The Mike Hosking Breakfast

It's hoped a new policy from Labour will keep our supermarkets honest.
The party wants to make sure Kiwis are paying fair prices for groceries, by pledging to start market studies into supermarkets if re-elected.  
Consumer New Zealand head of research Jessica Wilson told Mike Hosking when conducting price surveys, they find a lot of confusion around supermarket pricing.
She says some of it is deliberate.
"We find products on special so often, the special price is actually the regular price.”
Labour is pledging market studies into both supermarkets and building supplies if it's returned to power later this month.
Food and Grocery Council chief executive council Katherine Rich says it will be a valuable study because it's time we gathered such information.
She says for consumers one of the things the market study will do is assure them about where the costs are in their food and groceries.
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Boy, it's like you got to drag this lot kicking and screaming to the alter of common sense.
Scott Morrison yesterday said that South Australia and New South Wales was on the cusp of inviting us, New Zealanders, to be able to travel to those states with no quarantine.
Here comes the stinger, the arrangement initially will only be one way. The prospect, he said, of Australians being able to travel to New Zealand is further away.
Simple question. Why? Answer. Our government and its obsession with conservatism and fear.
We see the same in Singapore. We have been able to travel there quarantine free for weeks now. Sadly only 130 actually have, based on the simple issue that when you come back, you're stuck in quarantine. Same applies to vast swathes of the world, you can land in Europe and America and jump straight in your rental car.
Here's the madness, if you want to mount an argument that having spent a month in Italy, we, as a country, don’t want to take the risk, fair enough. But if you’ve been to the Cook Islands, Fiji, South Australia, New South Wales, or most of Australia outside Victoria, given the Covid level which is better, or certainly no worse, than ours, what on Earth is the problem?
As we've said Covid has changed, deaths are down, treatment has been changed as we have learned more, but the structures running the borders have not shifted since day one.
The concept of a bubble has come and gone, and has been dangled enticingly. Remember for a while there, it seemed possible that by July or August the Pacific Islands and Australia might be available quarantine free. Here we are in October and we are no closer.
There is talk. But talk isn't a ticket, and it's not a trip. And as each day passes it gets more absurd. Countries and regions with no Covid, or no Covid worse than us, are opening and travelling. What literally is the issue with us jumping on a plane tomorrow to Sydney, spending three days for a meeting or a break, and coming back and carrying on like we have been to Queenstown?
What happened in Sydney that didn’t happen anywhere else in New Zealand? What happens over the Tasman that doesn't happen here? Their numbers are minimal, in some cases better than ours, what on Earth is the problem, apart from attitude?
I feel sorry for Morrison. He's not only had to deal with recalcitrant Premiers who share a similar love of fear like our lot.
But now he looks across the Tasman, the trade, the business, and the tourism. He's offering us a sense of freedom, a small snippet of new normality, but in reality, we are prisoners to our own government.
And they keep saying, for reasons I can't fathom, you can't go because it's too dangerous. Even now they say it, when it's plainly evidently for all to see that it isn't.

THE BEST BITS IN A SILLIER PACKAGE (from Friday's Mike Hosking Breakfast) Less Talk. More Travel/Nobody Watched/Mark the Week/So Over Little Things/No More Movies

Did we have a winner in Cleveland?
Come to that shortly, but Trump v Biden lived up to the hype.
The biggest loser was Chris Wallace who had a neigh on impossible job to contain the madness. The mistake that was made was setting segments with topics.
They started with the Supreme Court but barely covered it, as both candidates let rip at each other, the animosity took about three seconds to emerge.
Wallace threw his hands up, insisted he was the moderator, looked exasperated and generally failed to contain the scrap.
This, by the way wasn’t his fault, and I feel scared for the next two moderators.
Trump was Trump, he bullied his way, he cajoled. If you want a bulldozer in a debate, he’s your man.
Biden looked initially frustrated but used a clever tactic to stare down the camera and talked to ‘the folks at home’ a lot - probably the best thing he could have done.
In the Covid segment, Trump managed to take the death rate and what generally has been seen as a disaster and managed to turn it into an anti- Democrat rant over closed towns and states. He made a segment that could have gone badly seem remarkably successful.
This sort of stuff happened a lot. There was nuance and subtly in each of the so called segments but in reality both held their ground mainly.
Both made reasonable points, both made up for the fact there was no energy coming from an audience that under normal circumstances would have been all over it. As a scrap, it was good telly.
When Trump raised Burisma, Biden struggled, as did Wallace who clearly was over his job and I suspect wanted to go home.
He complained of the raised voices and the interruptions, and kept telling them about the change of segments and how each had two minutes uninterrupted.
No two minutes went uninterrupted, and I doubt there is a single person who could have told you what the segment was meant to be about.
They could have started any of the segments with any topic: oranges, supersonic aircraft, primates of Papua New Guinea, it didn’t matter. It took in a life of its own, each and every time.
Trump, in general, defended his record well, and he highlighted the Biden problems well. Biden was more defensive than offensive, and given the perceived weaknesses of the Trump administration, he could have done a lot more.
Trump called Biden on a lot of issues, many he came back well on, some he didn’t.
The value of the debate was you saw the two men in the same room going head to head under pressure, on their toes.
What they said was not unique and was nothing that hadn’t been seen or heard before separately, but eye ball to eye ball, it was gripping.
It was a slugfest, it was a heavyweight title fight.
Ultimately, no one got knocked down. Except Chris Wallace who was out for the count and concussed about 30 minutes in, and if he’s lucky he won’t remember a thing about it.
But on points, I think Trump got it. But like boxing, in calling Trump on points, that’s probably controversial. I doubt votes got swayed but like, I suspect millions, I’ll be back for round two in a couple of weeks.

Cardinal George Pell, who left the Vatican in 2017 to face child sexual abuse charges in Australia, returned to Rome on Wednesday to find a Holy See mired in the type of corruption scandal he worked to expose and clean up.
The 79-year-old Pell arrived at Rome's Leonardo da Vinci airport on a flight from Sydney wearing a blue surgical mask. He waved briefly to reporters before getting into a waiting car without making any comments.
The trip is his first back to Rome after he took a leave of absence as Pope Francis' finance czar in 2017 to face historic sexual abuse charges stemming from his time as the archbishop of Melbourne. After he was absolved by Australia's High Court in April, Pell said he wanted to return to Rome to clean out his Vatican apartment, but intended to make Sydney his home.
It wasn't immediately clear how long Pell would remain in the Vatican or what his agenda might involve. The Vatican didn't immediately say if he would meet with Francis. The pope never turned on Pell throughout the Australian court proceedings, keeping his job vacant for two years so as to not prejudge the outcome.
Pell arrived the same day that European anti-money laundering evaluators began a periodic visit to the Vatican. They, too, found a mounting financial scandal in the tiny city-state that already has cost a half-dozen people their jobs, including one of the Holy See's most powerful cardinals, Angelo Becciu.
Pell and Becciu had long clashed over the Australian's efforts to bring greater transparency and accountability to the Vatican's balance sheets.
The Council of Europe's Moneyval team will be checking the Vatican's compliance with international norms to fight money laundering and terror financing.
The Vatican submitted to the Moneyval evaluation process after it signed onto the 2009 EU Monetary Convention and in a bid to shed its image as a financially shady offshore tax haven whose bank has long been embroiled in scandal.
Moneyval has faulted Vatican prosecutors in the past for failing to prosecute many cases despite receiving dozens of suspicious transaction reports from the Vatican's financial watchdog.
Vatican prosecutors did last year open a corruption investigation into the Holy See's investment in a London real estate venture, but to date no one has been indicted.
The Vatican's secretariat of state has sunk more than 350 million euros (nearly $400 million) into the London venture, much of it donations from the faithful. Tens of millions were paid in fees to Italian businessmen who acted as middlemen in the real estate deal.
Last week, Pope Francis fired Becciu, the cardinal who helped orchestrate the original deal. Becciu was the "substitute," or No. 2 in the Vatican secretariat of state from 2011 to 2018, when Francis made him a cardinal and named him prefect of the Vatican's saint-making office.
Becciu has defended the London investment as sound and has denied any wrongdoing in it. He says Francis actually cited an unrelated issue in firing him: allegations that he used 100,000 euros ($117,000) in Holy See money to make a donation to a charity controlled by his brother.
Becciu and his family have denied wrongdoing.
Pell's brusque style and aggressive clean-up effort ruffled many feathers within the Vatican old guard, Becciu's especially. The Australian congratulated Francis after Becciu was sacked.
"I hope the cleaning of the stables continues in both the Vatican and Victoria," Pell said in a statement last week, referring to his home state of Victoria, where he was initially convicted.
Pell served 13 months in prison before Australia's High Court acquitted him in April of molesting two choir boys in the late 1990s when he was archbishop of Melbourne.
In his first television interview after his release, Pell linked his fight against Vatican corruption with his prosecution in Australia.

Business confidence is now the highest since Covid hit our shores.
ANZ's business outlook survey showed a strong bounce back of activity after the initial hit in April.
Across the economy, firms appear to be confident the second outbreak of Covid-19 in the community is well under control.
ANZ Chief Economist Sharon Zollner told Mike Hosking it's good to see the second lockdown didn't derail things any further, but there's still a long way to go.
"There's been enormous fiscal support through the wage subsidy that's about to roll off, and the loss of tourism won't be felt until summer."
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New Zealand Rugby has a fresh fight on its hands, with claims that leaked documents show they agreed to a schedule that would involve the All Blacks being quarantined on Christmas Day.
NZR chief executive Mark Robinson denies that he signed off on an agreement which included a six-week Rugby Championship that would end on December 12, before a two-week quarantine period for the players as mandated by the New Zealand Government.
Both Newshub and the Sydney Morning Herald are reporting that leaked minutes of a meeting between the SANZAAR chief executives shows that New Zealand were not "blindsided" by the announcement of the six-week tournament.
Newshub said the minutes clearly show a six-week draw was accepted by everyone, and that all parties were comfortable with the September 24 announcement of the draw.
The Sydney Morning Herald stated: "Leaked minutes from a meeting of SANZAAR CEOs have revealed New Zealand Rugby agreed to play a six-week Rugby Championship which would finish on December 12, despite their insistence otherwise."
The SMH says it sourced the minutes from New Zealand. They "clearly show" the six-week format was agreed upon by all four nations.
However, speaking on the Mike Hosking Breakfast this morning, New Zealand Rugby Players Association boss Rob Nichol said the date of the reported minutes didn't lineup.
"All the information we have is no they didn't [agree to it]," Nicol said. "The minutes story was an interesting one because our information show there wasn't even a meeting on that date and no ones seen any minutes.
"There's some real irony in this because what we've learnt is exactly the same time that Sanzaar management put out a press release effectively changing the draw to show our last game on the 12th of December, the broadcasters themselves had circulated a draw that showed the last game on the 5th of December and all approved it," he said. "So we've just got a whole lot of questions because it's our players and team management who are going to be asked to go through this and until we get some transparency then we're not going to be committing to anything."
Meanwhile, Robinson and has also rejected the claim from Australian rugby chairman Hamish McLennan that transtasman relationships are at their 'lowest ebb".
He claimed the comment was a "strategy" New Zealand would not be drawn into, and said both McLennan and Aussie chief executive Rob Clarke had, within the past fortnight, and extended an invitation for the NZR top brass to come over to Australia.
"I think it's a bit of bluster, to be honest…we don't operate like that," Robinson said.
"There has been no agreement to play in the tournament on December 12 at any time and at any meeting."
The SMH wrote: "Robinson may have been consistent but the minutes show the SANZAAR and RA side of the story to be the more accurate account of events."
All Blacks captain Sam Cane has claimed the players were "blindsided" by the prospect of being in quarantine on December 25.
All Blacks coach Ian Foster told Cane "we didn't see this coming".
"Yeah, it doesn't excite us overly much," Cane said of quarantining at Christmas.
"It's not our fight to fight. What is ours is preparing for these two test matches against Australia. To have that certainty after so much uncertainty leading up to now is pretty awesome. For players that gives us a clear focus of what's coming next after a few months of wondering what's coming next."

British lawmakers voted Wednesday to renew the government’s sweeping powers to impose emergency restrictions to curb the coronavirus pandemic, though many slammed the way Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative administration has used them.
Legislators are increasingly unhappy about the government’s handling of the pandemic, which has seen Britain go from a national lockdown imposed in March to a patchwork of local measures of varying stringency, which Johnson and other ministers have sometimes struggled to explain.
Britain's official virus death toll has passed 42,000 — the highest in Europe — and the country is seeing a second spike in new cases.
But there is little lawmakers can do about the government's response because of the powers that Parliament granted the government six months ago in the Coronavirus Act.
Lindsay Hoyle, the impartial Speaker of the House of Commons, said the government had treated lawmakers with “contempt,” with new laws being brought in without scrutiny and measures sometimes published just hours before taking effect. That created travel chaos for Britons on holiday this summer, as many had to rush home in the middle of their vacations when the government changed its quarantine rules.
“I am looking to the government to remedy a situation I regard as completely unsatisfactory,” Hoyle said.
The powers in the act must be renewed every six months, and Health Secretary Matt Hancock said it was too soon to lift them now.
“This act is still needed to keep people safe,” Hancock told lawmakers. He said the law contained “extraordinary measures, but they remain temporary, time-limited and proportional to the threat we face.”
Johnson’s Conservative government has faced growing criticism from its own lawmakers, who feel restrictions on daily life brought in to slow the spread of the virus are stifling the economy. Dozens of Conservative legislators had threatened to rebel against the measures, but were assuaged by a government promise that Parliament will get a vote on future “significant” national measures.
On the other side of the political spectrum, the opposition Labour Party accuses the government of botching the battle against the virus and failing to protect lives.
“We have ended up with one of the highest death rates in the world and on the verge of one of the deepest recessions,” said Labour home-affairs spokesman Nick Thomas-Symonds.
“Things cannot go on as they are,” he said, al though he added that Labour would not vote to end the powers. They were renewed on a 330-24 vote in the House of Commons.
The number of new hospitalizations for COVID-19 and virus deaths in Britain are rising again, although both remain far below their springtime peak. There were 7,108 new infections reported Wednesday and 71 virus-related deaths, the same number of deaths confirmed the day before.
Johnson said it was too soon to say whether restrictions introduced in recent weeks were working. The government has barred people across the country from meeting in groups of more than six and banned millions of residents in northern England from mixing with people they don’t live with.
“I wish I could tell you tonight that the impact of this package has already begun to appear, but it will take time to feed through,” the prime minister said at a televised news conference.
Johnson said tougher measures could be coming, if the numbers don't start to decline.
“If the evidence requires it, we will not hesitate to take further measures that would, I’m afraid, be more costly than the ones we have put into effect now,” he said.

While Labour and National have both pledged millions to boost childhood dental care, both have been less vocal on the idea of extending free dental care to adults.
But the cost of funding free dental care to adults has tonight been revealed: $648 million a year to cover all adults.
Newshub reported that in December 2018 the Ministry of Health estimated the cost of extending free dental care to adults.
The report tallied up the costs as:
• $96 million to cover everyone up to their 27th birthday
• $5.5 million for a one-off dental check up for everyone turning 65
• $30 million for low-income parents and caregivers
• $17 million to cover low-income pregnant women
The report was not acted upon by the then-Minister of Health David Clark, Newshub reported.
In the report, the Ministry also suggested that after the first phase of funding, the cover could gradually increase past the age of 27 - at the cost of around $12m per year of age it was extended.
All up, with the average New Zealander now living to around the age of 80, it would cost an extra $648m a year to cover the dental fees of all adults, Newshub reported.
Earlier this month, Health Minister Chris Hipkins told media Labour was unlikely to offer free dental care to adults if it formed the next government.
"We've got to be frank here," he told Newshub.
"In the current economic climate free dental care for everybody would come at a very, very, significant price tag, and I don't think in the current economic environment that's a debate we're in a position to have."
The Labour Party yesterday promised to increase emergency grants for dental care for people on low incomes if elected.
Among the pledges made in the party's health policy, the emergency grant boost would cost $176m over four years to increase the emergency grant for oral care from $300 to $1000.
A further $37.5m over four years would go towards 20 additional mobile dental clinics to make free dental care for under 18s more accessible.
Meanwhile the National Party has pledged $30m a year for childhood oral health, including paediatric and school dental services.
Its policy would see all children provided with an annual dental health pack containing information material, a toothbrush and toothpaste for daily tooth brushing, education, and free fluoride varnish.

A train-wreck presidential debate has sparked calls to change the debate format in the US.
Donald Trump and rival Joe Biden were barely controlled by moderator Chris Wallace, who stopped his questions to chastise the President for his interruptions.
BBC's Nick Bryant told Mike Hosking the presidential commission is looking at changing the structure to make the next two debates more orderly.
“It could mean cutting off the mics when the candidates try to speak over each other.”
Mr Bryant says despite trying to soften his brand, Trump is losing his appeal to a key demographic.
He says many of these voters live in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Pittsburg and Detroit which are key constituencies, and are where Joe Biden is doing well in.
“Trump has to work harder this time, because Biden doesn't have the notoriety that went with Hillary Clinton.
“it's hard for Trump to paint Biden as a left-wing radical and a threat to American society."
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