The Mike Hosking Breakfast

Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters has told Mike Hosking New Zealand needed more "expert" help in terms of immigration.
Peters said that immigration was a bottom line for its support at the next election because the "other parties can't be trusted" with the portfolio.
"We're sick and tired of having discussions with people who say 'we'll do this and we'll do that' and they don't. It's just that unfair and not right ... we will not make that mistake again."
NZ First says it wants to restrict immigration to a net growth of 15,000 people a year.
The "bottom line" threat was "seriously real", Peter said.
He said New Zealand didn't need 13,000 chefs to be allowed to migrate here, but did need skilled workers.
"... we're going to eat our way to wealth? It's just nonsensical."
Hosking asked Peters about his adjusted immigration figures - from 10,000 people to 15,000 - and whether it was recognition that with borders closing and the country would need help.
Peters agreed more "expert help" was needed, which was why it was being looked at.
He had talked to business people, he said it was a "very, very conservative number but we think it's about right".
When asked that none of the parties delivered on any figure and why should any be believed, Peters said they weren't in charge of those decisions.
"Well the reality is they weren't in charge of that, that's why I'm saying next time we want that portfolio and that is the bottom line because other parties can't be trusted on this issue. I know what Labour promised before the last election and I know what we negotiated and it just didn't happen."
Hosking put to Peters that immigration did lead to growth which may be what New Zealand needed, with borders and tourism possibly a problem long term.
"Well that's a great fallacy, it doesn't lead to growth ... it doesn't lead to export growth, it doesn't lead to added growth in your own country ... it is purely consumption."
He said NZ First had delivered on everything they had promised during the current term of government.
He declined to answer whether he would support a Labour or National-led government at the next election, saying he would want to seek the opinion of his colleagues before making a decision.
When asked about his "woke pixie dust" comments and whether NZ First had been damaged by association with Labour and the Greens, Peters said "you always get damaged by association - they'd probably say the same about us".
"The difference is we have delivered on everything we said we could ... you always get contaminated."

National Party leader Judith Collins has ruled out working with NZ First leader Winston Peters.
When asked this morning by Mike Hosking if she could work with Peters in charge of the immigration portfolio, she said it wouldn't be a problem as he wouldn't be around.
"I'm not going to waste any time on him. He said shifting the port north to Marsden Point was going to be a bottom line too and look [at that]".
Collins said caucus has made it clear it did not want to do business with him.
"It's just not going to happen."
When asked about increasing taxes as the debt levels at the moment were "monumental", Collins said it wouldn't be happening under her watch.
"The best way to get taxes up is to get more people working. I'm not going to be announcing any taxes. That's the politics of envy ... not destroying everybody's wealth and what they've saved for," she told Hosking.
"Why would you work as hard as you do if you don't get some reward for it."
When asked about the state of the economy and debt levels and that people will vote Labour because the money wouldn't be paid back anyway, Collins said Labour wouldn't be winning the election.
"They're not going to win, I'm absolutely determined that we will win. What we're seeing at the moment is that a lot of people have lost their jobs and are not turning up in statistics because the other partner in their couple is working so they can't get the job seeker allowance, or dole. We're about 200,000 out of work at the moment and I think it's just going to get a lot worse.
"Just today, The Warehouse is today having another meeting, it's not going to end well, you just know it's not going to end well.
"I think everybody is going to understand very quickly the economy is jobs, it's actually the ability to pay our way. I don't think New Zealanders are stupid ... I don't think they will care about what's happening in the rest of the world when they don't have jobs."
When asked whether Kiwis might not look to blame anyone for the current situation and put it down to Covid-19, Collins said it wasn't about blame.
"No one's blaming anyone, we know that this is a very difficult time ... but you actually have to have a plan to get out. You can't sit there wallowing in the economic depression saying 'oh it's not our fault', well too bad you can do things to get out of it and that's why we've started unveiling some plans around infrastructure but also there's a lot more coming."
Collins said the wage subsidy, while a way out for some people, couldn't continue forever.
"The wage subsidy, which I think was the right thing for the Government to do at that time, is obviously welfare but we're now coming to the end of the second tranche of that ... well what then?"
She said the Government's shovel-ready projects weren't anything new and ones which National had got consented in 2017.
"There's nothing new. So all the hype about how they're going to do these things, about shovel-ready projects it's all turned out, to be frank, fairy dust."

Judith Collins is expected to bring the fight to Jacinda Ardern.
Collins has taken over as the leader of the National Party after Todd Muller stepped down unexpectedly earlier this week.
She's been chosen to lead National, just 65 days away from the election.
Gerry Brownlee has stepped into the deputy role, replacing Nikki Kaye, who has announced her resignation from politics.
Mike Yardley is joined by Tim Wilson and Kerre McIvor to discuss this, along with the other issues making news this week.
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Why do councils even pretend to care about your views, to pretend that consultation counts, when in most cases, the establishment thumbs its nose at the public will, to protect its nest and cess pit of waste.
Exhibit A – Christchurch. A massive public consultation campaign triggered thousands of submissions pleading with the council to adopt a zero rates increase, to help ratepayers get through the Covid crisis. That’s just not possible, was their response.
Despite its war-chest of commercial assets, producing piss poor dividend flows, the council considers partial-asset sales to correct its balance sheet as bordering on the satanic. An evil no-go zone.
So businesses and residents will be slugged with another lazy rates increase, to fund their parade of pet projects. In the past six years alone, my rates bill has shot up 52%.
The Christchurch Council seems to reside in a parallel universe. They won’t cut staff numbers this year. They won’t even follow the private sector and temporarily reduce remuneration levels for the hundreds of staff earning six figure salaries.
There’s no sense of shared sacrifice.
Exhibit B – Auckland Council. Risibly, their consultation on the annual plan, the emergency budget, prompted a massive public mandate to cap rates increases at 2 point 5 per cent. That’s what two-thirds of the submitters plumped for. One in four wanted a rates freeze. Just twenty eight per cent backed the council’s preferred option of a three point five per cent rates rise.
The Phil Goff-led council has spurned the overwhelming public feedback, boxing on with the heftier rates hike. The overall 3 point 5 per cent hike will see average household rates increasing 4.4 per cent, with water charges also expected to rise.
The arrogance, the defiance, the ‘we know best” bloody-mindedness makes me sick. Stand by for more over-specked slow roads and gold-plated cycle lanes. We have our projects to deliver, and by god we will, seems to be the mentality.
And councils around the land still wonder why most of us don’t bother voting in local body elections, let alone bothering ourselves around with their pointless, farcical, consultations. Wonder no more.

A secret report by virus detectives into the source of the COVID-19 outbreak that has forced Melbourne into lockdown is being kept under wraps by the Victorian Government.

The renowned Doherty Institute, the medical research facility that convinced Prime Minister Scott Morrison to shut down the economy earlier this year to avoid a European-style outbreak, has revealed it cannot release new genomic sequencing because of a public inquiry into the bungled hotel quarantine mess.
But the decision has sparked fury in Victoria, because the taxpayer-funded research explaining how the outbreak escaped hotel quarantine and forced its way into multiple public housing blocks in Victoria is critical to understanding why millions of Melburnians are now under lockdown.
Victorian Premier Dan Andrews has spent weeks batting away questions over whether taxpayer-funded private security guards involved with the hotel quarantine program sparked the outbreak when they had sex with travellers returning from overseas they were paid to lock up on the grounds that the inquiry will investigate the matter.
Now, the state’s chief medical officer Brett Sutton has confirmed the genomic sequencing conducted by the highly regarded medical research facility cannot be released, claiming it’s a decision for the Doherty Institute.
“It’s not my genome sequencing data, it belongs to Peter Doherty Institute,’’ he said.
“It’s not my call to keep it under wraps. I don’t have an opinion on it. I’m very happy to speak about it if I’m asked about it in the judicial inquiry.
“I’m not going to comment on it when it will be investigated very shortly.
“It will absolutely be subject to the judicial inquiry very shortly.”
But the Doherty Institute confirmed to news.com.au that as a result of the research being included in the terms of reference for the hotel quarantine inquiry, it cannot release the raw data.
It’s not clear whether the complete data will be released during the inquiry or even after it reports in September.
“The latest data is subject to the judicial inquiry and it’s not appropriate to discuss publicly until it’s gone through that process,’’ a spokeswoman said.
Mr Andrews announced the Judicial Inquiry Into Hotel Quarantine Program on 2 July.
It will also examine unconfirmed reports that returning travellers had sex with the private security guards who were supposed to be keeping them locked up.
Public hearings will commence next week, but no witnesses will be called at the July 20 hearing where Jennifer Coate, who is leading the inquiry, and counsel assisting, Tony Neal QC, will both make short opening statements.
Public hearings are expected to be held in August.
In a press release announcing the inquiry this month, the Victorian Government noted: “The Chief Health Officer has advised the Government that a number of cases of coronavirus in the community have been linked through genomic sequencing to an infection control breach in the hotel quarantine program.”
Victorian Opposition leader Michael O’Brien urged the Andrews Government to be “honest with Victorians and stop covering up the problems and mismanagement around hotel quarantine.”
“The Premier and his ministers are refusing to answer questions and continue to hide behind an inquiry rather than being upfront,’’ he said.
“The millions of Victorians locked up through no fault of their own, need the Premier to stop dodging questions and start giving answers.”
A final report is due by September 25.

A breach in Twitter’s security that allowed hackers to break into the accounts of leaders and technology moguls is one of the worst attacks in recent years and may shake trust in a platform politicians and CEOs use to communicate with the public, experts said Thursday.
The FBI said Thursday it is investigating the hacks, and said the high-profile accounts “appear to have been compromised in order to perpetuate cryptocurrency fraud."
The ruse discovered Wednesday included bogus tweets from former President Barack Obama, Democratic presidential front-runner Joe Biden, Mike Bloomberg and a number of tech billionaires including Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Celebrities Kanye West and his wife, Kim Kardashian West, were also hacked.
Twitter said the hackers used “social engineering” to target some of the company's employees and then gained access to the accounts. The term refers to taking advantage of human nature via phishing attacks, tricking people into downloading malicious software or compromising them by offering something in return for information. Twitter did not say how its employees were compromised.
The attackers sent out tweets from the accounts of the public figures, offering to send $2,000 for every $1,000 sent to an anonymous Bitcoin address.
Cybersecurity experts say such a breach could have dire consequences since the attackers were tweeting from verified, globally influential accounts with millions of followers.
“If you receive a tweet from a verified account, belonging to a well-known and therefore trusted person, you can no longer assume it’s really from them,” said Michael Gazeley, managing director of cybersecurity firm Network Box.
Reacting to the breach, Twitter swiftly deleted the tweets and locked down the accounts to investigate. In the process it prevented verified users from sending out tweets for several hours.
The company said Thursday it has taken “significant steps to limit access to internal systems and tools.” User passwords did not appear to have been compromised, Twitter said, so it's not necessary for users to reset them.
Many celebrities, politicians and business leaders often use Twitter as a public platform to make statements. U.S. President Donald Trump, for example, regularly uses Twitter to post about national and geopolitical matters, and his account is closely followed by media, analysts and governments around the world. The White House said Thursday his account was secure and wasn't jeopardized by the hacks.
Twitter faces an uphill battle in regaining people’s confidence, Gazeley said. For a start, it needs to figure out exactly which accounts were hacked and show the vulnerabilities have been fixed, he said.
“If key employees at Twitter were tricked, that’s actually a serious cybersecurity problem in itself,” he said. “How can one of the world’s most used social media platforms have such weak security, from a human perspective?”
Rachel Tobac, CEO of Socialproof Security, said that the breach appeared to be largely financially motivated. But such an attack could cause more serious consequences.
“Can you imagine if they had taken over a world leader’s account, and tweeted out a threat of violence to another country’s leader?” asked Tobac, a social engineering hacker who specializes in providing training for companies to protect themselves from such breaches.
Tobac said companies can guard themselves against such attacks by beefing up multi-factor authentication -– where users have to present multiple pieces of evidence as authentication before being allowed to log into a system.
Such a process could include having a physical token that an employee must have with them, on top of a password, before they can log into a corporate or other private system. Other methods include installing technical tools to monitor for suspicious insider activities and reducing the...

The coronavirus pandemic's creating a new fashion trend - covid cosy.
Clothing sales are up in New Zealand, which is one of the only countries where shoppers don't have to wear masks.
Fashion Commentator Paul Blomfield told Mike Yardley shoppers are reaching for the woolly jumpers, jeans and sneakers.
“Covid is finally putting the nail in the coffin of the high heel, which will mainly come out for occasions.”
Blomfield says the fashion being seen during covid is quite different.
“It’s not the glam items that are selling - but rather comfy pieces like woolly jumpers and jeans.”
He says sneakers have been taking over for some time - and could completely wipe out the high heel.
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President Donald Trump shook up his campaign staff amid sinking poll numbers less than four months before the election, replacing campaign manager Brad Parscale with veteran GOP operative Bill Stepien.
“I am pleased to announce that Bill Stepien has been promoted to the role of Trump Campaign Manager,” Trump said Wednesday on Facebook. “Brad Parscale, who has been with me for a very long time and has led our tremendous digital and data strategies, will remain in that role, while being a Senior Advisor to the campaign.”
Trump and Parscale’s relationship had been increasingly strained, with the president annoyed by the publicity Parscale had garnered in the role. But the final straw appeared to be a Tulsa, Oklahoma, rally last month that drew an unexpectedly low crowd of about 6,200 people after Parscale had bragged that more than a million people had requested tickets. The president was furious.
The shakeup injected familiar turmoil to Trump’s 2020 campaign, which had so far largely avoided the regular staff churn that dominated the president’s 2016 campaign and his White House. It comes as Trump has been struggling in his reelection campaign against presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, with the nation facing health and economic crises during a pandemic that has killed more than 135,000 Americans.
Parscale thanked the staff in an emotional meeting at the campaign's suburban Washington headquarters on Thursday followed by Stepien, who urged workers to ignore the polls that show Trump in a significant deficit, according to two campaign officials not authorized to publicly discuss private conversations.
The staff change was not expected to alter the day-to-day running of the campaign. News of the shuffle was delivered to Parscale on Wednesday afternoon by White House adviser and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Parscale, a political novice, ran Trump’s digital advertising in 2016 and was credited with helping bring about his surprise victory that year. Stepien has been in politics for years, working for former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and serving as Trump’s national field director in 2016.
Parscale had been increasingly sidelined in the weeks since the Tulsa rally and as the president's public and private poll numbers have taken a hit amid the pandemic. Speculation had been rampant about who might be promoted to lead the operation, with names like former Trump strategist Steve Bannon floated.
Parscale is a close ally of Kushner, who wields ultimate control over the campaign. A Florida resident, he had not been a regular presence of late in the campaign's Arlington, Virginia, headquarters, sparking some resentments among staffers.
Rather than parting ways completely, Parscale was retained in part because of the difficulty the campaign would have faced in rebuilding its digital advertising operation so close to the Nov. 3 general election. While the Republican National Committee owned most of the campaign's data, voter modeling and outreach tools, Parscale ran most of the microtargeted online advertising that Trump aides believed were key in 2016.
Parscale’s digital advertising firm was among the campaign’s most significant vendors, and some in Trump’s orbit have alleged that the former campaign manager was profiting off the president’s reelection. Parscale has repeatedly denied the claims.
Trump has been pressed by allies in recent months to expand his political circle and more forcefully define his run against Biden. Last month, Trump announced a promotion for Stepien and returned former communications chief Jason Miller to his campaign, taking away some of Parscale's clout and influence.
Biden also shuffled his campaign team, albeit much earlier in the cycle, amid a disastrous stretch in his primary run. For Biden, the moves marked genuine shakeups that expanded and changed how his campaign operated.
Biden elevated Anita Dunn, effectively...

Australian state tourism bosses are pushing for individual travel bubbles with New Zealand.
The state has recorded its first new case of Covid 19 in more than a fortnight.
But it's effectively closed itself from the major outbreak in neighbouring Victoria, where new cases of Covid 19 have just reached another record high.
South Australia Tourism Commission chief executive Rodney Harrex told Mike Yardley a bubble could be in place as early as September, if governments are willing to play ball.
"I know there has been a lot of discussions in Australia between airports and airlines, so there is a lot happening behind the scenes."
Harrex says New Zealand should be opening up to states that don't have community outbreaks.
“Kiwis and Australians are big travellers, we are island continent and are used to going overseas.”
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Mark Robinson has confirmed New Zealand Rugby is working with the Government to host the Rugby Championship through November and December, but playing Bledisloe Cup fixtures in Australia remains up for discussion.
Sanzaar announced earlier today that the four-team Rugby Championship would be held in New Zealand later this year, provided the Government approve travel exemptions and quarantine measures, and the Covid-19 situation here does not deteriorate.
Despite South Africa, where there are 311,000 Covid-19 cases, and Argentina (111,000 cases) being yet to resume any domestic rugby, NZ Rugby chief executive Robinson suggested New Zealand hosting a six-week Rugby Championship from early November to mid-December was feasible and that all four nations were on board.
"It's very positive news for rugby in New Zealand. It's a significant opportunity for the game here and the entire country which we're excited about and eager to begin work with the Government to see what we can make happen," Robinson said.
"Our thoughts go out to our joint venture countries in South Africa, Argentina and Australia about the challenges they're working through and if we are to get this tournament off the ground in New Zealand the great lengths they'll have to go to with their players and families and administrators to make this happen."
While the rugby schedule remains fluid the North against South fixture is locked in for August 29 at Eden Park. All Blacks coach Ian Foster will name his first squad the following day, and the first Bledisloe Cup test had been pencilled in for October 10 in Wellington.
The Mitre 10 Cup season is also scheduled to run from September 11 until November 28.
The plan was to stage two Bledisloe matches in New Zealand and two in Australia - Sydney and Brisbane - but with the Covid-19 situation rapidly deteriorating in Victoria and New South Wales that may not be possible. Logistically, it would be much easier to stage all Bledisloe matches in New Zealand but Robinson indicated those discussions were ongoing.
"At the moment they're signalling they would like to host two Bledisloe matches but it's a fairly fluid situation. We're going to have to try and understand what that means if we do play in Australia in terms of getting back to New Zealand in terms of quarantine and then having to go into Rugby Championship with the timing and what that means and if it can be done. They're still things it's early days with."

The Wallabies' wait continues - the Bledisloe Cup format is yet to be decided. Photo / Getty
Robinson confirmed Sanzaar would pick up the bill for teams having to quarantine in New Zealand for two weeks but the details of where that might happen, and whether they could train at managed facilities as the Warriors did when they first arrived in Australia, were still being worked through with Government.
There is also the prospect that South Africa and Argentina may attempt to arrive in New Zealand early and play warm-up fixtures before the Rugby Championship begins.
"It seems they're all in at the moment. Talking to the Argentinians and South Africans they're very keen to make it work.
"Although it's early days we're looking at the prospect that they could come to New Zealand and then look to have games played here as part of their preparation. The timing of that, and how that might look, is yet to be determined but we're wanting to work with them as much as possible to ensure they've got the best chance of success throughout the tournament."
While New Zealand Rugby is likely to enjoy a welcome financial windfall from hosting the tournament for the first time, Robinson said gate takings would be split among the four nations.
"It's probably too early to say what it might mean but it will be positive. We'll be working towards a model where everyone who participates in the tournament has to benefit. The detail of all that hasn't been...