The Mike Hosking Breakfast

Air New Zealand is under pressure to review its hardline refund policy and to clarify how long passengers' credits will be honoured, amid the ongoing uncertainty over international travel.
Consumer NZ says the airline also needs to clarify as soon as possible its stand on extending a booking window to avoid renewed frustration over refunds and credits.
The airline earned the dubious title of the most complained about company to the Commerce Commission last year for one of the worst customer relations crises in its 80-year history.
Air NZ said it had refunded ''several tens of thousands'' of passengers but had no update on extending fare flexibility, instead urging patience from customers.
Some will have tens of thousands of dollars in outstanding travel credits and - unlike many other airlines - Air New Zealand is not making refunds available for all tickets on cancelled flights as of right.
Chief customer and sales officer Leanne Geraghty said it was impossible to predict when borders may be open.
''We recognise that changing circumstances paired with other things needing to line up, whether that's flights, pre-departure testing or managed isolation, can make things tricky,'' she said.
The airline was reviewing new fare flexibility and would release further details ''soon''
Consumer NZ chief executive Jon Duffy said he hoped Air New Zealand had learned from missteps during a ''tumultuous time'' last year for which he would award it two out of 10.
''During the height of the Covid crisis I would give them a two at best but over the second half of 2020 they possibly got themselves back to a five. Frontline staff did a tremendous job - that two rating was down to decisions made around the exec table.''
Duffy said Air New Zealand should as soon as possible make very clear any extension of the rebooking window. The airline said it was close to finalising new dates.
Unlike most other airlines operating here, including Qantas, Air New Zealand did not offer refunds on non-refundable tickets for flights cancelled due to Covid-19. Instead, it offered credits for hundreds of millions of dollars worth of outstanding tickets.
And only after Consumer NZ lodged a complaint with the commission did the airline relent and refunded those tickets covered by United States law which more strongly back fliers.
Air New Zealand says it still makes refunds on compassionate grounds.
Duffy said ''radio silence'' of last year couldn't be repeated.
''It was relatively late in the piece that Air New Zealand started engaging on the comms front. It would be regrettable to see that repeated now where we remain in this uncertain period and we don't know how long it will be for international travel,'' Duffy said.
The Air New Zealand review underway now relates to its customer flexibility policy after March 31.
Nearly all non-refundable domestic and international flights before that date can be rebooked before December 31, and travel must be taken before the end of next year.
Duffy said that the picture for passengers wanting to rebook would not necessarily be any clearer by the end of the year.
''It's really incumbent on Air New Zealand to provide a bit of clarity when it can over whether the expiry date for those credits will be extended. It seems pretty clear in 2021 that international travel is not going to be what it was.''
Some will have booked in 2019 and with doubts over long-haul travel well into next year and beyond into 2023, the airline needed to broaden its refund policy.
People may be too old or have become unwell and are unable to travel, said Duffy.
There could also be a scenario where people with tickets died before they could travel, meaning their estate would then have to seek a refund.
''It falls back to Air New Zealand to be proactive in communicating what their plan is and allowing consumers to say that doesn't fit their...

THE BEST BITS IN A SILLIER PACKAGE (from Friday's Mike Hosking Breakfast) Really?/It's Just a Report/Mark the Week/They Know How to Do Quarantine/EV Myths Busted

You know how there is a lot of good news about? You know how there is no shortage of stories about our economic bounce back?
Well. that’s because it’s partly true - not totally - but partly.
But one of the biggest reasons is because the bill is not being talked about.
The government debt is now $100 billion -that’s the bill for this. That was at the end of November last year, so it’ll be higher now.
Net core crown debt, which started at 19 percent, was over 27 percent by last June and is now over 31 percent and climbing.
We owe a fortune and too many people seem to have forgotten that.
In the simplest of terms, we still have huge gaps in our economy.
The job numbers out, although good yesterday, are not what they were.
 They’re partly being masked by the claim that “things aren’t as bad as they could have been”, but the forecasts that predicted things to be as bad as they could be were guesses, and like most guesses they were spectacularly wrong.
So no, the house didn’t burn down, but a lot of it on fire.
And the government has been borrowing like never before to cushion the blow.
Not that that’s what they should be doing, because governments need to do that in a crisis.
But the impression we are getting is  shops are open we are spending, everyone has a new car and a jet ski, if not a camper van, houses are being  flipped, jobs advertised and we are all wandering around saying Covid - what Covid?
The gap in tourism alone between what it was and what it is is at least $6 billion.
An economy our size cant suck that up without tangible fall out. The fall out is being paid for by the government, or more realistically you and me, because someone is paying it back sooner or later, most likely our kids and grand kids .
The reserve banks QE programme although working is still buying 10 of millions of dollars in debt a week.
See, anyone can paint the house, hold a house warming party, show off the new curtains and renovated kitchen. It all looks flash nut that’s the window dressing
Who paid for it? If it was you, you’re quids in. If it was the bank, you’re in debt. This country is the latter.
The good thing about debt is it can mask a lot of stuff and buy you time. But it never stops being debt and it never stops needed to be paid back. And $100 billion and counting is a lot to pay back.
 
  

Golf's biggest hitter is relaxed over potential changes that could curb his huge tee shots.
The sport's rule-makers plan to reduce drivers to a maximum of 46 inches, which has been seen as a move to combat the 330-plus yard distances US Open champion Bryson deChambeau gets.
The US Open champion uses a 45-and-a-half inch shaft currently, but has flirted with the idea of using the current maximum of a 48-inch driver in the future.
The world number eight says it's a little flattering the rules are changing because of him.
NZ Golf boss Dean Murphy told Mike Hosking this has been coming for a while.
"It's been a project for a while to see how they could bring the distances back a bit and keep some of these great golf courses around the world relevant."
He says that deChambeau has put a magnifying glass on this issue.
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Former European bank chief Mario Draghi agreed Wednesday to try to form a non-political government to steer Italy through the coronavirus pandemic after last-ditch negotiations among political parties failed to produce a viable governing coalition.
The task won't be easy, though, given the populist party with the most seats in Parliament said it won't support a Draghi government and the right-wing party with the highest poll numbers is pressing for an early election.
Financial markets nevertheless welcomed indications that Italy's latest political crisis might soon get resolved - at least for the next few months. Draghi expressed assurances that he could fulfill the task Italy's president assigned him.
“I am confident that from the talks with the parties and the groups in Parliament and social forces, unity will come out, and with it, the capacity to give a responsible and positive answer to the appeal of the president of the republic,” Draghi told reporters at the presidential palace.
President Sergio Mattarella had turned to Draghi, who is credited with having saved the euro during Europe's debt crisis, after talks failed to find broader support for caretaker Premier Giuseppe Conte’s coalition of the 5-Star Movement and Democratic Party.
Conte was forced to resign last month after ex-Premier Matteo Renzi pulled support of his small, centrist Italy Alive party. Renzi, whose nickname is “il rottamatore,” or “the demolisher,” complained among other things about Conte’s plan to spend more than 200 billion euros ( $240 billion) in EU pandemic recovery funds and loans.
Draghi told reporters he accepted the mandate knowing that Italy faces the multiple challenges of a health care crisis, a national vaccination campaign and an economic recession. At the same time, though, he said Italy will have “extraordinary" resources from the European Union to try to help the economy relaunch.
“It's a difficult moment," Draghi said. But he added: “We have the chance to do a lot for our country."
During his tenure at the European Central Bank, Draghi became known as “Super Mario" for using new and sometimes unorthodox policy tools to solve the vexing debt crisis and other problems.
“Draghi to the rescue,” said Christopher Dembik, senior European economist at Germany's Berenberg bank, predicting that Draghi would eventually succeed in forming a broad-based government.
His greatest hurdle, though, will be securing support from the 5-Star Movement, which was the senior partner in Conte's government. The 5-Stars had insisted that Conte remain premier and bitterly resented Renzi’s power play that brought him down.
Five-star leader Vito Crimi said the movement would only support a political government. “As such, it will not vote in favor of a technical government headed by Mario Draghi,” Crimi said in a statement.
But the Democrats were lobbying the 5-Star Movement to back Draghi, given that the alternative - an early election - would likely send both parties packing and favor the right-wing, according to recent polls.
“I trust that reflection will make possible tomorrow what appears complex today," Conte's Democrat culture minister, Dario Franceschini, told Huffington Post's Italian edition.
For the 5-Stars, a Draghi government imposed by Mattarella poses an almost existential dilemma. The anti-establishment, populist movement emerged as a potent political force in part as a response to Italy’s last technocratic government led by Mario Monti, in 2011-2013.
As a result, a “Super Mario" success story is by no means a given, said Giovanni Orsina, head of the Luiss School of Government in Rome.
“If they (the 5-Stars and the League) are going to somehow support Draghi then the government I think can be born," he said in an interview. “Otherwise there is the possibility that Draghi will get back to the president of the republic Mattarella and say ‘I am sorry, I cannot...

Have we just shot ourselves in the foot when it comes to any potential cruises to New Zealand?
The cruise line Ponant was yesterday turned away by the government after being denied visas, and since then they have scrapped the seven other fully booked cruises they had.
Ponant says they were given the all clear to come to NZ.
New Zealand Cruise Association Chief Executive, Kevin O'Sullivan said he was "sad" and "extremely disappointed" in this outcome.
The cancellation of these sailings not only undermined the last 6-months' work by NZCA to establish domestic only sailing, but years the association has spent building New Zealand as a cruise destination.
"We had hoped that Le Lapérouse was the start of something bigger, a chance to show cruising around New Zealand was both safe and secure."
O'Sullivan said that INZ's decision to refuse visas to hotel staff was "huge barrier" .
"These [roles] are highly specialised even though they have some relation to jobs on shore, and require maritime training."
He said that there was plenty of time to raise concerns about earlier during the whole of government approach, "not what we regard as the last moment to produce this significant barrier to bringing the cruise ship to New Zealand."

The Privacy Commissioner is cracking down on privacy breaches by landlords after tenants were ordered to produce bank statements to secure homes or placed on secret "blacklists".
Privacy Commissioner John Edwards announced he will focus on the collection, retention and disclosure of information by landlords and property management agencies after his office received a raft of complaints.
Edwards said he was aware some property management agencies and landlords were asking for very detailed information from tenants during the selection process, while others used public forums to compile lists of so-called "bad tenants".
Such "blacklists" lacked transparency and could unfairly keep some tenants out of the market because of inaccuracies, Edwards said.
"I am concerned about some of the practices we are seeing, particularly during a time when pressure on tenants is high."
Demand for rentals across the country had led to prospective tenants competing for fewer properties, making them vulnerable to requests for personal information that went beyond what was necessary.
A Herald report in 2018 revealed some landlords were demanding copies of prospective tenants' bank statements, a move that was denounced as "unethical".
Auckland-based property manager Rachel Kann told a 2018 social services select committee she routinely asked for bank statements.
"I don't just want to put a tenant into a property and no sooner have they been put in they can't afford the rent," she said at the time.
"They're paying somebody's mortgage and I see a lot of people who are low socio-economic and their bank statements literally will read, 'KFC, McDonald's, the dairy, KFC, McDonald's, court fine', trucks that they buy, goods that they can't afford. You know, I see a lot of mismanagement of money."
An MP on the committee labelled the comments a "gross invasion of privacy".
Requesting information regarding a tenant's nationality, marital status, gender or detailed banking history was almost never justified, Edwards said.
"Landlords are able to collect information to assess whether a tenant can pay rent, however, collecting their bank statements to gauge how they spend their money is unfair and unreasonably intrusive.
"Landlords should only collect the minimum amount of personal information necessary to make that decision."
Landlords and property managers also needed to be open about why they were collecting information and how it would be used while ensuring any personal information they did hold was stored and handled securely, Edwards said.
The Privacy Commissioner released a new set of guidelines in 2019 outlining what information landlords can collect.
Things like pet ownership, expected length of tenancy and whether tenants smoke or not could be asked about, but details like nationality, marital status, employment history and what rent the tenant paid in the past shouldn't be collected.
The Privacy Commissioner's announcement comes ahead of the biggest tenancy law overhaul in 35 years, which comes into force this month.
Under the new reforms, landlords will be able to increase rents only once every 12 months, rent bidding will be banned and so will no-cause terminations, where landlords can kick out tenants with 90 days' notice without having to provide justification.
Text by Julia Gabel, NZ Herald

Pfizer says the technology in its Covid-19 vaccine means it can be changed easily to combat new variants of the virus.
Now it's won Medsafe approval,  the first doses are due to arrive by the end of next month.
There are 58 conditions, including the company having to provide ongoing clinical data, and full disclosure of any safety concerns.
Pfizer New Zealand managing director, Anne Harris, told Mike Hosking the conditions are part of the normal process.
"The company is ready to meet those, and we feel confident to do that in the coming months."
Harris says traditional vaccine technology would require months to years, to develop a new vaccine.
But she says with mRNA technology, it would only take weeks or months.
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Britain’s health chief has hailed a new study suggesting that a single dose of the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine provides a high level of protection for 12 weeks, saying it supports the government’s contentious strategy of delaying the second shot so it can protect more people quickly with a first dose.
Britain's decision has been criticized as risky by other European countries, but Health Secretary Matt Hancock said Wednesday that the study “backs the strategy that we’ve taken and it shows the world that the Oxford vaccine works effectively.”
Hancock's comments came after Oxford University released a study showing the vaccine cut transmission of the virus by two-thirds and prevented severe disease.
Mene Pangalos, executive vice president of biopharmaceuticals research and development at AstraZeneca, said no patients experienced severe COVID-19 or required hospitalization three weeks after receiving a first dose, and that efficacy appeared to increase up to 12 weeks after the initial shot.
“Our data suggest you want to be as close to the 12 weeks as you can” for the second dose, Pangalos said during a news conference.
The study has not been peer-reviewed yet, and it did not address dosing of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, the other one currently in use in the U.K. Pfizer recommends that its shots be given 21 days apart and has not endorsed the U.K. government's decision to lengthen the time between doses.
But the Oxford research was greeted with excitement by U.K. officials under pressure to justify their decision to delay the second dose.
“That reduction in transmission, as well as the fact there is no hospitalizations, the combination of that is very good news. And it categorically supports the strategy we’ve been taking on having a 12-week gap between the doses," Hancock told Sky News.
Some countries, including France, have authorized the AstraZeneca vaccine only for use in people under 65, saying there is not enough evidence to say whether it works in older adults. Belgium has authorized it only for people 55 and under.
Yet one of the lead researchers on the Oxford vaccine project, Dr. Andrew Pollard, said “we expect it to be highly effective in older adults” and said more data should be available in the next few weeks.
Pangalos noted that the European Medicines Agency had authorized the vaccine for use in all people over age 18.
“How individual countries decide to implement vaccines is ultimately up to them based on the vaccine supplies that they have,” he said.
Vaccine supply is a sensitive issue in the European Union, which is unhappy that AstraZeneca cut back on the number of doses it plans to supply the EU with in the near term. The company said last month that it planned to cut initial deliveries within the EU from 80 million doses to 31 million doses due to reduced yields from its manufacturing plants in Europe.
It has since applied to supply 9 million additional doses to the 27-nation bloc, whose leaders are facing criticism over what is perceived as slow progress in inoculating the population.
Britain has Europe's deadliest coronavirus outbreak, with more than 108,000 deaths, and is in its third national lockdown as authorities try to contain a new, more transmissible virus variant first identified in southeast England.
Other variants are also a concern. Public health officials in England are going door to door, trying to test all adults in eight targeted communities in an attempt to stop a new strain first identified in South Africa from spreading further.
So far 105 cases of the variant have been identified in the U.K., 11 of them in people with no links to overseas travel. Scientists say there's no evidence the South African variant is more serious than the original virus but it may be more contagious. There are also concerns that current vaccines may be less effective against that variant because it contains a mutation of...

Not only are we doubling sick leave, we are now arguing over just how quickly you can access it.
Can you get it from day one? Can you get it after six months?
We are also, of course, upping the minimum wage a number of times, and the call for a so-called living wage is never ending. All that money is not for more work, or more productivity, but just for turning up. Hell, even turning up has become a thing.
Amazing to believe in the middle of a pandemic and tens of thousands of people losing work we have still been immersed in this dreadful business of a labour shortage. Business after business, industry after industry not able to find enough people to do the work required.
There is a theme, a commonality to all of this.
Laziness.
What's free? What can you get for nothing? How can you get more by doing less?
The agenda is all wrong. It's cart before the horse, and the entitlement is shocking.
Why are we so focused on sick leave? Why is sick leave a thing? It's a thing because people abuse it. It’s a thing because unions have made it a thing.
About 3 years ago I got what i assume was flu. I was crook for days having got back from London where I was also crook, but kept working. I don’t know how many days I took off, because it didn’t matter because I couldn’t stand up. That's sick leave.
But modern sick leave is a sniffle, a hangover, or a bad attitude. Sick leave astonishingly in some jobs can be carried over, why?
If you're sick, and you can't work, that’s life. But that's not what it's turned into. It's now a needless entitlement that’s scrapped over. And while all the scrapping is going on, our eye is off the ball, and the work isn't getting done.
The message being sent is that sick leave, or not working, is more important than anything else.
What happened to grafting? What happened to just getting on with it? What happened to doing a good job, wanting to do a good job, and taking pride in your work? How come we've ended up with not working being the news?
We have gone soft, and not just that, we seem to be proud of it.