The Mike Hosking Breakfast

The extension of the wage subsidy scheme – which is expected to cover 470,000 jobs – has been welcomed by unions and business lobby groups alike.
The current scheme was meant to expire on September 1, but Robertson announced yesterday that it had been extended another two weeks.
It is expected to cost the Government just over $500 million.
The mortgage deferral scheme has also been extended until March 31 next year.
The Finance Minister also isn't ruling out sector specific support in the wake of Covid-19.
Hospitality is one of those sectors asking the Government for a targeted support package.
Grant Robertson told Mike Hosking he's acutely aware of the impact on hospitality and retail to an extent, and he's continuing to look at what can be done.
"It becomes hard to define what a hospitality, retail and tourism business is, but we've attempted to provide sector specific support and they'll keep trying where we can."
LISTEN ABOVE

The exit of big industrial employers is being labelled the de-industrialisation of New Zealand
Australian company BlueScope has flagged it may stop steel making at its Auckland mill, while Southland's Tiwai Point aluminium smelter is winding up operations next year.
Former finance minister Steven Joyce told Mike Hosking government policy is being fingered for big industries closing down.
"The Government isn't being seen to try, and I think that's causing more difficulties form the owners perspective.  And once these big employers go, we will never get them back."
Joyce says Taranaki's gas sector is being run down too because of talk of no offshore exploration policy.
Joyce says the cause of BlueScope scaling back and Southland's Tiwai Point smelter closing is something bigger than Covid.
"The common theme is energy and carbon prices and all of them have fingered the impact of government policy on their businesses."
Joyce says these are the biggest private sector employers in the regions and it's effectively the de-industrialisation of New Zealand.
LISTEN ABOVE

It was, of course, the only call to make.
I have been astonished over the past week or so to hear at least two so-called political experts from universities arguing there was no need to delay the election. Frighteningly, these are the people who fill young minds with what, in this case, is almost party political broadcast material.
The Prime Minister clearly wasn't overly keen on an extension either. But to seriously contemplate, as our political wonks at universities were, simply to carry on as though nothing had happened is to undermine the entire political process, not to mention tradition and simple fairness.
The Opposition hasn't even launched its campaign.
We look on at Belarus with questions. What do you think the world would make of a country where the Government's major party launched their campaign, then locked a solid chunk of the country down, made freedom of movement tricky for the rest of it, and had the official Opposition with no launch at all?
So a delay was a given.
I had, as you may have heard yesterday, predicted October 17 as the date.
I had that without having to ask the myriad of people the Prime Minister waded through.
Fairness was the simple guiding light. Given, once you'd decided you had to delay you could pick any date and if it was only dates you were weighing up in isolation, any date would do. So October 17 is the first Saturday past the school holidays. Easy.
Now, does it help or hinder? The reluctance from the Prime Minister to move the date is because it hinders her, and she knows it. Every day beyond September 19 is a day the Government has to explain this current mess. The border breach, the lack of testing, the very reason we are here is because it has failed to deliver what it said it had.
Up until last week it made much of the 100 days Covid-free. It called this the Covid Election, there would be barely any policy because it had eliminated the virus.
Sadly, that whole platform is blown to bits. Another two weeks of the country's biggest economy locked down, the flow-on effects for the rest of the country, and a billion-dollar-plus bill from the diminishing pile of borrowed money. It is not a good look, and a world away from what it thought it was campaigning on.
It's good for National, which gets a launch, and a platform to argue alternatives. And it's good for New Zealand First, which gets time to save itself.
It was always going to be closer than many of the Labour acolytes thought. But now with another month, and yet more bungles to spin, the tide on a government that's messed it up and failed to deliver is going out.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern appears to be pointing the finger at public heath officials over the failure to regularly test border workers for Covid, before a new outbreak occurred in Auckland.
She said some border staff had been reluctant to take tests - and asked this morning by Newstalk ZB's Mike Hosking why the Government hadn't picked up on the lack of testing, she said that was a question she was asking of public health officials.
"You can imagine the conversations we are having at the moment," Ardern said.
Her comments came as the rigorousness of New Zealand's alert level system has been thrust back into the spotlight after director general of health Dr Ashley Bloomfield floated a tightening of the level-1 setting.
Ardern acknowledged this morning that workers were not being tested "to the extent we wanted" in July and earlier in August.
Hosking: But why?
Ardern: "We did have the testing set up. Not everyone who was asymptomatic was going through it. It appears in some cases staff were reluctant to be tested and we needed to compel them. We have done that now. It is an order - everyone has to be. There are issues we are going back through."
She said it was not the only thing the Government was relying on to stop an outbreak - there were also daily health checks, machine cleaning and PPE use as well.
Even a weekly system of testing of people as espoused by the likes of epidemiologist David Skegg was not failsafe, she said.
Ardern did not directly answer why border staff were not being tested regularly, and why this wasn't picked up earlier, even though mobile testing stations had been set up in July.
Ultimately, she said, she needed to ask public health officials on the ground why that was the case.
"You can see what our expectations were, and they were very clear. That there would be regular routine testing of both symptomatic and asymptomatic people working at high-risk places."
She said there was no expectation of a daily regime. Hosking quoted Skegg as saying the government's plan to do tests every two or three weeks was still not good enough, yet the Government wasn't even doing that.
Ardern said: "In our MIQ (managed isolation and quarantine) we did have testing regularly going through... Cabinet then were of the view that we needed to make sure we had, in the Jet Park in particular, that it needed to be across every single worker. That was a reflection that we were hearing of a reluctance of workers to be tested that regularly. Our view was that should not be choice - it had to be done."
A "new normal", as Bloomfield put it when speaking to media yesterday, might include the enhanced use of masks when nationwide restrictions are eased.
"This outbreak will give us pause for thought about what alert level 1 looks like and what our minimum expectations of every New Zealander might be," Bloomfield said.

Businesses are waiting to hear the criteria for the latest extension to the wage subsidy scheme.
Finance Minister Grant Robertson is set to reveal more details about the extension this afternoon.
He's already said it will be available nationwide.
Canterbury Employers Chamber of Commerce CEO Leann Watson told Mike Hosking they're encouraged to hear the Government talking about reviewing the current criteria.
"I think this is a different situation now, there's no doubt that that support does need to be targetted." 
LISTEN ABOVE

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews says the state’s strategy to drive down community transmission is working after it recorded 279 cases in the past 24 hours.
Sunday’s COVID-19 figures follow a week of markedly lower daily infection numbers compared to earlier in the month, suggesting the harsh lockdown in Melbourne and tougher rules across the state appear to be having the desired effect.
But while he said the state was heading in the right direction, Mr Andrews cautioned Victorians about “backing off”.
“This is an endurance race, it’s not a sprint in any way,” Mr Andrews said on Sunday.
“Whilst these numbers are positive I wouldn’t want anyone in any place in Victoria to think that we have the luxury of backing off.
“We’ve just got to stay the course on this.”
Victoria’s daily numbers hit a harrowing record peak of 725 on August 5, three days after the first of the stage four restrictions were imposed on Melbourne, including a night-time curfew.
Despite the falling daily case numbers, Mr Andrews says it was still too early to say whether the stage four restrictions would ease at the end of the six-week period on September 13.
“What I would say is if you do a trend over the last seven to 10 days, then we have gone from around … 700 cases or more, we are now not in that territory, that is what the data says to us,” he said.
“Where will we be tomorrow? We will have to wait and see what tomorrow’s numbers are. I am always cautious, but there is on my part at least, a cautious optimism and a sense of real hope that this strategy is working and that we are seeing numbers fall now.”
Mr Andrews said the “key point” was that it was “perfectly appropriate” to be happy with falling numbers, but “but none of us can in any way become complacent or think that OK, now it will all just automatically kick in”.
“You’ve got structures, you’ve got rules that kind of work at a macro level,” he said.
“But ultimately those rules are only as good as the many millions of individual choices and decisions that individuals and families make every single day.”
That means “not breaking those rules, not going out, not being out after curfew, not ignoring symptoms and waiting two to three days and then may be getting a test or maybe not”.
“All of those really personal choices, that is what makes the rules work, that is what makes the strategy work,” he said.
Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt also said Victoria was on the path to improvement, shortly before Victoria’s numbers were announced today.
“There is a long way to go. There will be good days, there will be bad days,” he told Sky News.
“There will be days when the numbers are up and days when the numbers are down. But the signs now are that the trend is of progressive reduction.”
In the 24 hours leading up to Sunday, Victoria recorded 16 deaths in the past 24 hours, with 11 of those deaths linked to aged care outbreaks.
Mr Andrews said Victoria’s state of emergency, which was first declared in March, has been extended for another four weeks until 11.59pm on September 13.
It is in addition to a separate state of disaster that was declared earlier this month in response to the deadly second wave of coronavirus.
It comes as authorities in Victoria and New Zealand discuss the possibility of a link with cases across the ditch.
New Zealand has seen a surge of new cases of coronavirus after more than 100 days of no community transmission, recording 13 new cases today.
New Zealand’s health authorities are still working to isolate where the outbreak originated, and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Mr Andrews have discussed possible links between the regions.
“I’ve had a couple of conversations with Prime Minister Ardern and the New Zealand High Commissioner,” Mr Andrews said, according to a report from The Australian. “We’re remaining any and all support around some of that data.”
But...

So this is it? This is our future?
Given the government are obsessed with elimination, which is a word they should stop using, given it isn't and was never eliminated - it was suppressed until a mistake at the border was made.
So what we know is that next time, and there will be a next time, we get a leak, we are in lockdown for at least two weeks.
What would have been immeasurably more positive, uplifting, and realistic, is to say given it’s a cluster, given our contact tracing is world class, given we have electronic apps and contacts, we can safely move Auckland to level two and the rest of the country to level one after two and a half days.  
What that would have done is give us a read on how this country and its economy operates going forward. And even though many would think that’s still too conservative and economically damaging, at least it would have been a great deal more aggressive and sensible than what we got.
They are on a hiding to nothing. Until a vaccine or a change of government, we are at the hostage of control freaks who are maintaining an approach that has failed and the world has given up on. The amount of reading to be done on the damage of an elimination strategy is growing by the day, if not the hour.
We have gone from a fear of mass death and overwhelmed ICUs, to being obsessed over a comparative handful of people.
It's a cluster, it's not a mass outbreak. We have had all the time we needed to be ready. They said it would happen, they weren't ready. They’ve barely advanced in approach from March.
We don’t have the money to keep footing the bill, we don’t have the psychological where-with-all to withstand an ongoing fear that somehow, someway this is going to be happening over, over, and over again. The government's credibility was based on elimination, their word. They seemed to convince enough people they'd achieved it. They were wrong, they were always wrong.
And every time we now go through this, the resilience fades, the questions marks increase, and the anger grows. The tide is draining on support for this approach.
And that is why we have elections.

House Democrats said Sunday they are "ramping up" their investigation of the United States Postal Service as Democratic leaders, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, called on Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and Chairman of the Postal Service Board of Governors Robert Duncan to testify.
This comes as House Democrats are tentatively looking at bringing the House back the week of August 24, two House Democratic sources told CNN on Sunday. But the "dye isn't cast," and a Monday caucus conference call is intended to sort it out, one of the sources said.
The Democratic leaders said in a statement that they want the USPS officials to appear at a hearing on August 24 to discuss what they call "recent, sweeping and dangerous operational changes at the Postal Service that are slowing the mail and jeopardizing the integrity of the election."
"House Democrats, led by Chairwoman (Carolyn) Maloney of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, are ramping up their ongoing investigation by requesting that Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and Chairman of the USPS Board of Governors Robert Duncan testify at an urgent hearing before the Committee on August 24," the leaders said in a statement. "The hearing will examine the sweeping operational and organizational changes at the Postal Service that experts warn could degrade delivery standards, slow the mail and potentially impair the rights of eligible Americans to cast their votes through the mail in the upcoming November elections.
The leaders continued in the statement that DeJoy and Postal Service leadership should be questioned by Congress.
"The Postmaster General and top Postal Service leadership must answer to the Congress and the American people as to why they are pushing these dangerous new policies that threaten to silence the voices of millions, just months before the election," the leaders said.
Several House Democrats Saturday called for the subpoenaing of DeJoy if he won't appear voluntarily.
Senate Democrats, including Gary Peters of Michigan, who have limited investigatory power because they are in the minority, started an investigation last week.
The statement said Senate Democrats are asking Homeland Security Chairman Ron Johnson to call DeJoy and Duncan for a hearing as soon as next week for what they call "vigorous and urgently-needed oversight."
CNN reported Saturday the House Democratic leadership was seriously considering coming back to Washington either sometime this week or next week. One complication is that the Democratic National Convention is being held Monday through Thursday. If the House is brought back next week, it could offer a split screen between that and the Republicans holding their convention.
It is unprecedented for either House of Congress, though, to be in session at any time during one of the party conventions.
"We have a conference call tomorrow to discuss the issue. We spoke with Speaker yesterday as a California delegation, and this is on top of her priority list. I mean this is very serious," Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California told CNN's Ana Cabrera Sunday. "Our members are concerned about the implication this has to have a fair election with every vote counted. So I hope we return, and I know we're speaking about it as a caucus tomorrow."
text by Kevin Bohn, CNN

More than a quarter of Kiwi kids think reading is a waste of time and more than half only bother if they have to.
A new report says growing numbers are simply turning off reading. More than half of our 15-year-olds (52 per cent) now agree that "I read only if I have to" - up from 38 per cent in 2009.
Even worse, 28 per cent agree that "For me, reading is a waste of time" - up from 18 per cent in 2009.
The report by the Ministry of Education's chief education science adviser Professor Stuart McNaughton has been sparked by declines in Kiwi kids' reading performance in international surveys at the ages of both 9 (Year 5) and 15 (Year 11) over the past 20 years.
Kiwi 15-year-olds remain above the international average, which was originally set at 500, but their average reading scores have fallen in every year since the surveys began from 529 in the year 2000 to 506 in 2018.
Did social media do it?
Many commentators have blamed the decline on the growing use of computer games and social media, and McNaughton doesn't dismiss the idea. But he says there is not much evidence yet.
"There are two possible explanations for a direct effect on achievement. One might be that the greater use of social media for communication competes with reading and writing extended texts outside of school," his report says.
"This would be consistent with the drop in reported rates of reading and interest in reading, but the current evidence doesn't establish a direct link."
"A second is that the use of social media has been claimed to change the focus of reading and writing practices: from being able to process and comprehend extended texts at a deep level, to reading at a surface level with punctuated or 'bite-sized' texts, thereby reducing high-level cognitive processing.
"Again, direct causal evidence is missing and frequency and duration effects are not known."
Did NCEA do it?
McNaughton says another possible cause of the decline is the introduction of the National Certificates of Educational Achievement (NCEA) between 2002 and 2004, which has allowed teachers and students to choose "fragmented and idiosyncratic pathways".
His own previous research has found that the flexible NCEA framework has led to schools steering students from poorer families, especially Māori and Pasifika students, into less challenging units.
The gap between the richest quarter and the poorest quarter of NZ students in opportunities to learn more challenging material was the widest of all countries in the global survey.
Recommendations
But he says we need to respond by taking a "life course approach" to rethinking the way we teach reading at all ages.
"We propose that better outcomes will result from optimising learning and development across all ages, rather than focusing on isolated, limited or piecemeal solutions," he says.
He recommends to:

Early childhood: Encourage parents and early childhood centres to read with children and tell them stories, and make sure the centres measure each child's progress.
Starting primary school: Develop a standard school entry assessment to provide "detailed profiles of new entrants' strengths and learning needs", including social and emotional development.
Years 1-3: Strengthen existing approaches for all children including "guided reading with systematic phonics (sounding out words)", and appoint "a lot more" specialists for children who still haven't caught up with the mainstream after six months of one-on-one Reading Recovery.

About 23 per cent of 6-year-olds in schools that provide Reading Recovery currently take part in it, but McNaughton says 15 to 20 per cent of those who take part still need further help to catch up.
He says the current numbers of 100 resource teachers of literacy and 1000 resource teachers of learning and behaviour are not enough. "We need a lot more RTLBs and RTLits."

Years...

People who bought tickets online are still waiting to know if they won nearly 24 hours after last night's big $50m draw - but Lotto insists the technical glitch hasn't affected the integrity of the game.
Lotto NZ has apologised for the delay, which it was said due to the "sheer volume" of tickets purchased and the fact Lotto sold "more online tickets than ever before".
Currently the MyLotto site states the online store is open from 6pm tonight, but it may open sooner if possible.
Lotto NZ Chief Executive Chris Lyman said the game's integrity hadn't been affected by issues with the site.
"While we have had some issues with slow processing speeds, and poor customer experience, I can provide absolute assurance that the integrity of our games have not been impacted," he said.
Lotto NZ has seen a surge in online players since March, with the number of people playing online increasing by 33 per cent.
"We have significantly more people buying tickets online now than ever before. Nearly 200,000 people have registered to play online since 25 March – to put this into perspective, this is the number of new online players we would expect over a two-year period, not four months.
"This week alone 32,000 people have registered to play online, with around half of those from the Auckland region."
MyLotto cannot open until later today because all of the winning tickets need to be processed first, Lyman said.
"What's really important is that we pay our winners their prizes – and there are a lot of winners! In fact we've never had so many.
"Not only did 10 players share the $50 million prize, but hundreds of thousands of other people won prizes across all of our divisions."
After last night's whopping $50 million "must win" draw, the result could not be immediately published.Only this morning was Lotto able to announce how many winners were sharing the haul and where they had purchased their tickets.
Lotto later confirmed between 4000 and 5000 tickets were being purchased per minute for the $43 million draw, which then jackpotted to $50m for last night's draw.
Lyman said the company was making a "substantial investment" in upgrading MyLotto in response to a growing demand of online players.
"The current website is ageing, and the upgrade is required to meet higher demand online," he said.
"While this work is underway we have been making interim improvements. However, regrettably there have been some issues on MyLotto.
"This has in turn resulted in some pretty poor customer experiences, and for that I sincerely apologise."
Prior to the lockdown in March, 25 per cent of Lotto NZ's sales were online and 75 per cent were in-store.
"For last night's $50 million draw around 40 per cent of sales were online," Lyman said.
"We sold around 2.5 million tickets for last night's draw, and over a million of those were online. This is the most tickets we have ever sold online.
"This slowed down our processing significantly, and unfortunately led to delays."
It is not the first time there have been major issues with the MyLotto website after a significant draw either.
On Wednesday the site and app crashed after it became overwhelmed with people trying to buy tickets.
Work to upgrade MyLotto will ensure the back-end processes are more robust, and able to deal with higher traffic on the site. Lotto NZ is also planning a full replacement of its gaming system in 2024.