was too long to wait to reopen borders.
“We can’t have these conversations until we vaccinate the majority of the population,” she said.
“We need to get cracking and do the work … but I’m very keen to bring timetables forward.
“I don’t want us to be closed off from the world longer than we need to.”

text by Evin Priest, NCA NewsWire