The Mike Hosking Breakfast

From our credit where credit is due file, come on in Grant Robertson.
I am led to believe he has, or had, a quote framed in the entrance to his office that I made about him sometime in the past three years. I said Robertson might well be the saviour of this government.
How prophetic, given what we heard yesterday.
The government set aside about $50 billion to pay for Covid-19 and its carnage. In an update we found there is $14 billion left. The fear among many, was this was set aside for some excellent vote winning expenditure the closer we get to September 19.
Well to his credit, he will not be spending it. It will be put aside in case things turn pear shaped later. So the argument, I am sure, National had lined up that this was a spend thrift government and there was billions about to be tossed at the economy, has been pulled out from under them.
Robertson rolled out his usual comparison trick, find some useless countries and compare them to us.
His point being we started off with debt at 19 percent of GDP. Thanks National by the way.
And we will end up at about 54 percent. That, in anyone's books, is not good, it's not healthy, and may never really be paid back. But he is right, there are those that started off worse than us, and we will still end up a lot better off than many.
But if you do the math, of the $50 billion they put aside with $14 billion left, that $36 billion spent, for a country of 5 million, is a staggering amount of money. A lot of it is welfare based, it's not investment, it's not growth related, it's band-aid sugar money designed to hide the gaping wound.
Some of that will be badly exposed on September 1 when the wage subsidies end. And it's at that point the raw, stark, and brutal nature of the obsession around the health outcome will be laid bare.
But for a government that has tossed a lot of money in bad, unproductive, and politically blatant areas, Robertson deserves every credit, for at least not turning the last $14 billion into an election campaign lolly scramble.

There's still uncertainty over how Southland's economy will absorb the loss of nearly 2,600 jobs.
Rio Tinto is to wind up its operation in August 2021, citing high power costs and a poor outlook for the industry.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told Mike Hosking the Government will spend $25 million upgrading the Homer Tunnel - which should create 180 local jobs.
But she says no one industry can save all the smelter's workers.
"14 months isn't enough time for the kind of longer term projects which are likely to provide will provide long time income, but there are plenty of prospects in the region."
Ardern says many of the skilled workers at the Tiwai Point smelter are actually tradespeople, who can put their skills to good use.
In Northland, Marsden Point Oil Refinery is scaling back operations, and looking at changing to an import terminal rather than processing crude oil into fuels.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says there's still value in keeping the refinery running.
'We need to continue importing oil and there's  a range of others things going on and interests for NZ having the refinery."
Refining New Zealand has ruled out shutting the plant completely.

Disgraced MP Andrew Falloon has quit Parliament – effective immediately – after his boss Judith Collins called for his resignation this morning and allegations of more sexually explicit messages were revealed.
Collins was scathing of Falloon on Newstalk ZB this morning, saying that the explanation he offered up in his defence in the case of the first young woman was "clearly a lie" and she had "lost all confidence" in him.
It is understood the now-former Rangitata MP's versions of events is that he was at a party several weeks ago and briefly left his phone unattended at a party — and acquaintances then used it to send the sexual image in question.
Collins told ZB she did not believe this.
"This has gone from clearly what was stated as a mistake, to now being something quite different."
Just moments before she went to air on Newstalk ZB, she said she had received an email from Falloon – also addressed to Speaker Trevor Mallard – advising the pair of his resignation.
He announced yesterday he was quitting politics at the election, which would have meant he would have been paid until then.
Collins told ZB she could "no longer trust his story".
"I believe better for him, better for the young woman who is my first priority, and for Parliament, that he resigns."
Falloon's email this morning came after "fresh allegations" that another sexually inappropriate message had been sent to a young woman.
The woman at the centre of this latest claim is not a teenager and did not get her parents involved, unlike the first case.
The National leader said when she spoke to Falloon yesterday, he did not disclose any other instances which occurred, beyond the one which made headlines last night.
She called on anyone who might have received similar messages from Falloon to come forward and "we will take action".
Collins said this was "absolutely out of the blue".
"Although it now appears that some people were aware that he abused alcohol."
She had "never seen that because I was too busy doing my work".
But the issue of heavy drinking among MPs would be raised this morning in caucus, she said.
Collins told Newstalk ZB she was initially concerned about Falloon's mental wellbeing and made sure he returned home safely. "But I'm now of the view he made the right decision this morning to resign from Parliament," she said.
She had written to the first woman who received the inappropriate sex image, giving her an undertaking her privacy would be protected and if anything leaked out, that person would be sacked.
She sought a similar undertaking from the Prime Minister's office. The PM's office said it had acted appropriately and nothing had been leaked from its office.
Collins said that the story that someone grabbed Falloon's phone during a party and sent the material to the first young woman was "clearly a lie".
Despite the salacious nature of the scandal she did not think it damaged her own reputation. She said she would not tolerate this level of behaviour from National Party politicians.

I have a decent handle I think on the economy. Two weeks of holiday chat and calls and feedback and what seems to have happened is this.
For some, it’s a catastrophe to this point, at least 40 000 have lost their jobs. The health outcome might have been solid, but the economic one has been life-changing.
The mixed reports we have been getting is some doing well, some not, appears to come down to the fact that those so far unaffected work-wise have taken the money they would have spent on travel and are spending it elsewhere.
Here is a fascinating number I was given. We spend $7 billion a year on travel. Most of that now has to go elsewhere: where is it going?
Cars, major dealers are struggling to keep up, I have this from good numbers of sources. Art is selling like it hasn’t in years. And the stories of renovations are more than true: a fortune is being spent tarting the place up. If you’re in those industries this is all working out very well indeed.
So we are getting a clearer picture of what’s happening. The early carnage was in the tourism areas. Close the borders, you close an industry. Planes, hotels, motels, travel agents; all a disaster.
Now, the next part is the one a lot of people are worrying about. Job losses – phase two.
In Britain, they are saying one in three companies will be laying off when the furlough money stops.
Here, the wage subsidies September 1. Businesses all over this country right now will know what state they are in, how they are tracking, what their likely future is. They will have an idea of what the next round of job losses looks like
This will play out in the weeks running up to the election. Mix in the mortgage holidays coming to an end, and we will be revisiting the worry and uncertainty of April and March.
It’s possible it won’t be as bad as they said. They said 10 % unemployment, they said 80 000 more jobs lost. Let’s hope they’re wrong.
But like all things economic, some do well, many do not.
The same questions we have been asking for months now apply more than ever: where is the recovery plan?
When does the welfare stop? The borrowed/ printed patch up money stop? The talk stop? And when do the polices start getting delivered?
The Prime Minister was in Invercargill last Thursday talking jobs post-Tiwai. What jobs? Talk is not a job, a visit isn’t a job.
Crunch time is coming, when the sugar money is gone and reality arrives. Once again, what’s the plan?

Overseas visitors can still see scenic New Zealand - even with Covid border restrictions in place.
A Dunedin tourism operator's launched one-on-one virtual tours with their guides for the world's locked-out travellers.
Bookatour owner Bex Hill told Mike Hosking she got the idea when she had to cancel her own family trip.
"I thought to myself, just because I can't go, doesn't mean I have to give up. People can still come and see parts of New Zealand."
She says they can either be live-streamed or pre-recorded.
"If you get a live guide with you at all times, you can stop and ask questions, we can show you around the venue, we can show you anywhere around New Zealand, and more than that, we can actually enhance it by sending a sensory kit beforehand."

So the con continues to unfold from the government over the cannabis vote in September. 
In my holiday mail was the official pamphlet, direct from the politburo. Putin would have been proud of it.
Remember the official line is that the government holds no view on this, this is our choice, and they're staying out of it. If you still believe that you've been asleep or you're not that bright.
When it was claimed Family First was getting money from an American lobby group, Andrew Little blew his lid. It was completely unjustifiable for a foreign group to involve themselves in a local debate and vote. But there was, of course, no money at all.
And yet this is the same Minister who has overseen a series of rules that allow people like the Drug Foundation to raise whatever they like from whoever they like and not have to tell anyone who those people are, and he is just fine with it.
Back to the pamphlet, it reads "the bill's purpose is to reduce harm to people and communities." No, it isn't. The bill's purpose is to legalise, or not, something that is currently illegal. You are voting yes or no, legal or illegal, nothing more.
Could an outworking of the vote mean there might be less harm to people and communities? Possibly. Or indeed possibly not. Because that’s the case, you can't make the claim something will happen, if in fact it might not. That’s fraudulent.
The pamphlet ends with the question, "where can I get more information?" The answer, of course, is the internet. But they offer you one tiny piece of the internet, namely their own website. Can we conclude that if that particular piece of the net they're sprooking is as gerrymandered and biased as the pamphlet, then the only information you'll be getting is the stuff they want you to see?
They helpfully include a phone number as well. But only one number, theirs.
Here's the dishonesty in all this, for the most open, honest, and transparent government ever, it’s a joke. You know where I stand. Why? Because I tell you. I'm honest and I am open. You disagree with me? Fine. But, at least, we know where we are at.
They say they have no view, they're lying. They say they're neutral, they're lying. The pamphlet is a snow job masquerading as advice. And it's been driven by fear that they're losing, look at the Colmar Brunton poll.
You know what? The no vote deserves to win, not only because it’s the right health and social outcome, but because the government have been dishonest in putting their case forward. They simply can't be trusted.
This isn't, nor has it ever been, a level playing field.

The wearing of face masks will be mandatory in Victoria's worst-hit coronavirus areas from 11.59pm on Wednesday night.
"If you are out of your home for one of the four permitted reasons, then you need to be wearing a mask and I stress – or a face covering," Premier Daniel Andrews announced today.
"It need to stress it need not be a hospital-grade mask, it need not be one of the handmade masks like I was wearing when I came in today. It can be a scarf, it can be a home-made mask."
Anyone in Greater Melbourne or Mitchell Shire caught without a mask or face covering will be fined $200.
Andrews said an order of at least 2.5 million masks was on its way to Melbourne, with the "first significant batch" expected to arrive this week.
He told reporters "common sense" will guide when people need to don a mask, adding the decision had been made on the advice of Victoria's chief health officer Prof Brett Sutton.
"It's a relatively simple thing but it's also about embedding behaviour, which I think is just as important on the other side of this second wave as it is in bringing these case numbers down," Andrews said.
"We're going to be wearing masks in Victoria and potentially in other parts of the country for a very long time. There's no vaccine to this wildly infectious virus and it's a simple thing, but it's about changing habits, it's about becoming a simple part of your routine.
"Most of us wouldn't leave home without our keys, we wouldn't leave our home without our mobile phone. You won't be able to leave home without your mask and then wear it where it is absolutely essential to stop the spread of this virus."
Victoria's Health Minister Jenny Mikakos said the mandating of mark usage is an "important tool that we will use to minimise the spread of this virus".
The Victoria Premier announced three more people have died from coronavirus in Victoria overnight, and an additional 363 new infections have been reported in the past 24 hours – taking the state's total case tally to 5696.
Sutton said everyone over the age of 12 is recommended to wear a mask.
"That is in recognition that it's likely to work for all of those age groups. Below the age of 12, it's a consideration. We say not for toddlers. So not for 2 years and below," he said.
"It's a consideration for all other children. But it is mandatory, really, from that high school age onwards."
Exemptions will be given to people who cannot wear a mask due to a medical condition, and when engaged in an activity where it is "entirely impractical" to wear a mask, it's also not a requirement, Prof Sutton said.
"But it does make a difference. And having universal mask wearing is the key here, because not only are you – if you're potentially infected – shedding less virus into the atmosphere, but the person around you, if they're 1.5 metres away or closer, or further away, will be less exposed," he said.
"And if there's virus out there in the atmosphere, there's some filtering that happens with those cloth masks and as we say, it doesn't have to be a mask. It's a cloth face covering. It does need to cover the nose and mouth, and as some of you might have seen, masks don't do very well in your pocket. They don't do very well when sitting on your chin. They do need to cover your mouth to work properly, so that really needs to be reinforced."
Sutton said that while "obviously, if you're drinking or eating, you're not going to wear the mask". For the rest of the time Victorians should.
"These won't always be really easy and they won't always be welcome, but they are important, and there are lessons, increasingly internationally, about the jurisdictions that are doing well have introduced mandatory mask wearing," he explained.
"And those that haven't are the ones that are seeing really catastrophic numbers at the moment."
People wearing a mask should avoid touching it "as much as you can avoid it",...

The coronavirus pandemic has found fresh legs around the world, as confirmed deaths pass 600,000 and countries from Australia to the US to South Africa to India struggle to contain a surge of new infections.
Hong Kong issued tougher new rules on wearing face masks, Spain closed overcrowded beaches and Germany reported another outbreak at a slaughterhouse.
Pope Francis said "the pandemic is showing no sign of stopping" and urged compassion for those whose suffering during the outbreak has been worsened by conflicts.
The World Health Organisation said 259,848 new infections were reported on Saturday, its highest one-day tally yet.
Cases in the Australian state of Victoria rose again on Sunday, prompting a move to make masks mandatory in metropolitan Melbourne and the nearby district of Mitchell for people who leave their homes for exercise or to purchase essential goods.
Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews said those who fail to wear a mask will be fined A$200.
"There's no vaccine to this wildly infectious virus and it's a simple thing, but it's about changing habits, it's about becoming a simple part of your routine," Andrews said.
While the US leads global infections, South Africa now ranks as the fifth worst-hit country in the pandemic with more than 350,000 cases, or around half of all those confirmed on the continent.
Its struggles are a sign of trouble to come for nations with even fewer health care resources.
India, which has now confirmed more than 1 million infections, on Sunday reported a 24-hour record of 38,902 new cases.
In Europe, where infections are far below their peak but local outbreaks are causing concern, leaders of the 27-nation European Union haggled for a third day in Brussels over a proposed 1.85 trillion-euro ($2.1 trillion) EU budget and coronavirus recovery fund.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said there is "a lot of goodwill, but there are also a lot of positions" in the talks, which have laid bare divisions about how the countries hit hardest by the pandemic, such as Italy and Spain, should be helped. She said the talks, which were initially scheduled to end on Saturday, could still end without a deal.
As scientists around the world race to find a vaccine to halt the pandemic, Russia's ambassador to Britain on Sunday rejected allegations by the United States, Britain and China that his country's intelligence services have sought to steal information about vaccine efforts.
"I don't believe in this story at all, there is no sense in it," Ambassador Andrei Kelin said when asked in a BBC interview about the allegations.
"I learned about their [the hackers'] existence from British media. In this world, to attribute any kind of computer hackers to any country, it is impossible."
Confirmed global virus deaths have risen to nearly 603,000, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins. The United States tops the list with over 140,000, followed by more than 78,000 in Brazil. Europe as a continent has seen about 200,000 deaths.
The number of confirmed infections worldwide has passed 14.2 million, with 3.7 million in the United States and more than 2 million in Brazil. Experts believe the pandemic's true toll around the world is much higher because of testing shortages and data collection issues.
Infections have been soaring in US states such as Florida, Texas, Arizona, with many blaming a haphazard, partisan approach to lifting lockdowns as well as the resistance of some Americans to wearing masks.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said on Sunday that the situation was so dire in his California city that authorities were considering a new stay-at-home order.
Even where the situation has been largely brought under control, new outbreaks are prompting the return of restrictions.
Following a recent surge in cases, Hong Kong made the wearing of masks mandatory in all public places and told non-essential civil...

Business leaders have gathered in Auckland for what's being billed our most important trade discussion of the year.
The China Business Summit is looking at how we can improve our trading relationship with China in the wake of Covid 19.
New Zealand China Trade Association deputy chair John Cochrane told Mike Hosking the pandemic has changed everything, and it's crucial for our economic recovery that we adapt.
"I think it goes us an opportunity to rethink a number of things relative to just the geopolitical, geoeconomic landscape and where New Zealand businesses fit into that.
"Things could change; it's whether businesses grab hold of those opportunities." 
He says it's important we grasp trading opportunities with China in the wake of Covid 19.
However, that doesn't mean New Zealand needs to take a stand on Hong Kong.
"I think we can continue to deal with it in the way that New Zealand has over successive governments, that we don't need to align with one particular voice or another, we have our own unique voice in that space."

Scientists have pioneered a new eruption alert system they say could have given 16 hours' warning of December's deadly disaster at Whakaari/White Island.
New Zealand's official agency for monitoring volcanoes, GNS Science, says the University of Auckland-made tech could be a "potentially useful addition" to its own systems, but cautions that it still has limitations.
New Zealand doesn't currently have an advanced real-time warning system for volcanic eruptions.
Instead, the existing Volcano Alert Level (VAL) system is updated every few weeks or months and relies on human judgement and consensus amongst scientists to spot activity that could signal a pending eruption.
Three weeks before last year's fatal eruption at Whakaari - now the focus of an ongoing inquiry - the VAL was lifted to Level 2, or "heightened unrest", and then again to Level 3, but that was after the event.
"That eruption was preceded by a strong burst of seismic energy 17 hours earlier, a sure sign that fresh magmatic fluid was rising up and pressurising water trapped in the rock," said developer and engineer Dr David Dempsey, from the University of Auckland.
"The resulting explosion was like a pressure cooker blasting its lid off and that early seismic burst is the most common indication of imminent eruption at Whakaari.
"It's a warning sign that could have been detected almost instantly by the forecasting system we have developed."
Of 47 people on the island at the time, 21 were killed, including two who are missing and declared dead, and 26 suffered injuries, many severe.
With funding from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, the new system developed by Dempsey and Dr Andreas Kempa-Liehr, from the Faculty of Engineering, and Professor Shane Cronin, from the Faculty of Science, used sophisticated machine learning algorithms to "teach itself" from the data fed into it.
It learned from patterns in that data so it was able to signal almost instantly when a particular pattern matched that of the build-up to a previous eruption.
With data from the past 10 years at Whakaari, the new system predicted four out of five past eruptions missing only one – in 2016 when the data pattern was quite different to the other four.
"Machine learning means it learns from experience and so can constantly and rapidly improve its accuracy," Kempa-Liehr said.
A prototype of the forecaster has been operating continuously for five months and the development team are working with GNS to implement it alongside their systems.
One of the challenges of the whole project was refining the threshold at which an alert is triggered.
Currently the new system uses a threshold of 8.5 per cent probability an eruption is imminent, which, in simple terms, means it raises an alert when there was a one in 12 chance of an eruption occurring. Each alert lasted about five days.
The researchers say that will mean a trade-off if the new system is adopted because the Island would likely be off-limits for about one month a year.
"The types of eruptions this system has detected are the ones most likely to be fatal," Cronin said.
"The loss of life at Whakaari was a dreadful human tragedy and we hope that an automated forecasting system such as this could avoid loss of life but it's a question of whether policy makers, landowners, iwi and tourist operators want a system that, once an alert is raised, would need to be enforced."
The next step in development would be to teach the new system about the eruption history at New Zealand's other volcanoes including Tongariro and Ruapehū, which both attract tens of thousands of visitors a year.
GNS Science's volcanology team leader Nico Fournier welcomed the new research, which has been published today in the journal Nature Communications.
"But, as for any technique in development, it still incorporates a high level of uncertainty," he said.