The Mike Hosking Breakfast

A tourism operator in the Cook Islands is expecting a slow start to the travel bubble with New Zealand.
The bubble with the Cooks has opened, but the first flight into Rarotonga will not depart Auckland Airport until tomorrow morning.
Ariki Adventures owner Kave Tamaariki told Mike Hosking most of the bookings this month with be families coming home.
He says tourism should start picking up in a few weeks.
"Certainly our bookings from June/July is looking very strong - the school holidays - so hopefully that continues."
Tamaariki says businesses could still go under if they are not generating revenue by then.
"We're not out of the woods by any stretch of the imagination, but at least we've been given the opportunity to try and work our way through it."

There are calls for the Government to invest in dietitians, in a move that could potentially save billions of dollars.
A report from Dietitians New Zealand shows 24 per cent of general practice visits could be helped by a dietitian.
General Practice NZ chair Dr. Jeff Lowe told Mike Hosking most GPs work in limited timeframes, and adding a dietitian to the team would make a huge difference.
"Now if I want a dietitian that's publicly funded, I have to refer to the hospital and the hospital is swamped with patients that need to see them. So they're a scarce resource."
Lowe says it creates a discouraging situation to be referred to in the first place.

Dame Tariana Turia wants to see Māori "take back authority" in their lives amid discussion surrounding the He Puapua document.
Much of National leader Judith Collins' separatist agenda ammunition comes from the discussion document.
It comes from an independent technical working group, on how to realise the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
It has not yet been discussed by Cabinet, let alone been implemented.
But Turia told Mike Hosking she supports change, and does not believe it is racist.
"I personally think that we need to take back control and authority over our own lives and do a better job than what is being done."
Turia says this way, they can take responsibility for their issues and do a better job than is being done at the moment.
"The advantage is that we can take responsibility - I think it's really important that we look at all the issues that are confronting us, and we take some responsibility for it and take back authority."

National leader Judith Collins is not reading into the numbers in the latest political poll.
"I am safe," she said.
Sunday night's Newshub-Reid Research shows a drop in popularity for Collins, following weeks of the party accusing the Government of a "separatism by stealth" agenda.
Collins told Hosking the National Party was just "getting going on with the things that matter".
She said anecdotally people were telling her that they agreed with National holding Labour to account over its "radical" interpretation of issues such as the Treaty of Waitangi.
Collins said it was normal for an opposition leader to drop in the polls after an election.
She was pleased to see there was a small increase in support for the National Party.
Results from the poll show Labour at 52.7 per cent (up 2.7 percentage points from election night), and National at 27 per cent (up 1.4 percentage points).
In the preferred PM stakes, Jacinda Ardern polled at 48.1 per cent (down 4.5 percentage points); Judith Collins was at 5.6 per cent (down 12.8 percentage points).
Former PM John Key was higher than Collins on 6.7 per cent, while backbench MP Christopher Luxon was on 2.4 per cent.
These numbers mean that Labour could govern alone comfortably.

(Graphic / Herald)
They also mean the pressure on Collins' leadership will intensify, though it remains unclear whether any National MP would want to challenge her for the leadership at this stage.
Collins told Newshub that she "wasn't going down - full stop".
"It's really important that people understand what the Government is doing behind their backs. I'm not going to sit around and watch this Government divide our country up based on race."
Ardern told Newshub that National's political strategy in recent weeks was "sad".
In the poll, voters were asked whether Labour was being separatist and whether National was being divisive.
The most respondents (43.6 per cent) said Labour wasn't being separatist, while a similar proportion (44.5 per cent) said National was being divisive.
Among National voters, 23.5 per cent thought the party was being divisive.
The poll was conducted between May 7-13 with a margin of error of 3.1 per cent.

PM Jacinda Ardern told Newshub National's political strategy in recent weeks was "sad". (Photo / Dean Purcell)
The Newshub-Reid Research poll is its first of the year, and follows a One News Colmar Brunton poll in March that had Labour on 49 per cent, National on 27 per cent, the Greens on 9 per cent and Act on 8 per cent.
This was a slightly narrower gap between the major parties than on election night in 2020, when Labour won 50 per cent of the vote and National won 25.6 per cent.
Sunday's poll follows a campaign from the National Party over recent weeks to accuse the Government of a "separatism by stealth" agenda, highlighting the He Puapua report, proposals to hand over conservation estate to Māori, the proposed Māori Health Authority, and the Government's use of urgency to rush through a law getting rid of a public veto on Māori wards.
The Government has rejected this, saying neither He Puapua nor DoC proposals have come before Cabinet, the Māori Health authority is about partnership, and the ability for a Māori ward to be overturned in a referendum was "discriminatory".
Collins told a regional party conference in Queenstown on Sunday that the Government was creating regional water authorities, and the one covering the South Island would see Ngāi Tahu co-owning water infrastructure assets.
But Ngāi Tahu rubbished this, saying Collins was "deceptive and wrong".
Te Pāti Māori has accused National of "racist rhetoric", which Collins rejected, saying she is simply raising important issues for discussion.
Last week the Government was also on the back foot over its proposed pay freeze for much of the public sector.
Frustrated unions,...

Every Friday, Mike Hosking catches up with Kate Hawkesby and Tim Wilson to discuss the events of the weeks.
And for Kate, that meant explaining why she has earned the nickname 'Katie van Gisbergen' after getting pinged for a speeding ticket - sparking a discussion about how you should get yourself out of it. 
The three also discussed the end of Ellen's talk show, and whether we would jump in if we saw violence unfolding. 
LISTEN ABOVE

The Public Sector Pay Freeze: 1/10
"Top prize from the school of cock ups.
Communication was allegedly, at least, Robertson's and Ardern's strong points, well not this week.
When Labour is meeting ropeable unions, something hasn’t gone right."
 
Fair Pay Agreements: 4/10
"Union trouble.
And haven't we had enough of that this week?"
 
Moves to Reduce Merchant Fees: 7/10
"Very few will have an issue with this.
The governments high point of the week."
 
The Auditor General: 7/10
"He seems onto it, which is just as well given the government we have.
He pinged them on Ihumātao and now on the wage subsidy.
More rigour required in chasing up the cheats."
 
Vaccines: 3/10
"We still don’t seem to be able to take some phone lines, some open spaces, some people, and join enough dots to roll out what vaccine we do have, without the cluster we've seen this week.
 
Kiwifruit: 9/10
"Another record season on the way. Sales up in China and Europe.
And we've hardly scratched the potential of the red ones."
 
Ellen Leaving her Talk Show: 7/10
"19 years is quite the run, but it ends in shame.
She was never what she purported to be, and authenticity is where the root of all great success lies."
 
The Crusaders: 9/10
"Winning there is a culture.
A lot of people could look and learn from inside and outside sport."
 
Simon Bridges' Book: 6/10
"Solved all our Christmas present dilemmas in one go.
Surely, we're all buying a copy for Dad, aren't we?"

Competition for jobs is partly being blamed for an increase in anxiety among young people.
Lifeline Aotearoa had their busiest month ever in April, with a record 30,000 texts sent and received, breaking the previous record which was in March.
The messages were mostly from young people aged between 11 and 20 and the figures are actually higher than at the peak of our lockdown.
Robert Walters New Zealand Managing Director Shay Peters told Mike Hosking the people in question generally have higher levels of anxiety.
"I understand the demographic we're talking about probably have higher levels of anxiety, placing pressure upon themselves just generally, from what I've seen out in the job market anyway."
LISTEN ABOVE

Getting the public on board with tougher long-term Covid-19 suggestions could be a challenge.
Ashley Bloomfield has suggested moving the country to a baseline of Level 2.5 restrictions, to allow borders to reopen to more low-risk countries.
Those restrictions could be in place for three to five years, while the virus remains a pandemic or epidemic.
Auckland University Professor of Medicine Des Gorman told Mike Hosking long-term measures will be needed, but they need to be sustainable and enforceable.
"Would we buy into a significant erosion of our civil liberties and mobility? I don't believe you'd get compliance."
LISTEN ABOVE

The face-to-face trade negotiations are soon getting back underway.
Trade Minister Damien O'Connor will be the first cabinet minister to travel overseas since we closed our borders, when he heads to the UK and Europe in June for free trade negotiations.
Prime Minister Ardern won't be far behind, going to Australia in July before leading a delegation to Europe, the US and China.
Minister O’Connor told Mike Hosking the 27 member states of the EU have to buy into any deal, but the necessity of food trade during Covid-19 is seeping through.
“We’ve done 11 rounds of negotiation; we are making good progress there. There are still issues to be resolved but they see the value also in connecting to a country like New Zealand.”
LISTEN ABOVE

Under America, primordial creatures are stirring from a decades-long slumber.
Sifting through a shovel load of dirt in a suburban backyard, Michael Raupp and Paula Shrewsbury find their quarry: a cicada nymph.
And then another, and another and four more.
In maybe a third of a square foot of dirt, the University of Maryland entomologists find at least seven cicadas -- a rate just shy of a million per acre. A nearby yard yielded a rate closer to 1.5 million.
And there's much more afoot. Trillions of the red-eyed black bugs are coming, scientists say.
Within days, a couple weeks at most, the cicadas of Brood X (the X is the Roman numeral for 10) will emerge after 17 years underground. Also known as the Great Eastern Brood, these bugs are much larger and louder than the common New Zealand Cicada (Amphipsalta zelandica) . The 2.7cm kiwi bug is also far smaller than the 3.8cm American giants (Magicicada septendecim). Thank goodness they spend so long underground.
There are many broods of periodic cicadas that appear on rigid schedules in different years, but this is one of the largest and most noticeable. They'll be in 15 states from Indiana to Georgia to New York; they're coming out now in mass numbers in Tennessee and North Carolina.
When the entire brood emerges, backyards can look like undulating waves, and the bug chorus is lawnmower loud.
The cicadas will mostly come out at dusk to try to avoid everything that wants to eat them, squiggling out of holes in the ground. They'll try to climb up trees or anything vertical, including Raupp and Shrewsbury. Once off the ground, they shed their skins and try to survive that vulnerable stage before they become dinner to a host of critters including ants, birds, dogs, cats and Raupp.
It's one of nature's weirdest events, featuring sex, a race against death, evolution and what can sound like a bad science fiction movie soundtrack. They've inspired plenty of bad B movies, but also Bob Dylan's song Day of the Locusts, which he wrote following the 1970s emergence of the swarm in New Jersey.
Some people may be repulsed. Psychiatrists are calling entomologists worrying about their patients, Shrewsbury said. But scientists say the arrival of Brood X is a sign that despite pollution, climate change and dramatic biodiversity loss, something is still right with nature. And it's quite a show.
Raupp presents the narrative of cicada's lifespan with all the verve of a B-movie feature:
"You've got a creature that spends 17 years in a COVID-like existence, isolated underground sucking on plant sap, right? In the 17th year these teenagers are going to come out of the earth by the billions if not trillions. They're going to try to best everything on the planet that wants to eat them during this critical period of the nighttime when they're just trying to grow up, they're just trying to be adults, shed that skin, get their wings, go up into the treetops, escape their predators," he says.
"Once in the treetops, hey, it's all going to be about romance. It's only the males that sing. It's going to be a big boy band up there as the males try to woo those females, try to convince that special someone that she should be the mother of his nymphs. He's going to perform, sing songs. If she likes it, she's going to click her
"Then she's going to move out to the small branches, lay their eggs. Then it's all going to be over in a matter of weeks. They're going to tumble down. They're going to basically fertilise the very plants from which they were spawned. Six weeks later the tiny nymphs are going to tumble 80 feet from the treetops, bounce twice, burrow down into the soil, go back underground for another 17 years."
"This," Raupp says, "is one of the craziest life cycles of any creature on the planet."