The Mike Hosking Breakfast

Isn't it funny how this country is run?
Last Tuesday, we had an interview with the Prime Minister. It ended in an odd way, in the sense that some of the subjects I raised with her, it became apparent she didn’t have a clue about.
This set off the usual Twitterati, accusing me of being rude. A lot of people also wondered why so much was going on she didn’t know about.
It happened again yesterday, a government Ministry paying $3000 a house for social housing needs instead of the $550 they were actually worth. Last week there were the two letters to councils in trouble asking for information for the Minister. The Minister has the power to appoint people to run councils if a council has become dysfunctional.
And we also had the letter suggesting the government buy the Ports of Auckland, or 50 percent of it.
Ardern knew nothing of this, which was remarkable given it had been on this programme and a number of other outlets. You'd think the potential sale of such an asset might have caught her eye, or been drawn to her attention .
But as it turned out the bloke who wrote the letter had sprung the idea on his Auckland Council mates. Poor old Phil Goff, who appeared as out of the loop as the Prime Minister, expressed his displeasure and said it was no answer to the councils hundreds of millions of dollars worth of black hole left by Covid.
Anyway, the proposal less than a week later is on the desk of Grant Robertson. So something very few people seemed to be even remotely aware of, is now in front of the man with the money.
The question is, do we want the government owning more stuff than they already do? And it's question we should be asking given, it's an election issue, or it should be.
Government owning things is rarely a good idea. We already have Air New Zealand and their arrangement. We have a loan scheme that Air New Zealand has tapped into or about to tap into that is available to other major players that could involve the government grabbing a stake in the companies.
That includes Tiwai, NZ Refining and the Glenbrook mill.
There is also another loan scheme for smaller businesses where the government might end up owning a stake as well.
Just how much of this country do we want owned by the state? And when the state owns most of the country's businesses, what's the called? Join some dots.
For something so potentially significant, it's astonishing how little it's being talked about.

A Māngere primary school has made masks "non-negotiable" for all its students and staff, despite official advice still saying that they're not necessary.
The stance comes as some schools in South Auckland reported attendance of just a third of their students as the region enjoyed its first day out of level 3 lockdown yesterday.
Health Minister Chris Hipkins this morning told Newstalk ZB's Mike Hosking the Government realised there would be some concerns for families about children returning to school.
He said while there was uncertainty about children not turning up to class, it was too early for attendant services to chase up families who were keeping pupils home.
"It is safe to send your kids back to school," said Hipkins.
"We want kids back in school and we encourage parents to send their kids back to school," he said.
Individual schools would be following up over the absenteeism and if there was a persistent problem then families could be referred to authorities.
"I think it's a bit early to be talking about doing that sort of thing yet but ultimately we do have attendant services who can follow those sorts of things up," he said.
Hipkins said he could understand the degree of hesitance felt by many parents.
"But we wouldn't be reopening schools if we thought we were increasing the risk by doing that," he said.

He said yesterday that it was "not okay" to keep children away from school.


"Their futures depend on this."
Hipkins told Hosking this morning that an advertising botch - which saw some 700,000 people thinking they needed a test across West and South Auckland - should not be repeated. All advertising on Covid will now come past the Government.
Explaining what went wrong in the whole of government social media testing advertisement, Hipkins said: "It appears that wires got crossed there. We've had a very good look at the systems behind the authorisation for those ads before they go up, bearing in mind that none of them came past anyone in the Beehive so we didn't see them before they went up, so we're making sure that system is fixed so that that sort of thing doesn't happen again."
Hipkins today encouraged all those skilled workers who had returned to New Zealand since the international Covid outbreak to get into workforce and bolster the economy.

The decades-old dream of zipping around in the sky as simply as driving on highways may be becoming less illusory.
Japan's SkyDrive Inc., among the myriads of "flying car" projects around the world, has carried out a successful though modest test flight with one person aboard.
In a video shown to reporters on Friday, a contraption that looked like a slick motorcycle with propellers lifted several feet (1-2 meters) off the ground, and hovered in a netted area for four minutes.
Tomohiro Fukuzawa, who heads the SkyDrive effort, said he hopes "the flying car" can be made into a real-life product by 2023, but he acknowledged that making it safe was critical.
"Of the world's more than 100 flying car projects, only a handful has succeeded with a person on board," he told The Associated Press.
"I hope many people will want to ride it and feel safe."
The machine so far can fly for just five to 10 minutes but if that can become 30 minutes, it will have more potential, including exports to places like China, Fukuzawa said.
Unlike airplanes and helicopters, eVTOL, or "electric vertical takeoff and landing," vehicles offer quick point-to-point personal travel, at least in principle.
They could do away with the hassle of airports and traffic jams and the cost of hiring pilots, they could fly automatically.
Battery sizes, air traffic control and other infrastructure issues are among the many potential challenges to commercializing them.
"Many things have to happen," said Sanjiv Singh, professor at the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, who co-founded Near Earth Autonomy, near Pittsburgh, which is also working on an eVTOL aircraft.
"If they cost $10 million, no one is going to buy them. If they fly for 5 minutes, no one is going to buy them. If they fall out of the sky every so often, no one is going to buy them," Singh said in a telephone interview.
The SkyDrive project began humbly as a volunteer project called Cartivator in 2012, with funding by top Japanese companies including automaker Toyota Motor Corp., electronics company Panasonic Corp. and video-game developer Bandai Namco.
A demonstration flight three years ago went poorly. But it has improved and the project recently received another round of funding, of 3.9 billion yen ($37 million), including from the Development Bank of Japan.
The Japanese government is bullish on "the Jetsons" vision, with a "road map" for business services by 2023, and expanded commercial use by the 2030s, stressing its potential for connecting remote areas and providing lifelines in disasters.
Experts compare the buzz over flying cars to the days when the aviation industry got started with the Wright Brothers and the auto industry with the Ford Model T.
Lilium of Germany, Joby Aviation in California and Wisk, a joint venture between Boeing Co. and Kitty Hawk Corp., are also working on eVTOL projects.
Sebastian Thrun, chief executive of Kitty Hawk, said it took time for airplanes, cell phones and self-driving cars to win acceptance.
"But the time between technology and social adoption might be more compressed for eVTOL vehicles," he said.

The rest of the world can't stop snatching up New Zealand wine.
Wine exports hit $1.92 billion by the end of June this year, a new record high.
Nautilus Estate Winemaker Clive Jones told Mike Hosking for the first time in months they've had orders from every single person they've done business with.
"We've just been through the European summer with that sauvignon blanc drinking time.
"It's the engine of the New Zealand wine industry, and that's where the demand is."
Jones says when people have to stay home and order online, New Zealand becomes a very appealing option
He says consumers are enjoying our wine, reflecting on how lucky we are, and it's influencing their buying behaviour.
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Victoria's lockdown is costing the Australian state $400 million a day.
Melbourne has been under severe restrictions since early August with the rest of Victoria facing lighter measures.
There are nearly 3000 Covid-19 cases spread out across the region and 524 people have died.
Australian correspondent Steve Price told Mike Hosking Premier Daniel Andrews is being criticised for not offering a pathway out.
"If you're running a business you didn't say 'we'll put this business into hibernation', you need a date
"Is it going to be October, November, are you going to open up before Christmas?"
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has seen his approval rating drop several points in the latest Newspoll.
The Coalition and Opposition are locked at 50 points each in a two-party preferred poll, while Morrison has seen his popularity drop to 64 per cent, while maintaining 58 per cent in the preferred Prime Minister stakes.
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President Donald Trump wanted a large bounce coming out of the Republican National Convention, and early evidence is that he did not receive one. Trump may have gotten a small bump out of his convention, but he still clearly trails former Vice President Joe Biden.
If later polling data confirms this early evidence, a Trump victory hinges on him becoming the first incumbent in over 70 years to come from behind after trailing following the major party conventions.
The new ABC News/Ipsos poll is especially harsh for Trump. Although it did not poll the horse race, it did poll the candidates' favorability ratings.
Trump's favourable rating stood at 32% in an Ipsos' poll last week. Today, after the Republican National Convention, it stands at 31%.
Biden's favourable rating, meanwhile, was at 45% last week. It's now at 46%.
These movements, of course, are well within any margin of error, though they line-up with the idea that Trump did not receive a large bump out of his convention.
There are no post-convention polls that measure the horse race of Biden vs. Trump that meet CNN standards. The evidence we do have, however, is largely consistent with what Ipsos is hinting at.
The USC Dornsife Presidential Election Poll is a tracking poll taken over a week period. It has both a unique probabilistic voting question as well as the more traditional "who are you voting for" question. With the days added after the Republican convention, the poll shows that Biden's advantage this week is about the same as it was last week.
Indeed, if you were to average all of the national polls taken at least partially after the conventions, there may have been a bump of maybe a point or 2 at most for Trump.
Interestingly, that might make for a slightly larger bounce than Biden received, which was basically nothing. That fits the historical pattern of elected incumbents usually getting the larger bounce from the conventions.
Still, it's not anywhere close to where Trump needed his bounce to be. Remember, Trump trailed by around 9 points heading into the conventions.
The lack of bounces does make sense given that fewer people watched the conventions this year, which is especially the case for the Republican convention.
Now obviously that could change as we get more polling data, which Trump better hope it does.
An examination of polling data since the end of World War II reveals the obvious problem for Trump. Elected incumbents tend not to gain after the conventions.
Looking at elected incumbents, 6 of 8 times the incumbent lost ground when comparing polls immediately following the convention and the final result. One was Dwight Eisenhower in 1956, who was leading by double-digits and went on to win by a slightly wider double-digit margin. The other was George H.W. Bush in 1992 who trailed by single digits and went on to lose by a slightly narrower single-digit margin.
No elected incumbent since World War II has ever picked up more than 4 points when comparing the post-convention polls and the final result. Most incumbents lose ground.
The biggest gains for incumbents come when they weren't elected, such as Harry Truman in 1948 and Gerald Ford in 1976.
The only instance of any incumbent coming back to win at this point in the campaign since World War II was Truman in 1948. And even he needed an additional polling error at the end of the campaign to complete the comeback.
The bottom line is this for Trump: something major needed to change in the post-convention polling. It doesn't look like it did in the first round of evidence. That means unless something shifts, Trump will have to do something quite unusual to earn another term in the White House.
Analysis by Harry Enten, CNN

As Auckland joins the rest of the country at alert level 2, face masks are now mandatory from anyone travelling on public transport.
While the country is at alert level 2 and higher, the Government is making it compulsory for people travelling on buses, planes, trains, ferries and even Ubers to wear face masks to protect themselves and others.
The move comes after several people became unwell from a bus journey and new research shows the benefits of people wearing face coverings.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has also urged Aucklanders to wear face masks while they are out in public, though it has not yet been mandated to do so.
Police are out this morning to enforce the new rules. Police Assistant Commissioner Richard Chambers was at Wellington train station, and told Mike Hosking everyone seems to be complying so far.

"What I'm seeing down here is fantastic. Everybody that I can see is doing the right thing. My colleagues are right here with me, so they will no doubt by speaking to a few people while I speak to a few others."
He doesn't think people will slack off.
"We all know that we're in for the long haul here. It's the right thing to do for our people and our country. And while Police can have conversations with people, I think peer pressure is very influential as well."

Auckland is this morning adjusting to a "new new normal" - level 2.5 living - as Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern apologises for a wrong message which urged all 750,000 south and west Aucklanders to get a Covid test.
She told Mike Hosking today she was "angry, frustrated... a range of emotions" after a social media post - on Facebook and Instagram - from the official all-of-Government Covid-response page said residents needed to get a test, even if they did not have symptoms.
"It was a mistake, I fully acknowledge that," Ardern told Hosking.
She said the message - which she had learned about at 10am yesterday morning - had led to people lining up at testing stations yesterday, unnecessarily.
"The issue here is that in simplifying some of the messages they have shared incorrect messages. No excuse for that. It caused anxiety for people and for that I apologise. No wants to see people afraid. No one wanted to see people unnecessarily lining up."
She said she would be taking time to find out what happened. "It feels to me a little bit at the moment that I don't think we can place blame on any one person's shoulders. It's a series of errors have been made here."
She said she had raised it immediately with those who had the ability to remove it from the social media platforms - even though the message was still up on Instagram as she spoke at the 1pm press conference yesterday.
"If we wanted over 700,000 people to get a test we wouldn't just leave it to an Instagram or Twitter post. That would be something we would be sharing openly from the podium."
The apology comes as Auckland is this morning out lockdown and into another "new normal" - with roadblocks lifted and masks donned for public transport commuters and many workers.
But concerns still remain as the cluster that plunged the city into level 3 continues to grow.
Ardern warned that she expected the Auckland cluster to get larger and that the tail of new cases "will be long".
Instead of moving Auckland straight from level 3 to level 2, Ardern announced Auckland would be in a state she described as "level 2.5".
This is being welcomed by epidemiologist Michael Baker, who said it was a "good move," given the fact the cluster will continue to grow.
But he warned that there was some level of uncertainty as to whether level 2.5 would be enough to contain this outbreak.
Despite this, the move out of lockdown will come as welcome news to many Aucklanders, businesses in particular, who have been in level 3 for close to 20 days.
However, moving out of lockdown comes also comes with a level of uncertainty and some apprehension, especially from parents sending children back to school and day care.
This is because there is still community transmission of Covid-19 in the city and Ardern is warning that new cases will continue to be reported.
There were just two new cases of Covid-19 in the community yesterday – both linked to the Auckland cluster, which is now 135 people.
Ten people are in hospital, two of whom are in ICU.
Last time New Zealand, as a whole, came out of level 3 there had been no community transmission cases in almost two weeks.
Despite this, director of public health Caroline McElnay argued yesterday that the spread of the virus within New Zealand is under control.
"There may be some further cases that would continue to occur within the community, but our level of comfort with the control of the cluster is high."
Ardern said it was "highly likely" that proactive tests will reveal even more community transmission cases in the coming weeks.
And it is because the Auckland cluster continues to grow that the Government moved the city into, what she described as, level 2.5.
This is not an official alert level, rather a heightened version of the level 2 Auckland has already experienced.

An expensive lunch with Dr Ashley Bloomfield - all in the name of charity.
The Director General of Health offered the lunch date to the Cancer Society as a fundraiser.
An anonymous punter has stumped up with $13,550 to win the TradeMe auction.
The winner,  will enjoy lunch with "Dr Bloomfield and six friends at parliament's bistro Bellamy's.
Every Friday morning, Mike Hosking is joined by Tim Wilson and Kate Hawkesby to wrap the week in news.
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Auckland police checkpoints are still causing bother for the Horticulture industry.
Out of the 13 checkpoints set up around the region's border, eight of them are at the centre of the North Island's vegetable-growing heartland.
Horticulture New Zealand chief executive Mike Chapman told Mike Hosking this has caused Police to respond to complaints from farmers struggling to get to work.
He says all of this could have been avoided if the government had listened to their earlier suggestions to put the checkpoints in different places.
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