The Mike Hosking Breakfast

Travel bubble talks between New Zealand and Australia continue.
Western Australia is reopening its borders to Victoria and New South Wales on December 8.
South Australia remains in the medium risk category until at least December 11.
Tourism Minister Stuart Nash told Mike Hosking that both countries are taking a risk-based approach, to get things right.
“Australia isn’t knocking on our door saying we're being too conservative.
"Our people are talking to their people, and we’re coming up with a system on how what this will look like.”
Listen to the audio above as Stuart Nash and Mark Mitchell join the Mike Hosking Breakfast to discuss the issues making news this week.

On June 19 Matthew Hunt was meant to have dinner with his mother Diane after work.
But he never made it.
Several hours after he put on his beloved blue uniform, Constable Matthew Hunt was dead - gunned down in an Auckland street while attending a routine traffic stop.
Today (Wednesday) his mother will present a petition to Parliament in his name and honour, calling for changes to the Sentencing Act 2002 and the Parole Act 2002 that would see anyone convicted of murdering a police officer receive a mandatory life sentence and have their parole eligibility automatically declined.
It's been an "overwhelming" four months for Diane Hunt since that devastating day, but she is determined to do whatever she can to ensure no other frontline officer is killed and no other mother has to bury their son or daughter in similar circumstances.
"Matthew was 28 years old and he did not deserve what happened to him - he was meant to come home, he deserved a life," she told the Herald.
"He was totally robbed of that, all because he put on a New Zealand police uniform and there is an element of society who have no respect for that uniform.
"He gave his life for his country, on a suburban street in Massey, trying to do the right thing.
"I want there to be a legacy and I will devote the rest of my life to that - Matthew deserves that."
Hunt was killed as he and his partner tried to pull over a car just before 10am on June 19, a Friday.
He was shot multiple times with a long-barrelled gun, which the Herald understands was a high-powered assault rifle.
Hunt's colleague was also shot several times but managed to get away and survived the attack.
A man has been charged with murdering Hunt, attempting to murder the other police officer and wounding a member of the public as he allegedly fled the scene in a car.
A woman has been charged with being an accessory to Hunt's murder after the fact, by enabling the accused killer to leave the scene in a car and avoid arrest.
Both have pleaded not guilty and are in custody awaiting trial in the High Court at Auckland next year.
The scene of Constable Matthew Hunt's alleged murder. Photo / NZ Herald
Diane Hunt launched a petition on July 30 - the day her son would have turned 29.
"I want no parole for the killers of police officers in New Zealand - a murder sentence here can mean about 10 years in jail and I don't believe that's an appropriate sentence for the murder of a public servant doing their job," she said.
"First responders have this on their shoulders every day they go to work, they all need to get home.
"I'm don't want to suggest arming the police, but there needs to be another deterrent and this could be the way to stop this happening to any other person in New Zealand."
More than 39,000 people have signed the petition, which will be presented at Parliament this morning.
Diane Hunt said she was "extremely nervous", but proud that her son had had such a big impact and that so many people were supporting her.
"I don't want anyone else to go through this," she said, her voice cracking and tears flowing at the memory of her slain son.
"I don't want anyone to lose their life as Matthew has, for their uniform."
Diane Hunt said she and daughter Eleanor had struggled since the alleged murder.
"It's been awful - we were a family of three and now Matthew is gone… it's just awful, there are no other words, you can't really say anything else," she said.
"Some days I don't actually believe it happened… my daughter lives in India and she has been here a long time, she needs to get back and start her life again as she was before June 19.
"I just sort of muddle my way through, you never know what the next day will bring."
Diane Hunt said she had one goal in life since her son passed - one purpose.
"I want to make Matthew proud," she said.
"He was such a good person,...

It really is a stellar array of festive treats, isn't it?
Well worth turning out on that middle Saturday of October to give the Labour Party three more glorious years to micro-manage their way out of this global pandemic. So happy were we with the crash and burn, lock the door, throw away the key approach they had adopted up until that point.  
And yet coming up two months post the vote, what do we have? A climate emergency, doubling of sick leave, and now the revelation that one of their finer cock ups in their first term, Ihumatao, is proving astonishingly expensive, as well as inept.
They have forked out, so far, $150,000 of our money, money we don’t have, on that well known Wellington political accoutrement, the consultant. They have come in at a tasty $325 an hour for all that sage advice.
I will forgive at least some of the bill, if one or more of the consultants, for $325 an hour, told the government they were off their head ever getting involved in this in the first place. And that's been a monumental waste of time, energy, and other people's money to appease a bunch of disaffected whiners. Many of whom, let it not be forgotten, were associated with the original larger group that sold the land in the first place.
If a consultant had the balls to say that, I'll personally pay their bill.
By the way, Shelly Bay has the same stench about it. And the problem with Ihumatao is precedent. When they settle this with more of our money, and they will, they will have gone down a very dangerous rabbit hole.
And they will give the green light to all and sundry to go park themselves on a chunk of land they fancy, make a few bizarre claims, and stand by for the state to roll in with a cheque book.
The overarching tragedy of all this, is the fact if it wasn’t for Jacinda Ardern and her pre Kiribati, or whatever pacific sojourn burst of emotive clap trap she let rip with before she naffed off for a week, this would never have happened.
And because it happened, not only are we paying for it, for people like Fletcher's they’ve been the meat in the whole hopeless Sandwich, waiting for the political wheels to turn as the government looks to extract itself out of a fight, they never needed to be a part of.
The precedent will be a disaster. The money will be ours, the reputation of the government will be battered, and not a house will be built.
The only winners will be the stirrers, and some clipboarders who charge too much by the hour. Brilliant.
And watch then roll this out as close to Christmas possible. So, by January, post BBQ, all will be forgotten.

The next few weeks will likely see a lot of action as U.S. regulators assess COVID-19 vaccines and state officials get ready to start giving the shots to people. Shots for at most 20 million people are expected by year’s end.
A timeline of what to expect in the coming days:
— Dec. 1: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory committee votes on who should be first in line to receive vaccinations.
— Dec. 4: Deadline for states to submit requests for doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine and where they should be shipped.
— Dec. 10: Food and Drug Administration advisers meet to debate if there’s enough evidence for emergency use of the Pfizer vaccine. Sometime after the meeting, the FDA will weigh those recommendations in deciding whether to authorize emergency use.
— Dec. 11: Deadline for states to submit requests for doses of the Moderna vaccine and where they should be shipped.
— Dec. 17: FDA advisers meet to debate evidence behind the Moderna vaccine. The FDA will weigh those recommendations in deciding whether to authorize emergency use sometime after the meeting.
Once the FDA authorizes emergency use of either vaccine:
— Within 24 hours: “Phase 1a” of rollout begins. Private shippers would send shots to each state’s predetermined locations, such as hospitals. Health workers would give first shots to people per states' plans, with people working in health care likely at the front of the line.
— Second doses: For Pfizer’s vaccine, the second dose is given three weeks after the first. For Moderna’s, the second shot comes four weeks after the first.

Health Minister Andrew Little says young people taking drugs at festivals aren't bad people and should have access to advice and testing to make it safer.
Health Minister Andrew Little revealed yesterday morning that the Government will pass an urgent law to provide legal breathing space for drug-checking in time for the summer festival season.
Little told Newstalk ZB's Mike Hosking said he didn't agree with young people taking "mind-altering substances", but he wanted people to do it safely.
"We know with the festival season upon us young people turn up to concerts and drugs get passed around and they don't know what's in them.
"We're not encouraging it, but it's happening anyway.
"Young people experiment with this stuff and it doesn't make them bad people."
It comes as a surprise after both Little and Police Minister Poto Williams recently told the Herald that such a law change was "unlikely" before the end of the year, given there were only two sitting weeks left in Parliament.
Judith Collins doesn't support on site pill testing at festivals, even though she knows her opinion is unpopular.
A 2019 Colmar Brunton poll shows 75 per cent of people support some form of legal pill testing.
National's youth wing also supports the move.
A new law will mean that festivals and drug-checking services won't face prosecution for testing illegal substances to see what's really in them. Photo / Supplied
National Leader Judith Collins told Newstalk ZB's Kate Hawkesby we need to look further than polls before bringing in new laws.
Drug-checking allows users to hand over a sample and be told whether it is what they think it is, or if it is laced with something more sinister. Some drugs at Rhythm and Vines in 2018 were found to have pesticides, industrial paint compounds and paracetamol, while there have been several health warnings overseas for fentanyl-laced cannabis.
Currently, section 12 of the Misuse of Drugs Act says that anyone who knowingly allows a premises to be used for a drug offence faces up to 10 years in prison, depending on the drug in question.
It created a grey area where drug-checkers or festival hosts could face charges, though drug-checking organisation KnowYourStuffNZ has said it has never been threatened with prosecution or harassed by police.
Last season, KnowYourStuffNZ tested 1368 samples between April 2019 and March this year, and 86 per cent of the time the drug was what users thought it was; when it wasn't, 52 per cent of people said they wouldn't take it.

Thousands of seaside homes around New Zealand could face soaring insurance premiums - or even have some cover pulled altogether - within 15 years.
That's the stark warning from a major new report assessing how insurers might be forced to confront the nation's increasing exposure to rising seas - sparking pleas for urgent Government action.
Nationally, about 450,000 homes that currently sit within a kilometre of the coast are likely to be hit be a combination of sea level rise and more frequent and intense storms under climate change.
The findings coincide with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern poised to declare a climate change emergency in Parliament today.
The report, published through the Government-funded Deep South Challenge, looked at the risk for around 10,000 homes in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin that lie in one-in-100-year coastal flood zones.
That risk is expected to increase quickly.
In Wellington, only another 10cm of sea level rise - expected by 2040 - could push up the probability of a flood five-fold - making it a one-in-20-year event.
International experience and indications from New Zealand's insurance industry suggest companies start pulling out of insuring properties when disasters like floods become one-in-50-year events.
By the time that exposure has risen to one-in-20-year occurrences, the cost of insurance premiums and excesses will have climbed sharply - if insurance could be renewed at all.
The report found about 540 exposed homes in Auckland, with current median coastal flood premiums for once-in-a-century events of $2000, could reach that one-in-20-year threshold with just 15cm of sea level rise.
If insurance was still available at that point, premiums would have soared to $10,000.
For the 1740 Wellington homes modelled, median premiums could jump from $1800 to $8700 with seas 12cm higher.
In the South Island, 4850 properties in Christchurch and 3100 in Dunedin, could see premiums leap from $1600 to $7600 and $7900, with 13cm and 14cm of sea level rise respectively.
The research also suggested that just small increases in sea level would likely cause at least partial retreat by insurers for most of those 10,000 homes, within only 15 years.
Insurance remained a requirement for residential mortgages, and failing to maintain them could trigger defaults.
While mortgages were often granted with repayment periods of up to 30 years in New Zealand, insurance contracts were renewed annually.
An insurer could exit a market within 12 months, while a lender could still have decades before their loans matured.
Despite rules requiring mortgagors to insure, a general absence of compliance checks meant banks currently didn't know whether some properties they mortgaged remain insured beyond the first year of ownership.
Insurance Council of New Zealand chief executive Tim Grafton expected climate risks would continue to be signalled by insurers through price and excesses.
"Insurers are likely to continue to cover existing homeowners in climate change or natural hazard-threatened areas, but we can expect premiums and excesses will increase," he said.
"That might mean a floodplain property will have a $500 excess for fire damage but a $10,000 excess for flood damage.
"However, some companies might choose not to take on new customers in areas that have a known higher risk to sea level rise and flooding in 15 to 20 years."
Insurers needed to work with customers to ensure they understood the reasons and costs that came with pricing certain risks, he said.
About 450,000 homes that currently sit within a kilometre of the coast are likely to be hit be a combination of sea level rise and more frequent and intense storms. Photo / Paul Taylor
Meanwhile, homeowners were still choosing to buy, develop and renovate coastal property, and new houses were being built in climate-risky locations, said...

Argentina Rugby Union has revoked Pablo Matera's captaincy, following revelations of historical tweets that were deemed offensive.
In a quick response from the governing body, Matera along with two other players Guido Petti and Santiago Socino have also been suspended from the national team, until a disciplinary situation is defined.
It means all three players will not feature in their Tri Nations finale against the Wallabies this weekend. The Pumas remain an outside chance of claiming the trophy.
In a statement, Argentina rugby said the posts do not in any way represent them as a union.
"The Argentine Rugby Union strongly repudiates the discriminatory and xenophobic comments published by members of the Los Pumas squad on social networks.
"Although the messages were expressed between 2011 and 2013 and do not represent the integrity as people that the three showed during this time in Los Pumas, from the Argentine Rugby Union we condemn any expression of hatred and we consider it unacceptable that those who express them represent our country."
The actions follow apologies from all three players, who took to Instagram to express remorse over the posts that were uncovered, leading to a mass outrage from the online community.
"Today I have to take charge of what I said 9 years ago," Matera posted on his Instagram account.
Pumas captain Pablo Matera. Photo / Getty
"I had a tougher time. I am very ashamed. Apologies to all those who were offended by the atrocities I wrote. At that moment I did not imagine who I was going to become.
"I'm also sorry to my team and my family for the moment they are going through my actions and thanks to the people who love me for their support."
The tweets that centre around the 27-year-old Matera included criticism directed at black people as well as Bolivian and Paraguayan maids.
He has since closed off his Twitter account.

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has renewed calls for Australians to boycott Chinese products this Christmas, as relations between the two countries plunge to new lows.
“You might think it’s awfully hard, yes it is hard, I get it,” Ms Hanson said in a Facebook video on Monday night. “We all have our part to play in this. Think about it when you buy that furniture, that toy, that food, whatever you buy, have a look where it comes from, and if it’s China, let it sit on the shelf.”
Senator Hanson first proposed a boycott last week in response to “China’s recent economic attacks against Australia” – including a devastating 200 per cent tariff on Australian wine.
On Monday, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian posted a doctored image on Twitter depicting an Australian soldier holding a bloodied knife to the throat of an Afghan child, in reference to allegations in the Brereton war crimes report.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison slammed the image as “repugnant” and demanded an apology from the Chinese government. “It is deeply offensive to every Australian, every Australian who has served in that uniform, every Australian who serves in that uniform today,” he said at an unscheduled press conference.
In her Facebook video, Ms Hanson said it “absolutely disgusts me”. “This is why I am so anti-China – they are a country that says they want to grow to a stage where they will control and that’s exactly what they’re doing,” she said.
She said 20 per cent of products Australia imports “we can’t buy from anywhere else but China”. “Our shelves are full of Chinese products because we’ve stopped our manufacturing industry,” she said.
Queensland Senator Malcolm Roberts has responded by calling for a boycott on Chinese products this Christmas - and told Mike Hosking  he's getting strong support.
“We’re getting support from politicians in Japan, New Zealand, the United States and other countries. They’re recommending people buy a bottle of Australian wine to let China know what we think of them.
Roberts says Australia won't be cowered by China.
“China is trying to control Australia,  and beneath control is fear. Their development and construction needs our iron ore.

THE BEST BITS IN A SILLIER PACKAGE (from Wednesday's Mike Hosking Breakfast) Used to Living In Fear/We Didn't Ask for This/Conflicted Over Maori Wards/Where Are the Bubbles?/The One Present Rule

There should be a rule: you get to ask for something once, but then that’s it.
The feebaters are back. The people who want you to pay for their cars.
Julie Anne Genter, back when she was in charge of stuff - mainly nutty ideas – thought this one was spectacular.
The fee bate would mean that the electric car would be discounted because the petrol car would have a tax on it.
She claimed, incorrectly and completely dishonestly, that the scheme would be self-funding.
Despite the fact that for it to be self-funding the right number of petrol cars with the right amount of tax had to be sold to cover off the cost of the right amount of subsidy on the EV, and given the scheme wasn’t up and therefore no cars had been sold under it.
She wouldn’t have the slightest idea as to what the consumer behaviour towards more expensive petrol car vs a cheaper EV might be.
That government and her ministership came and went, and thank god thanks to NZ First – remember them? – the scheme never saw the light of day and most of us with a loose connection to the real world breathed a sigh of relief.
And this is where my rule would come in. Having floated the fee bate scheme and it being rejected, we would never hear about it again. Which sadly we are, given my rule is not real.
So back they have come this week. The headline read “Government urged to introduce fee bate scheme for EVs”. So often these stories are written from press releases, and the press releases are written in a way that wacky ideas have never before been put forward and this is a bright new shiny thing that we all have to consider with urgency.
So once again, if the Motor Industry Association gets their way, we will be back down the rabbit hole of subsidisation, funded as it always is by some poor sap that doesn’t get consulted.
As I have said forever, you want an EV, go get one, go get four.  For the woke handwringers who are in charge of companies councils or government, go buy a fleet.
But buy them for the right reasons, not for virtue signalling brownie points. And most importantly don’t buy them using other people money.
Here is the test of a good product: do people want it? Will they use their own money to buy it? Will having bought one they buy another one?
For whatever reasons EVs, haven’t taken off. I could give you a bunch of reasons but we don’t have time. And what we also don’t have time for is yet another round of subsidy merry go round.
The fee bate was a dumb idea last year, the year before, and the year before that: its status as a dumb idea remains unchanged.