The Mike Hosking Breakfast

This morning, I spoke about Don Brash’s speech against Māori Wards at a local council level - he doesn’t believe Māori seats are good for democracy or the country
When put to a vote previously neither does the majority of New Zealanders.
Councils sadly are increasingly ignoring the people who put them in work by, one, voting for Māori seats, and two, and then voting again to not have a referendum on that decision.
Under current law, if five percent local electors get together in petition form, they can force another vote, and it’s when those votes are held that the council decision is invariably overturned.
Enjoy that privilege while it lasts, because the government is going to change the law so you can’t do it any more
So in other words, if a council votes for a Māori ward or seat, that’s that.
And the interesting thing about the government’s move is, I agree with it.
Why? Because that’s the only thing a council does you can vote on.
We don’t get to vote on rate rises, or rubbish cut backs, or water shortages, or any other council business. We get to make a submission but that’s that.
Māori wards or seats are the only thing we get to challenge through a vote, so in that sense it’s an outlier. It’s an anachronism, and as such, you really can’t blame the government for wanting to get rid of it.
The democratic process is simple, which ironically is why we don’t want or need Māori seats. You stand – anyone can. You have a platform – anyone can. A series of ideas or polices - anyone can.
If they attract enough votes, you get elected.
Making it more complex of course is the fact the majority of us don’t vote, meaning essentially the big winner is complacency.
And as such, councils do what they want knowing they won’t get punished because no one cares.
But that’s on the voter, not the council.
In theory, what should happen is if a council makes a major decision or decisions that don’t reflect the view and will of the community, every three years is the chance to make them accountable and pay.
Make no mistake, the government is scrapping the Māori seat law because it suits their agenda, no one’s being fooled by this, but dove tailing in with that is the simple truth that it actually makes sense given its actually been unfair.

After a year disrupted by Covid-19, the local theatre industry is kicking off 2021 with a stylish new play.
Anna Jullienne, who rose to fame as Maia on Shortland Street, is heading back to the stage alongside Jennifer Ward-Lealand in Two Ladies.
The play, co-starring Rena Owen, is loosely based on the lives of Melania Trump and Brigitte Macron, and focuses on two First Ladies on the sidelines at an international meeting.
Jullienne joined Mike Hosking in studio about returning to the stage, the benefits of starting your career on Shortland Street, and taking part in Netflix's first locally-filmed movie, Falling Inn Love. 
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The European Union has defended its flagging coronavirus vaccine program, which has come under criticism from the World Health Organization, EU states and recently departed member Britain.
Ten days of bad news about stalled deliveries from producers, a rusty rollout by member states were capped last weekend when the EU made a hasty U-turn on plans to set up controls on the island of Ireland — between the United Kingdom’s Northern Ireland and the EU’s Republic of Ireland — to make sure vaccines wouldn't be illegally transported to Britain.
Considering that avoiding a visible border to keep peace on the island was a key tenet of the Brexit EU-UK divorce agreement, that plan was aborted just before it became a firm decision, yet it left the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, with plenty of diplomatic egg on its face.
Britain’s media had a feast, depicting the EU as untrustworthy, though the U.K. government kept a low profile on the issue.
“These are things which happen when you are working at full speed to deal with a developing situation,” European Commission spokesman Eric Mamer said.
“We have a saying only the pope is infallible. Important thing is that you recognise them early on — in this case so early that it was before the decision was finalised — and that you correct them,” he said.
Overall though, the European Commission stood by its plans to check on exports produced on its territory and make sure they were syphoned off somewhere else if the EU contract with producers stipulated that they should be used in the EU. The World Health Organization criticized the new EU export rules as “not helpful.”
The EU was moved to take such measures because the rollout of vaccines to its 27 member states is lagging far behind nations such as Israel and the United Kingdom, and even its own delivery plans. The EU as an institution has a massive stake in the success of the rollout as a way of showing the importance of cooperation and countering those who say it is irrelevant.
Sandra Gallina, the general director in charge of health at the European Commission told legislators Monday that “we bought all the doses that were available in time (...). What we buy, is a dose delivered in a certain schedule in time. This is the whole issue, it is to have the companies delivering by the time that they have committed to deliver.”
Despite the repeated setbacks, the EU remains confident member states can achieve the commission’s goal that 70% of the adult population across the bloc will be vaccinated by the end of the summer. Gallina said the bloc expects to have received 400 million doses by the end of June.
Still, critics have said that the European Commission should have started clinching contracts much earlier. AstraZeneca, which is in a dispute with the EU over deliveries, said Britain was in an advantageous position since it made a deal a few months earlier than Brussels.
There is general agreement that the EU got good prices the member states could never have obtained on their own and that generous support for the vaccines companies amounting to 2.7 billion euros ($3.3 billion) helped speed up research and increase production capacity.
But speed has been the EU’s Achilles’ Heel. Countries such as Austria have derided the more unwieldy approval process and Italy has even threatened court action against producers when deliveries started flagging. It is no different in the EU’s biggest member state.
Chancellor Angela Merkel and German state governors held a meeting Monday with representatives of the pharmaceutical industry on ways to beef up the country’s sluggish vaccination campaign.
By Sunday, some 1.93 million people had received their first dose in Germany, a nation of 83 million, and 532,000 had received a second dose In comparison, Britain, a country of 67 million, has given nearly 9 million people a first vaccine shot.
“There were good reasons why we...

An expert panel wants to see more of our kids performing maths to a high standard.
A Royal Society of New Zealand panel has been called in by the Ministry of Education to look at why maths results have hit a record low.
Only 45 per cent of Year 8 students are achieving above or at, the expected curriculum level.
Panel chairman Gaven Martin told Mike Hosking they want to see that increased to 80 per cent.
"We don't think anybody in New Zealand is incapable of performing at a high level, with the curriculum that exists."
Martin says students aren't being challenged as much as they need to be.
He says we're not getting the success we need and maths is a gate keeping subject across lots of disciplines.
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The British government says that it does not expect any disruptions to its orders for coronavirus vaccines after the European Union emphasized it would not trigger an emergency provision of the Brexit deal as part of its strategy to monitor export of doses produced in the EU.
Cabinet Minister Michael Gove said the government expects the vaccines to be supplied as planned after the EU addressed the "mistake" in its proposal to tighten export rules for COVID-19 vaccines produced in the 27 member nations.
The U.K. government complained late Friday that the bloc had invoked an emergency clause in its divorce deal with Britain to introduce controls on exports from EU member Ireland into Northern Ireland, which is part of the U.K.
After a call between Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the EU’s executive commission, the EU said it was not invoking the article of the Brexit agreement allowing either side to override parts of the deal.
Gove said Johnson was “very clear” in the call to stress that the U.K. has contractual arrangements with pharmaceutical companies AstraZeneca and Pfizer.
“President von der Leyen was clear that she understood exactly the U.K. government’s position, so we expect that those contracts will be honored, we expect that vaccines will continue to be supplied,” he added.
While the U.K. has made progress in its campaign to vaccinate the population against the coronavirus, the EU has faced complaints and criticism for its slow start.
Concerns over the pace of the rollout across the EU's 27 member nations grew over the last week after British-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca said it could not supply EU members with as many doses as originally anticipated because of production capacity limits.
AstraZeneca Chief Executive Pascal Soriot has said that vaccine delivery figures in the contract with the EU were targets, not firm commitments, and the company was unable to meet them because plants in Europe had lower than expected yields from the biological process used to produce the vaccine.
However, the European Commission suspected that doses meant for Europe might have been diverted from an AstraZeneca plant on the continent to the U.K., where two other company sites are located. The EU also wants doses at two sites in Britain to be made available to European citizens.
That was the backdrop to the EU's decision to trigger the Northern Ireland provision on Friday, when EU regulators authorized the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine for use in the EU. As part of the Brexit agreement, goods are supposed to flow freely between the EU and Northern Ireland under special arrangements for the U.K. region designed to protect the peace process on the island of Ireland.
Though it reversed course on that, the EU is pushing ahead with a plan to oversee vaccines manufactured in its member states, a move that could hinder the U.K.’s access to supplies, particularly to the BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine made in Belgium.
Germany’s health minister called Saturday for the European Union to get its “fair share” of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.
In an interview with German weekly newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, Health Minister Jens Spahn said he wanted transparency from the drugmaker. ,
“It’s not about Europe first, but about Europe’s fair share,” Spahn was quoted as saying.
According to the newspaper, Spahn said he wanted to be sure that all of AstraZeneca’s customers were “affected in the same way” by the production problems the company blamed for the reduction in shipments over the coming months.
The European Union expressed anger this week at AstraZeneca’s announcement that it would initially only supply 31 million doses of vaccine to the 27-nation bloc, instead of the 80 million doses it had hoped to deliver. The EU said it provided 336 million ($408 million) to help finance the production of...

Direct Maori representation on local councils will apparently make a big difference.
The Government has announced it will put in place the same rules for establishing Maori wards, as for general wards, removing the ability for a poll to overturn a council's decision.
Local Government New Zealand president Stuart Crosby says at the moment many councils have various arrangements in place to engage and consult with Maori.
“If established, their voice will add value to the decision-making process.
“It won't just be of benefit for iwi, but the whole community, to have that direct voice at the table.”
Crosby says there's been a lot of attempts by councils over many years to create a Maori ward, but many have failed.
He hopes that the removal of the poll provisions will encourage more Maori constituencies and more Maori wards.
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Alarming inequalities, dire workforce shortages and ongoing calls for further screening are part of a Government-funded report on New Zealand's cancer system released today.
For the first time Te Aho o Te Kahu, the Cancer Control Agency, has published a detailed snapshot of the current state of the country's cancer-care system.
Some of the key issues in the He Pūrongo Mate Pukupuku o Aotearoa 2020, The State of Cancer in New Zealand 2020 report, included:

Issues with the sustainability of our cancer workforce, with a large proportion of most specialist workforces set to reach retirement age within the next 20 years.
New Zealand's cancer workforce does not reflect the population of Aotearoa and lacks diversity. Of the core specialities involved in providing cancer care, between 1 and 4 per cent identify as Māori.
Inequities occur along every step of the cancer continuum and affect a number of specific population groups including ethnicity, socio-economic, mentally unwell and by postcode.
Screening for other cancers such as lung cancer has significant potential to reduce inequalities.
While the three screening programmes (breast, cervical and bowel) are well organised, they do not function equally well for all groups, especially Māori and Pacific peoples.

"We have many world-class aspects of cancer control in New Zealand, and the cancer workforce is full of highly committed and talented people, but if we are to improve our cancer survival rates compared to similar countries, focused action is needed," chief executive of Te Aho Te Kahu Diana Sarfati said.
"There needs to be continued work in addressing inequities, strengthening prevention, expanding screening and improving diagnosis and treatment for cancer," Sarfati said.
Cancer Society chief executive Lucy Elwood said the report provided a detailed snapshot on the current state of our cancer system but didn't provide the pathway forward for addressing the shortfalls.
"The report did indicate the areas that have already been identified including progressing the recommendations of the Health and Disability System Review, looking at that Māori health authority as part of that and ensuring better and fairer access to Pharmac systems and the national travel assistance schemes.
Elwood said it suggested that we need to do more in terms of addressing this postcode lottery issue.
"The treatment you get shouldn't depend on where you live in New Zealand, and then there should be more investment in cancer prevention and screening."
Lung Foundation chief executive Philip Hope said there was a lot talk but it was time for action.
"We talk a big talk when it comes to smokefree 2025 but the reality is that's an aspiration because we haven't funded the supporting structures and wrap-around services."
Hope said before introducing screening for lung cancer we must first be reimbursing all standard care treatments.
"It would be unethical to not. We see more than 1800 dying prematurely each year because they are not getting access to standard treatments in the public system."
The agency would be monitoring the diagnosis and treatment of cancer patients via a Quality Performance Indicator Programme which would identify key problems and disparities among DHBs and clinicians.
Along with the Ministry of Health and the Health Research Council, Te Aho o Te Kahu is also funding research to investigate the appropriateness and feasibility of lung cancer screening in New Zealand.

You might have seen Don Brash wandered into Tauranga on Friday, aka "the lions' den" and have a word about Maori Wards at local council level.
There was the usual bickering, a bit of singing by way of protest at the back of the room, and I strongly suspect no one changed their mind.
To be fair to Brash he is consistent in his message. And I am pleased there are people like him who are prepared in this woke, old day and age full of angst and cancel culture to still speak their mind.
Rupert Murdoch was right last week when he talked of the dangers of this current society. And our seeming inability anymore to be allowed to express a view without the group think brigade launching a campaign to cancel you, fire you, rubbish you, or dismiss you.
Jerry Seinfeld, by the way, is worth looking up. He's done a couple of podcasts recently. One of them with Kevin Hart where he talks of the need to ignore this current fashion for stamping out anyone not woke. He talks of society, culture, and the current culture is dangerous. But it will pass because culture is fluid.
Keep working, keep believing, and keep turning up is his message, and he's right.
Meantime, Don Brash flies the flag for increasingly rare amounts of common sense.
Increasing numbers of councils are voting for Maori Wards and increasing numbers of councils are then voting to not have a referendum on those wards thus, until the government changes the law, forcing the community to raise signature by way of petition, to force a vote.
Tauranga got their required five percent and will now have the community decide. And like previous votes around the country, the majority will vote no. That will leave the council out of step with the people who elected them.
This country, especially given its freedom and open democracy, does not move forward by being increasingly separatist. Anyone can stand for council, a board, a seat, a party, a government. There are no barriers.
And in such a system to slice off a chunk of access for race, or indeed for age, gender, or any other particular fascination you may have, is artificial, needless, divisive, and counter-productive.
Right here, right now that view is losing the battle. But as Jerry Seinfeld says culture is fluid, and we will eventually see sense.
And Don Brash will have been shown to be right all along.

Zespri appears nervous about jumping into a partnership with rogue growers in China to regain control of its gold Kiwifruit business.
The co-op wants to work with the Chinese industry to manage at least four thousand hectares planted in stolen SunGold vines.
Chief growing officer Carol Ward told Mike Hosking the Chinese government supports the idea.
"Zespri needs to have confidence this will be a two-way win for us, so that's why there's a trial before a commercial deal."
Kiwi growers have voiced concern about the risks.
Ward says a trial working with the Chinese government and industry is the best way forward to managing the spread.
A Chinese grower ordered to pay Zespri $15 million in damages for removing vines from New Zealand, is appealing the case.

THE BEST BITS IN A SILLIER PACKAGE (from Tuesday's Mike Hosking Breakfast) What You May Have Heard and What You Didn't/Not the Last Holden/No Laces Sounds Great