The Mike Hosking Breakfast

Malcolm Turnbull has lashed Scott Morrison’s “pathetic” sledges about inner city elites in wine bars and climate change policy, urging him to act on more ambitious targets.
Reigniting the climate change wars in the Coalition, the former Prime Minister has been increasingly outspoken in recent months, accusing Mr Morrison of “dodging” real action.
But it was the Prime Minister’s latest sledge over climate change activists in “wine bars” being irrelevant to real climate change action that left his predecessor underwhelmed.
“Scott Morrison should cut the pathetic culture war sledges and commit to an ambitious emissions reduction target with a plan of action to get there,’’ Mr Turnbull told news.com.au.
“The bluster and the dodging is wearing very thin.”
The Prime Minister has been slowly edging towards support for net zero emissions without putting a time frame on the ambition. However, he’s widely expected to land on a 2050 deadline.
“We are going to meet our ambitions with the smartest minds, the best technology and the animal spirits of our business community,” Mr Morrison told the Business Council on Monday night.
“We’re not going to achieve net zero in the cafes, dinner parties and wine bars of our inner cities.
“It will be won in places like the Pilbara, the Hunter, Gladstone, Portland, Whyalla, Bell Bay, the Riverina. In the factories of our regional towns and outer suburbs.”
The Prime Minister will announce a $539 million boost to new investments in clean hydrogen and carbon capture technologies on Wednesday, predicting it will create around 2,500 jobs, support Australian industry and manufacturing into the future and further drive down Australia’s emissions.
“It is essential we position Australia to succeed by investing now in the technologies that will support our industries into the future, with lower emissions energy that can support Australian jobs,” the Prime Minister said.
“There is a strong appetite from business for the new emissions reduction technologies that they know will be needed to run their operations and keep employing Australians and grow jobs for the future.
“We want to make clean energy more affordable and reliable, while looking for ways our investments can get more people into work.
“We cannot pretend the world is not changing. If we do, we run the risk of stranding jobs in this country, especially in regional areas.
Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction Angus Taylor backed the “practical, technological solutions to reduce emissions, not big new taxes.”
“We are backing technology to meet our 2030 target and get to net zero,” Minister Taylor said.
“It’s a tangible example of our commitment to being a low emissions technology leader and reducing emissions through technology not taxes, or imposing costs on households, businesses or the economy.”
However, Mr Turnbull has previously describing the Coalition’s gas-led recovery, as a “fantasy” “crazy” and “mad ideology” and “bonkers”.
The climate change debate was central to his loss of the prime ministership in 2018 and the Liberal leadership in 2009.
Mr Turnbull said no amount of “patronising mansplaining” from Mr Taylor would change the fact that gas was not as cheap as it’s proponents suggested.
“Angus has got quite a sophisticated understanding of the energy market, and he is speaking through the political side of his brain rather than his economic side,’’ he said.
“The idea that you crash the economy by cutting your emissions is just again, that’s ideology taking the place of what should be sound environmental and economic policy.”
Text by Samantha Maiden, news.com.au

A new Maori Health Authority will be created as part of the major shake-up to the health system.
The Government's also getting rid of the 20 District Health Boards and replacing them with a Crown entity, called Health New Zealand.
It will have four regional divisions.
Associate Health Minister, Peeni Henare, says the Maori Health Authority will work with Health New Zealand to ensure improvement and equity across the board.
He says it will be able to directly commission services and grow kaupapa Maori and innovation.
Some proponents think the Maori Health Authority will need five billion dollars.
Prominent Maori GP, Dr Rawiri Jansen, told Mike Yardley he's ambitious too.
"If we're going to get busy and make a big difference to Maori health, it has to have a big budget."
LISTEN ABOVE

The Ihumatao deal has to be tidied up by Parliament.
The Auditor-General has deemed the Government's purchase of the south Auckland land unlawful.
It means that as things stand, the $30 million buy-out of the disputed land from Fletchers Building, is invalid.
Former Attorney-General Chris Finlayson told Tim Dower the Government didn't obtain the necessary authority from Parliament, and didn't organise a new appropriation of the land.
'These sorts of things happen from time-to-time.
"In an ideal world, the i's would have been dotted and the t's crossed."
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I’m not convinced a brand new standalone Maori health authority, with a budget in the billions, is a necessary. Nor prudent. Nor a game changer for Maori health outcomes.
The agitators for it say it’s a must, because our current healthcare system is racist and produces deep inequity.
But its politically convenient to blame all Maori health indicators on the system. On systemic racism and unconscious bias. I don’t swallow it as a catch-all way to explain the disparities.
Let me give you a very topical example.
Maori smoking rates. They remain stubbornly high, as Ayesha Verrall pointed out last week.
Among all New Zealand women, eleven per cent smoke. Yet a third of Maori women smoke.
What about the blokes. Among all men, the figure is 12%. For Maori men, 25%.
Now we all have access to the same help to quit smoking. Whether it’s taxpayer-funded patches or gum, therapy and counselling through the likes of Quitline.  Similarly, we all have access to cost-effective alternatives, like switching to vaping. You may recall, it was absolutely the circuit breaker for me.
So how does a new bureaucracy, a stand alone agency charged with overseeing Maori health make a jot of difference to the number of Maori who stubbornly remain shackled to smoking? How does that in itself, magically turn the dial and transform behaviour?
Surely, it comes down to the individual. Self-will. Personal responsibility. The determination to take charge of your own lifestyle. You make the change. You shape the outcome.  Ultimately, it’s up to you to quit smoking.
So how does this multi-billion dollar political trophy, waiting in the wings this morning, make a skerrick of difference to that brute reality? How is a shiny new Maori health authority in itself, a solution?

Fiji has recorded its second Covid-19 case in the community.
She is the daughter of the woman who worked at a quarantine facility and who had tested positive to the virus last weekend.
Fiji Health Secretary Dr James Fong said the focus of health authorities was now on an area in Lautoka where the woman was believed to have attended a funeral last weekend where hundreds of people were present.
Fong said another area of concern was that some of the people who were at the funeral had travelled from the outer islands.
He said the authorities were trying to locate these individuals and any other places the woman may have visited in the past week.
Fiji now has seven active cases of Covid-19, with five in border quarantine.
Yesterday morning, the government has announced a lockdown in the west of Fiji's main island Viti Levu after the woman registered a positive Covid-19 test.
Her infection case was linked by the government to a protocol breach at an isolation facility.
Announcing the incident on Monday, the Prime Minister said the woman returned to work twice last week reportedly showing symptoms of the virus which went unreported.
By RNZ

THE BEST BITS IN A SILLIER PACKAGE (from Wednesday's Mike Hosking Breakfast) Granted!/And Now for Maori Health.../It's Not Mike's Fault/Recalcitrant Rooster

I’m sure the Act Party couldn’t believe their luck. Just as they launched their Free Speech Tour, Newsroom on Friday got their hands on a Cabinet paper, that outlines the proposed reforms to our Hate Speech Laws. This will see Hate Speech codified in our Crimes Act, and it will carry a three year prison term.
The Cabinet paper suggests hate speech as a criminal offence would be defined like this. The incitement of disharmony, based on an intent to stir up, maintain or normalise hatred, through threatening, abusive or insulting communications.
It’s a mouthful. And I am sorry, but that definition is opaque and ill-defined. Incredibly subjective and emotionally charged.
Simon Bridges points out that his reading of the Cabinet paper suggests that its not just race, gender identity and religious expression that will be subject to the hate speech criminal reforms, but political beliefs. 
Now there’s a can of worms. Insulting political beliefs that someone construes as stirring up hatred could land you in the can.
And are we going to ignore Britain’s hard lessons? They removed the term insulting from their Public Order Act, given the hornet’s nest it created.
The robust cut and thrust of free and diverse expression should not be sacrificed.
Violent hate speech is never acceptable. But are these hate speech laws really necessary? We already have long-standing catch-all offences on our statute books, that are perfectly suited to nailing hate-mongering hot heads. Threatening to kill. Threatening to injure. Inciting others to commit an offence.
Surely that covers all bases. So what is the problem?

You may not know the name - but Kiwi Jonathan Lemalu is an opera singer in hot demand. He's been based in Europe for years - and has played to sold out audiences throughout the concert scene.
Now, due to Covid, he's back home and is now doing a New Zealand tour.
Jonathan Lemalu spoke with Mike Yardley earlier this morning and performed an excerpt from ‘I am a Bass’ which is a satirical look at male voice types.
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While there's been plenty of excitement about the trans-Tasman bubble, most of us are planning to stay put.
Research from Frog Recruitment has found 88 per cent of Kiwis will not be leaving New Zealand shores in the next 12 months.
Massey University sociologist Paul Spoonley says people are still anxious about leaving the safety of New Zealand.
He told Mike Yardley the Australian Government's policies on New Zealanders and deportations also make the country less appealing.
"For some time the Australian Government has not made it easy for New Zealanders on the other side of the Tasman."
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How do you feel about restorative justice programmes?  Should they be reserved for first-time offenders? Low-level offenders? May even low-level recidivist slow-learning offenders? Or are you okay with the net being cast much wider?
For the past few years, the government has invested big bucks in Te Pae Oranga, iwi community panels. This Maori-led restorative justice programme has been rolled out across the country as an alternative resolution scheme. Its designed to divert offenders from being clobbered with criminal convictions. It aims to keep the low-levellers out of the court and prison system.
And the whole panel process is geared at encouraging the participating offenders to face up to the underlying factors behind their offending.
But yesterday’s revelations are simply grist for the mill, reaffirming the raging perception that Labour is slobbery big softie when it comes to crime. 
In the past nine months, a dozen people who assaulted police officers dodged criminal charges in favour of having a come together at an iwi community panel. Assaulting a cop. Excuse me?
And if that’s not alarming enough, 18 reprobates collared for firearms offences  were also given the community panel treatment. Those offences ranged from possessing guns illegally, discharging firearms in a house and wielding a firearm at another person. Now, apparently some of those offences related to airguns, but certainly not all.
Interestingly, the Police Minister reassured the public as recently as March that firearms offences weren’t a runner at these panels. They weren’t deemed low-level offending. Nor should they be. The police guidelines for community panel appearances take the same stance.
So why aren’t those policy settings being kept to?
It is gross in the extreme to suggest firing a gun in a house or bashing a cop is a trifling matter, a low-level offence.
The Police Minister claims the iwi community panels have seen the harm caused by re-offending drop by twenty two per cent, whatever that means. But allowing firearms offenders and thugs who assault cops to dodge criminal charges is a glaring case of project creep.