The Mike Hosking Breakfast

A full level 4 lockdown is "not in frame" right now despite additional cases of Covid-19, all linked to the existing Auckland cluster of 17, Health Minister Chris Hipkins said today.
As Cabinet meets this afternoon to decide New Zealand's ongoing Covid response, a level 4 lockdown is not in the frame right now, Hipkins told Newstalk ZB's Mike Hosking.
"All of the evidence suggest it's still the one cluster. Obviously we release the new number at 1pm. There have been some additional cases and we will release those at 1pm today. Yes, all of the cases so far remain connected. That is very encouraging but obviously we haven't identified the point of origin.
"Level 4 is not in frame at the moment. You would need to see a number of different clusters and a number of different isolated cases before you make a decision along those lines. There is nothing like that in the frame at this point."
Hipkins said it was now compulsory for border workers to be tested, defending the Government's earlier approach and revelations only a third had been tested.
Auckland University Professor of Medicine Des Gorman rated the Government's response as "somewhere between two and three" out of 10.
"I've seen health systems manage medical emergencies worse than this but it takes some doing," Gorman told Hosking. "It's like we're living in a parallel universe."
He was particularly astounded that only a third of border workers had been tested up until this week. "I thought someone was pulling my leg."
New Zealand had now had the same experience as Australia, Vietnam and other countries whose elimination strategies had been undermined by cases through the border."If we are going to have a keep-it-out, stamp-it-out [approach], then we need to keep it out as much as possible, stamp it out as quickly as possible... but you can't keep reacting the way we are to clusters by plunging society back into deep freeze."
Hipkins said he had not spoken to Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters who claimed on Australian television that a border breach had led to the new cluster. "There is no evidence to substantiate that claim at the moment."
Hipkins said there were rumours of positive cases all over New Zealand, and that simply was not true.
Auckland has been under level 3 restrictions and the rest of New Zealand in level 2 since midday Wednesday, following revelations of a Covid outbreak in the country's biggest city on Tuesday evening.
The news has seen thousands of Kiwis lining up for Covid tests.
Hipkins told Hosking there would be even more tests today, following complaints and concerns from people they were waiting for hours for tests or missing out altogether as stations closed.
His comments come as the size of the new Auckland cluster yesterday grew by 13 and cases spread to the North Shore. Counting the original family, there were 17 cases in total up until the new cases announced today.
New Zealanders will find out later this afternoon whether restrictions on their freedoms will be eased, extended or tightened.
Cabinet will meet about 3pm to review the last pieces of information it needs before making a decision. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern will announce what the Government has decided at 5.30pm.

Over the last couple of weeks, many Kiwis have looked across the Tasman at Victoria with the thought of "that would never happen to us".
But as we begin our second wave, should we be taking advice from the situation in Australia a way or how, and how not to, act.
Epidemiologist at Melbourne University Tony Blakely told Mike Hosking the compulsory wearing of masks in Victoria has worked.
"Studies have shown up to a 85% reduction by wearing masks.
"The numbers have started to some down fast since wearing masks, there's very strong evidence they work. They really are a no brainier."
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Entrepreneur Sam Morgan has a new idea to help contain Covid-19 - and he says the Ministry of Health could roll it out within days if it chooses.
The txt-based Daily Health Check service would send a message to everyone's phones - in the manner of the Civil Defence texts sent on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, only with two-way capability so simple questions could be asked.
There would be a couple of quick questions on first-use (on age, location and pre-existing conditions), then one about feeling any Covid-like symptoms (watch a demo here).
The idea, is once you're registered, your Daily Health Check takes less than 30 seconds.
Morgan sees it as a real-time way for the Government to establish where it should focus its resources, down to the postcode level, at a time when speed is of the essence to prevent runaway community transmission.
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Act Party leader David Seymour is calling on the Government to release its economic contingency plans as Auckland businesses brace to the possibility of extended lockdown.
And he says some form of compensation for businesses forced back into level 3 restrictions "for the public good" are necessary.
The Opportunities Party, meanwhile, wants a universal basic income (UBI) to "save ourselves a big administrative welfare headache".
Yesterday, Finance Minister Grant Robertson said he has met with Treasury officials to discuss a possible Auckland-targeted package, which could involve a wage subsidy extension for the region.
"The reason I kept the $14 billion aside was in the event that this occurred, we hoped that it wouldn't," he said of the money left in the Covid-19 response fund.
In the meantime, however, Seymour wondered if Robertson could release the details of the Government's contingency plans.
"Because they've had three months to prepare since we came out of [the April] lockdown, where this kind of thing was foreseeable," he told the Herald today.
"Surely they must be prepared for this. And if they're just hustling now then are they taking it more seriously than they have for the last three months? Are they already planning on a longer lockdown?"
On Tuesday night, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced Auckland would be moving to alert level 3 on the coronavirus response scale from midday Wednesday to midnight Friday.
The Super City was plunged back into a lockdown in response to four cases of community transmission with an unknown source.
It is estimated the current measures of Auckland at level 3 and the rest of the country at level 2 will cost the economy about $440 million per week.
"In principle the Government policy of lockdown is what disadvantages people, it may be caused by a virus which of course is not the Government's fault," Seymour said.
The Epsom incumbent, whose electorate includes the retail hubs of Newmarket and Parnell, said some form of compensation for businesses is needed.
"People also need to be aware that the wage subsidy pays the wages, and from the point of view of business that is just one cost," he added.
Other costs - such as commercial leases - would begin to again weigh heavy on businesses.
"I suspect a lot of the commercial lease arrangements that people have come to aren't actually durable if there's going to be a further lockdown," Seymour said.
But some businesses and owners, he said, "are already bottomed out".
"It's a little bit like when you're absolutely buggered and the referee calls extra time and you've got to play another 20 minutes," he said.
"This will be devastating because people have recovered and now they may not be able to ... It's very worrying to say the least."
TOP Party leader and former Treasury economist Geoff Simmons said Kiwis will need welfare to get by as the pandemic continues to rage overseas and "we know our borders aren't bulletproof".
"We know that lockdowns will come back into effect. We know that Kiwi businesses will suffer as a result ... So why over complicate it for ourselves? Let's implement a universal basic income immediately and save ourselves a big administrative welfare headache.
"We know that we need robust contact tracing and we know that's where our energy should be focused right now, not on the ins-and-outs of a complicated regional wage subsidy."
Simmons said experts had, for some time, been predicting a second outbreak of Covid-19 and some form of lockdown would return.
"The wage subsidy scheme is set to end in a few weeks, so you can believe that a lot of Kiwi businesses will be feeling uncertain right now about how to pay wages to staff especially as they're thrust into an immediate lockdown again.
"This goes beyond Auckland too – the rest of the country is watching anxiously to confirm whether the rest of the nation...

Horticulture New Zealand is frustrated that independent greengrocers in the Auckland area are being forced to close under the level 3 lockdown.
The industry fought hard last lockdown to try to get government approval to continue trading - warning of food waste and financial loss - but was unsuccessful.
Horticulture New Zealand chief executive Mike Chapman said it was disheartening that independent grocers in Auckland were once again being put back in this position. He said the disruption to the supply chain meant that there would very likely be wasted produce.
"We understand from government that in the level 3 restriction areas, that the independent fruit and vegetable retailers cannot open," he said.
"The issue here is about getting produce to the public, and in Auckland 60 per cent of the fresh fruit and vegetables is sold through independent retailers and through the farmers' markets, so it's really important to keep these stores open."
Chapman said discussions with the Agriculture Minister Damien O'Connor and Ministry for Primary Industries were ongoing.
Despite greengrocers having to close, vegetable growers in the Auckland area are still able to operate. Farmers and growers are considered an essential service and could continue working providing they follow hygiene and social distancing guidelines.
The area under level 3 restrictions includes Pukekohe, a key vegetable growing area.
Pukekohe Vegetable Growers Association president Kylie Faulkner said the safety precautions implemented last lockdown were all being rolled out again.
"So face masks, social distancing, work bubbles ... because first and foremost obviously is looking after our own staff and ensuring their safety and making sure that we can still keep doing what we do - to be able to cut and provide fresh veggies," Faulkner said.
Faulkner said growers would be working hard to keep supermarkets well stocked. But she said having greengrocers open would make this easier and would not cause such a logjam of people trying to all get to the supermarket.
In a statement, MPI said under the level 3 guidelines retail businesses could operate, as long as they could offer contactless delivery or pickup.
"Consumers cannot physically browse for goods. This includes greengrocers," it said.
By Maja Burry of RNZ.

The Reserve Bank has increased its ability to effectively print money but won't be able to go any higher.
The central bank's kept the Official Cash Rate at 0.25 percent but has increased its quantitative easing limit from $60 billion to $100 billion.
Westpac chief economist Dominick Stephens told Mike Hosking that's as far as it can go because there are no more Government bonds to buy than that.
“If the Reserve Bank needs to use even more monetary stimulus, it'll need another tool."
Stephens says last year the Reserve Bank said a negative OCR was an option.
"I think what Adrian Orr was saying that it’s not needed right now. And they’re still saying, but if something happens, it’s the next cab of the rank."
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Three people were killed and six others injured Wednesday when a passenger train derailed in northeast Scotland after heavy rain and flooding hit the area.
The train driver was believed to be among the dead, British Transport Police said. The Rail, Maritime and Transport union said that the train conductor was also believed killed. Formal identification has yet to take place. Six people were hospitalized, but their injuries are not considered serious.
Images from the scene show that several cars of the four-carriage train had left the tracks and one had tumbled down an embankment. Smoke was seen billowing from the wreck. Air ambulances and coast guard helicopters came and went as the rescue operation unfolded.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson said a police investigation aims to find out what caused the derailment and ensure “nothing like this happens again.”
“As I understand there was about a month’s worth of rainfall in a very short period which undoubtedly aggravated the problem there,” he added.
Torrential rain had caused flooding and travel disruptions in Scotland, and on Wednesday morning Network Rail Scotland tweeted warnings of a landslip affecting services in the area.
It was not clear how many people were on the train, an early morning ScotRail service from Aberdeen to Glasgow.
British Transport Police chief superintendent Eddie Wylie said the derailed train was not a busy service, “and from (closed circuit television) inquiries and witness statements we believe all passengers have been accounted for.”
“However, once the area has been made safe, then a full and thorough search will be conducted, which is likely to take some time," he said.
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon described the derailment as a “major″ incident and said she would be convening an emergency response meeting.
The transport police said officers were called at 9:43 a.m. (0843GMT) to the railway line near the coastal town of Stonehaven, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) northeast of Edinburgh and south of Aberdeen.
Local lawmaker Andrew Bowie had been in Stonehaven surveying flood damage earlier Wednesday.
“The situation was really bad this morning. The River Carron, the main river which flows through it, had burst its banks, and the heavy rain had caused flooding in the center of Stonehaven and lots of the side streets leading off it,″ he said.
Bowie added that the water had receded and it was unclear if flooding was connected to the derailment.
“We obviously don’t know why the derailment took place, but obviously we have suffered terrible weather here," he said.
Serious train accidents are rare in the U.K. The country’s last fatal derailment was in 2007.
Queen Elizabeth II sent a message of condolence, saying “it was with great sadness that I heard of the train derailment.” She added that the entire royal family joined her in sending thoughts and prayers to the families of those affected.
The head of Network Rail cut short a family vacation to return to the UK. The chief inspector of railways, Ian Prosser, said inspectors were at the site and assisting in the preliminary investigation.

I have been astonished at how many people personally know Ashley Bloomfield or people who work directly with Bloomfield, who have been able to release in the golden gems of info they’ve gleaned from their highly prized conversations with him.
We have people "in the know." There is an armada of people who knew Level Three was coming, even more know that we will be in Level Four by Monday.
We have people who know people, who know people. There are people who know for a fact these cases don’t even exist, that all the talk about masks, tests, and lanyards was the softening up for what came Tuesday night.
I tell you what, Bloomfield clearly spends most of his time just leaking astonishing amounts of detail. I'm surprised he had time to take that test on Tuesday.
That, by the way was a stunt that the media, sadly, because most of them long ago let go of any pretense around being neutral, failed to see as a stunt.
And it was a stunt as a result of the Prime Minister being sprung on this show Monday for not having had a single test, despite spending the previous days telling everyone to say yes to a test, contact trace, wear a lanyard, download an app, and get a mask.
She, of course, couldn’t front up all of a sudden and do a public test, that would have been too embarrassing. So poor old Bloomfield was thrown under the bus yet again and dispatched to give the media their headline and happy snap, that their administration were at least superficially doing what they were expecting the rest of us to .
For what it's worth and call me sensationally naive, but I am one of the few who seem to believe we'll be out of this by tomorrow night.
Why? Because the government can't afford not to be. They've blown this, their calling card is in tatters, the Covid free status that formed their campaign, and the Covid free election is now shot to bits.
They wouldn't have been so stupid to name Friday if they didn’t think they could deliver. In an election campaign, and make no mistake the campaign hasn’t stopped, the pitch for love, support and your vote rolls on unabated. But in an election campaign,you under-promise and over-deliver.
You don’t say Friday, then go, "whoops it's Level Four, and it'll be weeks."
That, by the way, I didn’t hear from Bloomfield, it's just common sense.

PM Jacinda Ardern traded verbal blows with National leader Judith Collins and deputy leader Gerry Brownlee, with the Prime Minister accused of lacking transparency and sitting on information.
As major parties suspended their election campaigns, Collins urged Ardern to push back the election date given the alert level restrictions and the media spotlight on the Prime Minister.
She said there was a lack of transparency because the Opposition should be provided more information, and should be consulted on such major decisions.
Brownlee added that it was "interesting" Kiwis were warned there could be another outbreak about 10 days ago and told to stock up on masks.
"And then you had the Prime Minister's visit to the mask factory [on Tuesday] ... all very interesting things to have happened a matter of hours before a large residential area of New Zealand went into level 3 lockdown."
Brownlee told Newstalk ZB's Mike Hosking today that the election was now a distraction to the fight against Covid-19. "Regardless of how we got here... it's very serious. Although it's Auckland locked down, the rest of the country is also affected."

National Party leader Judith Collins says her party should have more briefings from the Government and should be consulted on major decisions. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Ardern said the suggestion the Government was holding back vital information was "just nonsense".
"There is no reason why we would ever do that ... I do worry that those kinds of theories do nothing to support what needs to be collective action from all of us."
She said the caretaker convention, which would normally mean consulting the Opposition in major Government decisions, only applied after an election was held and before an administration was formed.
"We'll keep the National Party informed. All I ask in return is that we continue to see some unity in our response here."
Asked about the election date, Ardern said the dissolution of Parliament had been deferred until Monday to provide some breathing space to focus on the Covid response.

New Zealand's top health boss has rejected suggestions the country is being too soft on people who have tested positive for Covid, amid revelations a high school student now has the virus.
Cabinet Ministers will meet tomorrow to decide whether Auckland might be eased into alert level 2, stay at level 3, or moved to full lockdown.
Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield confirmed today a Mt Albert Grammar student in Auckland had tested positive - a person who was a close contact of the family whose members have tested positive.
He did not know if the student was one of the four probable cases announced yesterday.
He said some of the original family who had tested positive were in a quarantine facility but not all of them.
"I don't think we have been soft on this at all. We don't round up people in New Zealand, Mike," Bloomfield told Newstalk ZB's Mike Hosking this morning. "We round up sheep, we don't round up people."
Tomorrow's Cabinet decision on the future of the lockdown will depend on factors including the extent of the new Covid-19 outbreak, the containment of known chains of transmission, and whether the source of infection has been found.
Bloomfield would not say how he thought the decision would go. "We are getting all our information together so we can get the best possible advice. I feel confident we will have a lot more good information to inform a good decision."
Bloomfield told Hosking: "We get closer every hour" to finding patient zero, and the source of the latest outbreak.
He said it was only a "low possibility" the virus came in on freight - one of the family members works in a coolstore that takes imported frozen goods from overseas.
"We are working flat out to do the contact-tracing we need to do and trace back to find out what the source of this infection is," he said.
But Kiwis would have to wait until 1pm for the latest information on testing results and a full update.
He rejected a suggestion he was playing down the cases and the possibility of community transmission. "I don't think advising on getting Auckland into alert level 3 within about six hours is playing this thing down."
Kiwi epidemiologist at Melbourne University, Tony Blakely, said the Government response had been impressive, but he told Hosking it was "bizarre" how the virus had arisen again. He did not believe it could have come in on freight.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Bloomfield will today reveal the first trends from the push for mass testing, following the re-emergence of community transmission on Tuesday.
Auckland moved to alert level 3 at midday yesterday, inundating testing stations and supermarkets while others clogged up police checkpoints as they tried to flee the city before lockdown lite started.

The rest of the country moved to alert level 2. The restrictions are in place until at least midnight Friday, and if they are extended, the Government will look at targeted financial assistance for Auckland; $14b still remains in its Covid recovery fund.

There are now 26 active cases (confirmed and probable) of Covid-19, after a woman in managed isolation who arrived from Pakistan on August 7 tested positive yesterday.
The four cases of community transmission in a South Auckland family were isolating in their home. Four probable cases - two work colleagues and two relatives - have been linked to them, while 208 close and casual contacts have also been contacted.
They are among up to 1000 people who must stay at home until contacted by health officials, according to a new Public Health order from Bloomfield.
The order also applies to employees or contractors at two workplaces connected to the family, visitors to those workplaces and anyone who lives with those people. They can be forced into quarantine, if necessary.
The Government also moved to enhance contact-tracing by passing a Public Health Response...