The Mike Hosking Breakfast

We will today be having a parliamentary debate about Beijing's treatment of Uighurs, but with revised wording.
Act put in a motion to debate about whether China is committing genocide against Uighurs, but Labour said they wouldn't support the motion unless the word genocide was taken out.
But they have removed it so the debate can go ahead, one that Trade Minister Damien O'Connor warned would damage trade with China if we discussed it.
Former Foreign Affairs Minister and New Zealand China Council chairman Sir Don McKinnon told Mike Hosking the question of whether genocide can be proved, is one you'd raise immediately.
“When you’re dealing with this sort of thing in the diplomatic world, you’ve got to be very, very careful.”
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Grant Robertson says a new unit will be an extra set of eyes.
The Finance Minister has revealed he'll be leading an implementation unit, responsible for ensuring delivery for the government's priorities, at the request of the Prime Minister.
He told Mike Hosking it's necessary because there's a very large sum of money going in, due to Covid-19.
Robertson says there's a number of complex, cross-departmental projects and programmes.
“Having a small group of people, based out of the Prime Minister’s department, who keep an oversight, work with the agencies, work with the ministers to make sure we meet the milestones, I think is important.”
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The Speaker's facing pressure, to explain his latest use of Parliamentary Privilege.
Trevor Mallard's used the legal immunity of Parliamentary Privilege to say that a worker, who he'd apologised to for falsely accusing of rape, had committed sexual assault.
He's also claimed an initial investigation, that found no wrongdoing, was done amid a "culture of cover-up".
But political editor Barry Soper told Mike Hosking Mallard still hasn't spoken to the woman complainant at the centre of the saga.
"I'm the only one outside the group of his supporters and himself, who knows what the case was about. The man was accused, in the enquiry of hugging a woman."
National is calling for Mallard to make the comments outside of Parliament.
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A product used to make kombucha has been found to reduce E. coli in dairy shed effluent.
Agresearch grew SCOBY, a slime-like substance made from bacteria and yeast in dairy shed effluent to see what happened.
Senior scientist Seth Laurenson told Mike Hosking the research, which had only been conducted in a lab so far, showed very promising results.
“We set out to prove a concept; I think we’ve done that quite well.”
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A new report has backed Queenstown's bed tax bid, but the tourism industry has hit back saying "New Zealand doesn't need new taxes" and that Kiwi travellers will be caught out by the levy.
The draft Productivity Commission report said the Queenstown Lakes District Council was one of several local authorities experiencing pressure on their infrastructure as a result of high tourism numbers.
They needed new funding tools, including accommodation levies.
David Seymour joined Mike Hosking to discuss the notion that Stuart Nash has mislead parliament about not working on a bed tax after he got answers through parliamentary questions.
"I think already, on the basis of the contradiction between what he said in the house and his admissions, he'd have to think very carefully about whether he has mislead the house."
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THE BEST BITS IN A SILLIER PACKAGE (from Wednesday's Mike Hosking Breakfast) We'll See, I Guess/Something Doesn't Add Up/More Parking Pain/What a Loser Bill Turned Out to Be

One of New Zealand’s favourite homegrown artists is coming home.
After being holed up in Los Angeles for endless Covid lockdowns, Greg Johnson is heading back to New Zealand for a nationwide tour.
This is his first tour since 2019 - but he's promising to make these shows "real, interactive, and cozy."
And this all ties in with his latest album, Tilt Your Interior, which came out at the end of last year.
Johnson joined Mike Hosking over Zoom from LA to chat about his tour and to perform his song Save Yourself.
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The old favourite line about China got rolled out at the big trade summit yesterday.
"There will be things that we disagree on."
That's the line you use when you're a tiny country of 5 million and you have 10s of billions worth of business flowing both ways, they're you're biggest trading partner, they're growing, you need them, and you'd be sunk without them.
And let's be honest, if we didn’t set trade aside as an individual part of a relationship, we wouldn’t do business with anyone. Even Australia has issues around race with its indigenous people, it's not exactly all over climate change, and that's the sort of thing we like to get a bit exercised about.
Individual counties have a legitimate right to do their own thing their way, I would have thought our biggest beef with China was that no one gets a vote.
So probably too much is being made of China's current bullish expansionist view of the world. But that doesn't mean aren't meat in the sandwich, because we are.
The reason Joe Biden said what he said last week to Congress, the reason he wants all that money, is to show China that America isn't finished as a superpower. He's trying to say that whatever China can do, they can do better, and they can do it through democracy not autocracy.
It would be nice to think we could get along well with both of them, but as tensions ratchet up, we have trouble. That's why Nanaia Mahuta's speech got a shed load of attention. That's why the Brits, the Tories in particular, didn’t like it.
They see sides and you can't be on both sides. Well, you can, and most countries are. And we do at times, do weird things we don’t want to, because of alliances.
Do you really think we wanted to be in Afghanistan for 20 years to achieve basically nothing? Or Iraq? Of course not. But America called and we jumped, that’s how this stuff works.
There is a good piece on CNBC at the moment about how China is stepping up its diplomatic bravado, testing how hard Biden will push back.
But when it all gets laid on the table, in all its complexity, here's the simple truth, China basically owns us, we can't afford not to have them, and that predicament is only going to get worse.
The bottom line, especially a $20 to $30 billion bottom line, wins every time.

A UK survey has found a third of Britons only wash their bed sheets - once a year.
And it's not the millennials - they're the cleanest generation while it's the over 65's with the worst washing habits.
Nanogirl and researcher Michelle Dickinson told Mike Hosking that while the survey was done by a furniture company so it may not be scientific - but the findings are disgusting.
She says that how you sleep and what you do before you go to bed will affect the cleanliness of your sheets.
"Those of you who sleep naked, you have to remember every night you may be wiping faecal matter on your sheets
"You are going to be losing about 50 million dead cells per day, and they are going to feed some lovely things like dust mites."
Dickinson says people who wear pyjamas should wash their sheets every fortnight.
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Is the decision to have the Olympic Games and for athletes to attend actually a moral decision - and does the rest of the world care about the argument? 
Otago professor Michael Baker has stirred things up by suggesting the Tokyo Games should be called off and says our government should take a moral stance and say we won't be sending athletes over to japan.
He says it sends the wrong message when so many countries are still battling to contain Covid.
Former UK Olympian and athletic commentator Martin Gillingham told Mike Hosking that the cost of the Olympics for Japan is US$26 billion - so it's in their interest it goes ahead.
He says that the UK is not focused on the debate as New Zealand is.
"One thing that is getting a lot of traction at the moment is the challenges India is facing, so we're well aware of the challenges at one extreme." 
Gillingham says that the UK is debating other sports games going ahead, so the debate will likely focus on Japan soon.
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