The Mike Hosking Breakfast

THE BEST BITS IN A SILLIER PACKAGE (from Thursday's Mike Hosking Breakfast) Questions Over Empty Rooms/Zoning Again/Vanilla Voting/What Does She See In Him?/Where Did the Pens Go?

Patrons of an Auckland pub have been asked to self-isolate and get swabbed for Covid-19,  after being exposed to someone infectious with the virus.
A person who visited The Malt pub in Greenhithe last Friday between 7.30pm and 10pm, later tested positive.
The infected patron is one of two community cases announced yesterday, among 25 new cases across New Zealand.
Otago University infectious disease expert David Murdoch told Mike Hosking it's crucial people who are at risk of exposure self-isolate, and he hopes they will.
Murdoch says we can't brush this aside as no big deal.
"We need to expect to see cases ... and that we have a system that can respond to it."
Health Minister Chris Hipkins says officials are working "very fast" to make sure any community spread is contained.
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He may be one of Hollywood's most popular and diverse actors - and a multi-award winner to boot - but don't expect to see Matthew McConaughey in a starring role any time soon. 
But rather than it being the result of a dramatic fall from grace, this decision is entirely McConaughey's own, as the Covid-19 pandemic continues to rage around the world.
The 50-year-old actor told Mike Hosking that he has no intention of returning to set, even as dozens of blockbusters resume production with social distancing practices and extended bubbles in place. 
“I’m not even entertaining going to work on a set. I have a lot of friends that are working, they are talking about how the bubbles are working on set, but uh-uh, no way.
 “I’ve got an 88-year-old mother here with some pulmonary challenges. I’m not even taking a chance.”



Instead, McConaughey is focusing all his energy this year into promoting his new memoir, Greenlights. In it, McConaughey draws from 35 years of diaries that serves as a his life story so-far and  a guide to “catching greenlights” – his methodology for living a more satisfying life.
The topics range from the year he spent travelling around Australia, to how he got his big break in acting, before going on to secure acclaimed roles in HBO’s True Detective and his Oscar-winning performance in Dallas Buyers Club.
McConaughey first broke out in movies like Dazed and Confused and A Time to Kill, but it wasn’t until he started getting cast in rom-coms that he became a household name. He quickly became a household name for his roles in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days and The Wedding Planner.
Eventually, he made a conscious decision to stop starring in them. He explained to Hosking that he wasn’t getting offered the dramatic roles he wanted, so he told his agent he didn’t want any.
“Four months go by, no rom-coms. This one comes in with a $8 million offer. I’m like no, I don’t want to do it. He comes back with a $10 million offer, and I said no, I don’t want to do it. I read it, it was a good script, but I don’t want to do it.
“They came back with $12 million. I pause – I had a bit of a ellipsis before I said no.
“They came back with $14-$15 million. I said, let me see that script again.
“I read that script again, and I said, you know what, it’s better. Mind you, it’s the exact same script as the original, but at 14 million, it was better.”
However, he stuck to his guns, and says that showed Hollywood that he was really done with those movies. It meant he went two years without any work as he “unbranded”, allowing him to become a new McConaughey.
“I was down in Texas holding out and raising a newborn son and falling in love with the woman who was my wife, trying to hold the line and waiting until this desert’s over and I’ll find the water.”
The book tour is being conducted entirely virtually, with McConaughey and his family - including his wife, Camilla, and their three children - hiding themselves away in their home in Austin, Texas in what he describes as a “hard-core lockdown”.
“We have one family we see every couple of weeks and right after all of us get tested.”
It's a heightened level of security at contrast with the approach taken by many Americans, including in Texas. McConaughey, who has born in the state and has lived there much of his life, says there have been plenty of protests and pushbacks against the restrictions. McConaughey puts that down to Austin being a hospitality town, but the fight is spread across Texas.
Asked if America is a deeply divided country, McConaughey simply said “yes”, putting that down to the Covid crisis coming at the same time as an election year.
 “Many of us are clinging to the extremes to have some sense of ‘I have a stance now’. A lot of it is ‘I’m not even sure what I’m for, but I know what I’m against’.”
He says that he hopes that the country makes it through the...

Of all the things the government has had trouble with; the one thing I thought went pretty well, turns out to be the biggest ongoing headache: the wage subsidy.
Tuesday’s edition was the “revelation” around companies such as McDonalds and Coca Cola.
I only use the word ‘revelation’ to carry on the verbal hysteria some of the media seem  obsessed in using around who and who hasn’t paid back their chunk of change they took - according to the aggrieved and angry, under false pretences.
Of course there were no false pretences. If you closed your doors and your sales dropped to a certain extent, you qualified for money to save jobs.
Did those jobs get saved? Yes they did, the system worked.
The argument at the time was the rules were simple because they needed to get the money out the door fast and indeed out it went at a rate of knots. $13 billion, massive numbers of jobs were supported because of it.
Tuesday’s hyperbole involves McDonalds, Asahi, Tesla and Coca Cola. For convenience sake they were labelled as “international giants”
The fact they’re local, employing local people, paying local tax at local head offices was conveniently forgotten for the headline would not have screamed quite so loud.
They join the likes of the Warehouse and various other large operators who took the money, may or may not have laid people off, but committed the more generalised crime of being perceived to be rich and therefore able to pay the bills themselves.
Companies that have since reported profits have been targeted too - how can you profit and still get tax payer money?
The answer in all these cases is simple: because there was one rule. Did your business nose dive as a result of the lockdown? Yes or no.
There was no rule that said, by the way, are you loaded so the subsidy is pocket change for you?
Equally, profits reported are annual. The lockdown was limited to a small period of time. The money made was made in another part of the year when doors were open and life was normal.
Now some people say Briscoe’s have decided to pay their money back. Good on them - if they feel good about it brilliant. But that doesn’t mean the rest should, or have to.
Any more than just because you happen to be a local version of a multinational, someone in London or Atlanta should foot the bills of someone in Wellington.
If you’re obsessed with waste, let me line up a series of examples for you sometime.
Starting with the winter warmer payment made to people whether they need it or not. Or the $100 million just last week to marae reconstruction from a slush fund called the PGF - now disowned and dismantled.
There is plenty of waste if you want to see it. The wage subsidy doesn’t fit the charge. The wage subsidy had one job, and it did it.

In Australia, the Victorian government is reportedly considering using GPS trackers to help monitor returned travellers when the state starts accepting international flights again.
The electronic monitoring devices would be used to make sure some overseas travellers were isolating at home when they returned to Australia, The Age reports.
A senior Health Department official and a government spokeswoman told the newspaper that talks were underway in both Victoria's Justice and Health departments to assess the merits of GPS tracking wristbands.
It's not expected that the trackers will replace hotel quarantine programme entirely with talks underway with arrangements being made to restart the programme.
The Age reported that Premier Daniel Andrews was personally involved in the discussions as Victoria comes under pressure to start accepting travellers from overseas again.
Victoria's hotel quarantine was overhauled and largely shut down in July when it was revealed it had seeded a second wave of coronavirus that has led to 20,000 infections and 800 deaths.
The state's programme hasn't taken any new overseas arrivals – other than those with an exemption such as health and maritime workers – since an inquiry was announced in June, but some hotels had been providing quarantine for vulnerable community members who cannot safely isolate at home.
It comes as the Hotel Quarantine Board of Inquiry chaired by retired judge Jennifer Coate prepares to hold an extraordinary sitting after emails emerged that had not been disclosed to the inquiry.
Coate will use Tuesday's sitting to outline her next steps, which could see the November 6 final report deadline pushed back.
The inquiry has already resulted in two senior state government figures resigning from their positions – Health Minister Jenny Mikakos and Department of Premier and Cabinet secretary Chris Eccles.



The Age also reported Victorian officials were in talks with the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee, which was composed of all state and territory chief health officers and chaired by Australia's Chief Medical Officer, about using the GPS devices.



It comes after 65 travellers from New Zealand entered Victoria last week after a travel bubble opened without hotel quarantine requirements between the transtasman neighbours.
Victoria's Department of Health and Human Services has contacted 55 of the 65 travellers to make sure they were aware of the state's delicate coronavirus predicament.

The Silver Ferns hit the netball court for the first time since January this evening.
They face New Zealand A in the Cadbury Series at Palmerston North.
Coach Dame Noeline Taurua welcomes a contest.
"We've been running really hard over the last couple of days, so I've been heartened by what I've been able to seen. We've done enough work, and now we have to put it out on court."
She says it's an ideal contest.
"NZ A are going to give it to us, and that couldn't be better for us as we prep into England next week." 
The national under-21 and men's sides also face off.
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Some Australian states are angry about arriving New Zealand travellers, but other states are rolling out the red carpet.
South Australia has joined New South Wales and the Northern Territory in the one-way travel bubble.
It means New Zealanders can travel to Adelaide via Sydney, but will still need to quarantine when they return to New Zealand, at their own cost.
South Australia Tourism Commission local manager Stacey Kerr told Mike Hosking the state is in a good position to allow travel with New Zealand.
She says like New Zealand, South Australia went hard and early, and it has now gone several months without community transmission.
Victoria and Western Australia are still asking New Zealanders to keep out.
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A challenging year ahead for beef and sheep farmers.
Beef and Lamb New Zealand's New Season Outlook is predicting an overall decline in sheepmeat and beef export receipts in the next year.
Chief insights officer Jeremy Baker says they're expecting a decline of around 15 per cent in lamb exports and about nine per cent in beef and veal revenue.
“That will feed through to a reduction in on farm profit of around 26 per cent.”
Baker says global uncertainty caused by Covid-19 has taken the top end of prices out.
“Things like the food service industry around the world isn't operating the way it used to, so those top prices are no longer available at the level they were.”
Baker says there's also been an impact from the drought - with total volumes dropping as well.
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A New Zealand fishing company says it's prioritising the health of its foreign employees.
Eleven international fishermen have tested positive for Covid-19 in Christchurch's Sudima MIQ, with another 14 cases under investigation. 
Sealord chief executive Doug Paulin says the main thing for his company is to follow up on the health of the individuals involved.
He told Mike Hosking Sealord is making sure the individuals involved are healthy,  and the economic position of his company isn't a priority at this time.
Of the 440 foreign fishermen in isolation, 110 are due to work on Sealord boats.
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An angry President Donald Trump came out swinging Monday against Dr. Anthony Fauci, the press and polls that show him trailing Democrat Joe Biden in key battleground states in a disjointed closing message two weeks out from Election Day.
On the third day of a western campaign swing, Trump was facing intense pressure to turn around his campaign, hoping for the type of last-minute surge that gave him a come-from-behind victory four years ago. But his inconsistent message, another rise in virus cases and his attacks on experts like Fauci could undermine his final efforts to appeal to voters outside his most loyal base.
“I’m not running scared," Trump told reporters before taking off for Tucson, Arizona, for his fifth rally in three days. "I think I’m running angry. I’m running happy and I’m running very content 'cause I’ve done a great job.”
His aggressive travel comes as Trump plays defense in states he won four years ago, though the president insisted he was confident as he executed a packed schedule despite the pandemic.
“We’re going to win," he told campaign staff on a morning conference call from Las Vegas. He went on to acknowledge that he "wouldn’t have told you that maybe two or three weeks ago," referring to the days when he was hospitalized with COVID-19. But he said he felt better now than at any point in 2016. “We’re in the best shape we’ve ever been,” he said.
Seeking to shore up the morale of his staff amid growing private concerns that he is running out of time to make up lost ground, Trump blasted his government's own scientific experts as too negative, even as his handling of the pandemic that has killed nearly 220,000 Americans remains a central issue to voters.
“People are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots," Trump said of the government's top infectious disease expert. “Every time he goes on television, there’s always a bomb. But there’s a bigger bomb if you fire him. But Fauci’s a disaster."
At a rally in Prescott, Arizona, Trump assailed Biden for pledging to heed the advice of scientific experts, saying dismissively that his rival “wants to listen to Dr. Fauci."
The doctor is both respected and popular, and Trump's rejection of scientific advice on the pandemic has already drawn bipartisan condemnation.
At his rally, Trump also ramped up his attacks on the news media, singling out NBC's Kristen Welker, the moderator of the next presidential debate, as well as CNN for aggressively covering a pandemic that is now infecting tens of thousands of Americans every day.
Fauci, in an interview with CBS's “60 Minutes” that aired Sunday, said he was not surprised that Trump contracted the virus after he held a series of large events with few face coverings.
“I was worried that he was going to get sick when I saw him in a completely precarious situation of crowded, no separation between people, and almost nobody wearing a mask,” Fauci said of the president.
Biden was off the campaign trail Monday, but his campaign praised Fauci and criticized Trump for “reckless and negligent leadership” that "threatens to put more lives at risk.”
“Trump’s closing message in the final days of the 2020 race is to publicly mock Joe Biden for trusting science and to call Dr. Fauci, the leading public health official on COVID-19, a ‘disaster’ and other public health officials ‘idiots,'" the campaign said.
Monday's professed confidence in victory stood in contrast to some of Trump's other public comments in recent days reflecting on the prospect that he could lose.
“Could you imagine if I lose my whole life? What am I going to do?" he asked a rally crowd last week in Macon, Georgia. "I’m not going to feel so good. Maybe I’ll have to leave the country. I don’t know.”
Biden, meanwhile, was in Delaware for several days of preparation ahead of Thursday's final presidential debate. His running mate, California Sen. Kamala Harris, returned to the campaign...