The Mike Hosking Breakfast

Poking the Chinese bear will only come back to haunt us.
That's Sir Don McKinnon's view on the Government reviewing agreements with China, after the passing of a new security law in Hong Kong.
The New Zealand China Council chairman told Mike Yardley our relationship with the country has never been easy over 70 years.
'We have faced China's handling of events in Tibet, Taiwan and Tiananmen Square by voicing our concerns in a non-threatening way."
McKinnon says we have to be measured as the two way trade is worth $30 billion dollars.
"There have always been bumps ion the road, and we’ve always managed to be over these bumps, not by being aggressive, but carefully going around them."
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The Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, Jr. can obtain President Donald Trump's tax returns for a criminal investigation but sent a second request by Congress for the records back to lower courts.
Here are some key questions and answers stemming from the decision:
Q: WHAT WAS THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY'S CASE ABOUT?
A: The records were being sought for a criminal investigation by Vance are part of a broader probe that includes payments made to buy the silence of two women, porn star Stormy Daniels and model Karen McDougal, who claim they had affairs with the president before the 2016 presidential election. Trump has denied them.
Two Manhattan federal judges ruled in separate cases that the subpoenas could not be blocked by Trump. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan upheld the rulings late last year. The Supreme Court was left with the final word. It upheld the legitimacy of the subpoenas but returned the cases to the lower court to determine if Trump could limit the scope.
Trump has refused to release his tax returns since he was a presidential candidate, and is the only modern president who hasn’t made that financial information public.
Q: WHO WON?
Vance overcame Trump's claims that he should be shielded from state criminal investigators while he is president. The high court sent the case back to the lower courts, but they largely threw out Trump's argument.
The court turned away the broadest arguments by Trump’s lawyers and the Justice Department that the president is immune from investigation while he holds office or that a prosecutor must show a greater need than normal to obtain the tax records.
Vance, a Democrat, whose office recently won a #MeToo conviction against Harvey Weinstein, saw a “tremendous victory for our nation’s system of justice and its founding principle that no one – not even a president – is above the law."
Trump's lawyers also claimed a victory. Attorney Jay Sekulow, said he was pleased lawyers can argue in the lower courts that the subpoenas must be limited in scope, an argument Trump’s lawyers made all along.
Q: WILL ANYBODY SEE TRUMP'S TAX RECORDS BY ELECTION DAY?
Unlikely. Perhaps a grand jury will get to view some records in sealed proceedings, but the Supreme Court ruling all but wiped out any chance that Congress or the public will get to scrutinize Trump's tax records by November.
The subpoenas by Congress and Vance will now be debated before federal judges in Manhattan, where any rulings on what can be turned over could be appealed again to the 2nd Circuit and the Supreme Court.
Even if judges expedite those decisions, the process will likely take weeks and even months to resolve fully. Records could then be released to a grand jury in Manhattan. Vance has said the records will not be made public.
Even the increasing likelihood that a grand jury will eventually get to examine the documents drove the president into a public rage. He lashed out declaring that “It’s a pure witch hunt, it’s a hoax” and calling New York, where he has lived most of his life, “a hellhole.”

The Southland Chamber of Commerce is going to fight the planned closure of Tiwai Point aluminium smelter.
Rio Tinto's Southland based smelter company will stop operations in August 2021, due to high power costs and poor outlooks for the industry.
President Neil McAra says it's a devastating blow.
He told Mike Yardley they want to engage with the Government to find a solution because .
"It's easier to hold onto jobs than create them. More than 2500 jobs could be directly and indirectly lost in the area."
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Victoria’s two largest ever coronavirus outbreaks have now been linked, forming one huge cluster that health authorities are scrambling to contain.

Investigators say it is now clear the 113-case Al-Taqwa College cluster and the 159-case public housing towers outbreak have strong connections. It is not clear which may have become infected first.
Both outbreaks are the biggest Victoria has ever seen, surpassing the Cedar Meats outbreak’s 111 cases on Thursday.
Chief health officer Brett Sutton said he didn’t know which cluster came first.
“An epidemiological link between Al-Taqwa and the towers is just a link. It might have gone in one direction, it might have gone in the other direction. There may well be multiple importations of virus (at both sites),” he said.
National Cabinet will meet today to discuss a number of topics including state borders, quarantine hotels and international arrivals.
Australia has recorded a total 8870 cases of COVID-19, with 3264 in New South Wales, 3098 in Victoria, 1068 in Queensland, 443 in South Australia, 627 in Western Australia, 228 in Tasmania, 112 in the Australian Capital Territory and 30 in the Northern Territory.

Kiwi scientists have found a promising new treatment for Covid-19 – but say Government funding is needed to get it out of the lab and into human trials.
A team led by Auckland Hospital immunologist Associate Professor Rohan Ameratunga has been developing a "decoy" molecule - delivered through an inhaler - designed to stop the SARS-CoV-2 virus from infecting our lung cells.
"At the moment, there's no proven treatment for Covid-19," said Ameratunga, who has been working with renowned researchers including Victoria University's Dr Davide Comoletti, and Otago University's Professor Miguel Quiñones-Mateu.
"We have been looking at the vulnerabilities of the virus and figured out the most vulnerable part of it is that which binds on to the cells."
The virus attaches itself to lung cells by binding its outer "spike" proteins, something which plays a big part in how quickly it spreads within us, and to other people.
Just as threatening, the receptor that it targets, called ACE2, happens to be highly expressed in our respiratory cells, enabling the virus to find its way deep into the lungs.
ACE2 has hosted this havoc before, acting as the receptor in the Sars coronavirus which infected more than 8000 people and killed 800 in the early 2000s.
To block the process, Ameratunga and his team have made their own designer ACE2 proteins to lure the virus away from the actual receptors attached to sensitive cells.
Once the virus was coated with the fake receptor, the researchers expected it could be eliminated like any other particle like dust or bacteria, through phlegm.
Their decoys could not only slash the amount of virus that made it through and attached to the cells, but help protect frontline health workers.
"What we are trying to do is target the virus very early on in the infection, and basically get people to breathe these proteins in, therefore flattening the exponential infection curve of the virus," he said.
"So if you do get the infection, it is much milder than otherwise."


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This week, his team tested their decoy in Comoletti's Wellington lab to find it indeed worked.

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"It actually blocked the virus, and does exactly what we predicted it would do," he said.
"What we'd like to do now is make these into clinical-grade drugs, and eventually go on to do human trials, which would probably have to be carried out mostly overseas, given we don't have Covid-19 here."
He expected that would mean working with a large pharmaceutical company, enabling trials to be carried out in multiple countries.
But to keep the core of the research in New Zealand, the team would have to seek Government funding.
"Everybody has done some great work, but at some stage, we are going to need some serious funding to progress it.
"The worst-case scenario is that we will have to go overseas, because it's important, and there are so many people dying from this. As a scientist, I want this to work, and for it to be available to everybody who needs it."
The project has been endorsed by the Australasian Society of Clinical Immunology and Allergy and the Immune Deficiency Foundation of New Zealand.
NZ scientists reveal 'weak point' on virus
Meanwhile, another team has discovered potential target points on the virus' genome – or its full genetic make-up - which may point the way to new treatments.
Over the lockdown period, PhD student Ali Hosseini and Professor Alex McLellan, of Otago University's Department of Microbiology and Immunology, began analysing the SARS-CoV-2 genome, which had then only recently been decoded.
They found previously unrecognised weak points – "target sites" that are picked up by an nucleic acid-based "immune system" operating in all of our body's cells, called...

It’s a hammer blow for Bluff, for Invercargill, for Southland. So many jobs, so many livelihoods heading for the shredder over the next fourteen months. One thousand at the smelter and sixteen hundred downstream jobs. Ten per cent of the regional economy.
 
But as much as Rio Tinto has a penchant for playing who blinks first, I respect the Finance Minister for not buckling, not capitulating to their increasingly grasping ways.
 
I love Southland. We all feel for Southland. But Grant Robertson has stood firm, upholding the position of Key, Joyce and English. No more hand-outs. As it is, Rio Tinto is charged a pepper-corn usage rate by Meridian. A quarter of the consumer’s rate. Does Rio Tinto really expect the gentailer now gives its power away to them for free? Rio Tinto already pocket a sixty five million dollar carbon subsidy under the ETS scheme. And under the Transmission Pricing changes, they would soon be paying eleven million dollars a year less in grid charges. But it’s never enough for these guys.
 
I was gazing over their disgusting dross dump in Mataura just a couple of weeks ago. They’re not exactly the exemplar of good corporate citizenship.
 
Aluminium prices continue to fall. As Grant Robertson rightly highlighted, just look at aviation. New aircraft today are typically constructed out of composites, not the aluminium tubes of old.
Rio Tinto is playing the same game, with the same tricks in Iceland right now. Enough – they’re not a charity case.
Meanwhile, as we’ve seen in the north, the ripple effects have started, with Contact pressing pause on some generation projects. When the Clutha Waitaki transmission upgrade is complete, that gusher of surplus of Meridian power from Manapouri could have a very positive impact on your power bill – depending on where you live in the country. But Southland will need real help to develop and expand industry and jobs, whether its agritech or aquaculture. Rich in resourceful people and a gutsy spirit, they will be up for the challenge.

Former prime minister Helen Clark says she hesitated about heading a global Covid-19 review panel "because it's mission impossible."
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has appointed Clark to co-chair an independent panel, reviewing its handling of the coronavirus pandemic and the response by governments.
She will look at how the outbreak happened and how it can be prevented in the future.
Speaking about her new role to Newstalk ZB's Mike Yardley this morning, Clark said the inquiry would focus on how effective the response which the WHO has co-ordinated has been.


She said there would be other parallel inquiries going on within the WHO as well.
"We'll have to write detailed terms of reference to see how we move forward with this."
The way member countries of the WHO have handled the situation would also be looked at carefully, she said.
Clark acknowledged that the move to ban travel from China had worked for New Zealand - but not for other countries.
"One of the issues may be going forward is does the WHO...need more powers?"
Asked whether she hesitated about taking up the co-chair job, she said: "Yes - because it's mission impossible."
She said it was hard to say whether New Zealand's success with battling Covid-19 had anything to do with her appointment.
Clark acknowledged that her co-chair teammate, former Liberia president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, was most likely called upon due to her experience with the Ebola outbreak during her reign about six years ago.
'Covid-19 has left no country untouched'
WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus acknowledged the magnitude of the situation the world has found itself in - and the respective response that was therefore needed.
He called Covid-19 a "once-in-a-century" pandemic that had hammered home a critical lesson - "when it comes to health, our destinies are intertwined".
"The Covid-19 pandemic has left no country untouched. It has humbled all of us.
"It is often said that disease knows no borders. It does not care about our political differences and it disregards the distinctions we draw between health and economy, lives and livelihoods."
Ghebreyesus said Clark would work alongside Sirleaf.
"I cannot imagine two more strong-minded, independent leaders to help guide us through this critical learning process to help us understand what happened.
"An honest assessment and to help us understand also what we should do to prevent such a tragedy in the future, to collectively - as a world - say 'never again' to such a tragedy."
He said the WHO would be an "open book" to Clark's review and he expected all WHO member states to also be transparent.
Clark honoured to co-chair panel
Clark posted a message on her official Twitter page after the news broke.
"Honoured to be announced by (Dr Ghebreyesus) as a co-chair of Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response with former Liberia President (Sirleaf).
"Aim to provide evidence-based path for future."
The panel will report back to health ministers in November.
Clark says the assignment can only be described as exceptionally challenging.

The most exacting measure on which we rate political leaders is judgement. It’s the yardstick that really counts. Are they decisive, are they assertive and clear-eyed in their judgement?
Dominating Jacinda Ardern’s negatives is the perception that she’s too kind, indecisive and too forgiving of fools. The Prime Minister might possibly have been the last person left in New Zealand to retain confidence in her previous Health Minister, David Clark.
Then we come to the National Party. With a new broom at the helm, Todd Muller’s first real test of his mettle looked muddled. On Monday, he knew the Walker scandal was going to blow. He relieved Hamish Walker of his portfolios on Tuesday and issued a statement accordingly.
It came up short. The glaring misjudgement was Muller’s fundamental failure to swiftly wash his hands of Walker.
There was no nod from Todd, publicly, that Walker should consider his future. And he had the time to get his ducks in a row, constitutionally with the party, to do so. But he didn’t. And that oversight made Muller look lame in the thick of a crisis. The court of public opinion was seething. Walker had to go, and Muller found himself playing catch-up.
Belatedly, this time yesterday, he got there, confirming that Clutha Southland deserved a fresh candidate. And Walker resigned at lunchtime.
Hopefully for National, this will cauterise the bleeding and contain the mess. The shills on the left would have you believe the rot of dirty politics goes much further up the National Party Tree. It’s a half-cocked claim with no supporting evidence.
But Muller’s crisis-management performance was flaky. He didn’t pass the stress-test in flying colours. We’re on the eve of the campaign proper. He shouldn’t be tepid, wooden and hesitant to publicly assert his moral authority.
For all his attributes, Muller is yet to convince me that he’s a leadership game-changer. Has National made the same panicky missteps that the bed-wetters in the Liberal Party unleashed – a la axing Abbott for a muddling Malcolm Turnbull? Judgement and timing is everything.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has announced a $761 million investment to help councils upgrade "run down" water services across the country.
In a politically charged piece of symbolism, Ardern and Local Government Minister Nanaia Mahuta chose the site of the water bore found to be the source of the fatal Havelock North campylobacter outbreak in 2016 to make the announcement on Wednesday.
Ardern said the country's public water infrastructure needed upgrading, and local government often didn't have the resources needed to fix it.
"This $761m investment will kick-start much needed work to bring our drinking, waste and storm water infrastructure up to scratch," she said.
"Nationally the estimated capital costs of upgrading drinking water treatment plants to meet health standards is between $309 and $574 million. The investment will help to cover some of these costs.
"Investing in water infrastructure is about investing in the health of New Zealanders."
Four years ago, four people died and about 5500 others got sick in the Havelock North campylobacter outbreak.
The Prime Minister said New Zealand's problems with drinking water aren't limited to Hawke's Bay.
"At least 34,000 New Zealanders become ill from drinking tap water every year and many communities around the country cannot drink their water without first boiling it," she said.
"Covid-19 has put additional pressures on local government. Councils that own and run water services need assistance to maintain or renew infrastructure.
"In particular rural councils with small ratings bases often can't afford the sort of investment need to upgrade their water infrastructure."
Hawke's Bay councils would receive in the region of $50m between them to assist with their water infrastructure upgrade work, she said.
The financial investment from the Government is contingent on local councils opting in to a wider water reform programme.
The cumulative effect of increasing capital costs, infrastructure maintenance and upgrades, enhanced standards and environmental challenges mean that the current operational and governance arrangements for water are not sustainable and consolidation is required.
Mahuta said there are "massive looming costs" across the Three Waters networks - wastewater, stormwater and drinking water.
"The current service delivery arrangements, particularly for the smaller rural and provincial councils, are not well-placed to meet these," she said.
"Today's announcement will lend the reform programme's initial stages very real impetus and councils will need to sign up to the wider reform agenda in order to access the Government's funding.
"We want to see new arrangements made that provide scale in the form of public multi-regional water entities – and take account of catchment-related and communities-of-interest considerations."
Mahuta also acknowledged the progress that Hawke's Bay's councils have made towards investigating shared service arrangements.
"This will put them, along with others who have developed similar initiatives, in an excellent position to consider the advantages of the reform programme," she added.
"New Zealanders in all our communities have every right to turn on the tap and drink the water in the knowledge that it is safe. We also want to be able to swim in our rivers and lakes and go to the beach and gather kai moana without getting sick."

The National Party is looking for a new candidate in the Clutha-Southland seat, now that Hamish Walker has quit.
He admitted to passing on private details of Covid-19 patients to the media.
Clutha Mayor Brian Cadogan says people in the Clutha Southland electorate are stunned and disappointed with Walker's actions.
He told Mike Yardley most people believe there's more to come in the saga.
"It’s just so messy, and the loose ends have yet to be explained yet.
"Everyone is waiting for the full story to come out. Hamish is a good guy, he had a job for life, but he’s absolutely shredded it."
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