The Mike Hosking Breakfast

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson welcomed the start of a new U.K.-U.S. chapter on Wednesday under incoming U.S. President Joe Biden, even as his predecessor Theresa May accused Johnson of “abandoning” the U.K.’s moral leadership in the world during the tumultuous Trump era.
May, who resigned in 2019 amid turmoil over Brexit, has been critical of Johnson’s handling of Britain’s exit from the European Union. The open criticism is unusual because both prime ministers represent the Conservative Party.
Writing in the Daily Mail newspaper, May slammed Johnson’s threat last year to breach the legally binding Brexit treaty he had signed with the EU, and his decision to abandon a commitment to spending 0.7% of Britain’s GDP on foreign aid.
May said “to lead we must live up to our values.”
“Threatening to break international law by going back on a treaty we had just signed and abandoning our position of global moral leadership as the only major economy to meet both the 2% defence spending target and the 0.7% international aid target were not actions which, in my view, raised our credibility in the eyes of the world,” May said.
Since Biden won the U.S. election in November, Johnson has tried to shake off criticism that he became too close to outgoing President Donald Trump. The two men’s populist, crowd-pleasing styles have often drawn comparisons.
Johnson’s supporters argue that all British prime ministers have to forge strong relationships with the occupant of the White House. May was the first world leader to visit Trump after his inauguration in 2017, though their personal relationship was never warm.
Johnson has congratulated Biden and noted that they share priorities, including combating climate change and bolstering international institutions.
Johnson told the House of Commons that he looked forward to working with Biden “and with his new administration, strengthening the partnership between our countries and working on our shared priorities from tackling climate change, building back better from the pandemic and strengthening our transatlantic security.''

THE BEST BITS IN A SILLIER PACKAGE (from Thursday's Mike Hosking Breakfast) Biden In/Trump Out/So Biased, Didn't Even Do the Story

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is promising to fix New Zealand's housing crisis and has unveiled new details of her Government's state housing plan.
The country's state house waiting list continues to balloon – nearly 22,500 people are now on the public housing waitlist.
The Government this morning releases its Public Housing Plan, which identifies where in the country the additional 8000 state and transition houses will go.
Those 8000 homes were one of the headlines of last year's budget.
But this morning it revealed that the big winners are Northland, Hamilton, Bay of Plenty, Gisborne, Napier, Hastings, Palmerston North and Whanganui.
Details as to how the 8000 will be split between these regions will be unveiled later.
Ardern, who is in Nelson for Labour's annual retreat, said: "Fixing the housing crisis is a key focus of this Government".
She added that the state housing programme plays a key part in the Government's plan.
Of the 8000 homes, 6000 are state housing places and 2000 are transitional.
Ardern said the Government remains on track to deliver more than the previously announced 18,000 extra places by 2024.
The unveiling of where these already-announced state houses will be built comes as pressure ramps up on Ardern's Government around housing.
Greens co-leader and Associate Minister of Housing Marama Davidson said the growing state housing waitlist needs to be "urgently addressed" by the Government.
"We should be using more of the tools in the toolbox to fix this runaway housing crisis, and that includes taxing wealth or capital gains."
Ardern has ruled both these taxes out numerous times.
"We're frustrated," Davidson admitted.
"We've been quite clear, Government is not doing enough if we are not putting all the tools on the table so that people can afford to rent, buy kai for their households, and even own their own homes."
National was also critical of the Government's ever-expanding state housing waitlist.
"This is the sad result of Labour's continued failure to get on top of our housing shortage," National's housing spokeswoman Nicola Willis said.
"Despite promises to fix our shortage, housing has become more unaffordable than ever under Labour with more and more Kiwis struggling to find a home."
Housing Minister Megan Woods, however, blames the previous National Government for the long waiting list.
"It follows decades of insufficient new housing stock being built and the selling of thousands of state homes by the previous National Government."

The official swearing-in ceremony for President Joe Biden have concluded, but more events are planned throughout the day.
Biden and first lady Jill Biden departed the platform at the U.S. Capitol following a ceremony that included Biden taking the oath Wednesday as the 46th president of the United States. Vice President Kamala Harris also took her oath of office, becoming the nation’s first female vice president.
The day included musical performances from Lady Gaga, Jennifer Lopez and Garth Brooks. Celebrated poet Amanda Gorman read a piece noting that, “while democracy can be permanently delayed, it can never be permanently denied.”
Following his departure from the platform, Biden was expected to sign paperwork in the President’s Room within the U.S. Capitol. Afterward, he reviews troops outside the Capitol before departing and traveling to Arlington National Cemetery for a ceremony with former presidents in attendance.
Later Wednesday, Biden is expected to make his first official arrival at the White House as president before a virtual inaugural parade.
Listen to the audio above as US correspondent Nick Bryant joins Mike Hosking to share his thoughts on the inauguration and what the world can expect from a Joe Biden presidency.

A former US ambassador to New Zealand hopes the Biden administration is the end of mis-truths.
Joe Biden has just taken the oath of office on a sunny but chilly morning in Washington DC.
Mark Gilbert, who was ambassador in the final years of Obama's presidency, says people began to believe the Trump administration's rhetoric.
He told Mike Hosking the American people need to hear the truth and see work on issues that affect the country.
"I really believe that Joe Biden is the right person to bring the US back together."
LISTEN ABOVE

The first quarantine-free flight into New Zealand for 10 months is due at Auckland Airport later this morning.
Air New Zealand flight NZ0941 is due to land just before 11am and it will be first time in since last April, its passengers can walk through the arrivals area directly into the arms of loved ones.
While it is for now a one-way bubble, the first quarantine-free flight from the Cook Islands today will be a special moment for Cook Islanders in both countries who are now able to reconnect more easily, said Scott Tasker, Auckland Airport general manager aeronautical commercial.
Passengers arriving from the Cook Islands will use a streamlined Safe Travel Path, which uses airline slot management to avoid other flights, rigorous cleaning and other operational tools to create separation between Cook Island travellers and those passengers arriving from other parts of the world.
"Air travel is important for trade, business or just heading off on an exciting adventure – and also for connecting friends and whanau for life's precious moments is what really makes it special," said Tasker.
While Auckland Airport has prepared to separate its international terminal into two self-contained zones – a health management zone for arrivals needing to go into managed isolation and quarantine, and a safe travel zone for arrivals from countries with which New Zealand has formed two-way, safe travel bubbles – these separated zones won't operate for the Cook Islands arrivals.
''The expectation of only two flights per week under the one-way, quarantine-free arrangement with the Cook Islands made a Safe Travel Path a practical interim step, following discussions with border agencies and government officials,'' said Tasker.
Air New Zealand will operate two flights per week, departing Rarotonga on Wednesdays and Saturdays using an A321 aircraft.
Passengers will undergo health checks pre-flight at Rarotonga International Airport and in Auckland Airport on arrival.
They will also be required to wear masks inflight for the flights where one economy tickets (there is no business class) started at $419.
Tasker said allowing quarantine-free flights from a Covid-free country like the Cook Islands is a small, but important, first step in the recovery of the aviation and tourism sector.
"Taking a careful and staged, risk-based approach to re-opening the New Zealand border will be crucial in re-establishing regular, reliable air links with the Pacific Islands and beyond," Tasker said.
International passenger movements have been devastated by the pandemic.
''We are a long way from the 15,000 people that would have walked through our international arrivals doors daily this time last year, but what we've seen with domestic air travel is that people are keen to fly again when lockdown restrictions are lifted. We now have domestic travel volumes at around 60 per cent of what they were pre-Covid.''
Before the pandemic about 1.4 million people travelled to and from the Pacific Islands through Auckland Airport each year on eight different airlines.
Tasker said it would ''take some time'' to get those air connections re-established.
Air New Zealand chief customer and sales officer Leanne Geraghty said the airline had been encouraged by bookings since the announcement late last week.
Before returning to the Cook Islands passengers will need to undertake a Covid-19 test within 96 hours of their flight departing, which must be negative and complete the exit health clearance process at Auckland Airport.
New Zealanders can't yet travel to the Cook Islands for holidays. Entry is limited to Cook Islanders and current holders of Cook Islands work and residence permits who meet that country's health entry requirements.
Work is underway on establishing a two-way travel bubble with Australia as early as the end of March. Now New Zealanders can travel quarantine-free travel to New...

The United States has a new president.
Joe Biden has just taken the oath of office on a sunny but chilly morning in Washington DC.
So the question is, will a Joe Biden presidency have a dramatic affect on New Zealand?
Chair of the NZ - US Council Leon Grice told Mike Hosking he is hopeful a Biden administration will be great partners with New Zealand, and says they will be pushing for a bilateral free-trade agreement.
"Biden is very experienced in foreign policy, I am very impressed with how much he knows about New Zealand."
LISTEN ABOVE

Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte worked to solidify his majority in parliament Wednesday after narrowly winning a Senate confidence vote after a junior coalition ally yanked his support over Conte’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
Conte was expected to brief President Sergio Mattarella on his prospects to keep governing, though the timing was uncertain. With a reduced majority, Conte will have to cobble together support from outside the current coalition to pass legislation, including aid to help Italy’s pandemic-battered economy.
Conte’s government on Tuesday survived what amounted to a confidence vote with a 156-to-140 win, with 16 abstentions. The abstentions came from the centrist party of ex-Premier Matteo Renzi, who pulled his ministers from the government last week after complaining about Conte’s leadership and management of the European Union’s pandemic recovery funds.
Conte’s victory margin fell short of the 161 votes needed for an absolute majority in the upper chamber, weakening his already fragile coalition of the 5-Star Movement, the center-left Democratic Party and a smaller party.
Had Conte lost the vote, he would have been required to resign.
After the votes were counted, Conte said he intended to press on to confront the pandemic, the economic recession and Italy’s COVID-19 vaccination campaign, as well as the spending plan for the more than 2 billion euros ($2.4 billion) in EU recovery funds that Italy is expected to receive.
“Now the objective is to solidify the majority. Italy doesn’t have a minute to lose,” he tweeted.
However, his coalition is already facing pressure from the center-right opposition, which has said it wants an early election.
“The numbers speak clearly,” said Giorgia Melloni, head of the small but rising Brothers of Italy party. “We’re waiting to learn if the president of the republic thinks that in these conditions Conte can go forward.″
But the center-right was thrown a curveball when two senators from ex-Premier Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party broke ranks with the opposition and voted in favor of Conte’s leadership.
In the lower Chamber of Deputies, where the 16-month-old government holds a more comfortable margin, Conte won a first confidence vote on Monday.
Last week, Renzi yanked his two ministers from his Italia Viva (Italy Alive) party, in a spat over how much control Conte would hold in deciding how the EU largesse gets spent.
Even though he triggered the crisis, Renzi indicated he would consider returning to Conte’s coalition if asked. However, the Democrats have ruled out accepting him back given what they said was an irresponsible power play during Italy’s worst health care crisis in a century.

U.S. stocks are rallying to records Wednesday on encouraging earnings reports and continued optimism that new leadership in Washington will mean more support for the struggling economy.
The S&P 500 was 1.1% higher at 3,841 in midday trading, topping its record closing level of 3,824.68 set earlier this month. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 188 points, or 0.6%, at 31,118, as of 11:51 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 1.7% higher.
Joe Biden took the oath of office to become U.S. president, and he has a flurry of executive actions at the ready. He has also pitched a plan to pump $1.9 trillion more into the struggling economy, hoping to act quickly as his Democratic party takes control of the White House and both houses of Congress.
The hope on Wall Street is that such stimulus will help carry the economy until later this year, when more widespread COVID-19 vaccinations get daily life closer to normal. Such hopes have helped stocks and Treasury yields rise, even as the worsening pandemic digs a deeper hole for the economy. Spiraling coronavirus counts and deaths have more workers applying for unemployment benefits and shoppers feeling less confident.
The incoming Biden administration is taking control of the White House from Donald Trump, who pointed again on Wednesday to the stock market's level as validation of his work.
Trump's preferred measure is often the Dow Jones Industrial Average, even though the S&P 500 is much more important to most workers' 401(k) accounts. Under Trump, the Dow had an a annualized return of 11.8% from his inauguration until his last day in office, according to Ryan Detrick, chief market strategist for LPL Financial. That's better than any Republican president since Calvin Coolidge during the roaring 1920s, but it's not as good as the returns for Bill Clinton or Barack Obama.
Trump has said in the past that he should get credit for the stock market's gains following his election but before his inauguration. The market got a “Trump bump” then on anticipation of lower tax rates, less regulation on companies and faster economic growth. Much of that did come to fruition, but the COVID-19 pandemic and the government's response to it upended everything in 2020.
Gains for stocks have also been accelerating since Biden's election, before his inauguration, on enthusiasm about COVID-19 vaccines and hopes that he and Congress can deliver more stimulus for the economy. The bump for stocks between the most recent Election Day and Biden's inauguration is bigger than Trump's bump before his inauguration.
Janet Yellen, Biden’s nominee to be Treasury secretary, told the Senate Finance Committee during her confirmation hearing on Tuesday that the incoming administration would focus on winning quick passage of its $1.9 trillion plan.
“More must be done,” Yellen said. “Without further action, we risk a longer, more painful recession now — and long-term scarring of the economy later.”
A better-than-expected start to earnings reporting season is also helping to lift the market Wednesday. Analysts came in with low expectations, forecasting the big companies in the S&P 500 will report a fourth straight drop in earnings per share because of the damage from the pandemic. But the vast majority of the earliest reports have managed to top forecasts.
Netflix jumped 14.6% for one of the market’s biggest gains after it said it ended last year with more than 200 million subscribers. It also said it made more in revenue during the end of 2020 than analysts expected, though its earnings fell short of forecasts. Business is good enough for the company that it says it likely doesn’t need to borrow anymore to cover its day-to-day operations.
Morgan Stanley initially rose after reporting much stronger earnings for the latest quarter than Wall Street had forecast, though its gain sputtered as the morning progressed. It was up 0.4%. A boom in young...

A lot of us sadly would have missed the Julian Assange decision over the holidays – when he won and lost.
The appeal is on, so it’s far from over, but it would seem if you can convince a judge in Britain that you’ll take your life should you be sent to America, that’s enough to keep you from going to America  and facing justice.
The extradition attempt by the Americans was turned down on health grounds. The judge was not convinced that the system and procedures as offered by the Americans would prevent Assange from committing suicide.
On the legal aspects, he actually lost: the judge went through his teams various arguments against extradition ranging from politics to time limits and rejected them all.
As indeed she should have, based, as far as I can work out, on the fact that there seems no disputing the fact that Assange handled stolen goods and passed them onto others.
And, as such the people, whose property was nicked, i.e. the Americans, want a word, and I would imagine a fairly lengthy term of confinement should the trial go their way.
What has been lost, deliberately, over the years, is that part of the argument from the Assange camp appears to be about press freedom and how it trumps criminal activity. In other words, if your legal material is good enough, laws don’t count.
They are wrong of course and they know it. Hence instead of defending his position and offering himself up to the feds, he went and hid in the embassy until everyone got fully sick of him and the poms dragged him out to Belmarsh.
Which is where he remains, given the second part of proceedings involved him applying for bail and it not being granted. And nor should it. The court not surprisingly saw him as a flight risk
So how is any of this fair on the Americans? All they want is a thief back. And to press some charges for that theft.
The evidence will either convict him or not, but in not giving them the chance is this not justice denied. And denied on an idea, the idea that you can be convincing enough to have a judge believe you’re a risk to your own life.
There is no proof of that, it’s not evidence based. It’s just a thought, a prediction driven by fear, a seed of doubt cast.
Is that justice? I wouldn’t have thought so.
And if he gets away with it if he never returns to the states, how dangerous is the precedent set? Fear beats fact.
As long as you’re allegedly suicidal over your actions, your actions don’t matter.