The Mike Hosking Breakfast

Businesses will be able to borrow much more and for longer through a Government-backed scheme, after changes were made to boost interest in the scheme.
On Thursday Finance Minister Grant Robertson announced that the size of the loans available under the Business Finance Guarantee Scheme would be raised from up to $500,000 to $5 million.
In other changes the terms of the loans would be increased from three to five years, larger businesses will be able to draw the loans, and the funds can be used for a wider range of purposes.
Announced in March, the $6.25 billion scheme was designed to encourage business lending, with the Government underwriting 80 per cent of the loan.
However the scheme saw little take up, with banks blaming the Treasury for requiring them to obtain a general security agreement before approving the loan, while certain sectors such as agri-business were excluded.
Today Robertson said just $150m had been lent to 780 customers, just over 2 per cent of the limit of the scheme.
"We've been open about the fact that the original scheme has seen a lower uptake than we would have liked," Robertson said in a statement.
"The changes announced today should allow the banks to be more flexible with the scheme."
Robertson said Treasury and banks have been working to the changes to the scheme based on feedback from banks and their customers.
"Changes needed to be made and banks have come to the table and agreed to the modifications. Extending what the loans can be used for, including capital investment, means banks can use the scheme to help more viable businesses respond to this 1-in-100 year shock."
The latest changes further clarify that the Crown does not require a personal guarantee on the loans, with the decision on what security to require falling to the banks.
The changes were welcomed by the banking sector.
"We think expanding the criteria should make it more relevant for businesses in need at this time," New Zealand Bankers' Association chief executive Roger Beaumont said in a statement. "Widening the scheme criteria further supports the supply of credit to businesses in need. Uptake will ultimately be driven by demand from businesses."
ASB, which said it had lent $40m under the scheme, said the latest move "will save jobs and businesses".
The changes announced on Wednesday include, raising the maximum loan limit from $500,000 to $5 million, lengthening the term from three to five years.
The criteria for borrowing has been extended from liquidity support/bridging finance to "general purpose borrowing, including for capital investment, for businesses affected by Covid-19".
Larger businesses can access the funding, with the maximum revenue raised from $80m to $200m. Businesses will be able to use the loans to refinance up to 20 per cent of its existing debt.
The changes also clarify that no personal guarantee is required by the Crown.
"The Crown will pay a claim in event of default where no personal guarantee has been provided," Robertson's statement said.

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 Week in Covid News.
2/10.
"Who thought last Friday as we got two weeks of level three and two, that things would be exposed the way they have?"
Covid Testing.
0/10.
"That’s the greatest scandal of all.
Michael Morrah, who asked the question no one else did, certainly not the government, is owed a debt of gratitude by us all."
Elimination.
5/10.
"It still has obvious merit.
But at what cost? And those asking for cost-benefit revisits are asking the right questions."
Vaccines.
7/10.
"You've never seen so much money tossed at something that still hasn’t happened.
But keep asking, just where is it we are in the queue?"
Andrew Borrowdale.
8/10.
"Another person that needs our gratitude. He tested what needed testing.
A government that acts unlawfully is a government to be ashamed of."
The Election Date Change.
7/10.
"Yes, the right thing to do.
The only thing to do."
The Economy.
8/10.
"A welcome bright spot.
Manufacturing up, services sector up, spending generally up, and the housing market almost universally backed as being more than okay."
Joe Biden.
6/10.
"Got there in the end in the weirdest contest ever that started with everyone from Kamala Harris, to Pete Buttigieg, to Kirsten Gillibrand, to Beto O'Rourke, to Andrew Yang.
And yet polls show so many of the votes he might get are not because of who he is, but who he isn't."
The Vodafone Warriors.
9/10.
"On the verge this week of being shafted in the most abysmal way by Telstra.
They deserved better and got it."
Ronnie O'Sullivan.
9/10.
"World Champion on the snooker table again.
Doesn't play a lot, and yet still the best in the world, and sensationally cool with it."
LISTEN ABOVE FOR MIKE HOSKING'S FULL WEEK IN REVIEW

A senior medical figure and a former head of the Treasury say an independent body should take over New Zealand's Covid-19 response amid a damning assessment of the Government's management.
In a letter published by the New Zealand Medical Journal today, University of Auckland professor Des Gorman and former Treasury Secretary Murray Horn say a group led by health and economic experts, free from bureaucracy and political interference, was needed to undo the Government's failings.
Gorman said that this past week had been disappointing and described the level of failure as "egregious".
"This is a failure to execute and of governance."
He said the model he was advocating was something that the Government was familiar with.
Gorman said the Minister of Health needed to focus on fixing the crippled health system, which was in significant distress even before the pandemic struck.
"We need the Minister of Health to get on with the job of managing the health system and get out of the job of trying to pretend they're an operational unit that can manage a complex pandemic."
He also called for a change in policy direction to deal with future community outbreaks.
"We shifted from a containment to an elimination strategy, we realised that's not achievable, and we now need a smart containment and elimination policy. We need to go from keep it out, stamp it out to keep it out as much as possible, stamp it out as quickly as possible. Those policy settings need resetting."
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's office has shut down the idea of an expert body, saying the Government's response has been a team effort and no body of experts could ever replace the efforts every New Zealander put into beating the virus.
It comes after Ardern on Wednesday announced 500 more NZ Defence Force staff to be deployed to managed isolation facilities to roll out the testing of staff quicker.
The Government was also directly hiring security guards to help control the facilities, which will make them less reliant on private security guards.
But Gorman said it wasn't enough.
He said clear standards and performances of border control, testing and tracing needed to be made publicly available to restore the trust back into New Zealanders.
One target could be 100 per cent of tests results to be processed within 48 hours and 90 per cent within 24 hours - and then the performance measurement of that would be made public on a routine basis, Gorman said.
He said if this independent group had already been in place Auckland would not be in lockdown.
"The only reason we are in lockdown, is because contacting tracing couldn't be done fast enough and that's because the right measures hadn't been place.
"For example why was there only five community testing stations the day we went into alert level three, there should have been 25 ready to go."
Gorman, also a practising clinician, said lockdowns were not sustainable and better preparation was needed so they could be avoided.
Last week, an ASB report revealed Auckland's latest lockdown measures would cost the economy about $440 million per week - or 0.15 per cent of annual GDP.
He said there had been a failure of governance and management and those failures were now leading to an erosion of trust and confidence, which means New Zealanders were less likely to comply with alert level rules.
"It's worrying because these lockdowns threatened two things; one is the ability to borrow money cheaply to prop the economy up and the other is that compliance depends upon trust and confidence.
"Every time you turn on TV and see egregious breaches of security that trust erodes and that feeling that all these sacrifices we've made have been compromised by what."
He said the Ministry of Health needed to "get back to their day job".
"Before Covid hit, they were working to fix a broken health system. That still needs work."
A...

The National Party's border policy smacks of the thinking of a party with recent experience in government.
Essentially, we all got there in the end, didn't we? We need a border force. Labour want a border force, now that they've worked out their Dad's Army approach has failed spectacularly. New Zealand First always, apparently, wanted a border force. Funny we only found out about it this week, as they develop their election strategy of claiming everything that was ever good, and running from everything that wasn't.
National would get you tested before you enter the plane, makes sense. Plenty of others already do that. It would be run by a single agency, not the mad mix of all and sundry the current government seems to have chosen.


But it represents a simple truth when it comes to facing up to the mess we have. There aren't actually any magic bullets. Yes, a border force is the answer, so essentially everyone comes up with the same policy.
But the key, and this is why this past week has been such a disaster for the Government, is how you enact ideas, and how you deliver policy. The idea and the concept are but one part of the puzzle. Making it actually work is the other and it clearly requires a skill, dexterity, dedication, and work ethic Labour doesn't possess.
If Labour lose the election because of this, and only the true apparatchik would scoff now at such a suggestion, this will be the week where the rot really sets in. What was supposed to be 14 days of another lockdown for a chunk of the country and an annoying inconvenience for the rest, actually turned into a full-blown scandal.
Jacinda Ardern in full spin may well have been able to manage the disappointment of a level three due to this "tricky virus".
But when it became clear that the border leaks, the guards were asleep, the social distancing was a joke, and the testing wasn't being done despite all the reassurances, it became frighteningly clear that the Government had learned nothing from the first lockdown, were sensationally lazy in failing to check what they wanted was actually unfolding, and yet again relied on Labour's favourite excuse, that's what the officials told them.
If the officials told Ardern the sky was purple, every Tuesday she'd argue black and blue that it was, until it became obvious it wasn't, and then blame someone else for not looking up to check.
Business has lost faith, we have lost faith. The shots on those beaches told you that last weekend. The conversation for the first time has turned openly and frequently to elimination being suspect, if not wrong and impossible.
And if all that wasn't bad enough, the court ruled and told us that the first nine days of the original lockdown were unlawful.
Yes, a royal commission is required, yes heads should have rolled, and yes, my god yes, we deserved a hell of a lot better.

A new team is confident is can help the Ministry of Health improve its border testing.
The group co-chaired by Sir Brian Roche, who has reviewed contact tracing procedures and Helen Clark’s former top adviser Heather Simpson - will help test border staff more rapidly.

"We are the envy of the world. We seem to want to beat ourselves up for every infringement, and as a citizen I find that surprising," Roche told Newstalk ZB's Mike Hosking.
Asked by Hosking why tests on border workers hadn't been happening, as expected, Roche said that was the "very elusive" question.
"Everyone's acknowledged that what they thought was happening, didn't. So there has to be an intervention to remedy that and I'm part of the intervention."
He urged perspective. "A mistake was made, there's a lot of moving parts, a lot of risk. No one goes to work to make a mistake; we shouldn't overstate it. There have been mistakes made. There have been some mis-communications - let's just simplify it, sort it out and move on."
Asked if there were far too many people and departments involved, Roche said: "I think that sums up the public sector but at one level it's a cheap shot. They all work together very well. This is a cross Government thing - it's led by health, the health voice is very loud but it requires a collective effort. Not everybody works as easily in that environment as you would hope."
Leadership was important at a political and administrative level. "I have had the privilege of lifting the hood at public health units. I was humbled by what I saw. The work they are doing on our behalf is unbelievable - and we have lost just a sense of perspective. Yes, this has come back, we have deployed hundreds and hundreds of people to safeguard the community. They have done it in an incredibly professional and sensitive way."

Could video games help us solve some real world issues?
Playstation has a game on it called "Dreams" where you can create any kind of world and scenario as long as you are smart enough.
A game called "Pick up Quick" has been launched in "Dreams" by Sustainable Coastlines as part of its litter intelligence project where real life coastlines have been created and you have to help get litter off the beaches.
It's designed to showcase the real world problem and think about how best to solve it.
Co-founder of sustainable coastlines and the litter intelligence programme Camden Howitt joins Mike Hosking to talk about the game.
LISTEN ABOVE

Countries that had seen a summer respite from coronavirus outbreaks tracked swiftly rising numbers of new confirmed cases Monday, prompting fears among government leaders and health officials that months of hard-won progress would be lost in just days as vacationers return home.
New restrictions accompanied the final weeks of summer break in Europe. Hours-long traffic jams formed at the Croatia-Slovenia border over the weekend as Austrians trying to beat a midnight quarantine deadline rushed home from a favoured coastal vacation spot.
With one goal in mind, the Italian government closed discos, required masks from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. anywhere people might gather and began testing all arriving travellers from Spain, Greece, Malta and Croatia.
"Our priority must be the reopening of schools in September in full safety," Italian Health Minister Roberto Speranza said. Italy's schools have been closed nationwide since early March.
Several nursing homes around France closed their doors anew after reporting virus cases in recent days, families told The Associated Press. One nursing home in eastern France had 34 of its 135 residents and staff members test positive since Aug. 3, and nine residents with the virus die in the past week.
The local mayor in the town of Polnoy blamed the outbreak on waning vigilance by families amid the vacation season, and a sense among many in France this summer that the crisis was over.
In Greece, health officials attributed many new infections to wedding receptions and people ignoring social distancing and other public health protective measures while on vacation. Authorities began carrying out spot checks on ferry passengers returning to the mainland from the Greek islands amid growing concern of vacationers transporting the virus back to cities.
Three young Greeks reportedly broke quarantine on Sunday night while waiting for their virus test results on the island of Patmos and boarded a ferry to the port of Piraeus outside of Athens. Two of the three tested positive, and all three were detained.
Despite the rise in cases, officials say schools will reopen as planned in Greece on Sept. 7.
Schools in northern regions of the Netherlands are reopening this week with most pupils expected back in classrooms by Wednesday without social distancing or face masks. Students returning from vacations in high-risk areas must quarantine at home for 14 days.
Education Minister Arie Slob insisted it is safe to return to high schools but told NOS Radio 1 news that "there is never a 100% guarantee that everything will go well."
In the far grimmer case of Lebanon, reported coronavirus cases have surged after the devastating blast at the Beirut port earlier this month, prompting medical officials Monday to call for a two-week lockdown. The blast overwhelmed the city's hospitals and badly damaged two playing a key role in treating COVID-19 patients.

Reassurance we can trust airline crews to follow Covid-19 safety restrictions.
That's the message from the Board of Airline Representatives New Zealand.
It's Executive Director claims airline crews follow stringent protocol while overseas.
Justin Tighe-Umbers told Mike Hosking they wear masks and transit straight from the airport to a hotel.
“They aren't allowed to mingle with other airline crews or hotel guests - they stay in their rooms until they operate the return flights.”
Justin Tighe-Umbers  says airline staff are doing a terrific job - in a difficult situation.
"There's a lot of fear on social media - but there's a very robust process in place from the Ministry of Health that airlines are following."
LISTEN ABOVE

Kiwis have openly admitted classing information they disagree with as fake news in a new survey released by Netsafe.
The online safety organisation found at least 50 per cent of Kiwis have experienced fake news, nearly half of whom are concerned about mistakenly spreading it.
The research is part of a new education campaign launched today to teach people how to spot fake news and how to deal with it effectively.
Martin Cocker, Netsafe's chief executive, says participants of the 1000-strong survey openly disregarded information they didn't agree with as misinformation or fake news.
"There have certainly been plenty of events where news media have been accused of being inaccurate of their coverage, not always fairly," he said.
"That starts to mean that even legitimate articles by legitimate media are going to fall into what people consider to be a fake news bucket."

Martin Cocker says industries need to step up their game against fake news. Photo / Sarah Ivey
It is important for people to be able to clearly differentiate what is and what isn't misinformation, Cocker said.
Netsafe hopes the campaign will help the public be more aware of misinformation and fake news and how to deal with it.
It comes after the man behind a malicious rumour online about the origins of Covid-19's return to New Zealand admits he is awaiting a visit from police.
He had claimed that a member of the family at the centre of the new cluster had supposedly entered a managed isolation facility.
The man, who works in international development and aid, says he is incredibly remorseful and ruing the three minutes it took to compose and post the harmful rumour.
Fourteen per cent of people in the Netsafe survey, which ran between March 13 and March 22, 2020, mentioned seeing misleading stories about Covid-19.



Eight in 10 recall seeing fake news on social media, 52 per cent on New Zealand online news sites, 40 per cent in newspapers, and one in three on national television.
Cocker says industries need to do more to intercept fake news, especially if it is spreading on their platform.
The best thing people can do is report what they believe to be misinformation or fake news on the platforms they see them on.
Elections and other major events, like the Covid-19 response, are easy targets because it's a topic everyone is interested in finding out more about, Cocker says.
"The reality is we are, as a country, seeking out information about Covid and about the lockdown and things like that," he said.
"If you put out misinformation that is related to that, it's more likely to be picked up and boosted and spread given the public interest in the topic."
"[Fake news and misinformation] is a tremendously serious problem, with serious consequences."
Netsafe has created a website where people can find out more information about fake news and misinformation: https://yournewsbulletin.co.nz.
The survey ran between March 13 and March 23, 2020. A national representative sample of 1000 people aged over 18 participated.
Colmar Brunton conducted the survey to gather Kiwis perceptions and knowledge on fake news and misinformation.
Netsafe's tips on how to spot fake news
• Understand the context: Information is presented to you everywhere. Check where the original story appeared and who is promoting it. Find out if the source is credible before sharing it.
• Check the facts: Fake news often contains incorrect details, unreliable sources or altered timelines. You can often research and cross-reference key facts with a simple web search.
• Understand the subtlety: Sometimes real information can be distorted to become fake news. Be especially wary of image or video descriptions that might be misrepresenting what is happening in them.
• Compare other sources: Every news...

A new book on legendary New Zealand soldier Charles Upham argues he could've been awarded the prestigious Victoria Cross a staggering eight times during World War II.
Captain Charles Hazlitt Upham is the only combat soldier to twice win the Victoria Cross – the highest award for gallantry – and one of only three double VC winners ever.
He was awarded his first VC for "a series of remarkable exploits" over nine days during the bloody Battle of Crete in 1941, where he single-handedly snuffed out numerous machine-gun posts, carried wounded men under fire, and was badly wounded in his shoulder on the fourth day.
Double VC winner Charles Upham is hailed as one of the greatest soldiers of the Second World War. Photo / File
Upham then won his bar, or second VC, when he fearlessly led his men in North Africa. His citation recorded "five acts of conspicuous gallantry" over three weeks before he was severely wounded again and captured by the Germans.
As a prisoner of war (POW), he made so many escape attempts that he was finally sent to the infamous Colditz Castle.
But in Searching for Charlie, a major new biography published tomorrow, award-winning cartoonist and columnist Tom Scott suggests the relentless acts of bravery by a wiry, modest Canterbury farm valuer meant he probably deserved six more.
"In the end they couldn't do it – they couldn't give one man that many VCs. But just winning one VC was a nightmare for [Upham], winning two was just horrifying, so if he won eight it would've killed him," said Scott who quit his regular cartoon slot to pursue the book project.
"Searching for the source of Charlie's courage was like chasing the end of a rainbow. The deeper I looked and explored the more mysterious it became, until it defied rational explanation."
Scott has been fascinated by Upham since he was a schoolboy and reading the best-selling classic Mark of the Lion by Hamilton lawyer Kenneth Sandford, published in 1962.
During his research, he went on a pilgrimage to Upham's old battlegrounds in Crete and Egypt, as well as the POW camps at Colditz and Weinsberg in Germany, and Modena in Italy.
Scott visited the British Museum and learned about other VC winners, all the time thinking, rather ashamedly, "Charlie did this before morning tea".
He also retraced Upham's childhood and discovered his uncle and namesake, Dr Charles Upham, who took his nephew on house calls to the Quail Island leper colony.

Tom Scott had long dreamed of writing a book about Charles Upham. Photo / Supplied
The seeds of Upham's powerful moral compass and his lifelong abhorrence of bigotry, pretence and prejudice were sewn in those times, Scott believes.
Shy and reluctant to take any credit, Upham deflected all praise onto his soldiers and was "distraught" to discover he'd won the VC.
"Charlie was locked into a defiant, bewildered, almost pathological modesty," Scott says.
"He didn't downplay his achievements so much as wish vehemently that they would go away."
Scott examines the science behind bravery and even takes a test on Upham's behalf to rubbish claims he was a psychopath.
"If you distilled everything that was good in a New Zealand male at that time, Charlie would've been the Champagne or brandy you would've produced," Scott says.
"He just seemed to sum up that Kiwi doggedness, resolve and self-effacement."