The Mike Hosking Breakfast

The aviation sector is crossing its fingers for two-way travel between New Zealand and Australia, before Christmas.
New South Wales and the Northern Territory will open to New Zealanders on Friday week.
Qantas is reporting steady sales of mostly one-way flights to Australia, while Flight Centre says website views of New Zealand to Australia flights have doubled.
Aviation Coalition co-chair Kevin Ward told Mike Hosking it's positive news, but it's nothing on the sales we can expect when New Zealand opens up to Australian states as well.
He says quarantine-free both ways is the magic step which we need to take in the run up to Christmas.
Ward says it's crucial that New Zealand opens up to Australia as well -- but the Government is right to seek safety assurances first.
He says opening up travel before it's safe,  could lead to a fear of travel, like what's developed in the Northern Hemisphere.
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I tell you what, I reckon the polling industry could do itself a major favour and launch a fairly significant branding campaign to try and educate us as to how their industry works, whether it is remotely accurate, worth dealing with, and whether we should be giving it the sort of coverage we do, especially around election time.
Firstly, there are things like TVNZ's Vote Compass which is not polling as most of us would understand it. It is simply a tool you can dabble with as many times as you like. It is representative of nothing, and it's certainly not a poll or a snapshot of anything other than those who want to fill in questionnaires. Nothing wrong with that, just not a poll.
A poll, for what it's worth to me, is a random sample of at least 1000 called out of the blue and where information is gleaned. It is statistically representative of the country's population.
Horizon Research, which are often quoted as a poll ,entice you to join, they offer prizes to join, and you're part of a club. That's  not polling either, but they would argue it is. The only people joining are those who can be bothered, motivated, or have the time. That’s not truly representative of the population, their lives, and outlooks.
Then there are the polls from vested interests of which we have two this week on cannabis. And guess what the results are?
Colmar Brunton and Reid Research, who work for TVNZ and Newshub, had broadly similar results on cannabis. The no vote is leading by quite a margin. So much so, even if the undecided voters all went yes, yes still wouldn’t win.
Those to me are proper polls. Participants don’t join, the purchaser of the poll has no vested interest.
And yet Helen Clark and her foundation and a therapeutics company have a poll each this week also on cannabis with, remarkably, the yes vote leading. How is it possible to get the result that would just happen to suit your client? And a result the opposite of the other polls in the market?
There are so many results, numbers, and indications that don’t even come close to matching up or showing a trend that the punter is surely left bewildered.
We need a standard, a recognised, accepted, and regulated methodology in which the starting point is always the same. Because if we all start in the same place, hopefully the vast variation disappears, polls that aren't polls are no longer pedaled as polls, and those who want to buy numbers to suit their cause will, at least, be discouraged knowing they're taking a risk in shelling out money to find something they don't want to see.
Yes, we could say bugger the polls, and we have. And yet they are an industry, they drive debate ,they shift mood, they win or lose races, and they shouldn’t, especially not if they're not legit.

THE BEST BITS IN A SILLIER PACKAGE (from Thursday's Mike Hosking Breakfast) Polls Just Totally Useless/We're Never Coming Back/You Can't Fight Social Media/Corden's Best Work/Next New Nobel

Used to being a one-man show in Parliament, the Act leader is expected to lead a number of largely unknown candidates next term, with recent polling putting Act on 8 per cent (10 MPs).
"We are taking each day as it comes," Seymour said of that position. "If Act can play a role in holding all of them to account out there, that is a real positive."
Hosking asked about Act Party's candidate list, and whether any people set to enter Parliament could be trusted to perform.
Seymour said there was a strong vetting process, and they would be great MPs. The general public didn't yet know some of them, he said, but that was to be expected given they weren't yet MPs: "Nobody knew who Margaret Thatcher was."
Act didn't have bottom lines in any post-election negotiations. Even large parties couldn't guarantee their policy would survive negotiations, he said.
"If you vote for Act, then you are getting a push towards a more aggressive, more Taiwan-esque approach to health...you are getting a more aggressive approach to debt...there are other issues around the RMA, charter schools...firearm laws."
Seymour said he had worked with five National leaders, and they were all good day-to-day managers, and keen to stay in power. Act was different because it pushed new thinking.
"That is Act's role - to bring ideas to the table, to drive change."
What did the last Government do that he was impressed with? Abortion law reform, Seymour said. However, he ruled out any governing agreement with Labour, and insisted a National-Act coalition would happen, "by a whisker".

How different would it have been if NZ First wasn't in Government? Shaw said the Government would have been able to move faster in a lot of areas.
"It would have been a more coherent government."
Shaw said the work of the last government showed how MMP could work.
"I have issues with the way NZ First conducted themselves, at times...but ultimately that's not the fault of the system."
The thing the Greens most wanted to get done that didn't happen? The capital gains tax.
Shaw said because Jacinda Ardern had ruled out a capital gains tax, the Greens had come up with the wealth tax proposal.
"The most likely outcome from this election is a Labour-Green government...most voters, when they cast their vote, are mindful of what the shape of that looks like.
"It is not unreasonable to assume what the shape of the next government looks like...the larger party forms the majority of the programme."
Shaw said the Greens had achieved an enormous amount over the last three years. His personal highlight was the zero carbon act.
His party was the party of long-term thinking.
Is tax love? "Tax is what we do to have a civilised society," Shaw responded.
Hosking asked if Shaw misunderstands farmers. The Greens co-leader said he was raised in the city, but his mother came from a farming country.
"But I get that there is a sense of grievance there, if you like. You won't find me being one of those people saying, farmers are bad or wrong...every sector has areas where we need to pull our socks up.
"I understand there's a narrative out there that the Greens hate farmers...it's not true."
It was important to build consensus.
"Farmers want clean rivers...they are the ones most vulnerable to climate change...we all want the same things. The question is, how do we get there."
Hosking asked about Taranaki, as a region where the transition away from fossil fuel industries wasn't going smoothly.
Shaw said it would take time, but there was time: "You want to give yourselves a long runway."
Hosking again asked about MMP, suggesting it didn't work. That was rejected by Shaw, but he agreed with Peters that the media still covered elections like it was first past the post.
Was a co-leader necessary? "For us it really works...we are the only party who are going to defy history and be as strong in the subsequent election as they were the one before...a vote for the Green Party is not a wasted vote."

Winston Peters is fighting for his party's survival as recent polling put NZ First well below the 5 per cent threshold, on about 1 per cent.
Peters was asked to rate the Coalition from 1-10, 10 being best - he gave it an 8. On the Covid response, he gave an 8 as well.
"We went early, we did not go hard enough in the context of getting the military in, using masks...but we still had a seriously, seriously good result...but we should never had the second break-out, in my view."
Peters said NZ was too conservative on moving towards measures like travel bubbles. The South Island could have linked up with places like Tasmania and the Cook Islands.
People were rightly fearful of Covid, but a collapsed economy was a huge threat too.
What was the thing he wanted that he couldn't get? Peters said his party wanted the military brought in from the start.
"I met with apathy on that."
He also wanted mask use mandated on public transport earlier.
Beyond Covid, Peters said the thing he wanted that he couldn't get was the need to seriously reform the economy.
"There are some values off-shore to do with work and savings, that we need to adopt in our country."
Asked what NZ First had prevented in government, Peters cited the scuppered Capital Gains Tax, and what he said was Labour's plans to "interfere with leases", which he likened to belonging in countries like Venezuela.
Peters said some people in Labour were great, but there were also "the tribalist type".
On the provincial growth fund, Peters said the fund had helped repair community centres like churches, council facilities and marae around the country.
"I'll tell you how dynamic it was...every Labour MP has tried to get to every opening, every National Party MP, every provincial MP."
The racing industry measures secured by NZ First were needed given the industry employs "up to 50,000 people" including casuals.
On the Pike River re-entry, Peters said he suspected bodies would be found.
Hosking asked about NZ First's low polling.
"Our historic place in New Zealand society has been to defend the vulnerable against extreme policies," Peters replied, saying this was more true than ever in the time of Covid-19.
Peters said the campaign had effectively been treated by the media as a first past the post campaign, despite the MMP system.
The NZ First leader said he knew about bottom-lines and negotiation, given his experience including as a lawyer - unlike other political leaders.



"I go in prepared to lose the whole lot.
"We have got a whole lot of lines we are keen to promote and push...we have a surge going on at the moment for NZ First - I feel it out in the streets and in the malls."
Hosking met that statement with laughter, and bet him $100 his party wouldn't get 5 per cent. That ended the interview.

Former Prime Minister Sir John Key has defended National's election campaign, saying Judith Collins is doing "really really well".
Key told Newstalk ZB's Mike Hosking this morning that some of the criticism Collins had faced was over small issues that did not have an impact on the electorate.
"I don't think too many voters are going to hold that against Judith," Key said - addressing the seemingly rent-a-crowd of National supporters in Ponsonby yesterday.
Key said every party - not just National - had supporters who always knew where the leadership was on any given day.


He said that sort of issue highlighted in the media was more of a "process issue" that blocked the main messages being put out by a certain party.
Key acknowledged that Jacinda Ardern's success or 'it' factor may have also had a lot to do with her being at the forefront during the Covid-19 response.
"The principle is, it is fundamentally easier when you are Prime Minister."
On the cannabis referendum, Key said he held strong views on the issue and he would personally be voting no.
Questions about Collins' leadership were raised when she promised an Auckland Council review, if National was elected, live on Newstalk ZB earlier this week.
National's council spokeswoman, Denise Lee, was not aware of that and sent an email that described Collins' announcement as a "highly problematic idea". The email was later leaked to media.
The National leader also came under fire yesterday when a walkabout with media in Auckland's Ponsonby saw them bump into a crowd of National supporters.
It raised speculation of a rent-a-crowd being planted to make the party look popular.
Last weekend, Collins was pictured offering a prayer at St Thomas Church in Tāmaki while out to vote with her husband David Wong-Tung.
Images of her kneeling at a pew resulted in claims of the leader seemingly politicising her faith - something she later refuted as she had not invited media to photograph her at that moment.
Collins has said she would remain in the role of leader if her party was unsuccessful come next Saturday.

A "deluded" child-led approach to teaching is to blame for New Zealand's declining educational performance, new research says.
The NZ Initiative report, New Zealand's Education Delusion, says NZ educators are deluded in thinking teachers should let children direct what they want to learn about.
It calls for a much more detailed curriculum specifying what children should learn at each level, and standardised national assessments to ensure they learn those things.
But Kiwi experts have hit back at the findings, saying prescriptive "Eurocentric" teaching practices risk ignoring the needs of indigenous communities.

Report author Briar Lipson says "It's too much of a lottery". Photo / Supplied
Report author Briar Lipson, a former British maths teacher who helped set up two charitable low-decile primary schools in London, says encouraging children to choose what they want to learn entrenches the differences that children start school with.
"It's too much of a lottery," she says.
"Students of unabridged Shakespeare are judged equally to those who study the lyrics of 'more relevant' artists like Tupac or David Bowie.
"Such deference to relevance explains why the NZ Curriculum exacerbates variations between classrooms and schools. Rather than having a narrowing effect, it intensifies inequity."
Lipson says New Zealand's educational outcomes have declined in parallel with the rise of child-led learning.
International surveys show NZ 10-year-olds' reading levels fell in 2016 to their lowest since the surveys started, and our 15-year-olds' reading and maths levels declined in every survey between 2000 and 2018.
In science, the 15-year-olds' scores were stable up to 2012 but plunged in 2015 and 2018.
"In reading and science, the average student's performance has fallen by the equivalent of about three terms' worth of schooling," Lipson writes.
"The drop was even worse in mathematics, where students lost the equivalent of nearly a year and a half's worth of schooling."
In contrast, Lipson says, England adopted a much more detailed curriculum in 2014 and international assessment scores were already improving.
Until the 1990s, New Zealand had a detailed syllabus prescribing what children had to learn in every subject.
But that changed to a much looser framework in 1993 and an even looser one in 2007.
In social studies, for example, children in senior primary school are now expected to "understand how people view and use places differently", as well as a more specific "understand how early Polynesian and British migrations to New Zealand have continuing significance for tangata whenua and communities".
Children are expected to learn these often-vague topics through their own "inquiry".
"Children might use the internet to research a topic, then report their findings to the class," Lipson writes.
She says this approach may work for children who already know something about the topic, but not for those who don't know where to start. She cites Professor John Hattie's research showing that inquiry-based teaching has an effect size that is far below direct instruction.
However Hattie, a former Auckland University professor now based in Melbourne, says there is "not one iota of evidence that NZ has slipped in the international assessments because it has adopted a child-centred philosophy".
"I have often lauded the NZ curriculum because (unlike the Australian one at about 2500 pages) it is brief (67 pages), it allows multiple opportunities for schools to choose the specifics ... it is rich in knowledge and invites a balanced approach to precious knowledge and competencies," he says.
Albany Senior High School principal Claire Amos says Lipson's view that the curriculum should prescribe Shakespeare rather than Tupac or Bowie is "Eurocentric".
"The danger of prescribing a powerful knowledge curriculum is about whose...

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has revealed a massive new program aimed at boosting Australia’s “jobs recovery”.

But while it has been designed to get more Aussies back to work, it will leave millions of us out in the cold.
The $4 billion JobMaker Hiring Credit will encourage businesses to hire younger Australians – and has been tailored to give those on JobSeeker who are aged between 16 and 35 a helping hand.
But it’s just the latest in a string of major government schemes to be rolled out during the coronavirus crisis – so if you’re confused about the new JobMaker plan as well as all the recent changes to JobKeeper and JobSeeker, here’s everything you need to know.
JOBMAKER
Mr Frydenberg revealed the JobMaker Hiring Credit during Tuesday’s Budget announcement, explaining there was “no economic recovery without a jobs recovery”, stressing the Budget was “all about jobs”.
Therefore, from tonight, the JobMaker program will come into effect to make younger employees more attractive to businesses.
The JobMaker hiring credit will be payable for up to 12 months and will be immediately available to employers who hire those on JobSeeker who are aged 16 to 35.
It will be paid at the rate of $200 per week for those aged under 30, and $100 per week for those aged between 30-35.
New hires must work for at least 20 hours a week, and all businesses except for the major banks will be eligible.
Treasury estimates that this will support around 450,000 jobs for young people.
Mr Frydenberg said it had been developed as young people had been “particularly hard hit” by “extensive” job losses during the coronavirus crisis.
“Having a job means more than earning an income,” he said.
“It means economic security. It means independence. It means opportunity.
“We can’t let this COVID recession take that away.”
To be eligible, young job seekers will have received the JobSeeker Payment, Youth Allowance (Other) or the Parenting Payment for at least one of the previous three months at the time of hiring.
Meanwhile, employers must prove they have increased their overall employment to receive the payment for up to 12 months for each position created.
To claim the JobMaker Hiring Credit, employers need to report their employees’ payroll information to the Australian Taxation Office through Single Touch Payroll.
JOBKEEPER
The JobKeeper wage subsidy was another measure introduced by the government to help keep Australians afloat during the pandemic.
It was originally worth $1500 a fortnight and open to any business that could prove a large reduction in overall turnover, with different criteria for small and large businesses.
But while it was extended for a further six months than originally planned, to March 28, 2021, it has also been significantly cut.
The rate of payments was slashed by $300 to $1200 a fortnight in late September for full-time employees who work more than 20 hours on average a week, while part-time staff who work less than 20 hours a week now get $750 per fortnight.
The eligibility criteria has also been tightened, and $30 billion was been earmarked for the new version of the scheme – dubbed “JobKeeper 2.0” – compared with a far more generous $70 billion for the initial program.
JobKeeper will be cut again on January 4, 2021 to $1000 or $650, depending on hours worked, and will be pulled completely on March 28, 2021.
In the 2020-21 Budget, JobKeeper is described as “one of the largest fiscal and labour market interventions in Australia’s history” which is estimated to cost $101.3 billion over 2019-20 and 2020-21 and is currently supporting around 3.5 million individuals, in over 900,000 businesses.
JOBSEEKER
The JobSeeker payments were doubled to $1100 a fortnight thanks to a special temporary $550 Coronavirus Supplement introduced to help those who found themselves out of work because of the pandemic.

ASB Classic tennis officials have expressed disappointment at the government's reasoning for turning down their plans for tournaments this summer.
The January events have been canned due to covid-19 with Megan Woods, the minister in charge of managed isolation, claiming the proposed bubble would include players, officials and fans.
In a statement, organisers say at no point was there any suggestion or request to have players and fans in such an arrangement.
Tournament director Karl Budge has had to bite his lip when asked who to blame for the decision to cancel this summer's ASB men's and women's tennis events.
Arguably the biggest annual international sporting events in the country have fallen victim to Covid-19 with the Government unwilling to approve Budge's quarantine plan.
Budge is disappointed but publicly is refusing to play the blame game.