The Mike Hosking Breakfast

Let’s be honest, the names attached to the portfolios isn’t of great interest to most of us.
From a personal point of view and given his attachment to the show, Stuart Nash has got to be happy with economic and regional development. Yes, he loses police and revenue but anything to do with the economy right now is as important as it gets and clearly reflects the PM’s view of his contribution.
But as for the rest of it there are a bunch of them in there that broadly you would believe they would have a clue as to what they are doing.
Robertson, Little, Parker, Hipkins, Woods and co are solid. You might not like their style of politics, but there experienced and they won’t end up like Clark or Curran or Lees-Galloway.
But in that latter is the key to all of this.
There are new names and incompetent names. We might note the scrupulous inclusion of David Clark, a simple incompetent who let the country down badly and yet still has work. That says as much about Ardern as it does Clark.
But almost redeeming herself is the demoting of Phil Twyford, with a portfolio as inconsequential as you can get without actually sacking him completely. Fortunately he’s outside cabinet, and the fact those two are still about reveals the truth they will never really confess.
And that’s that a larger caucus doesn’t mean a more talented caucus. And the pressure this time is they own it all.
They don’t have New Zealand First to blame or to unload work and portfolios on to. And if you look at their first term record, one, they didn’t get much done, and two, they ran into too many issues with too many embarrassing moments. Their lack of talent and delivery was well exposed.
The up side is there are no excuses. They have a mandate and they should if they know what’s good for them, have the confidence to start really rolling out their programme
From their point of view you would hope all the trouble they had was a lot to do with MMP not incompetence, but in all reality I think we know the truth.
So the test and pressure is real, but here’s another truth. If you’re smart you only need a handle to actually run the place.  A lot of a cabinet is window dressing its jobs and rewards for favourites. It’s as much political as it is practice.
This next three years is about money. Spending, recovery, the economy, cover those bases well and you’re half way there. Who dabbles in internal affairs or arts or broadcasting is of no real importance.
The biggest part of yesterday’s reveal is after two long, long weeks thank god we can actually get on with it because it’s not like there isn’t an economic disaster to sort.

For all of Scott McLaughlin’s success  - there are a couple of names in Australian motor racing that shine just a bit brighter.
Amongst those names is Mark Scaife. He has secured six Bathurst wins, five championships, and the all-time record for race wins in Australian motor sport. 
Now retired, he works with Fox Sports on their SuperCars coverage.
He has chronicled his career in a new book, Mark Scaife: The Complete Illustrated Autobiography. He joined Mike Hosking to talk about his extraordinary life story.
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There'll be a different feel today at the Melbourne Cup.
No crowds will be allowed at the famed Fleming Racecourse because of Covid-19.
Sky Channel race caller Nick Quinn told Mike Hosking he'll be one of the few people allowed inside.
He says it was also like that on Derby Day, when there was an eerie silence as they were running the races.
"What surprised me was there was no broadcast. I still thought the broadcasts would go throughout the track, but it was in total silence asides from a few jockeys yelling at each other."
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Donald Trump is behind in the polls - but things look different this election.
American historian Allan Lichtman tipped Trump to win four years ago - even though his prediction was contrary to all the pollsters and pundits.
He's correctly predicted every successful president since 1984.
Lichtman is confident in a Biden victory this time around - and told Mike Hosking this is a different election to what happened four years ago.
"I do believe the polls, not because of polls but because they are in sync with my prediction based on the fundamentals of what drive elections - a vote up or down on how well the party holding the White House has governed." 
He says Republicans are already trying to suppress the vote of the rising Democratic base of minorities and young people.
"They filed lawsuits all over America to make it harder to vote and harder to count the votes.
"They are in court as we speak in Texas, to try and throw out 120,000 ballots legally cast."

Germany's going into lockdown-light, after 12 thousand new Covid-19 infections in the past 24 hours.
Bars, cinemas, theatres, museums, gyms and pools will remain closed, and cafes and restaurants can only offer takeaway food.
Europe correspondent, Catherine Field told Mike Hosking German Chancellor Angela Merkel has just given people a warning.
Merkel is warning people not to plan lavish Christmas or New Year's Eve parties.
She says if November's miserable and people get through it, December may be tolerable.
 
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Boris Johnson was accused of "giving in to scientific advisers" by a former leader of his Conservative Party after the UK Prime Minister announced a lockdown for England following weeks of warnings from the experts.
His Saturday announcement of a strict national lockdown against the spread of coronavirus came after UK cases passed one million and its death toll reached 46,555.
The infection rate in the country has been rising steeply for weeks. The Office for National Statistics now estimates that 1 in 100 people in England have Covid-19, compared with 1 in 2,300 in July and 1 in 200 at the start of October.
Johnson's cabinet was advised that if no action was taken, the National Health Service's bed capacity would be surpassed by the first week of December.
Former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith wrote in the UK's Telegraph newspaper that the month-long lockdown showed government was "giving in to the scientific advisers," claiming that government experts had "pressurised" Johnson into the step.
"Normally, advisers advise and ministers decide. Yet that system has broken down with Sage [the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies] believing its advice to be more like commandments written on stone and its members publicly lecturing the Government over the airways," Duncan Smith wrote.
Many others believe the lockdown has come too late. Sage first suggested stronger restrictions six weeks ago, when it called for a short "circuit-breaker" lockdown to bring case numbers down.
The group said in a document released on September 21 that "a package of interventions will need to be adopted to prevent this exponential rise in cases," including the closure of bars, restaurants and gyms.
There were 28 confirmed deaths and 5,596 cases in the UK on September 21, compared with 326 deaths and 21,915 cases on Saturday.
The new lockdown, which will come into place in England on Thursday morning following a Wednesday vote in Parliament, will see all bars and restaurants closed except for takeout and delivery, as well as the closure of all non-essential businesses including gyms and hair salons. Schools, universities and childcare facilities will remain open.
Residents will only be allowed to leave their homes for specific purposes including education, work (if they cannot work from home), exercise, medical issues, or to buy food and essential items.
UK Minister for the Cabinet Office Michael Gove said Sunday that England's second lockdown could be extended beyond December 2 -- the point at which the Prime Minister said he expected the current regional tiered system to be reintroduced.
"We are going to look at all of the data, we've got this four-week period during which we are going to review progress, but of course we'll always be driven by the data," Gove said on Sky News.
Gove said ministers would review lockdown measures on December 2, with the aim of seeing the R (reproduction) rate -- the number of people that one infected person will infect -- fall below 1.
Opposition Leader Keir Starmer said the lockdown should have been imposed three weeks ago and would now have to go on for longer.
"I'm so frustrated at the incompetence of the government," the Labour party leader told the BBC's Andrew Marr. "The government was too slow in the first phase of the pandemic and now it's been too slow again, and there's a cost to this. That's why the lockdown will now go on longer."
Gove told the BBC that he did not accept that the government had got it wrong and waited too long. "The advice we were getting at the time indicated that a regional approach was entirely appropriate," he said on The Andrew Marr Show.
He added that the UK's deputy chief medical officer Jonathan Van Tam had believed the localized approach was appropriate and the chief medical officer Chris Whitty had said on Saturday that there was no perfect time to act.
Violent backlash to second...

There's no such thing as a bad idea, but are our schools letting any new ideas in at all?
Research from Auckland University shows a damper has been put on creativity at schools.
It's looked at 11 dimensions that make up a creative learning environment, and found there are fewer opportunities to explore new ideas at all levels of schooling.
Lead researcher Peter O'Connor told Mike Hosking our current system is focused on teaching kids to think inside discipline silos.
He says adding something they've learned in maths to something they've learned in English to create something new, is the competitive edge our nation needs - and schools aren't providing it.
O'Connor says it proves decades of neglect have stripped the arts from New Zealand schools.
He says he couldn't design the system better to destroy creativity than we currently do, and this study shows how it's done.
 “The creative environment falls of a cliff once you get to the secondary school.”
He says by the time young people finish high school the creative edge needed in work industries have faded away.
O’Connor says the teacher’s Union agree with him.
 
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The banks are busy reporting progress and their bottom lines at the moment. We had one last week, one yesterday, and another to come Thursday.
Given the banks role in our lives at the best of times, far less the worst, their story is worth following.
All of them have been hit badly. They're still profitable, and boy do they need to be. Once again, it's worth reminding ourselves how lucky we are in this part of the world that the industry is robust and profitable, and won't be yet another thing to worry about going forward.
Which might, just might, be a message to the Reserve Bank who appear to revel in being interfering sticky beaks. Movement on the LVRs is almost certain in the not-too-distant future, especially around investors.
I operate on the simple premise that if someone knows what they're doing, let them get on with it. Banks know what they are doing.
Interestingly one argues, there is still room to move on housing for investors. In other words, the headlines you may be reading are more dramatic than the reality.
Good news also that first home buyers are increasingly involved in housing. So hopefully reportage one day might just reflect that, not everyone is locked out and miserable.
They may well be up to their eyeballs in mortgage debt but at least they're on the ladder. But the banks are also telling us business lending isn't up to much yet because the confidence isn't there. Why not? Why aren't they? What about all this mad purchasing that’s going on? The booming sales of everything from water tanks, to TVs, to cars, to art, to home gym equipment, why aren't the people selling that stuff laughing?
Clearly not, or not enough of them.
Job data is out this week as well, that will be another insight.
The risk we run, is we think that because everyone's buying a weekend in Queenstown and a new Jaguar, Covid isn't an issue. But it is, and it’s a bigger issue than many seem to get, and the bank commentary tells us why.
If a business won't back themselves and their own story with lending, something's not right. Could be Europe, could be a lack of vaccine, could be closed borders, or it could be worries about the new government. It doesn't really matter, what matters is actions or lack of them.
Are we doing better than many thought? Probably. Are we out the other side? The numbers are there to be read if you want to, and we're not even close.

Covid-19 has re-emerged into the community for a third time - this time a worker in a Christchurch managed isolation facility.
And a supermarket in Colombo St in the city has been closed for deep-cleaning after the positive case visited the store on Sunday.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said there was a testing regime that detected cases in workers at managed isolation facilities.
"Our system is utterly built for managing a situation where people who may be attached to our MIQ [managed isolation and quarantine] systems themselves find themselves positive with Covid," she said.
"Our whole system is built for that, that's why we have an ongoing testing regime. It's why, particularly our people who work in our MIQ keep very, very good records of where they've been and who they've been in contact with.
"They are very aware of their health status, so if they feel unwell they're very cautious about getting tested straight away and being isolated straight away."
New Zealanders should feel "assured" about the testing regime, though she also said it was being improved and worked upon "constantly".
Ardern told TVNZ that said health staff would now be working with the infected person on where they will go next.
"We do let the public health workers on the ground work through the best place for someone to be. Often it will be that there's a range of circumstances they'll take into account to determine where they should be," the Prime Minister said.
"But for the most part, most of the time, of course, our cases go back into a facility...this case was only identified yesterday afternoon so it's not unusual for just a bit of time to be taken to identify all of their close contacts, do the testing that needs to be undertaken and then work through making sure that we're putting the person into the facility if that's the right place for them to be," she said.
"It's not unusual just to make sure that conversations are had on the ground with the person."
The new case is a staff member working in the Christchurch managed isolation facility, understood to be the Sudima Hotel, where a group of international mariners have been staying.
The positive worker had developed symptoms for Covid-19 on Saturday and sought a further test on Sunday.
Countdown's general manager corporate affairs, safety and sustainability, Kiri Hannifin, confirmed the person visited the store, but the time of the visit was not known.
The supermarket was closed last night and was undergoing a deep clean, said Hannifin. The supermarket was expected to be open again as normal today.
The latest case in Christchurch ended 10 straight days of no community cases of the virus in New Zealand.
A total of 31 positive Covid cases are now linked to the group of mariners. They are among 440 fishers from Russia and the Ukraine, 270 of whom are due to go out on three Independent Fisheries boats next month.
The new case was tested as part of routine testing for staff at the Sudima at Christchurch Airport. They returned a negative test last Thursday, October 29.
On Saturday, however, they developed symptoms and sought a further test yesterday, returning a positive result which was received on Monday.
"The person is now in isolation at home and reports taking care to isolate themselves as soon as they developed symptoms," the Ministry of Health says.
The first of the international mariners were due to have completed their managed isolation this morning but will have it extended for at least 24 hours as an additional precautionary measure.
The ministry said full details of the case, and the actions taken in response would be provided in a 1pm press conference today.
Precautionary measures for the international mariners include additional tests - up to four for some individuals and an already lengthened stay in managed isolation.
This is the third time Covid-19 has re-emerged in the...

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