The Mike Hosking Breakfast

The government is stepping in with apparent help for the emergency housing situation in Rotorua.
You'll know of course about the problems that have plagued the city on this issue, damages to rooms, intimidation and harassment by gang members, drug and alcohol problems, the list can go on.
Now, the government say to fix this they will directly contract motels themselves, provide wrap around services to help out and no more mixed-use motels.
And if it goes well the plan could be put out nationwide. So is it enough?
Hennessy's Irish bar in Rotorua has dealt with the problems and owner Reg Hennessy told Mike Hosking he has warned the government for years it was getting worse.
“I myself personally have been onto the council, and to the mayor Steve Chadwick for about 18 months now.”
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I think we are getting a fair old consensus around housing and what might be happening post the Grant Robertson revolution of early 2021.
Commentary seems to suggest investors are stepping back with a wait and see attitude.
But sadly, also the first home buyer is disappearing as well.
The stats don’t back it up yet: records are still being shattered all over the place.
And here’s the real warning: places like Britain and Australia, who have the various taxes and so called constraints that Grant thinks will work, are booming ahead anyway.
Thus indicating, as we have said all along, governments don’t regulate the housing market; the housing market regulates the housing market.
The reserve bank weighed in last week with another of their monetary policy statements, they still think things are too frothy and issued the warning that more restrictions could well be on their way.
There are a couple of things to come out of all this:
One, the fact first timers are out is a classic example of why the government doesn’t get it.
The reason they were “in” was FOMO - fear of missing out.
Now, all that’s happened is they’ve been spooked by the changes. Some will be under the delusion that prices are dropping, which they won’t be.
What they do run the risk of is tighter regulation from Adrian at the bank, and before they know it, they are never going to have the deposit or the wages to support a tilt at a house.
Two, you might have noticed a number of banks last week reported their results, and although we are not out of the woods, the profitability is back.
And yet again, the banks are proving, despite Adrian’s tut tutting, that they actually know what they are doing, and therefore should be left alone to lend to whoever they see fit to borrow some money and launch into the housing market.
The real danger here is you have a couple of power-mad sticky beaks.
Grant, who can’t get his hands on the controls fast enough, and Adrian who loves to tell fellow bankers what to do and when to do it.
Between the two of them, they’re helping next to no one.
There is no point in ridding the market of investors, because people need rentals; always have, always will.
And there is no point in freaking out first timers because by the time they’ve worked out Grant and Adrian are control freaks, it’ll be too late.
Overall, my guess is the increases we’ve seen will cool, but you’ll still be seeing price growth, why? Because money is dirt cheap.
We love houses, we love to spend, and the new builds aren’t being built fast enough to meet demand.
None of this is complex; it’s just that some may well miss out because of a couple of blokes in Wellington never quite got their heads around the difference between theory and reality.

Several hundred more migrants reached a tiny Italian island before dawn on Monday, swelling to past 2,100 the number of arrivals in around 24 hours and fueling calls from across the political spectrum for the Italian government to strengthen its migration policies.
Italian state radio said four boats arrived at Lampedusa island after being escorted the last miles to port early Monday by Italian coast guard or custom police vessels. The 635 latest arrivals followed more than 1,400 who arrived on Sunday.
Human traffickers, mainly based in Libya, but also in Tunisia, often take advantage of calm seas to launch unseaworthy boats toward European shores.
Many migrants slept on the dock after Lampedusa's migrant housing center, which had been empty until Sunday, rapidly surpassed its 200-plus capacity. Hundreds more were being transferred to an unused passenger ferry offshore for quarantine until they can be tested for COVID-19. Another commercial passenger ship was being dispatched to Lampedusa to take on some more.
"The situation on Lampedusa is literally explosive," said a police union official, Domenico Pianese, in a statement which noted that some 2,150 migrants had stepped ashore on the island since before dawn on Sunday. "If we have another day like yesterday, with an incessant succession of disembarking, it won't be possible to manage public and health safety," he said.
Sunday's steady stream of migrant boats arriving at the 20-square-kilometer (about 8-square mile) island, which is closer to northern Africa than to the Italian mainland, was the biggest number of migrants to come ashore in a single day at an Italian port this year.
This year's arrivals have already topped by far the number of migrants arriving via sea in the same period in each of the past two years. According to Interior Ministry figures, by May 10, 2019, just over 1,000 people had arrived by sea ; by the same date in 2020, 4,184 had arrived, and this year so far nearly 13,000 have arrived.
The numbers, though, are far lower than those earlier in the past decade, when hundreds of thousands of rescued migrants were brought to Italy within the span of a few years.
Il Giornale di Sicilia, a Sicilian daily, said just before midnight Sunday, a boat dispatched by the port captain's office aided a fishing boat with 352 migrants aboard, some 9 nautical miles (16 kilometers) from the island. A few hours later, another coast guard motorboat took aboard 87 men in a boat farther out at sea, while successive hours saw more boats, some of them rusting fishing vessels, reach the island, the newspaper said. Among the latest arrivals were at least 13 women and eight children, the daily said.
Among those arriving on Lampedusa since Sunday were Somali, Eritrean, Sudanese and Bangladeshi migrants, U.N. refugee agency officials said.
The island's mayor, Salvatore Martello, renewed urgent appeals to the Italian government to deal with the sea migrant issue. Lampedusa lives off tourism, and Italy has just launched a national campaign to quickly vaccinate residents of tiny islands against COVID-19 ahead of the looming holiday season.
Right-wing, anti-migrant, leader Matteo Salvini, whose League party is part of Premier Mario Draghi's three-month-old wide-ranging coalition, kept up his pressure for a government huddle. Giorgia Meloni, a far-right opposition leader, insisted that Italy immediately set up a naval blockade to thwart Libya-based traffickers from launching more vessels.
Political leaders on the left also pressed for effective management of the migrant arrivals.
Democratic Party leader Enrico Letta, a former premier, said there was no choice but to convert a European military mission, now tasked with enforcing an arms blockade against conflict-wracked Libya, into one that can manage rescue operations.
Letta urged the government to press the European Union to make good on pledges to have many of...

The Reserve Bank has released research into the effect of low interest rates, leaving many people confused.
The Bank says that it is not clear low interest rates increase inequality, and claims it is a mixed picture.
It is in response to the Reserve Bank's monetary policy being blamed for widening the gap between the rich and the poor.
Senior economist at Infometrics Brad Olsen told Mike Hosking it is important research, but it does not ring true to the New Zealand context.
"The Reserve Bank here is saying that's what it seems to come from overseas, that's what they're seeing. They haven't made a call on New Zealand, but I think you, myself and the team of five million have got a fairly clear idea of what it looks like at the moment."
Olsen says the argument low interest rates benefit everybody as they get greater access to money.

Delta Goodrem can't wait to be back on New Zealand shores this year.
In her first headline tour in New Zealand, she's returning with her Bridge over Troubled Dreams tour that coincides with the release of her first book by the same name.
Both of these are out tomorrow and Delta told Mike Hosking she decided it was time to go back to her roots with her latest work.
“I feel like it was that moment in life where it was time to go to another layer, to go back to basics of going back to what I love; the piano and telling more stories about what I’ve learned in this first chapter of life.”
The tour will kick off on October 21 at Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre in Auckland, then to the Michael Fowler Centre in Wellington on October 22 and finishing up in the newly refurbished Christchurch Town Hall on October 23.
Tickets can be found on ticketmaster for Auckland and Wellington and ticketek for Christchurch.
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Florists are feeling the pinch of higher prices for flowers.
A number of retailers say the price for both a stem or a bunch has been steadily rising in the past seven years.
Owner of Snickel Lane Florist in Auckland Amanda Brown told Mike Hosking she saw prices for roses around Valentines Day soar to $35 a bunch.
She says it is a real blow for businesses still recovering from the financial impact of Covid-19.
"Sometimes I'll go to the market and I will see flower prices come through and I just won't buy those flowers. I feel like sometimes it just prices them out of the market.
Brown adds a lack of flower imports is just the latest factor to contribute to the rise.
"The Auckland auction is on a market clock - the bidding is set buy the people actually bidding on it, and demand is high and there's not enough products coming through [and] that increases the prices."

If you've got a spare 52 and a half million dollars, or 38 million USD, then one of the rarest gems ever could be yours.
A 15.81 carat purple-pink flawless diamond is going up for sale at auction in Hong Kong next week.
It's called the Sakura, named after the cherry blossom, because of its colour, and is internally flawless, something very rare for a pink diamond.
It's expected to break the record for most expensive purple-pink diamond at 27 million USD just last year, so are we seeing more and more rare gems entering the market and if so, why?
Greg Holland is the owner of Greg Holland Jewellery and he told Mike Hosking there would be few better examples of this kind of stone on the market.
“This is quite an extraordinary example of a pink diamond, for sure.”
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KidsCan is rebuilding its food programme to help at other times of the day instead of lunch.
That is due to the introduction of the Government's healthy school lunch initiative that can now provide about 215,000 students at 963 schools with a meal.
However, there are concerns about the project after the discovery hundreds of the leftover meals in Hamilton are going uneaten.
KidsCan founder Julie Chapman says the Government initiative has been a big help.
"What KidsCan's doing is actually re-looking at a food programme and rebuilding it from the ground up to make sure that kids whoa re hungry have their needs met at other times of the day."
Chapman says they could look into how they distribute the food.
She adds their programme targets where there's likely to be the most need, in low decile schools.

There'll need to be cooperation from World Health Organisation member states to enact recommendations on the Covid-19 response.
Former Prime Minister Helen Clark has co-chaired a panel on the global response to the virus, which has just released a report.
She says told Mike Hosking China's cooperation will be needed to negotiate a pandemic convention, and give the WHO greater powers.
She says the report hasn't fired missiles of blame around.
“But quite dispassionately setting out what happened; where the delays were why that was a problem and what needs to be fixed, but we need member state cooperation to fix it.”
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It's hoped the world has been shocked into action over Covid-19.
An independent report on the global response to the virus has been released, co-chaired by former Prime Minister Helen Clark.
It recommends increasing the availability and manufacturing of vaccines, and reforms to the global pandemic preparedness and response system, to prevent a future pandemic.
Otago University infectious diseases expert, David Murdoch, told Mike Hosking Covid-19 has been a wake-up call for the world.
“We have to focus where we can exert influence and certainly the supplies to New Zealand as well. Even though we have done relatively well with Covid, we can do a lot better.”
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