The Mike Hosking Breakfast

The Government wants to keep the America's Cup event in New Zealand, but it's not a done deal yet.
It's promised to pour $5 million into our next defence, provided it's held in this country.
Team New Zealand boss Grant Dalton is in talks with Ineos Team UK about holding the event either here or in the Isle of Wight.
Minister Responsible for the America's Cup, Stuart Nash, told Mike Hosking it would be very disappointing to see the event head offshore, but he can't make any guarantees.
He says while there's three months of negotiations ahead,  in these Covid times, the Government may not have enough money.
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Australia will send COVID-19 vaccines from its own supply to its near-neighbour Papua New Guinea and will ask AstraZeneca to send more to try to contain a concerning wave of infections, Australia's prime minister said Wednesday.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said 8,000 doses would be sent next week for Papua New Guinea's front-line health workers and he and his Papua New Guinea counterpart James Marape would ask AstraZeneca to send another 1 million doses as soon as possible.
The European Union this month blocked a shipment of more than 250,000 doses to Australia because the need for them was not considered great enough in a country largely successful in containing the coronavirus.
"With the support of the PNG government, we are ... making a formal request to AstraZeneca and the European authorities to access 1 million doses of our contracted supplies of AstraZeneca not for Australia, but for PNG, a developing country in desperate need of these vaccines," Morrison told reporters.
"We've contracted them. We've paid for them and we want to see those vaccines come here so we can support our nearest neighbor, PNG, to deal with their urgent needs in our region," Morrison added.
Papua New Guinea is a poor country of almost 9 million culturally diverse people who speak more than 800 languages and mostly live in traditional villages. The extent of the pandemic there is difficult to gauge because of a lack testing.
Australian Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly said half the women attending hospitals in the capital Port Moresby due to pregnancy were testing positive. Large numbers of front-line health workers were also contracting COVID-19.
"These are all signs that there is a major epidemic in the community," Kelly said.
Marape warned this week that one in three or four people in Papua New Guinea could soon be infected.
Papua New Guinea is separated from the Australian mainland by an archipelago across the Torres Strait where residents have island-hopped between the two countries for generations.
Morrison announced new flight restrictions between the countries Wednesday. The sea border has been closed due to the pandemic, but is difficult to police. Several recent COVID-19 cases detected in the Australian state closest to Papua New Guinea, Queensland, originated across the border.
Morrison said the Papua New Guinea emergency "presents very real risks to Australia."
Australia this week began vaccinating people on Australian islands in Torres Strait.
Torres Strait Island Regional Council Mayor Phillemon Mosby said his fellow Australian islanders were becoming increasingly concerned by the threat posed by nearby Papua New Guinea islands.
"An outbreak in our region would be certainly devastating," Mosby, a resident of Poruma Island, told Australian Broadcasting Corp.
Australia has been among the most successful countries in the world in containing community spread of the disease. One of the reasons for Australia's success is that it does not share a land border with any country.

The New Zealander and company behind anti-viral clothing is back after a two year sportswear trading restraint.
You'll know the name Jamie Hunt - his sportswear brand 2XU went viral when Kim Kardashian was pictured wearing it after a brand deal with Yeezy.
In December 2018, Jamie sold 2XU to Louis Vuitton and as per the agreement, he wasn't allowed to work on any other sporting brand to rival 2XU.
That two years is up and now Jamie has just launched Pressio.
He joined Mike Hosking to talk about his new venture.
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Not only is the Australian Government calling out our Government's lies around a travel bubble, but the people here who would help make it all happen are now doing it too.
Chris Hipkins reignited the conversation yesterday when he said officials were close to making a deal in February, but Australia backed out and changed their position.
But it should never even have got to February without a travel bubble according to Wellington Airport.
Jenna Raeburn is the General Manager of Corporate Affairs at Wellington Airport, and she joined Mike Hosking to talk about the growing calls for the Government to open up a trans-tasman bubble with Australia.
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National's asking the Government to get on with a transtasman bubble.
Leader Judith Collins says it'll save heartbreak for people being kept from seeing dying loved ones.
Collins has launched a petition for the opening of a bubble.
She says even the experts are now promoting one.
She says when the likes of epidemiologist Michael Baker are saying it can be done, the Government can't afford to close its ears.
Stuart Nash and Mark Mitchell joined Mike Hosking to talk about the opening of a trans-Tasman bubble, along with the National Party's election review and Immigration New Zealand approving border exemptions for Disney's The Lion King stage production.
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The government has delayed bringing in regulations to control the controversial practice of intensive winter grazing after pressure from the farming industry.
Winter grazing is when livestock are kept in small sections of pasture until they completely finish off the crop and are at times, cramped and wallowing in mud.
The regulations to improve waterways and animal welfare were supposed to come into effect from May, but the government has deferred it until 2022.
Farmers had complained that the restrictions and requirements were impractical.
However, Environment Minister David Parker said farmers had agreed to make immediate improvements as a compromise for the delay.
Until May 2022 they had been asked to follow a farm plan.
"We are going to spend this year with the sectors testing the deployment of a prototype IWG module.
"I've got a commitment from the sector and regional councils to drive clearly demonstrable, real practice change this winter grazing season."
He said farmers had already been given a lot of help to make these changes, and it was the primary responsibility of those causing the pollution of rivers to clean them up.
The industry groups and regional councils had been asked to do more monitoring and provide a quarterly report on progress to the minister.
Greenpeace said the government's delay in implementing already-weak intensive winter grazing regulations was yet another example of them buckling to New Zealand's "dirtiest industry".
"Leaving a bad practice unregulated and thanking industry for their promises to make it slightly better is no substitute for getting rid of it, as the Government should be doing with intensive winter grazing."
National Party spokesman David Bennett was critical of the delay saying it was due to the process being rushed and the impracticality of the changes.
"This is the third time there's been changes to this set of regulations. Minister Parker clearly rushed the process, he didn't consult properly with the sector, and now he's having to delay for a year.
While farmers would welcome the delay, there was still a lot of work to be done to make sure any new regulations could actually be achieved, Bennett said.
"The Minister has developed a policy based on ideological notions and once again he has had to back down after realising it isn't practical or based in science.
Farmers showed up in their hundreds to tell Minister Parker his regulations were rushed and unachievable, Bennett said.
"But this playing for time gives no certainty or clarity around what farmers will be expected to have implemented by next year.
"The risk is that the Minister sets unachievable standards, opening up the prospect of the Intensive Water Grazing rules being implemented in Southland."
- RNZ/Otago Daily Times

A Wellington bar owner says bars, police, the council and the Government all need to work together, to put a stop to rising violence in Wellington's CBD.
National MP Nicola Willis is calling for action from the Government, saying she no longer feels safe walking down Courtenay Place.
It comes amid growing concerns from locals and the hospitality sector about "feral" late night behaviour.
Danger Danger owner Matt McLaughlin told Mike Hosking everyone has a part to play in making the streets safer.
He says bar owners want to play a part, Police can enforce the liquor ban, and the council can put pressure on the government to address the wider picture.
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Faced with a rising number of migrants at the southwest border and criticism from all sides, the Biden administration's head of Homeland Security insisted Tuesday that the situation is under control as he defended a policy of allowing teens and children crossing by themselves to remain in the country.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas conceded that a surge in the number of children, mostly from Central America, is a challenge for the Border Patrol and other agencies amid the coronavirus pandemic. But he rejected a Trump-era policy of sending them immediately back to Mexico or other countries.
“They are vulnerable children and we have ended the prior administration’s practice of expelling them,” Mayorkas said in his most detailed statement yet on a situation at the border that he characterized as “difficult” but not the crisis that critics have portrayed.
The increasing number of migrants attempting to cross the border, which is at the highest level since 2019 but is on pace to rise to hit a 20-year peak, has become an early test for President Joe Biden as he seeks to break from his immediate predecessor, President Donald Trump, who waged a broad effort to significantly curtail both legal and illegal immigration.
Republicans in Congress have claimed that Biden's support for immigration legislation and decision to allow people to make legal asylum claims has become a magnet for migrants, but Mayorkas noted that there have been surges in the past, even under Trump.
Some progressive Democrats and others, meanwhile, have assailed the Biden administration for holding migrant children in U.S. Customs and Border Protection detention facilities longer than the allowed 72 hours as it struggles to find space in shelters run by the Department of Health and Human Services.
The number of children crossing by themselves rose 60% from January to more than 9,400 in February, the most recent statistics available. The overall increase is blamed on a number of factors, including the economic upheaval caused by the pandemic in Central America and two recent hurricanes in the region. U.S. officials have also conceded that smugglers have likely encouraged people to try to cross under the new administration.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy led a delegation of a dozen Republican lawmakers on Monday to the border in Texas and blamed the Biden administration for driving an increase in migrants by actions that include supporting legislation in Congress that would provide a path to citizenship for millions of undocumented people now in the country and halting border wall construction.
“The sad part about all of this is it didn’t have to happen. This crisis was created by the presidential policies of this new administration,” McCarthy said.
Trump, however, also confronted a similar surge in 2019 even as it rushed to expand the border wall system along the border and forced people seeking asylum to do so in Central America or remain in Mexico. A year earlier he forcibly separated migrant children from their families as part of a zero-tolerance campaign that became one of the most significant political challenges of his administration.
After dropping during the start of the pandemic, the number of migrants caught while crossing the border began to rise in April. Some of the increase is due to people who are repeatedly caught after being expelled under the public health order.
The total number of people encountered by CBP rose about 28% from January to February to just over 100,000, most of whom were single adults. The last time the number was that high was in June 2019.
Migrants who are under 18 years old are being allowed to remain in the country while the government decides whether they have a legal claim to residency, either under asylum law or for some other reason.
The U.S. is continuing to expel most single adults and families either to Mexico or to their countries...

A business advocate is concerned about the knock-on effect from the closure of the Whakatane Mill.
Management have told staff just over 210 staff will be made redundant.
Most will be out of work before the end of June.
Employers and Manufacturers Association CEO Brett O'Riley told Mike Hosking the mill is part of an forestry "eco-system" in the Eastern Bay of Plenty.
He says without the mill, the whole system could unravel, and other jobs and businesses could also be at risk.
O'Riley says the business had been looking for a buyer for a couple of years.
He says the government left the business in the lurch.
"The Government has been well aware of the mill's challenges, but not a lot has been done to help them transition to a new mode."
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So, the 15-year-old deported from Australia wasn't quite the surprise the Prime Minister made it out to be.
I mean it was a surprise to her, given no one told her, but the fact no one told her is the clue. Once Covid-19 fades from its omnipresence in our lives that is when it gets really interesting.
Nanaia Mahuta was told weeks ago, so why didn’t she tell anyone else? Because she has no political radar.
The no surprises policy is a good policy because when enacted properly it saves the Prime Minister looking hopelessly out of touch. The fact Mahuta didn’t say anything is an example of this government's performance.
Before Covid, and doesn’t that seem a long time ago, this government was famous for being largely useless. The economy ending 2019 and into 2020 was grinding to a halt, the year of delivery had turned into a joke for the ages, and generally they were heading into election year in trouble.
Covid saved them the way it's saved, or helped, many a government and politician all over the world in the past 12 months, who happen to have had a vote scheduled in the middle of a pandemic.
But Covid should be largely done by the end of this year as the sole focus of our attention. That means governments can be judged on their multi-faceted merits and this is where our one is in serious trouble. 
The poll this week is a snapshot of why they are still safe, and whether Mahuta is hopeless or not isn't really a story, or whether they ignored Treasury advice on Ihumatao isn't really the scandal it might otherwise be.
33 percent didn’t know or wouldn’t answer on their preferred Prime Minister. That's actually higher than National's support.
Don't know or won't answer are, in fact, the opposition. It is the way of the year after election, a decent chunk of voters aren't engaged enough to care and a government can use that to their advantage.
But not for too long. By the middle of next year, the focus is back, the attention is peaked, and decisions are starting to be formed.
If you take out Covid, this lot are unchanged. With the exception of the Prime Minister whose halo, as the poll shows, is already in serious trouble. Decent Prime Ministers ride in the polls at well into the 50s and 60s. Having already dropped 15 points into the 40s, that's a red flag, and people are onto her.
They’ll be onto the rest of them soon enough, unless they get their act together. Unlike last time, there is no coalition. They make up all the government, there is no one to blame but them.
Mahuta and her lack of radar is but one of a large selection of problematic operators that will eventually haunt them.