The Mike Hosking Breakfast

Doubt is being cast on whether the government's $50 million reforms to stop the exploitation of migrant workers will do enough.
Under the plans, there will be a new visa, more investigators and harsher penalties for those who are caught.
Those who work with migrants say the new visas must be simple to get and anyone who breaks the law must serve jail time.
On Monday, Hawke's Bay labour contractor Joseph Auga Matamata was sentenced to 11 years in prison for human trafficking and slavery.
Exploitation of migrant workers across New Zealand is rampant, according to advocate Nathan Santesso.
He assists workers with their claims of exploitation, and helps them take employers to the Employment Relations Committee, or the Employment Court.
He said migrants are often and easily abused because of how vulnerable they are in a foreign country, with little money and no support network.
But the biggest issue facing them is their immigration situation with their visas linked to their one employer.
"If they raise concerns, that employer could end that employment, and basically invalidate their visa and their right to be in the country, so it's a very very stressful situation.
"Often, they're relying on the employer not just to keep them there on that visa, but to support them into residency, so they want to make it work."
The reforms announced by the government on Monday look to amend that dependence.
A new visa is to be created, which will allow migrants to leave their employer, without it negatively affecting their immigration status.
"With immigration there is a lot of discretion, so I think, with the visa, it just has to be black and white for it to be effective," Santesso said.
"[If] you're on a temporary visa, and you didn't get the minimum wage, or the minimum entitlement - you qualify for the visa."

Joe Matamata was sentenced to 11 years jail for slavery and trafficking offences. Photo Warren Buckland
Introducing a new visa is just one of a raft of changes aimed at tackling migrant worker exploitation.
Some measures are aimed at giving migrants the platform to speak out against their employer, such as a free phone number and an online reporting system.
Other measures look to punish those who are caught. They'll be banned from managing a company and won't be able to hire migrant workers in the future.
Workplace Relations Minister Andrew Little said they'll be recruiting new labour inspectors as well.
"The critical thing is to make sure that we have frontline personnel go out there in the field, deal with the workers who are complaining of being exploited, understand the issues there, go after the employers who are clearly doing the exploitation, and take enforcement action," he said.
Hiring more inspectors is being welcomed by the head of NZ Kiwifruit Growers (NZKGI), Nikki Johnson.
Just under 20 percent of their seasonal workers are from the Pacific Islands on the Recognised Seasonal Employer programme, and a further 25 percent are backpackers on Working Holiday visas.
She said they had been calling for more resources for some time.
"While as an industry we can do some things, we actually need the government to be able to play their part in the true enforcement section.
"We do want the government to be working as fast as they can to resolve those issues, both for the workers, obviously, but also for the other people in the industry who are affected by this."
Certain industries which are heavily reliant upon migrant workers can expect to be targeted, Little said.
That would involve franchises, labour hire companies and typical industries which recruit migrant workers as that is where the exploitation crops up most frequently.
Julie White, head of Hospitality NZ, said it would benefit the sector, as unfairly treating employees "creates unfair competition".
"The government's support will...

Nightclubs, bars and beaches — some of Spain’s most beloved summer venues — are facing new lockdown restrictions after turning into coronavirus hot spots, and some European nations are warning citizens not to visit the country.
The northeast regions of Catalonia and Aragón host the three most worrying virus clusters in Spain, prompting authorities to tighten restrictions in Barcelona, in a rural area around Lleida and in Zaragoza that were relaxed only a month ago when Spain had its devastating outbreak in check.
Britain put Spain back on its unsafe list beginning Sunday, announcing hours earlier that travelers arriving in the U.K. from Spain must now quarantine for 14 days. Norway also ordered a 10-day quarantine for those returning from the Iberian Peninsula. France and Belgium are recommending that travelers ditch plans to spend their summer vacations in Barcelona and its nearby beaches, which have seen crowds too massive to allow for social distancing.
Tui, the UK’s biggest tour operator, said Sunday it had cancelled all flights due to depart to mainland Spain until Aug. 9, but it has maintained flights and travel packages for trips to Spain’s Balearic and Canary Islands.
Travelers were caught off guard by Britain's move — even U.K. Transport Minister Grant Shapps is on holiday in Spain.
“I think that it is extreme. If you only come for one day, no way,” José González, a Spaniard heading to his home in London, said at Madrid’s airport. “We will have to see what happens next. We will have to respect it and that’s that. You can't do anything else.”
Spain reported over 900 new daily infections on Thursday and Friday as authorities warned that the country which lost at least 28,400 lives before getting its outbreak under control could be facing the start of a second major onslaught.
Catalonia ordered all nightlife venues to close for 15 days and applied a midnight curfew on bars in and around Barcelona and Lleida, hours after French Prime Minister Jean Castex urged French citizens not to visit Catalonia due to the upticks in new infections.
“If we see that the growth of contagion is exponential, then the only way to stop it is to limit free movement,” said Catalonia public health chief Josep Maria Argimon.
Catalonia’s regional government, run by separatists who had complained about Spain’s centralization of the health crisis from March to June, is struggling to tamp down on the growing clusters that have overwhelmed Spain's undermanned contact tracing teams.
Tourism employs 2.6 million people in Spain and generates 12% of the country’s economic activity. Spain’s government, unions and industry leaders are heavily invested in promoting the message that Spain is a safe destination for foreigners to salvage the 2020 tourism season. That now looks more like wishful thinking.
“The season is practically lost now,” Martín Sarrate, president of Catalonia’s association of travel agencies, told Spain’s public broadcaster TVE. “This is an important setback. Who is going to travel to a country if you have to go into a 14-day quarantine?”
At least one tourist disagreed.
“We are returning this afternoon having had the most wonderful holiday,” English tourist Sue Marshall wrote on Twitter from Mallorca. “We would spend three weeks self-isolating to do it all again.”
Spain was negotiating with the U.K. to lift the quarantine on travelers returning from the Balearic and Canary Islands, which have an even greater dependence on tourism. Foreign Minister Arancha González Laya said the islands are “highly controlled territories” that are doing better in the pandemic now than the U.K.
France said there's no need yet to shut its border with Spain. The U.K. and France sent a combined 4.2 million tourists to Spain in August 2019.
"We have seen a wave of cancellations above all by foreign clients from France, Germany and England who were supposed to come next week,...

Universities say they could safely bring international students back into the country themselves.
The Government will spend $51.6 million on New Zealand's embattled overseas education sector, as schools and universities continue to reel from the loss of foreign students.
The $5 billion foreign student industry has essentially ground to a halt after the Government closed New Zealand's borders, due to Covid-19, in March.
Victoria University Vice-Chancellor, Grant Guilford told Mike Hosking the Government should hand quarantining over to the private sector and the universities and let them get on with it.
"That way everyone's needs can be attended to, rather than relying on a very constrained government service."
Guilford says universities don't want a state handout.
"All we want is the opportunity to work with the Government to re-open the borders in a safe way, then we can manage it ourselves."
LISTEN ABOVE

One of the bigger lessons out of Covid is the fact that not a lot else matters any more.
Stuff that used to fill our days from climate change, to obesity, to advertising sugar, to all the other pressure group dramas have largely vanished from the landscape. The old energy in, energy out equation we very quickly discovered was tipped on its head. And whatever our "super" cause was, no one was listening.
Apparently plastic bags use is up as we decided saving the planet was less important than saving ourselves, so a single use bag was a reassurance against bugs, apparently. Even the evangelical climate changers have had to work hard to get a headline of late.
So given the mood, I think the bunch of whinging expats upset that we are charging them to come back and quarantine are wasting their time as opposed to changing minds. And as such, if they're smart, they will give up before they really kick on with it.
Why they haven't done a poll on this, I have no idea. Given I am convinced it would heavily favour the government move to charge.
Once again by the way ,this is a lesson to the Greens. Labour is for it, National are for it, and New Zealand First are for it, so being the tiny outlier the Greens are on this just reminds everyone what a bunch of fringe thinkers they are. And at a time when all the polls have them dangerously close to annihilation I'd be looking to avoid that.
Or is that why they are doing it? Appeal to the offshore vote? Align yourself with the distant Kiwi, angry in London, and grateful there is still a voice back home that makes you feel slightly less forgotten.
But back here in the real world, the cold hard truth is we are one of those countries lots of us like to leave. That might actually be something we could look at some time, why is it so many of us want to naff off? Is it something that drives us away? Or are we just so disconnected geographically we have to go find out what's on the other side of the earth for ourselves?
Anyway, by year's end the bill for quarantine is half a billion dollars. It's absurd, we don’t have it. And it's not even like the government are making this up, there is no legal right to free entry.
Yes, you have a right to return to your country. But rights aren't carte blanche. Governments regulate and dictate rules, conditions, and boundaries all the time.
All this is, is a price on your re-entry. No, you don't have to like it. And yes, you might want to argue it's unfair and start all the campaigns you like, but that won't be changing your reality.
Like most things in life there is a price, and $3000 to get back into one of the safest places on earth, is a bargain.

Pivoting unemployed New Zealanders into the agriculture and primary sector won't turn former Air New Zealand flight attendants into dairy workers or remove the need for specialist skills across the processing sector, according to a change consultant.
The comments come as the Ministry for Primary Industries rolls out a $4.5 million recruitment campaign aiming to fill a 10,000-job hole across the agricultural and primary sectors left by New Zealand's extended border closures through the Covid-19 pandemic.
The website and marketing campaign, 'opportunity grows here', was developed by ad agency Clemenger BBDO and the four-year project is being funded through a $19.3m allocation under this year's budget.
Agriculture Minister Damien O'Connor said it will seek to "redeploy recently unemployed Kiwis" to vital food and fibre sector jobs, which account for one in every seven jobs.
Big role in recovery
O'Connor said the sector was a "huge part of our economy and our brand" and will continue to play a big role in NZ's economic recovery.
"Many unemployed people are talented and have skills that are readily transferable. They just need to know that these opportunities exist – that's what this campaign is all about."
But the plan has met with criticism.
Richard Rowley, an innovation adviser at Tech Futures Lab in Auckland, said some people will manage to learn new skills, but many will not.
It will be a very challenging time for many, so it is not as simple as saying "oh well, I'll go be a farmer," he said.
Rowley, who has advised Air NZ, Beca, ANZ, BDO and Waste Management, suggested the slow start to fill 1,000 dairy farm jobs, and the fact that employers in several sectors are struggling to fill vacancies, "isn't because everybody's happy to be on welfare."
Rather, it comes down to how people are defined by their roles, and for some, the "leap of faith" is just too great.
He said when it comes to shifting career, self-esteem and confidence play a huge part. "As a result, most people will see only obstacles, including age, experience and physical ability."
Sirma Karapeeva, chief executive of the Meat Industry Association, said while the sector supports the initiative to attract more people into the industry – particularly on the back of ongoing labour shortages for meat processors and exporters – there is still a need to extend the time that skilled migrant workers can remain in the country.
"Skilled migrant workers are important to maintaining certainty of production and employing more New Zealanders."
Still need specialist skills
She said the stronger focus on hiring domestically will not replace the need to bring in specialist skills, including Muslim Halal processing people.
Rowley said there will also be many people out there who believed that they had found their career for life and now have just had the rug pulled out from under them.
"Can a flight attendant in their 40s picture him or herself in a muddy paddock at five o'clock in the morning, in the rain?"
Rowley said that expectation is both unrealistic and unfair, particularly when "you consider that government's emphasis is now on outdoor, hard labour type jobs in conservation and agriculture."
He said NZ should brace itself for a raft of mental health and addiction issues coming down the line.
"Our identity and value are attached to our job, and when that is stripped away, people can't love themselves anymore."
By: Brent Melville, BusinessDesk

TVNZ's Andrew Saville and Guy Heveldt join Mike Hosking to discuss another great weekend of Super Rugby Aotearoa, that delivered two close, entertaining games.
The Hurricanes ended the Crusaders' 36-match unbeaten run at home winning 34-32 in Christchurch, while the Blues came from behind to beat the Chiefs 21-17 in Auckland.
Mr Saville notes the competition's popularity, but does not believe it is viable with just local derbies.
"I don't think the players would survive, I don't think the interest would survive."
Mr Heveldt says the crowd of 32,000-plus yesterday in Auckland is a huge win for the Blues, and signifies a big year both on and off the park for a franchise that has struggled for the best part of a decade.

A survey has found traces of glyphosate in one-in-five honey samples, which beekeepers say presents a tricky situation.
The Ministry for Primary Industries found low levels of the chemical in twenty percent of samples from around the country, but say it is still safe to eat.
Unique Manuka Factor Honey Association general manager John Rawcliffe told Mike Hosking it is not a surprise to the industry.
"The industry through the national body and the ministry has been working constructively with this issue for a large number of years. Has helped with the testing and been advising beekeepers on their practice."
Mr Rawcliffe says while they can not control the bees, they are working to reduce those figures.
He says they can monitor where the bees are located and how they manage weeds around the hive.
Glyphosate is a recognised probable carcinogenic, and is the active ingredient in the weed-killer Round Up.

Federal payments that have aided Americans financially during the global pandemic are set to expire, and will likely bring about a new wave of financial strain.
An extra US $600 has been added to weekly unemployment checks since the early stages of the pandemic. Protections against evictions are also about to end.
US correspondent Richard Arnold told Mike Hosking the expiration's have caused "a second-grade depression".
"If you go to the centre of Los Angeles right now, there are homeless people everywhere I have never seen anything like this.
"Potentially now we have millions more people who are about to lose the roof over their heads and be booted onto the street."
Meanwhile, one American man has shared his lottery winnings due to a handshake deal back in 1992.
In the earl 90's, Wisconsin friends Tom Cook and Joe Feeney agreed to split the cash should one of them ever win.
Mr Cook was a lucky winner and held up his end of the deal, splitting the US $22 million between them.
UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFIT EXTENSION RUNNING OUT, MAN SHARES LOTTERY WIN WITH FRIEND AFTER 1992 HANDSHAKE DEAL

Labour's enjoying a strong result in the latest Newshub-Reid research poll, which props them at 60 percent, while National languish down at 25 per cent.
However, it differs from a recent Massey-Stuff poll which places National at 40 per cent.
The party's deputy leader Gerry Brownlee told Mike Hosking they believe the are in the high 30s, and the recent Newshub one is totally off the mark.
"This sort of thing happens in polling, you get the about one in 20 that goes all skewed, and that's not a criticism of the Reid research people that's just a fact, and we think this is one of those."
Mr Brownlee says regardless of what polls say, the National Party have a great track record of getting the country through tough economic times.
"We have some tough economic times coming.
"You got 200,000 people out of work, you've got plenty going to work today wondering how long is their job going to last, a whole lot who can't get on the job seeker benefit because they've got a partner in work.
"Not easy times ahead."

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is keeping a lid on any excitement, despite the latest Newshub polls which shows Labour on a strong 61 per cent, while National are down on 25 per cent.
The Prime Minister told Mike Hosking she always keeps a "healthy skepticism around polls".
"I'd like to feel like the general direction of them, the trend of them though speaks to a general confidence in the public around the Government's response to Covid-19 and our recovery plan," she adds.
Ms Ardern says there is a correlation with what they are seeing with internal polls, which shows a gap between them and National.
But she and her party are not getting ahead of themselves.
"We will never be complacent, a lot can change very quickly. We know that we have to continue everyday to earn the support of New Zealanders."
Meanwhile, the Prime Minister is confident they will get to the bottom of accusations surrounding Iain Lees-Galloway.
There is currently a ministerial investigation into whether the former Labour MP misused taxpayer money.
Ms Ardern says Mr Lees-Galloway left himself open to those accusations, but has assured her no money was spent inappropriately, and it will not take long to get to the bottom of this.