The Mike Hosking Breakfast

New Zealand Warriors CEO Cameron George says the club is 'very relieved' with telecommunications giant Telstra's sensational U-turn in its decision to force out the club's main sponsor.
On Monday it was revealed that Vodafone would not be permitted to sponsor the embattled NRL club after this season. As first reported by the Herald, the move was sparked by the NRL's enactment of an exclusivity clause which protects Telstra, the competition's major sponsor, from any competition - and was set to cost the Warriors at least $1 million a season.
Vodafone has been the Warriors' naming rights sponsor for 22 years but would likely have been forced to walk away from the club at the end of the season, despite still having two years on the existing contract.The NRL's decision prompted a public outcry on Tuesday, however, with NRL legend and new Warriors consultant Phil Gould warning that rival clubs would "back the Warriors" in any dispute with the NRL.
In a statement on Twitter on Tuesday night, Telstra said it had made the decision to allow the Warriors to extend their partnership with Vodafone.
"Our sporting clubs are feeling the pinch right now and many, like the Warriors, have stepped up to support their fans and the game," the statement said.
"While our naming rights sponsorship is a big investment from us in the game and should be protected in the long term, now is not the time to be taking money out of the sport.
"Just as we've extended our sponsorships that were due to expire for 12 months to support our partners, the Warriors have our support to extend their existing sponsorship too."
Warriors CEO Cameron George told Newstalk ZB's Mike Hosking he was very happy with the outcome.
"Very much so relieved, we appreciate both the NRL and Telstra for their review of the situation," he told the Mike Hosking Breakfast.
"It's been on and off the table for a little while…this year it really escalated because our home games were in Australia. We had to remove Vodafone signage and goal post padding. It just all came to a head.
"We got a letter last week…today we're in a vastly different situation but one we're very comfortable and happy with," George said.
When asked if the issue was sorted long term George said: "We've got two years to go with Vodafone and we'll enjoy that time."
"Telstra's contract with the NRL expires at the same…we'll just wait and see what happens with their partnership."
Vodafone spokesman Rich Llewellyn said it was "bloody great that the NRL and Telstra have found a way through this".
It was excellent news for the club, which had enough to deal with at the moment without having a major sponsorship problem on its hands.
He had only seen the Telstra tweet and not been given official confirmation when contacted by the Herald. Vodafone was still interested in how the NRL would deal with what was being portrayed as a tricky commercial conflict.
But Vodafone would love to continue on with its current naming rights deal with the Warriors, which ends in 2022.
"Kudos to the NRL and Telstra for doing what is right for the game," he said.
"And we are very pleased for the Warriors and their fans. It's awesome.
"We don't want to comment too much before we have seen all the details. But we'll definitely see our contract through until the end of 2022."
The Warriors are 12th on the NRL table after winning just five games so far in a turbulent season that has seen them relocate to Australia due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
In June the club sacked head coach Stephen Kearney, before recently being snubbed when they offered the role to interim coach Todd Payten.
Nathan Brown was last week confirmed as their new coach after the club lost key playmaker Blake Green.

New Zealand's Prime Minister says overseas students will still have to wait until next year to come here, despite an Australian pilot scheme to bring in 300 students next month.
Australian Trade Minister Simon Birmingham said the 300 students would be admitted on flights from Singapore to Adelaide starting next month, using spare quarantine capacity in Adelaide.
But NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said New Zealand was still focused on "making sure our system is right" for returning New Zealanders.
The Government asked airlines to stop selling inbound tickets even to returning New Zealanders between July 7 and August 9 to keep the numbers in quarantine below the current capacity of 7292 people.
It is also still struggling to track down the source of the current Covid-19 outbreak in Auckland which has infected 69 people so far. A worker at a quarantine facility at Auckland's Rydges Hotel has also tested positive for Covid today, indicating that the first cluster may not be the only source of community infection.
Ardern told NewstalkZB host Mike Hosking that she would "look at what we can learn" from the Australian pilot scheme, but the Government's position was that foreign students would not be let into New Zealand until next year.
"We haven't ruled out a system in the future where we manage potentially international students even if they are in separate bespoke quarantine facilities," she said.
"We have said, though, that our focus should be on doing that in the new academic year rather than this one, given the work it would need to go into doing that properly."
She noted that the Australian pilot scheme was for "quite a small number".
"We're saying that that's something that we would look to in the new year, it's not something we believe that we should be doing at this point in time because actually most of our demand is still going to make sure our system is right for those New Zealanders."
The Australian move has been controversial, prompting a a backlash from Victorian residents who are locked out of South Australia except for essential travel, and from South Australians with family members who have been unable to get back into the state from overseas.
South Australia's deputy chief public health officer Dr Mike Cusack defended the move, telling the ABC that "people crossing the Victorian border posed a more pressing danger than arrivals by international students".
Trade Minister Birmingham, a senator from South Australia, told the ABC: "South Australia has shown an exceptional ability to manage [quarantine hotels]... [and] is a good market to do this in because there's excess capacity … in quarantine."
NZ educational institutions have been lobbying the Government for months to let them run their own quarantine facilities for students at their own cost, arguing that foreign students would be motivated to obey the rules because breaking them would mean they would have to leave the country.
Universities NZ chief executive Chris Whelan said the sector was waiting for the Ministry of Health to issue standards for quarantine facilities.
"I understand the Ministry of Health is putting out standards some time in August," he said.
"I'd certainly be hoping that our Government is looking at this [Australian move] and seeing what can be learned. We'd love to be able to do it here.
"I've made some discreet inquiries to see if there is anything in the pipeline at this stage, and it's fair to say that, this close to the election, it's probably not the highest priority."
English NZ chair Darren Conway, who represents 22 English language schools, said Auckland's Dominion English Schools went into "hibernation" last week, EF International Language Centre was doing the same next week, and North Shore-based Unique NZ was closing.
"I would think that at least half of the English NZ schools will be in hibernation by the end of the year simply...

A bid to cushion the economy through the impact of Covid-19 is likely to see the Reserve Bank cut its benchmark cash rate below zero, bank economists are now predicting.
On Tuesday ASB and ANZ joined Westpac in predicting that the official cash rate would be dropped below zero early in 2021. Westpac was the first to formally predict a negative OCR.
Economists at BNZ said on Tuesday that they were currently reviewing the bank's prediction, hinting that it was likely to follow a similar path in predicting a negative OCR.
"It now looks highly likely that they will go negative," BNZ head of research Stephen Toplis told the Herald.
The move follows statements from the Reserve Bank last week expressing a preference for a negative cash rate, along with a new "funding for lending programme" which would lend money directly to the banks in order to ensure that a lower benchmark rate would be passed on to customers.
ASB economist Mark Smith said the bank had been warning for some time that the current OCR was unlikely to be enough to boost the economy given the hit posed by Covid-19.
Smith said the bank was growing in its conviction that the Reserve Bank's own forecasts would prove to be too optimistic "even if the recent community outbreak of Covid-19 in NZ has a modest and short-lived impact".
Earlier this year the Reserve Bank slashed the OCR by 75 basis points to 0.25 per cent, and promised it would stay there for at least 12 months.
It also warned banks to have their systems operationally ready for a negative OCR by December this year.
ASB has predicted that in April 2021 the Reserve Bank would slash the OCR by another 75 points to 0.5 per cent.
ANZ meanwhile predicted April would see a 50 basis point cut to -0.25 per cent and it was possible that a further 50 basis points of cuts could follow.
"The RBNZ has ruled out changing the OCR before March 2021, but expressed a preference for a package of a lower OCR and a bank 'funding for lending' programme, should they conclude that further stimulus is required at that point," ANZ chief economist Sharon Zollner said in a note on Tuesday.
"We think they will."

If leadership is a test of this election, and like all elections it should be, surely we are seeing some fairly gargantuan issues emerge.
The fact Australia is seeing the arrival back of international students next month and we aren't is example one. Listen to our Prime Minister yesterday being told the news, she had no answer, she had no plan, she hadn't thought about it, she started offering excuses. Like Australia wasn’t getting many back, and Australia was concentrating them in certain areas.
Yes, and yes. That’s called a plan, that’s a trial, that’s working out what works, and what doesn’t. Doing nothing, which is her attitude and approach, isn't working. It isn't solving the problem, it isn't bringing some of the $5 billion we've lost back into the country.
It's an abdication of duty and responsibility that we aren't leading the way, thinking about leading the way, or looking at all possible avenues to generate income for this country.
What makes it worse is the universities have already addressed this with the government. They have a solution, they can run the programme themselves, they have the facilities, and they have solved their own issues. But no, the government must do everything, and yet it’s the government that are doing nothing.
Example two is elective surgery. Once again the Prime Minister was surprised. Is it really necessary to cancel all elective surgery in the country's largest city just for level three, and a cluster of 50 odd people?
The answer is no.
But the fact the Prime Minister was taken aback by the health reaction tells you two things. She hadn't thought through the consequences of going to level thee and two, and the public service are so fear bound that the go to position is to cancel everything. Like he 2000 beds in level four that were filled by 22 people as thousands gave up their operations and treatments.
While we are at it, the Australians are going after Google in terms of adverting to help local media. We talked about that, remember? What have we done? Nothing.
Leadership is the most critical of skills. Foresight, planning, insight, determination, respect, reassurance, and even the odd bit of surprise. Yet look at the border, look at universities, look at elective surgery, look at Google. And that's just the here and now.
Where is the leadership? Where is the sense that the adults are in charge here? Where are the adults?

Megan Woods is trying to reassure New Zealanders after a maintenance worker at an isolation hotel tested positive for Covid-19.
He had no routine contact with guests,  but genome testing shows his strain is the same as a returnee from the US.
The Minister in charge of border isolation and quarantine said the results of the re-tests of Rydges staff and guests would be known today.
"We have a case of a singular worker who has contracted the virus," Woods told Newstalk ZB's Mike Hosking today. "We are still trying to track down why. We know from the genome sequencing it's not connected to the cluster that's happening in Auckland at the moment."
She denied the suggestion the border had leaked or been breached. The man's close contacts had been tested, with negative results.
"It's not the border leaking. We can't even establish a person-to-person contact for how this man did contract this. We have gone through very methodically, through all the evidence, about where he was as a maintenance worker, what rooms he was in. There is absolutely no evidence this is a border leak. Obviously something has happened - we will continue to chase it down."
She said the Government wanted to make doubly sure there was no one else in the chain of transmission.
Hipkins told Parliament yesterday testing had been too slow and gave figures which showed three days after ordering tests, only half of the 10,000 Auckland Airport and Ports of Auckland workers had been swabbed.
"It has not met the very clear expectations of ministers," Hipkins said.
"The decisions of Cabinet were not implemented in a timely or robust manner. That has been both disappointing and frustrating."
Yesterday a full investigation was launched into how a maintenance worker at the Rydges managed isolation hotel was infected with Covid-19 after genome sequencing ruled it out as a connection to the Americold cluster.
The case could indicate a possible second chain of community transmission but officials are confident at this stage it's contained, with the man's close contacts all being isolated and testing negative.
The strain of his infection is the same as a woman who returned from the United States and stayed in the Rydges between July 28 to 31 before being moved to the Jetpark quarantine hotel after testing positive.
Officials reviewed CCTV footage and swipe card records and found there was no obvious person-to-person contact, with the woman only leaving her room two or three times and the maintenance worker not entering it.
Woods said the infection was not related to any incidents or systems breakdown.
"This case highlights how tricky and insidious this virus can be."
All guests and staff at the Rydges Hotel are being tested as officials work to establish how the man was infected.
But it was revealed the man passed two daily health checks and temperature checks despite having a cough because he put it down to a pre-existing condition.
His case was only picked up as a result of the mandatory testing regime on August 13.
Director general of health Ashley Bloomfield said the man's case was believed to be contained with his household and workplace contacts testing negative and being isolated for two weeks.
And as of yesterday morning, 97 per cent of staff at Auckland MIQ facilities had been tested in the hunt for the source of the Americold outbreak which appears to have the first case, with the onset of their symptoms starting on July 31.

The Government admits it has concerns around the testing of airline crew coming through the border, amid claims from Winston Peters that a "second border breach" led to a hotel worker contracting the virus in central Auckland.
Health Minister Chris Hipkins said this morning he was concerned about protocols for international airline crew, and the risk of the virus entering New Zealand.
"I'm meeting with Air New Zealand today to make sure that that's as tight as a drum," Hipkins told Newstalk ZB's Mike Hosking. "I'm not 100 per cent convinced that it is at the moment. I'm going to be absolutely boring into that. There's no time for rest here. I've been doing this job for seven weeks. Every single day I've woken up thinking about Covid-19."
According to the Ministry of Health, "Air crew living in New Zealand and returning from high-risk layovers should self-isolate, have a Covid-19 test on day two after their arrival in New Zealand and continue to self-isolate until the results of that test have been returned."
Hipkins told Newstalk ZB that he wanted to tighten every possible avenue for the virus to get into New Zealand.
On the Rydges case - which is unrelated to air crew - Hipkins said CCTV footage and the worker's swipe-card access had been reviewed and he had not been in physical contact with any guests.
All staff and guests are being re-tested at Rydges after the maintenance worker's positive test. The strain of Covid is different to that involved in the big Auckland cluster that has forced the city into a two-week level-3 lockdown.
The new case comes on top of the massive exercise to test every frontline border worker in an effort to track down the source of the Americold outbreak which is on track to be the largest cluster yet.
By 11am yesterday, 97 per cent of the 2900 staff at Auckland managed isolation and quarantine facilities had been tested.
But so far the sources of the latest mystery case and the Americold cluster remain unknown, despite the Deputy Prime Minister saying there'd been "a second border breach" and someone should be sacked.
Winston Peters said the Health Minister was accountable for the failure in testing at the border, but he was not responsible so shouldn't resign and neither should the director general of health.
"What you have to do though is find out where the direction was followed and if it wasn't followed, why, and if it's inadequate in terms of an answer then that person must go - it's that simple."
Hipkins today defended the Government's approach, and that the Rydges case had been picked up early because the system worked.

There is at least one positive to come out of this new lockdown, and that is the public once again showing their support for small businesses.
During the last lockdown, former New Zealander of the Year David Downs set up SOS business - a platform that businesses could sign up to and customers could buy vouchers for to keep revenue coming in relatively steadily.
Last lockdown, over $2 million worth of vouchers were sold for 2400 businesses and now SME's have received a massive boost.
Texas based company inKind has now partnered with SOS and will inject $5 million in funding for the first year.
Inkind founder Johann Moonesinghe joined Mike Hosking to talk about the project.
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Nine people with the virus died over the past week in a single nursing home in eastern France, and other French care homes are shutting their doors as the country battles a new rise in COVID-19 infections.
The Les Sablons home in the town of Pulnoy tested its 135 residents and staff after a first case was found Aug. 3, and 34 tested positive, the home’s director Daniel Cilla told regional media.
By Sunday, nine residents with the virus had died, he said.
While more than 10,000 people with the virus died in French nursing homes in the first wave of the pandemic, the Les Sablons home hadn't registered a single case until this month, according to the regional health agency.
Pulnoy Mayor Marc Ogiez, speaking on BFM television, blamed the outbreak on waning vigilance by families amid the vacation season, and a sense among many in France this summer that the virus crisis was over.
The health agency issued an online appeal Monday for reinforced medical staff for hospitals and nursing homes in the Grand-Est region, which was the first in France to be badly hit by the virus in March.
Several other nursing homes around France have closed their doors anew after reporting virus cases in recent days, families told The Associated Press.
Infections have been speeding up around France in recent days, with 3,015 new cases Sunday, one of the highest daily jumps since the country lifted as strict two-month lockdown in May. Some 263 virus clusters are currently under investigation, many linked to workplaces, family vacation gatherings or dance parties.
The government is sending riot police to the Marseille region to help enforce mask requirements, as more and more French towns and neighborhoods are imposing mask rules. France has seen scattered incidents of violence involving people refusing to wear masks.
More than 30,400 people with the virus have died in France, one of the highest death tolls in the world.

In a U-turn after days of criticism, the British government on Monday scrapped an exam-grading policy that was set to deprive thousands of graduating high school students — especially more disadvantaged ones — of places at universities.
Roger Taylor, chairman of U.K. exam regulator Ofqual, said the use of an algorithm to predict the results of exams that were canceled by the coronavirus pandemic had caused “real anguish and damaged public confidence.”
“It has not been an acceptable experience for young people,” he said. "I would like to say sorry."
Universities in the U.K. offer final-year high school students places based on grades predicted by their teachers. Admission is contingent on the results of final exams, known as A Levels.
This year, with schools largely shut since March and no exams, education authorities in England ran the predicted grades through an algorithm, intended to standardize results, that compared them with schools’ past performance. That meant high-achieving students at under-performing schools, many in deprived areas, saw their marks downgraded, while students at above-average schools kept their predicted grades.
Hundreds of students have held protests, calling the results an injustice, and lawmakers were inundated with complaints from angry parents.
Kay Mountfield, head teacher at a school in Marlow, west of London, said 85% of her students had received lower than predicted grades.
“Seventy of my students have not had their first choice of university,” she said. “Normally that would be about five, or 10 maybe, students.”
The reversal means students in England will receive the grades estimated by their teachers, unless the ones generated by the algorithm are higher. Education authorities in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have made similar moves.
The same policy will apply to GCSEs, the exams taken by 16-year-old students. Those results are due on Thursday.
The U-turn is an embarrassment for Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government, but had come to appear inevitable as criticism of the policy spread, even within the ranks of the governing Conservative Party.
“This group of young people have lost out on so much already; we must ensure that bright, capable students can progress on their next step,” Paymaster General Penny Mordaunt said before Monday's announcement.
Defense Minister Johnny Mercer said there were “clear injustices” in the system.
In Scotland, authorities quickly reversed course after a similar fiasco last week, saying students would get their predicted grades. That increased pressure on Johnson to do the same for England.
Johnson, who is on vacation, chaired a call on the crisis Monday with Education Secretary Gavin Williamson and senior officials.
Williamson had previously insisted that there would be “no U-turn,” though he said students who had been downgraded could appeal or retake the exams.
But on Monday he acknowledged that “the process of allocating grades has resulted in more significant inconsistencies than can be resolved through an appeals process.”
“I am sorry for the distress this has caused young people and their parents but hope this announcement will now provide the certainty and reassurance they deserve,” he said.
The announcement did not end the uncertainty for all students, however. Many are scrambling to get in touch with universities to see whether they can now get in.
“I’ve been on hold for an hour, said Testify Anyahamiwe, who hopes to study medicine at Queen Mary University of London.
“Although I'm happy that my grades are definitely going to be higher than what they gave me, I still don't know if I'm going to get my uni place," she said.
Amy Kirkham, from High Wycombe, northwest of London, missed the grades needed to secure her place studying economics at Cambridge University when the algorithm downgraded her in two subjects.
Now she has the...

Principals are now being given the option of allowing Year 12 and 13 students back to school early for face-to-face learning during alert level 3.
Ministry of Education head Iona Holsted told schools in a bulletin last night that she will confirm today the date students can return.
"It is likely to be either Wednesday, August 19 or Thursday, August 20. Our objective is Wednesday," she said.
The health requirements are as follows:
• Physical distancing must be observed at all times – 1m inside and 2m outside.
• Students must be organised into bubbles of no more that 20 with one teacher.
• The student make-up of each bubble cannot change throughout alert level 3.
• Bubbles must not mix with each other inside or outside in the school grounds.
• A teacher cannot be associated with more than one bubble of students but a bubble of students can have more than one teacher throughout alert level 3.
• Rigorous hand washing and drying must be adhered to and hand sanitiser available at the entrance to classrooms.
• Coughing and sneezing must be into the elbow.
• Students and teachers must stay home or be asked to go home if they are unwell."Principals can determine the configuration of bubbles – principals and teachers are in the best position to know what is needed for their students, and which of their students may be more vulnerable, learn better in a structured environment or whose learning is dependent on portfolio or laboratory work," Holsted said.She said examples of situations principals might consider are supervision of online learning,tutorial groups and subject groups (e.g. chemistry).
"Different students may attend for different times of the day, or different days of the week," she said.
Principals will need to provide "a very brief description of their proposal" and sign an attestation that they will meet the public health requirements and email the online form to Holsted for approval.
Auckland Grammar headmaster Tim O'Connor has been imploring authorities to allow flexibility, especially for students so close to crucial assessments.
On Friday he said 11 more full school days out of the classroom would be expensive, especially for students sitting Cambridge examinations. He didn't want 2020 to be a wasted year for students.
"I'm ecstatic. It's great news," he told Checkpoint about yesterday's announcement.
"Our young men will be ecstatic about this ... it gives them the opportunity to get prompt responses from teachers. Anything we can give them they'll be grateful for."
He said the decision was complicated because the Government would have to work through the Health Order to give students a dispensation to return and he expected this to happen tomorrow.
It would mean a lot of organisation to ensure physical distancing of one metre inside and two metres outside, classes of 20 or fewer and teachers only being associated with one group of students although the bubble of students could have more than one teacher.
"It might mean students aren't with us for the entire day ...
"Any form of face-to-face contact is great for our young people."
Asked if the decision favoured high-decile schools and unfairly disadvantaged schools with fewer resources, he disagreed, saying it offered schools greater flexibility to be able to make decisions for themselves and their community.

He said one of the critical groups schools needed to be helping were students on vocational pathways who did a lot of practical work as part of their courses.
"They will fall behind very quickly indeed."
The decision does not mean that Year 12 and 13 students have to come to school every day.
"Any face-to-face contact is better than none."
He urged all other Auckland schools to consider returning at least some of the students so they received some contact.
He said he wanted to congratulate the Ministry of Education for...