The Mike Hosking Breakfast

The Victorian Opposition has launched a bid to kick Premier Daniel Andrews out of office over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

Opposition Leader Michael O’Brien will introduce a motion of no confidence in Mr Andrews in parliament on Thursday.
The motion will be tabled on Thursday with the vote to be put to Lower House MPs next month.
Mr O’Brien said the Premier had lost the support of Victorians.
“Every Labor MP will have to decide whether they will vote to protect the jobs of their communities or the job of the Premier,” he said.
“A no-confidence motion is not a decision made lightly, but increasingly frustrated Victorians are telling us loud and clear that Andrews must go.”
As Labor holds a comfortable majority in the Legislative Assembly, the motion is almost certain to be voted down.
But if it passed, and the house did not pass a motion of confidence in the Premier within eight days, the parliament would be dissolved.
The Opposition only gets one opportunity to move a motion of no confidence in the Premier each parliamentary term, and if it fails they will have to wait until after the 2022 state election to move another.
The Opposition said it was the first step in dissolving the parliament and allowing Victorians to vote the Andrews Labor Government out of office early.
Mr O’Brien cited the Government’s botched handling of the pandemic, including hotel quarantine, refusing Australian Defence Force support, contact tracing failures and imposing what it claims is a potentially illegal curfew.
“Victoria deserves the chance for a fresh start,” he said.
“With Andrews’ road map to nowhere, millions of Victorians know their jobs are on the line if this Government keeps us locked down.”
Victorian Nationals leader Peter Walsh claimed the Premier had made too many mistakes to continue.
“Andrews’ failures are the very reason Victoria is in the second wave through his botched hotel quarantine and delays in contact tracing, and Victorians are left with no confidence in him or his Labor government,” he said.
When asked about the motion on Thursday morning, Mr Andrews dismissed it as a political stunt.
“Cheap politics is no vaccine against this virus, and that is all I will say about him and that,” he said.

There is confusion around how Auckland University can return to campus.
The university's keeping classes online until October 2, after reneging on its plan to operate classes up-to 300 people on campus from Monday.
Tertiary Education Union national secretary Sandra Grey says official information is conflicting.
She told Mike Hosking details for the tertiary sector needed to be clear from the start - and they've asked officials for clarification.
Grey says they're asking if all students should be wearing masks because physical distancing will be hard.
Auckland University Students' Association is also advocating for compulsory mask-wearing, as well as staying online for the rest of the semester.
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The gulf between President Donald Trump and public health officials over wearing face masks keeps widening, undercutting medical experts who say consistent face covering is one of the best tools — short of a vaccine — to fight the spread of the coronavirus.
Trump has gone back and forth on protective masks in the roughly six months since the virus has taken root in the U.S., muddying the message from doctors and other health experts.
White House officials insist that Trump has always supported wearing masks, but the president's own words and actions tell a very different — and sometimes puzzling — story.
He dismissed mask wearing for himself, then allowed himself to be seen wearing one while visiting a military hospital. He has called it “patriotic” to wear a mask but seems to seldom pass up an opportunity to mock Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden for his routine mask donning.
And on Wednesday, after the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told Congress that his mask might even be a better guarantee than a vaccine against the virus, Trump publicly undercut Dr. Robert Redfield.
“As far as the mask is concerned, he made a mistake,” said Trump.
Hours earlier, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany had said: “The president has always supported mask wearing, and he’s made many comments to that effect from this podium.”
Lawrence Gostin, a public health expert at Georgetown University’s law school, said Trump’s vacillation between portraying masks as an infringement on personal rights and touting them as crucial to stemming the virus has left Americans “absolutely dazed and confused.”
“One could forgive the American public for not trusting anyone,” Gostin said.
But Gostin also faulted Redfield for asserting that masks are more important than an eventual vaccine, at least until one is approved. Suggesting that being vaccinated is less important as long as people are wearing masks further clouded the public message, Gostin said.
Public health experts largely agree that COVID-19, the disease the virus causes, will be brought under control through a combination of social distancing, mask wearing and a vaccine.
“One of those three is not enough, you need all three,” Gostin said. “It’s such a simple message. It’s just befuddling that the White House doesn’t consistently state that message.”
Trump has very seldom worn a mask for the world to see, though he is regularly tested for COVID-19 and says he does wear one when he can't practice social distancing. At one point, he suggested that the reason some people wear masks is to make a political statement against him.
The CDC recommended in April that people wear cloth face coverings in public when it's difficult to be socially distant. But Trump immediately undercut the guidance, declaring he wouldn't follow it and suggesting it would be unseemly to be masked in a meeting with a head of state.
The first image of a masked Trump surfaced on social media in May after he donned one for a behind-the-scenes tour of a Ford facility in Michigan. Reporters were not allowed on the tour, and afterward Trump told them he'd worn a mask in a “back area” only because “I didn’t want to give the press the pleasure of seeing it.”
In June, as he prepared to hold his first indoor political rally of the COVID-era, Trump complained to The Wall Street Journal that Americans were wearing masks as a way to signal disapproval of him, and not as a preventive measure. He complained that people can’t help but fidget with the coverings, similar to assertions he made on national television this week.
“They put their finger on the mask, and they take them off, and then they start touching their eyes and touching their nose and their mouth,” Trump said. “And then they don’t know how they caught it?”
Weeks later, the president offered a different take, sounding like a mask evangelist and going as far...

At the end of each week, Mike Hosking takes you through the big ticket items and lets you know what he makes of it all.
The PREFU.
3/10.
"The border was the shocker, wasn’t it?
Yes, the numbers are a mess, and yes its going on for longer than we thought, but did you really have all of next year written off for borders?"
Q2 GDP.
1/10.
"We are as bad as Italy, and a world worse than Australia.
This is the “no argument no guess” price we are paying for this government's approach.
That's economic calamity."
The Wairarapa.
8/10.
"The only region in the country to grow in terms of tourism.
#magnetforholidays."
Middle Seats on Planes.
8/10.
"Probably as political as it was medical, but who cares most of this stuff has been made up anyway.
This is the sort of forward looking thinking we need a hell of a lot more of.
And hopefully it will fill some tills come the school holidays."
The Rugby Championship.
0/10.
"An astonishing cock up.
We had it, and yet through ineptitude, intransigence, and sheer bloody mindedness we blew it.
And the Australians, using a completely different mindset, are reaping the rewards."
Bledisloe Cup Tests.
7/10.
"A small element of redemption and some genuine high level sport to look forward to.
Fingers crossed actually in front of a crowd."
Labour Cancelling Fees-Free Extension.
8/10.
"Yes it’s a broken promise.
But that’s good given the idea was naff from the start, didn’t work, and therefore was a waste of money."
Jobs.
7/10.
"There are lots of them in the fields and orchards of this country. And at $25 an hour it seems astonishing they're not being filled.
Winston Peters might be right maybe foreign labour is the only answer.  
Ironic the conclusion came from Peters."
LISTEN ABOVE FOR MIKE HOSKING'S FULL WEEK IN REVIEW

THE BEST BITS IN A SILLIER PACKAGE (from Friday's Mike Hosking Breakfast) Not Great Though/The Seymour Plan/The Big Vaccine Lie/Mark the Week

It's almost quaint that we call it a recession.
A recession is we might have, in the good old days, have gone backwards for two quarters but Q1 would have been negative 0.1 and Q2 was negative 0.2. Not negative 1.6 and followed by negative 12.2.
If this isn't a depression, then we need a new word, because recession doesn’t seem to cover it.
The 12.2 percent drop is worth noting for several things actually. Yes, it's not as bad as they said it would be. But surely now we understand that is a dose of reverse psychology and the fact their original numbers, even their revised numbers, were pretty much guesswork, and a dartboard would have been just as useful at Treasury.
It further highlights yesterday's PREFU, which you would hope was published with an increased level of confidence, but still in reality has to carry an element of "I wouldn’t have a clue what happens next" about it.
Which is what makes the GDP so interesting. It's real. Yes, it's behind us, but it did actually happen. This wasn’t a forecast or a guess, this was the cold hard stark fact of it all.
A 12.2 percent drop is a disaster. And it's proof positive that when you take our two numbers and Australia's two numbers, they thrashed us.
They closed less of their economy, their approach was broadly the same but with a defter touch, and as a result, Victoria and its specific Daniel Andrews' inaptitude aside, they got out less damaged. In fact, significantly less damaged.
The government needs to own up to this. Grant Robertson and Jacinda Ardern I am sure will busy themselves not wanting to compare, but we must, for the simple reason they are our trading partners, our closest allies, and a repository for what will almost certainly become a brain drain.
12.2 is of European standards, Sweden aside who got a 9 percent drop. They, once again, can claim that, economically at least, theirs has been a better path. But Spain, France, and Italy, economies we looked askance at fared no worse than us, or we no better than them. Italy, long considered an economic basket case came in at negative 12.4 percent.
The big question is, was all this really worth it? Chaos, carnage, joblessness, lives torn asunder, debt for years, deficits for years, and borders shut this year and maybe next. Even the so-called bounce-back we are supposed to be in now, is in real jeopardy and doubt.
Go hard and go early? Or go backwards and go broke?

This morning the Finance Minister Grant Robertson was upbeat about the future, saying there were signs the recession was over and New Zealand would back bounce back quickly.
He told Newstalk ZB's Mike Hosking the "going hard, going early" strategy to deal with Covid-19 had not only saved lives but livelihoods. As a consequence the country was rebounding back fast.
"It represents a one-in-100-year shock to the economy and we will rebound fast."
"We are coming back strongly from this," said Robertson.
He said the country appeared to have weathered the worst of the Covid downturn, declaring: "The recession is finished."
The finance minister said he expected the next quarter's figures to show growth and significant bounce back although there was uncertainty how big the bounce back would be.
Despite falling into recession in the second quarter, the Government chose an approach that was the best for public health policy and he remained convinced it was the best path to recovery on all fronts.
Taking measures to lockdown the country and provide substantial government assistance to business had meant the Covid response was done in such a way that was quicker and better.
He said that already started to play out economically with a 2 per cent year-on-year growth in July.
And he was confident the third quarter would show considerable improvement.
"It will certainly be a very solid bounce back because we've seen some very high levels of activity.
"We're focused on the future and making sure we come out of this as strong as possible."

One of the biggest weekends in Motorsport is coming with 24 hours of Le Mans.
It's perhaps the most famous race in the world.
It's being held later this year due to Covid, and there won't be any crowds
And our very own Brendon Hartley is chasing another title, having won it back in 2017
He's now racing with Toyota.
He joined Mike Hosking from France to give us an update on his Motorsport career.
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There have been plenty of lessons taken from this year's influenza vaccination campaign and the 2019 measles outbreak.
The Ministry of Health has released two reports into the flu immunisation campaign and last year's Auckland's measles outbreak.
The idea is to find out how to better respond to the Covid-19 pandemic, and to prevent and respond to future outbreaks.
Auckland University vaccinologist Helen Petousis-Harris says we've seen an erosion in the public health system, and this year has served as a reminder how important public health is.
"Certainly we learned last year with measles, almost like a precursor. It shows that when you have a strong public health system, you can respond to crises when they're emerging." 
2020 was a record year for flu vaccines, with more than 1.77 million vaccines distributed to general practices, pharmacists and other providers.
Petousis-Harris says the reports show that the Health Ministry wasn't prepared to vaccinate as many New Zealanders as possible.
"I think we'd already learnt from experience that we were not any longer very nimble to suddenly change the ways we do things, or respond to an emergency."

Travellers eager to fly again may want to consider Italy as their next destination.
Rome's Fiumicino Airport has become the first airport in the world to earn "the COVID-19 5-Star Airport Rating" from Skytrax, an international airport industry ratings body.
Though Skytrax is best known for its annual rankings of the world's best airports, the global Covid-19 crisis prompted the organization to come up with a designation for airport hygiene.
According to a release from Skytrax, the organization based its rating on "a combination of procedural efficiency checks, visual observation analysis and ATP sampling tests."
Fiumicino Airport (FCO), also known as Leonardo Da Vinci International Airport, is the busiest airport in Italy.
On September 1, the airport opened a 7,000-square-foot Covid testing center, which is co-managed with the Italian Red Cross.
But it's not only organized, rapid testing that Skytrax noted in its review of FCO. The airport scored points for having easy-to-read signage in multiple languages, strict enforcement of mask wearing, visibly present cleaning staff and efficiency thanks to the consolidation of all incoming and outgoing flights to a single terminal for easier tracking.
So far, Skytrax -- whose head office is in the United Kingdom -- has only been able to monitor European airports.
In addition to FCO's five-star ranking, three other airports have been awarded three stars for their Covid response -- Málaga-Costa del Sol Airport (AGP) in Spain, Nice Côte d'Azur Airport (NCE) in France and London's Heathrow (LHR).
According to the Skytrax rating system, five stars indicates "very high standards of airport cleanliness and maintenance procedures," while four stars is "good" and three "average." Two stars, the lowest possible rating, means that the airport's anti-Covid protocols "need work."
text by Lilit Marcus, CNN