The Mike Hosking Breakfast

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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Listen to how simple this sounds and actually is: Australia will open its borders next year in a budget plan to bring back migrants and speed up the economic recovery.
The government fears that growth cannot be sustained if travellers are kept away and citizens kept at home. Not hard to get your head around, eh?
Josh Frydenberg, the Australian Treasurer, wants to restore migration levels to pre pandemic levels as soon as it is safe to do so.
Do we have such a plan? Of course not.
And not just that, last time Kris Faafoi, Minister for Immigration, spoke on the subject he said migration would not be returning to what it was.
Surely of all the things we have learned in the past Covid year, the most obvious and indisputable is that migration is invaluable it drives growth and the economy.
There are fields all over this country strew with rotten fruit that wasn’t picked because the borders were shut.
No one argues tourists from off shore aren’t the difference between us paying our way or not. Students bring billions to the country every year.
The simple truth is we need the world. If Australia needs the world and they are five times bigger than us, then we need it even more.
And the fact that we have no plan around the border is a crime mixed with astonishing ineptitude, and the fact we don’t see migration returning to what it was is a direct pathway to economic trouble we don’t need.
The stats don’t lie. Australia has better growth than us, while we are going backwards.
The Macquarie Bank said last week Australia’s response leads the world. Part of it, a big part of it, is attitude.
Frydenberg and co gets what works: travel works, migration works, students work, and in May he’s got a plan.
In May here, we don’t even talk about it.
The irony is this was our lot just a year ago. It’s not like it’s some mad experiment. Migration a year ago was paying the bills. Students were a $5 billion industry. Fruit actually got picked. It’s like Covid gave us amnesia.
Obviously, the brain drain is a growing threat if Australia keeps down the path they are.
But you got to wonder how long it is before our government is simply embarrassed and humiliated into action, and how long those who support their catatonic state snap out of it?

Stuart Nash says public servants need to realise the private sector's doing it tough.
The Government is denying its announcements amount to a pay freeze on the public sector as nurses weigh up whether to strike or not.
The Small Business Minister told Mike Hosking it's not about how much is being saved, it's about bringing restraint back.
"I've received a whole lot of letters from people in the private sector, who during Covid either were made redundant or were struggling to hold onto their staff."
He says the Government has spent more than $4 billion in the last term on pay settlements for teachers and nurses
"Go back to those three words - lift, adjust, hold our aspiration on this is in the right place."
However, National MP Mark Mitchell told Mike Hosking inflation won't stop over the next three years.
"The cost of living is just going to go up, and you've got people stranded on their current pay. It's just not fair."
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The Australian government released a big-spending economic plan for the next fiscal year on Tuesday that includes hefty investments in defence and national security as relations with China worsen.
The government plans to spend 270 billion Australian dollarsover the next decade on upgrading defence capabilities to "promote an open and peaceful Indo-Pacific," Treasury Department documents say.
This includes AU$747 million to upgrade four military training areas in the Northern Territory where U.S. Marines have a temporary base.
The government announced in March that it would begin building its own guided missiles in close collaboration with the United States. The AU$1 billion project would produce the first Australian-manufactured missiles since the 1960s.
The government also plans to spend AU$1.3 billion over a decade to enhance the ability of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization, the nation's main spy agency, to address national security threats.
"We . . . need to be prepared for a world that is less stable and more contested," Treasurer Josh Frydenberg told Parliament as he outlined his economic blueprint for the fiscal year starting on July 1.
The government has also proposed an additional AU$17.7 billion spending on elder care over five years and a AU$15.2 billion investment in infrastructure over 10 years.
Australia would loan Indonesia AU$1.5 billion to manage coronavirus-related financial pressures, loan Papua New Guinea AU$558 million to support its pandemic response and give India AU$37 million in medical supplies. The spending measures need Parliament's endorsement.
The pandemic last year derailed the political calendar that sets the budget as an annual event in May. The 2020-21 budget was delayed until October. It forecast a deficit of AU$214 billion in the current fiscal year.
That deficit is now forecast to be AU$161 billion. The government expects the deficit will continue to decline in each of the next four years.
Net debt is forecast to peak at AU$980.6 billion, or 40.9% of GDP, in June 2025.
With Prime Minister Scott Morrison due to call an election within 10 months, his conservative coalition has said paying down debt will not be a priority in the next fiscal year.
The government has said it would not focus on reducing debt until the unemployment rate was below 5%. The jobless rate was 5.6% in March and is forecast to fall to 5% for 2021-22 and to 4.75% in the following year.
Australia's economic growth would jump from 1.25% in the current fiscal year to 4.25% in 2021-22, according to Treasury forecasts.
As relations with China have deteriorated, Beijing has blocked Australian exports including beef, wine, coal, lobsters, wood and barley. But Australia's most lucrative export, iron ore, still has eager buyers among Chinese steel manufacturers.
Iron ore prices surged last week as steel mills, fearing further trade restrictions, rushed to lock in supplies after China suspended activities related to the China-Australia Strategic Economic Dialogue. It hit a new record price of $228 a metric ton on Tuesday.
Tuesday's budget assumes that the price for iron ore will fall to $55 a metric ton by the end of the March next year.
Frydenberg described Treasury's ore price forecast as "conservative."
If the price remained above $150, it would add more than AU$12 billion to government coffers, he said.
"Today we're giving a very big thanks to Western Australia and the iron ore industry because we are seeing record prices," Fydenberg said, referring to the state where iron ore is mined.
China's trade restrictions had had limited impacts on Australia's economic recovery from the pandemic because many exports were re-directed to other markets, the Treasury documents said.
The budget forecasts assume that international travel will remain at low levels until mid-2022 and that COVID-19 vaccines will be widely...

New Zealand and Australia are charting different courses on their way out of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Australia's federal government has revealed a big spend-up in its budget overnight, taking on more debt to create a quarter of a million jobs over the next two years.
Former Finance Minister Steven Joyce says next week's New Zealand budget is likely to take a similar approach.
But he told Mike Hosking while our Government is ending oil drilling and introducing Fair Pay Agreements, Australia is avoiding major changes to its economy.
"In New Zealand, we are making a lot of changes to regulation and laws to change the economy post-pandemic whereas the Australians are looking as much as possible to get back to normal."
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It’s New Zealand's most ambitious solar energy project ever.
Lodestone Energy is planning to build five solar farms in the North Island, it says will create enough energy to power a city the size of Hamilton.
The idea is that the land under and around the panels, can still be farmed.
Lodestone Energy Managing Director Gary Holden told Mike Hosking this is just the beginning.
“We could probably be adding another farm almost every year until we run out of opportunity.”
The first consented development will be at Kaitaia, with construction due to start by late this year.
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China is experiencing its slowest growth rate since the 1960s, as birth rates decline around the world.
It's reported fewer people are having children entirely, marriages are becoming increasingly delayed, and the cost of living is rising.
Massey University researcher Pushpa Wood told Mike Hosking globally, women are becoming more independent.
“More educated and career orientated and naturally they are making decisions in terms of child birth.”
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The fact by-standers were able to help victims in the Dunedin knife attack, show why knowing first aid is so important.
First aid experts say it's a wake-up call for all of us.
Four people were stabbed at Countdown Dunedin Central on Monday afternoon, each is recovering from surgery in Dunedin Hospital.
First Training director Mark Judge told Mike Hosking New Zealanders are good at not walking on by, but rather stopping to help out.
“Know what to do, and being able to target what the key problem is that is life threatening is important, so having some skill is definitely going to enhance your treatment.”
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The Government is being accused of trying to rein in the economy through a wage freeze.
It's calling it a wage restraint, rather than a freeze.
The Government's agreed to review pay rates about six months earlier than originally intended, after meeting major unions yesterday.
The Corrections Association, which represents prison staff, will start bargaining today.
President Alan Whitley told Mike Hosking the Government's using public servants to put a ceiling on wage rises for everyone in the country.
“They’re trying to put the brakes on the economy, using Covid as the excuse. I guess Covid has cost the country a lot of money so it is a time where we need to be a bit mindful of that as we go into our negotiations.”
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