The Mike Hosking Breakfast

Job security ranks a low fifth for Kiwi workers as many of them feel upbeat about their roles.
Recruitment firm Robert Walters' salary survey shows employees value the culture of their organisation above anything else - despite the shadow of Covid 19 on their lives.
Country Manager Shay Peters told Mike Hosking they were surprised that employees aren't too concerned about job security.
"This shows the optimism coming through - and there's still a skill shortage of professionals."
Peters says the overall tone of workers about the job market is optimistic.
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There are questions over what the Reserve Bank is expected to do when it comes to lending restrictions for the housing market.
Corelogic say there's a rising possibility that they will impose a 40 percent deposit requirement for investors, based on past trends.
Senior property economist at Corelogic, Kelvin Davidson joins Mike Hosking to share his thoughts on what we can expect to hear from the Reserve Bank.
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All you need to know ahead of the Prada Cup semifinal.
The official competition to select the Challenger to face Team New Zealand in the America's Cup match has reached its knockout stage as Luna Rossa take on American Magic in the Prada Cup semifinal.
With the round robins done and dusted, the two remaining challengers face off in a best of seven (first to four wins) race to determine who will take on Ineos Team UK, who booked their place in the Prada Cup final by being the top team in the round robins.
The losing semifinalist will see their America's Cup dream end.
The main story coming into the semis will be the state of American Magic's AC75, which underwent severe repairs after its dramatic capsize in the first week of Prada Cup racing.
The Americans will be a relatively unknown prospect, having only a few days of practice time after re-launching Patriot 2.0 on Wednesday.
Terry Hutchinson's crew were the top challenger in the World Series event in December and were the only team to beat the defenders Team NZ.
However, it was a different story in the Prada Cup round robins where American Magic were winless, including two losses to Luna Rossa - suffering a capsize in the second race to put them out of the water for nine days.
The Americans will be hopeful of regaining the speed they saw right before their capsize, where they were one leg away from a win before tragedy struck.
Luna Rossa and American Magic will face off in the Prada Cup semifinal. Photo / Dean Purcell
Meanwhile, Luna Rossa have had a relatively up and down campaign thus far.
They looked like they could've beaten the British in the final round robin race last weekend but made a few costly errors.
Ultimately, it always comes down to speed and which team has made the right improvements to their boats.
The battle between Luna Rossa's dual helsmen and American Magic's Dean Barker will also be fascinating, especially during the race starts.
Schedule
There are two races scheduled each day on Friday, Saturday and Saturday. The first team to claim four wins will move on to the final. If the score is tied at 3-3 after the weekend, then the teams will have a break on Monday and return on Tuesday for the seventh and final race of the semifinal. The first race each day will kickoff around 3.15pm.
Odds
Prada Cup semifinal series winner:
Luna Rossa - $1.80American Magic - $1.90
How to watch and stream
The Herald will have live updates on nzherald.co.nz/sport while you can listen to live commentary on Gold AM and iHeartRadio.

The motor industry wants to put a handbrake on the government's clean car crackdown, saying it's too much too soon.
Under the new Clean Car Import Standards, new and used vehicles must meet lower emission targets, with phased in penalties for importers from 2023.
Motor Trade Association chief executive Craig Pomare told Mike Hosking they've asked the government for at least two years.
He says Europe has been working on this transition for 30 years, and we're trying to do it in four.
The average vehicle in New Zealand has CO2 emissions of around 171 grams/kilometre compared to 105 in Europe.
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Robinhood and other retail brokerages are taking steps to tamp down the speculative frenzy surrounding companies such as GameStop, but the actions only sparked more volatility in the market and an outcry from users of the platforms and some members of Congress who say small investors are being treated unfairly.
GameStop stock has rocketed from below $20 earlier this month to close around $350 Wednesday as a volunteer army of investors on social media challenged big institutions who had placed market bets that the stock would fall.
The action was even wilder Thursday: The stock swung between $112 and $483 before closing down 43.2% at $197.44.
Robinhood said Thursday that investors would only be able to sell their positions and not open new ones in some cases. Robinhood will also require investors to put up more of their own money for certain trades instead of using borrowed funds.
Besides GameStop, Robinhood said trading in stocks such as AMC Entertainment, Bed Bath & Beyond, Blackberry, Nokia, Express Inc., Koss Corp., American Airlines, Tootsie Roll, Trivago and Naked Brand Group would be affected by the new restrictions.
Interactive Brokers also limited options trading in AMC, BlackBerry, Express, GameStop and Koss. Clients can close out positions, but not buy more options, a move the company said was due to extraordinary volatility in the markets. It also tightened margin requirements indefinitely on “short stock positions."
Charles Schwab and TD Ameritrade took similar steps to restrict trading on their platforms Wednesday.
The frenzy surrounding shares of GameStop, AMC and others has drawn in an influx of investors with little or no experience trading stocks. That poses a challenge for brokerages that cater to small investors, said Andy Nybo, managing director at Burton-Taylor International Consulting.
“The brokers were forced to take action because they would be in the firing line if an unsophisticated investor loses money,” he said.
Robinhood’s stated goal is to “democratize” investing and to bring more regular people into investing. The company has forced huge, ground-shaking changes for the brokerage industry, such as its decision to charge zero commissions for customers trading stocks and exchange-traded funds. That's why some users took Thursday's actions as an affront.
At least one lawsuit was filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in New York claiming Robinhood manipulated the market by restricting investors' access to trading GameStop.
Robinhood investor Carlos Amaya said the app’s action Thursday was a disappointment to users like him who prided themselves on being a “different breed of investors.”
The 28-year-old school operations manager in Washington, D.C., said his parents immigrated from El Salvador and he was the first person in his family to buy stocks when he started using the app in 2017. He’s since made several thousand dollars.
“We pride ourselves in the name Robinhood because we’re trying to make more money and be the next people at the top,” he said. “You would expect Robinhood to let us do our thing instead of blocking us and saying it’s for our protection."
Ziad Cohen, another Robinhood user, said he'll ditch the trading portal once he sells his GameStop shares. He bought 85 shares last week, and says he is ahead by $20,000, even with the stock's decline Thursday. The 19-year-old college student from Los Angeles plans to use that money to pay rent and his student loans.
“I feel pretty good about it," Cohen said.
Investors upset over the trading portals' restrictions are getting some sympathy from some members of Congress.
Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, who is set to become chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, announced that he will hold a hearing on the GameStop situation. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., also announced a hearing in the House Financial Services Committee.
Rep. Alexandria...

At the end of each week, Mike Hosking takes you through the big ticket items and lets you know what he makes of it all.
The Government's MIQ programme.
3/10.
"From catching the disease in the facility, to the testing debacle, to the ongoing refusal to deal to the most obvious of issues, and the ignoring of the experts.
What a hopeless, unprofessional, lazy, and disrespectful way to start the year."
The Vaccine Roll-Out.
4/10.
"Pretty much going exactly as we predicted.
The poor get shafted, and the rich bitch with each other as to who got in first."
Mortgage Holidays.
8/10.
"There isn't any, statistics this week show.
The deferrals and the holidays are a fraction of what they once were."
Jobs.
8/10.
"Xero's numbers on small business, hospitality aside, everyone is growing.
And not just growing, but at a point that is better than pre Covid.
The bounce-back has been exceptional."
Our Dairy Industry.
8/10.
"As far as countries that do a lot of stuff with cows and worry about their emissions go, no one is cleaner and better than we are."
Rupert Murdoch.
7/10.
"Another voice of concern over the growing age of THE woke, in which individualism and opinion are not wanted unless you're part of the group thinking. 
"A wave of censorship that seeks to silence conversation, to stifle debate and ultimately stop individuals and societies from realising their potential."
Well said, and spot on."
The Prada Cup.
9/10.
"More this weekend.
The Americans are back and another chance to flash our country to the world and watch what sheer geniuses can do on foils."
Tom Brady.
9/10.
"43, and already the greatest of all time.
But just for fun, turn an average team around and get to play the Superbowl at your home stadium for the first time ever."
LISTEN ABOVE FOR MIKE HOSKING'S FULL WEEK IN REVIEW

A tourism boss says this week's Northland cluster shouldn't put us off working towards a trans-Tasman bubble.
The Australian Government has suspended quarantine-free travel from New Zealand for a further three days, as it carries out its own testing and contact tracing.
Our Government has warned there could also be delays, to achieving quarantine-free two-way travel.
Tourism Holdings chief executive Grant Webster told Mike Hosking a short-term border closure shouldn't change the long-term plan.
He says the border shouldn't be seen as a door that is either open or closed, but rather as a swinging door that can be opened or closed at different times, based on the situation.
The Australian Government claims 12 guests from the Pullman Hotel have since travelled on to Australia, but Ashley Bloomfield disputes that figure.
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As we end the week mired in a entirely avoidable Covid mess, yet again, we are seeing, yet again the architecture of the government and the way they operate.
Having on Wednesday promised us that the testing debacle we saw in Northland wouldn't happen again because they learn from their mistakes, we end up on Thursday with Auckland Mayor Phil Goff asking the hell was going on when a testing site wasn't open, the nurses hadn't turned up, and the queues were long.
At the start of the week, we saw the usual scramble involving not a lot of actual fact, and an awful lot of spin. The air conditioning was this particular cock up's scapegoat. Like Americold, where they blamed the meat, not the border.
They fly a kite, under the auspices of “leaving no stone unturned.” Then having flown the kite, the next day they say it's unlikely. And as long as people keep asking, they keep saying it's increasingly unlikely until people stop asking. They then breathe a sigh of relief.
They look at CCTV footage, and they do that forever until you forget to ask what it found, which is inevitably nothing.
The Northland woman, remember her at the start of the week? They were scouring footage, did they tell you what they found? Of course not.
And while the queues grow, the anxiety grows, yet again.
The questions get asked as to why the government keep ignoring the experts on MIQ. Stay in rooms, isolate before getting on a plane, isolate after MIQ, no mixing day four with day one, or day 12, no flights from Britain or the States. In response they stall, obfuscate, slip, and slide.
And then after the first case, and then the next two, by the end of the week, guess who turns up? Our absent Prime Minister who yet again has hung poor old Chris Hipkins out to dry. At which point she ponders out loud whether or not we shouldn't be tightening things up a bit.
Surely, by now a year into this Covid mess, even the most ardent Labour Party apologist must be starting to wonder if this lot is actually up to anything at all.
By the way, read the Simpson-Roche report into the Ministry of Health they slipped under the radar before Christmas. There are good clues in there as to why you have a fatal combination of a useless Ministry, a lazy government and why shutting the border of a tiny island nation with a multi-thousand-mile moat was really the only reason we've come out of this ok.
If it had been any more complex than being at the bottom of the world, we'd be stuffed by now.
The upside is the government's weak point is pressure. They buckle to it. Their view on Monday is not their view on Friday, because they essentially make it up as they go along.
If this is them for 2021, god help the vaccine rollout.

New Zealanders will today have a "better picture" as to whether there has been any community transmission in Auckland, as the region holds its breath ahead of the long weekend.
Much hinges around what happens with the test results of 48 returnees, who stayed alongside four confirmed Covid-19 cases at the Pullman Hotel and who have since left the facility.
Neither Ministry officials, director general of health Ashley Bloomfield or Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins know how many in that cohort have been tested, or how many have been contacted.
But, according to Bloomfield: "We will have a very good picture by [1 pm today], especially with all the testing that has been done."
This comes as the Australian Government revealed it has extended its suspension of its one-way travel bubble with New Zealand for another 72 hours.
The hold on the bubble is now due to end on Sunday, January 31.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said she retains confidence in New Zealand's systems and processes but acknowledged the decision was for the Australian Government to make.
In fact, Hipkins yesterday told reporters that New Zealand's MIQ standard was at a "platinum" level.
But this claim has come under pressure, as officials continue to investigate the latest Covid-19 outbreak at the Pullman Hotel.
Despite this, Hipkins says "we're not seeing any evidence of community transmission at this point".
He said that later today he will have "more information about whether we need to do anything around alert levels or any changes."
"At this point, I haven't seen information that would indicate that there is that risk," he told reporters yesterday.
This comes as Ardern revealed that the Government is investigating "extra requirements" for those leaving MIQ facilities in light of the new Auckland cases.
Although the Government has not gone into detail about these new requirements yet, epidemiologist Professor Michael Baker said those leaving MIQ facilities should be required to self-isolate for a week.
"Quite clearly, the period, after you leave MIQ, you are still at an elevated risk."
In the meantime, the Pullman Hotel remains under the microscope as officials investigate how three people contracted the virus during their isolation – one other person was the source case who infected the others.
The facility is now closed to new arrivals and once all those currently isolating have left, it will undergo a hospital-grade "deep clean".
As well as this, Hipkins announced that all returnees across all managed isolation facilities will now be required to stay in their rooms for the last two days of their time in quarantine.
"The day three and the day 12 [testing], when we introduced it, was the gold standard – now we've moved into a platinum standard."
Meanwhile, officials are now rushing to get in contact with everyone who left the Pullman between January 9 and 13, telling them to get a test and self-isolate.
Hipkins said that of the 353 guests who left the facility over that period, 303 have tested negative for Covid-19.
Two were positive – they are the cases outlined by the Ministry of Health on Wednesday night, who became infected while isolating at the Pullman.
Bloomfield revealed yesterday that the pair is a father and daughter in Auckland's North Shore.
They left the Pullman on January 15 and have since been moved into quarantine – the child's mother, who has tested negative, is in self-isolation.
But Hipkins said officials are still waiting on the results for the remaining 48 people in that cohort.
He was unable to say how many have been tested, how many were yet to be contacted, and how many were still waiting on the results of the test.
But he did say they were being "actively followed up".
A Health Ministry spokesperson said those people were re-contacted on Wednesday morning but it was unknown as to whether they...

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