The Mike Hosking Breakfast

The total number of deaths in New Zealand or Australia hasn't risen because of Covid-19,  because hardly anyone's caught the flu this year.
New research shows England, Wales and Spain had the highest numbers of excess deaths as a result of the virus.
Study author and Imperial College London professor Majid Ezzati says New Zealand and Australia have had fewer deaths, because we managed to contain the first wave of the virus.
He says that meant deaths, caused by Covid-19 and other conditions, didn't increase.
Ezzati hopes UK’s second wave is smaller than the first, but agrees the cases are certainly on the rise.

The Green party's latest announcement for students is coming under scrutiny.
The tertiary education policy includes a universal allowance for all full time students, working up to a guaranteed minimum income of $325 per week.
Public transport costs would be halved, or completely free for students with a Community Services Card.
Universities New Zealand director Chris Whelan told Mike Hosking it may move a few votes, but it won't help students who've lost part time jobs, and need that money now.
He says about 60 percent of students use part time work to pay for their accommodation.
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Coronavirus infections are surging again in the region of northern Italy where the pandemic first took hold in Europe, renewing pressure on hospitals and health care workers.
At Milan’s San Paolo Hospital, a ward dedicated to COVID-19 patients and outfitted with breathing machines reopened over the weekend, a sign that the city and the surrounding Lombardy region is entering another emergency phase of the pandemic.
The region was the hardest hit area of Italy in the spring, when Italy spent weeks with the world's highest reported virus-related death toll before being overtaken by the United States. For the medical personnel in Lombardy who fought the virus the first time around, the long-predicted rebound came too soon.
“On a psychological level, I have to say I still have not recovered,’’ said nurse Cristina Settembrese, referring to the period in March and April when the region accounted for one-third of Italy's confirmed cornavirus cases and nearly half of Italy's COVID-19 deaths.
“In the last five days, I am seeing many people who are hospitalized who need breathing support," Settembrese said. “I am reliving the nightmare, with the difference that the virus is less lethal.”
Months after Italy eased one of the globe’s strictest lockdowns, the country on Wednesday posted its highest daily number of new cases with 7,332 — surpassing the previous high of 6,557 that was recorded during the virus's most deadly phase in March.
Lombardy is again leading the nation in case numbers, an echo of the traumatic spring months when ambulance sirens pierced the silence of stilled cities.
The Italian government is eager to avoid another nationwide lockdown to protect the country's economy but has not ruled out closing cities or provinces.
Increased testing is partially responsible for the latest round of high case numbers, and many of the individuals who have tested positive are asymptomatic. So far, Italy’s daily COVID-19 mortality figures remain significantly below the spring heights, hovering around 40 in recent days. That compares with the high of 969 dead reported on one day in late March.
In response to the current outbreak, Premier Giuseppe Conte’s government tightened nationwide restrictions twice inside a week. Starting Thursday, Italians are prohibited from playing casual pickup sports, bars and restaurants face a midnight curfew, and private celebrations in public venues are banned. Masks are mandatory outdoors as of last week.
But there is also growing concern among doctors that Italy squandered the gains it made during its 10-week lockdown and didn’t move quickly enough to reimpose restrictions. Concerns persist that the rising stress on hospitals will force scheduled surgeries and screenings to be postponed — creating a parallel health emergency, as happened in the spring.
Italy is not the only European country seeing a resurgence in confirmed virus cases. French President Emmanuel Macron announced Wednesday that 18 million people living in nine regions of France, including in Paris, will have a curfew starting Saturday through Dec. 1 in an effort to curb new infections.
Macron also reinstated a nationwide state of health emergency that had ended three months ago. France has a total of 798,000 confirmed cases and nearly 33,000 deaths, while COVID-19 patients occupy a third of intensive care unit beds nationwide.
“We won’t go to restaurants after 9 p.m., we won’t see friends, we won’t party, because that’s how to pass on the virus,” Macron said during a during a televised interview.
Italy so far is faring better than its neighbors this time around. Italy’s cases per 100,000 residents have doubled in the last two weeks to nearly 87 — a rate well below countries like Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Spain and Britain that are seeing between around 300 to around 500 per 100,000. Those countries have also started to impose new restrictions.
This time,...

Springboks players remain in the dark whether they will be departing for the Rugby Championship in Australia on Saturday.
Yesterday South Africa Rugby were given 48 hours to decide on its involvement in the tournament amid growing concerns that the Springboks will withdraw from the first few rounds of the competition.
According to the Daily Telegraph, the world champions are set to withdraw from the first three matches of the Rugby Championship, leaving organisers scrambling to add a Barbarians team to ensure the four-team competition goes ahead later this month.
South African rugby journalist Brenden Nel told the Mike Hosking Breakfast on Newstalk ZB that it seems 'very unlikely'.
"I suppose you can't really say until they officially announce it but everything points to the fact that they won't be going," he told Mike Hosking.
"There are trying for one last ditch to shift dates and make it somehow so the South Africans can come. We were on a press conference today with the Bulls and we asked Duane Vermeulen and he said nobody has even spoken to them about the Rugby Championship just yet. If the players don't even know…they would have to be on a plane on Saturday night to begin quarantine so that seems very unlikely," Nel said.
South Africa are only into week two of their domestic competition while their New Zealand and Australian counterparts have completed full domestic competitions.
"The players are pretty underdone and would be at a significant disadvantage with New Zealand and Australia playing domestic seasons and Bledisloe tests. The whole thing of being world champions and the brand taking a knock – they couldn't actually lose quite badly and that wouldn't be great. That's seen people favour a decent domestic competition and go from there," Nel said.
"The one thing that counts in South Africa's favour is they hopefully have the Lions tour next year and they have just re-signed with one of the major banks as a sponsor and looking to re-sign with a jersey sponsor pretty soon. So things look pretty positive on the income side of things. Whether they can survive missing some decent TV cash from this tournament is anyone's guess."
The Telegraph reported yesterday that the Springboks would be available for the final three rounds of the event, with an "alternative team" being chased for the first three rounds, with both the Barbarians and Australia A being speculated as possible fillers.
Sanzaar and Rugby Australia told the Telegraph that they were unaware of any contingency plans.
Following a conference call between the Sanzaar bosses, the member unions have agreed to provide South Africa Rugby with an additional 48 hours to finalise discussions about the Springboks' participation in the Rugby Championship.
This will now delay the scheduled departure of the Springboks from South Africa to Australia.
Sanzaar will provide an update on the resolution of these discussions and a timetable for the Springboks' participation in the tournament in the coming days.
Springboks coach Rassie Erasmus has previously expressed concerns about the welfare of his players, who haven't had much preparation due to the Covid-19 pandemic ahead of the competition.
The Bledisloe Cup fixtures between Australia and New Zealand on Saturday 31 October and Saturday 7 November in Sydney and Brisbane, are unaffected and will go ahead as scheduled.
All Blacks assistant coach John Plumtree suggested yesterday that the Springboks would not make the trip to Australia for the start of the tournament.
"The disappointing thing was that they couldn't get their Currie Cup going quick enough," he said. "The longer that got delayed, the harder it was always going to be for them to get match hardened, match ready. I guess that was one of the major contributing factors.

"They're the world champions as well. For them to come down here, if they don't feel like they're ready,...

Jacinda Ardern has asked for a review of a decision to reject a UK family from entering New Zealand on humanitarian grounds after their son was killed at sea by a speedboat.
On Saturday, the Weekend Herald reported that Barbara Genda and Harry Jarman had been refused an exemption by the Ministry of Health (MOH) to enter New Zealand's maritime border.
Their 14-year-old son Eddie was killed on August 9, after he was hit by a speedboat on Moorea Island, near Tahiti, while checking an anchor.
The accident is the subject of a manslaughter investigation.
The family is now held up indefinitely in French Polynesia, trying to sell their yacht and return home to the UK before the cyclone season arrives.
On Monday, the Prime Minister raised the plight of the UK family while discussing the maritime border exemption with Newstalk ZB's Mike Hosking.
"I did see a case recently which I thought actually on humanitarian grounds, you know I thought a reasonable case had been made," Ardern said.
"I'm going to go back and look at that one, that was the case of a family who had a death on their yacht."
The MOH subsequently told the Herald they were reviewing the family's case "as a matter of urgency".
The MOH said they were still finalising what options, if any, might be available to the family in order to enter New Zealand via the maritime border with their yacht.
However, the MOH said they had not yet been able to get in contact with Genda, Jarman and their 13-year-old daughter Amelie.
Genda said yesterday it "comes as a surprise" the Prime Minister had intervened on their behalf, but at the moment they did not have regular internet connection and had not heard from the Government.
The family are trying to sell their $1 million yacht - the only home they have - in order to return home to the UK and buy a house.

Eddie Jarman, 14, was hit by a speedboat and killed off Moorea Island in French Polynesia on August 9. His family have been rejected entry into NZ border under humanitarian grounds. Photo / Supplied
Genda said it was almost impossible to sell their 17-metre yacht, September AM, in French Polynesia.
Auckland yacht brokers 36 degrees had urged the family to make the "utmost effort" to bring their boat to New Zealand because there were prospective buyers here - but none that could fly to Tahiti to view their yacht.
The family also obtained a letter of support from the British High Commission assuring the MOH that Genda and her daughter could return to the UK within days of arriving in New Zealand.
Yet the MOH refused the family from West Sussex's application on October 2.
The family had been on the round-the-world sailing trip since January 2019, after selling their house to buy September AM.
Genda says the family need the capital from the sale of the yacht to return home to the UK, buy a home and try to restart their lives.
"In the whole uncertainty of our life ahead of us without Eddie, at least one certainty was we could go to New Zealand and very likely sell the boat and move on," Genda said last week.
"Because of that rejection we will live in that uncertainty, and we live on a boat that reminds us of him every day.
"Every time I go out in the cockpit and look over I remember the scene, seeing my son floating in the water unconscious and probably dead by that time, being dragged by a woman who recovered him."
The MOH's refusal letter to the family's border entry application said director general of health Ashley Bloomfield took into consideration the fact they had already managed to repatriate Eddie's body to the UK.
The family flew back to Sussex to bury Eddie in August, but had to return to their yacht, September AM, with their daughter to navigate cyclone season and try to sell it.
The MOH extended their condolences to the family for their loss and said "due consideration was given to their...

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s new strategy for combating COVID-19 seemed to unravel Wednesday as regional leaders chose their own paths and the mayors of the cities facing the toughest restrictions accused Johnson of using the crisis to divide them for political advantage.
Fearing Johnson hadn't gone far enough, two regions in the United Kingdom chose to impose tougher measures than the prime minister. Northern Ireland said it would close schools, pubs and restaurants to slow the spread of the virus, while Wales announced it would not allow in people from hot spots in other parts of the U.K.
As Liverpool, the only area that has been placed under England's toughest restrictions, prepared for the new rules to take effect, revelers spilled into the streets as bars closed Tuesday night amid fears they may not reopen again until spring.
Social media showed the images, including one video of a police car slowly moving through the crowd as partiers banged on the side of the car.
“These pictures shame our city, attacking our brave police officers is unacceptable," Liverpool City Mayor Joe Anderson tweeted. “Our health service is creaking, 300 in hospital and 30 people dead in week. Ignoring these facts is why we are in Tier 3 measures.”
The leader of greater Liverpool's regional government criticized Johnson’s handling of the crisis. The government refused until last week to work with local leaders in the fight against COVID-19, and now it is trying to use Liverpool’s acceptance of tough new restrictions as a way to force other cities into doing the same, Steve Rotheram said during a video news conference with Andy Burnham, leader of the Greater Manchester Combine Authority.
“We’re not going to stand by while the government plays politics with us,” Rotheram said. “We’re not going to stand by and not do anything about holding the government to account.”
The wrangling came as England’s new three-tiered system of restrictions took effect across the country. Health officials met Wednesday to discuss whether other areas, including Manchester and Lancashire, should join Liverpool in the highest risk tier, which would bring with it additional measures such as closing pubs and banning social gatherings with other households.
Greater Manchester’s regional government on Wednesday rejected efforts to move it into the highest tier, saying infection rates and levels of hospitalization in the metropolitan area are much lower than those in Liverpool.
Burnham said the U.K. government was trying to force local leaders into making the hard decisions about which businesses to shut down without providing enough financial assistance to mitigate the economic impacts. Given the government’s current offer, the majority of regional leaders would prefer a short national lockdown to the tiered approach, Burnham said.
“We’ve gone from an approach that was about ‘whatever it takes to get the country through this’ to a penny-pinching approach to this pandemic where the cost will fall very much on people in the real world whose businesses are already close to the brink,″ he said.
Britain already has Europe’s deadliest outbreak, with more than 43,000 confirmed deaths, and Northern Ireland has the highest infection rate in the U.K.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, Northern Ireland has recorded 1,156 cases of COVID-19 per 100,000 people, compared with 995 in Wales, 960 in England and 755 in Scotland.
In the U.K.’s system of devolved authority, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales control their own health policies and therefore their response to the pandemic. The U.K. government decides the policy for England, but says it is coordinating with the others.
But Welsh First Minister Mark Drakeford said he was forced to act because Johnson had ignored requests to ban travel from areas with high infection rates. He said it wasn’t an issue about the border, but a “matter of fairness.''

THE BEST BITS IN A SILLIER PACKAGE (from Thursday's Mike Hosking Breakfast) Stop Leaving It To Somebody Else/Like Singapore Does It/Can't Take Your Vote Back/Olds VS Greens/It's a Long Story

It's not just obesity of course, it's all around us. It's attitudes, lifestyles, ways of living, outlooks, and for some it's who we are.
Hasn’t Judith Collins poked the bear good and proper? And god bless her for doing it.
She has entered the sacred ground of excuse making, and the industry that has grown as a result of its acceptance. In fact, in many cases not just acceptance, but full and open embrace.
There isn't much left in life that you can't find someone else to blame if you so choose. It includes your lifestyle, your income, your parenting, your skills, your education, who you married ,why you're in court, why you are large, why you are angry, and why you drink too much.
There is the well-established series of groups and departments who espouse your outcome, feel your pain, and advocate for your rehabilitation. There is money and services readily and increasingly available to sooth your brow, dress your wounds, offer your excuses, or fight your corner.
Race is often used. If you're from the wrong race you can have special rules for things like medical school. You can put today's troubles right by blaming past wrongs. There is a whole tribunal for that and a lot of lawyers paid for by others.  
If you're short on housing not only can you join a queue, you might actually be given a special deal. And now under the latest government's rules, once you're in, you don’t have to leave, which takes that welfare net and makes it a nice, warm, lifelong blanket.
Why would you work hard, improve yourself, shake yourself off, and shape yourself up, if it's easier not to?
Pre Covid the jobseeker roll was up 15,000 a year in an economy that couldn’t find workers. How does that even make sense? Because if you couldn't find work that was okay.
And because this "it's not your fault” mentality has spread and eventually anchored itself in our psyche, there are generations of kids that grow up knowing nothing else, and therefore expecting nothing else.
If you're obese, you can blame Mum because she was obese and call it intergenerational. It's easier than exercising and learning about nutrition.
NCEA, like sport, is not about pass and fail. It's about turning up and "achieving” or getting a nice warm Merit.
We have money services, shoulders to cry on. They're all designed to absolve you of your responsibility and self-responsibility. We have the lost art of owning something yourself, of giving yourself an upper cut ,of growing some balls, or a backbone.
The fact Collins got so much heat shows you just how soft, lost, and reliant we have become.

National Party leader Judith Collins says she's surprised her comments on obesity have turned into a hot topic in the lead-up to election.
Speaking to NewstalkZB's Mike Hosking this morning, Collins said the reaction had surprised her.
"I was simply saying people do need to know what to do and need to take personal responsibility.
"It's not that hard...the science is there."

Collins said professional boxer-turned health guru Dave "The Brown Buttabean" Letele was "a bit of a character."
Letele is among community voices who have condemned Collins' comments surrounding obesity that it was not an epidemic and that it was on the individual.
Letele is now well-known for his work to tackle obesity within the Pacific and Māori communities particularly in South Auckland and West Auckland.
Collins acknowledged that the work Letele is doing in the community is exactly what she was calling on people to do.
On the discussion around the Green Party's wealth tax policy and the possibility of a Labour-Green coalition, Collins said: "We know what their fall back is always - which is to tax."
"They can't grow the economy because they have no plans to do it."
Collins hit out at the media, saying the treatment of Labour leader Jacinda Ardern meeting large crowds at shopping malls compared to the treatment of her walkabout in Ponsonby - when claims of a rent-a-crowd of National supporters were brought in to make her look better - was "pathetic".
"If I'm out there talking about policy, I'm not gonna be at the mall."
Collins said at times she felt like she was speaking to press secretaries for Ardern instead of reporters.
She said there needed to be more diversity in the press gallery.
Come Saturday, Collins said she wanted to see Labour below her.
"I hope that they land in a position below us, actually, with Act."
She said she still believed National could win the election - but said that was why they needed people to give their party vote to National.
"Yeah, we can [win], actually. But it is very hard."
Collins said she believed the Act Party would get over the line and also thought the Māori Party would get at least one seat.

If you put more weight on numbers than theories, then this Covid thing is far from the end of the world.
It's important to differentiate as more data comes to hand. 
They said back in March armageddon was on its way. 
But they said that because they were guessing, who the hell knew what was going to unfold.
The longer this has gone, the more we know and here's what we know as of this morning.
Housing is fine, it's more than fine.
Spending is back, again, stats out yesterday show spending is up 24 % over the 3 months to September, obviously that’s pent up, it's people using money that would have gone overseas or they couldn’t spend in lock down.
Jobs are up provincially 9 of 15 regions have more jobs now than last year.
Spending intention is also up, as we sort out whether we were losing our shirts or not, those that aren't, have settled into a new normal.
People are looking to spend and continue to spend in the next 3 to 6 months .
What we appear to have is a split recession, tourism, planes, borders, hospitality and some events badly damaged or finished.
The flip side is a lot of us are untouched.
And typical of recessions the counter factual to the damage, those that have boomed and there seem plenty having a good time.
It's still way too early to see whether it's settled.
Whether companies still with doors open will try to see out xmas then collapse, a lot of restructuring is going on. The Warehouse, Marsden, Tiwai, Glenbrook, but much of that isn't Covid related.
And there is the change that appears permanent, downtowns in trouble as suburbs grow.
Provincial New Zealand taking on a sort of renaissance as people move to fresh air and space and zoom to the office.
Of course the in escapable truth is so much of the damage we have not seen yet, is because we have borrowed eye watering amounts of money and the country is in a mess of debt.
And it will haunt us for decades, but there is enough there i think to believe it could have been a lot worse.
And as tough as it is for those who have gone under, lost work or been stressed by uncertainty, large swathes are still ok, will be ok, it will just be different.
In every dark day there is opportunity, and as each day passes I am increasingly convinced that the line often used, the worst is yet to come, may not actually be true.