The Mike Hosking Breakfast

At the end of each week, Mike Hosking takes you through the big ticket items and lets you know what he makes of it all. 
Money and Spending.
8/10.
"It's still early days but the spending is there. One percent down on this time last year.
Are you kidding me? What recession?"
Trans-Tasman and Pacific Bubbles.
4/10.
"We've got to be more entrepreneurial.
If Australia isn't ready, the Cooks Islands are. Let's get on with it.
Is it really hard to do more than one thing at a time?"
Australia.
5/10.
"Scott Morrison is pulling his hair out. Winston Peters is right, it’s the road block of federalism.
Giving that power to a power freak in Queensland at the expense of the country is not the way to run a successful country."
The Protests, Statues and TV Cancellations.
1/10.
"What a shocking week where the mad, rabid, and bizarre were let loose.
Not only did they put all our health at risk, but also completely lose the plot on history."
The Government's Mood.
4/10.
"Jacinda Ardern got angry, Grant Robertson got frustrated, and Stuart Nash got bloody angry.
You notice when we are not locked up, and there is more than just one voice barking out orders on Facebook Live, things start to come a bit unstuck?"
Pike River.
0/10.
"The confession from Andrew Little that the bodies weren't coming home.
Not that most of us didn’t know that, the crime is the trick that was played on the families for political gain.
If you don’t think this government is Machiavellian, wake up."
Ministry of Education and the Modems.
1/10.
"Come on, even for the public service that’s a pretty spectacular cock up.
And once again with our money which, of course, wasn’t our money anyway given we borrowed it."
The Election.
7/10.
"99 days and counting.
It'll be closer than many think, with no shortage of drama."
Sport.
8/10.
"It's back.
And if it's not back, it's almost back, and a lot of it is back with crowds.
And with crowds comes money."
LISTEN ABOVE FOR MIKE HOSKING'S FULL WEEK IN REVIEW

Dan Carter has had an instant impact at the Blues.
The 38-year-old former All Black has joined the franchise as an injury replacement for Stephen Perofeta.
Fellow first-five Beauden Barrett told Mike Hosking just having Carter in the environment has been beneficial.
“The first day I was training along side him, and he was giving me really decent feedback, which is great and will hopefully make me a better player.”
Beauden Barrett is likely to debut for the Blues against the Hurricanes this weekend at fullback with the team named this afternoon.
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Delays in realising Covid-19 was spreading within some rest homes meant more people were infected, an official review has found.
An independent review of how the aged care sector coped with Covid-19 found "in some cases, recognition of an outbreak was relatively delayed which accelerated internal facility transmission".
"For three of the outbreaks, notification to the PHU (primary health unit) was late in the outbreak," the review noted. "It appears more than half of the people had developed symptoms of illness before the outbreak was notified." That made contact tracing difficult.
The Ministry of Health-commissioned report was released yesterday and also found personal protective equipment (PPE) wasn't available in some facilities, and advice from health authorities was sometimes confusing and inconsistent.



Six rest homes had Covid-19 cases, two of which - Rosewood Rest Home in Christchurch and CHT St Margaret's in Auckland's Te Atatu - account for 16 of NZ's 22 Covid-linked deaths.
Director general of health Dr Ashley Bloomfield noted the differing results when ordering the review, which didn't name individual facilities and also included other rest homes without Covid cases.
An unprecedented crisis
The review found all facilities had compliant infection control policies, but none were prepared for the impact of a positive case "let alone an outbreak/cluster".
"Clear continuity planning for staff backfilling was limited to reduction in 20 per cent, 40 per cent or 50 per cent of staff, but did not require continuity planning for up to 100 per cent staff reduction of staff and was not stress tested."
Facilities with Covid-19 were "broadly critical" of their interactions with services such as public health units (PHUs) and DHB incident management teams.
PHUs sometimes told staff they were suspected or close contacts and not to work, in the middle of a shift and without telling the facility.
"The sudden loss of staff caused the ARC [aged residential care] provider to turn to casual and agency staff, which also resulted in increasing the risk of infection. This period was described as 'complete chaos' and was highly stressful for all concerned."
Most facilities kept visitors away before this was officially required, but one was hesitant to go against advice by their DHB. "This was something that they regretted later," the review noted.
DHB staff helping at Covid-hit homes weren't properly briefed. One told reviewers of arriving to chaos: "Everyone was new. We had no idea of the work routine, nothing got documented, we couldn't work the hoist, and all we could do was feed, keep people clean, toilet, and ready at bedtime."
Media reports created anxiety for staff and residents' families. One facility was given 10 minutes warning before being named as a cluster.
'Atmosphere of fear'
Staff and management described an "atmosphere of fear", and an initial perception that the Ministry, DHBs and PHUs were unsure of what to do.
There was confusion around testing, with "lag times and provision of results variable and not well communicated through to the ARC facility", which made rostering difficult. All staff felt they should have had access to testing sooner.
Some staff worked in other facilities, in some cases without an employer's knowledge and against their guidance. That complicated contact tracing.
Others were threatened with eviction by landlords or housemates if they kept working for a facility, and reported feeling like "lepers".

Simon Wallace of the NZ Aged Care Association: 'We had to take a strong leadership role' Photo / George Novak
Preparing for another wave
The review's recommendations include developing a national infection prevention and control (IPC) strategy for the aged care sector, and to clarify "case recognition to identify infections early".
The Herald has previously reported...

An increasing number of stranded foreign nationals are looking for work in Hawke's Bay, despite the season, and Civil Defence says it is like "watching a slow train wreck".
Civil Defence Hawke's Bay had been providing emergency accommodation, food and clothing to dozens of foreign nationals over the last few months, Civil Defence controller Ian MacDonald said, and the situation was getting worse.
The foreigners included nearly 1700 workers from Pacific islands, employed under the Recognised Seasonal Employment (RSE) scheme, whose contracts had ended and were now left with either little or no work and unable to get home.
Many more were backpackers fleeing the desperate situation in Queenstown in the belief they would find horticultural work in Hawke's Bay.
"But it's the wrong time of year, and they probably don't understand that," McDonald said.
"We've heard stories of backpackers living in tents in orchards. We're getting frosts, it is the middle of winter ... this is not sustainable."
Furthermore 400 international students at the Eastern Institute of Technology were also stranded with no way of getting home and often no work to fund their stay, MacDonald said.
There were similar situations unfolding in Canterbury and the Bay of Plenty as backpackers tried to seek work in other regions, he said.
"It appears to be finally bubbling to the surface. It's like watching a slow train wreck."
The responsibility of Civil Defence was to provide emergency shelter, food and clothing to foreign nationals needing help, but it was not sustainable to be doing this long term, he said.
His staff needed to again focus on planning for emergencies.
"We need more clarity from the government as to who is responsible for looking after them."
Text by Anusha Bradley of RNZ

There are reservations over the need for an inquiry into 'racist' monuments, statues and names from New Zealand's colonial era.
The Maori Party's calling for an inquiry into the monuments, statues and names from New Zealand's colonial era.
Historian Paul Moon told Mike Hosking it wouldn't correct anything.
"If you think removing a statue - somehow amputating a visual representation of the past is going to change anything - you're very much mistaken."
Professor Paul Moonsays in the US,  people congregate around confederate statues and celebrate confederate leaders, but we don't do that sort of thing here
"Given that we see these statues for what they are, Victorian era memorials, we tend not to get agitated by them because there's no need to."
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Our capacity to foot trip our way forward never ceases to amaze me. 
The world has had an abysmal week, in the middle of a pandemic, the likes of which we have never seen. We still have the capacity to find other things in which to make a mess of our lives and futures.
Somehow the death of a black man in Minneapolis ended up seeing a statue toppled in Bristol, which then was tied to a call to stop funding police, in fact to have no police at all. That was closely followed by lots of other statues being targeted, so they could be banned, chopped, or melted down. That dovetailed into campaigns to have plaques and street names reassessed, reassessed by whom was never quite dealt with.
Detail is never addressed in these scenarios. Mad symbolism isn't about answers, it's about noise, carnage, and destruction.
By the end of the week Gone with the Wind was off air, along with Little Britain and Cops. From Floyd, to Coulston, to Lou and Andy, gone. Banned. Put in the bin of history because history now clearly is only to be seen through a lenses prescribed by wokest of woke.
In that is the rub, most of us see this for what it is. The only difference these days is the nutters are given licence. Leadership has vanished, and in an attempt to try and avoid upsetting anyone, anything goes. An entire world can be in lockdown trying to save lives unless there's a cause the handwringer decides is worth putting that at risk for.
Because there is no leadership, no one says enough. Never seeing Rhett and Scarlett again isn't going to save the life, or treatment, of a black man on the streets of America. We all know it, but but that’s not what the wreckers are after.
The wreckers never have answers. They're not bright enough to get that far into the problem. We all accept there is a problem, we know there is a problem because the George Floyd story sadly isn't the first, or anywhere close to it.
The same way Colston wasn’t the only bloke who sold people for money.
But that’s how societies change, and that’s why Colston is a relic. That's why Rhett and Scarlett had servants. It was what they did at the time, and that time is not now, because we learned from it. You don’t learn by not seeing and pretending it never happened.
Yes, the time is now to stop bad cops kneeling on necks, but that’s not archived by banning Fat Pat or Marjorie Dawes. It's not achieved by removing Rhodes ,or de-funding police forces.
Here's the irony, unless you have leadership and authority you are left defenceless and open to the weakest link. And, my god, did this week feel like the weakest link had free run of the place.

Air New Zealand is so cash-strapped their chief executive says there is no chance of customers with non-refundable tickets being refunded.
And after making over 1000 people redundant recently, it hoped to cut costs even further with a goal of shedding $150 million worth of labour costs.
However, Air NZ chief executive Greg Foran said the airline had not put a number down in terms of people losing jobs.
Speaking to Mike Hosking this morning, Foran understood why passengers with non-refundable tickets were frustrated but his hands were tied.


"I completely understand the frustration of our customers, frankly, we're frustrated too," Foran said.
"The reality is that customers who have got a non-refundable fare, we can't provide cash for that so instead we're heading down the path of credit."



The airline was making sure it was being as flexible as possible around the terms of the credit, from the length of time to using it on multiple trips.
Earlier this week, Air NZ chief revenue officer Cam Wallace met with Consumer NZ chief executive Jon Duffy following tension around the non-refundable tickets.
Consumer NZ had been pushing for refunds on non-refundable tickets, saying Kiwis needed cash not credits.
"From a legal perspective, Air New Zealand is right to the extent of saying it doesn't have a legal obligation to refund non-refundable tickets," Duffy said.
"Our position is that the law is broken, the law needs to be fixed. And that doesn't mean you don't have a moral obligation to refund consumers now."
Elsewhere, Foran told Hosking he thought the process of opening up a transtasman bubble with Australia was taking an appropriate amount of time.
There were a number of challenges which needed working out, including the issue surrounding transit passengers.
It was looking likely the transtasman bubble would be active around August-September, Foran said. He hoped a bubble with the Pacific would come faster.
"I'd really like to get into the Cook Islands and Nuie sooner rather than later," Foran said.
"There are some good discussions occurring there and we are part of that. If we can pull something together there reasonably soon then I think that would be a good thing."
Foran did not think the Government was holding up the process despite New Zealand and the Cook Islands both having no active cases of Covid-19.
The airline did need to continue to cut costs, Foran said.
On May 20, it was announced more than 1300 cabin crew would lose their jobs - out of 1600 long and mid-haul crew, 950 would be let go.
Three-hundred domestic crew workers would also be made redundant across Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.
While they hadn't put a number down in terms of people, Air NZ had put a challenge out to try to cut $150 million from its labour bill.
"We also want to save some more operating costs and see if we can get some capital down," Foran said.
"We're up for considering any reasonable ideas on how we get there as we work through with all our Air NZers and want to stress, it's not just about redundancies."
Asked whether Air New Zealand would be going for a capital raise, Foran said it was continuing to assess its options.
The airline would provide any further updates to the market as required, he said.

As New Zealand and other countries so as we come out of the health side of Covid-19  - the focus is well and truly now on the economy.
But there are growing calls that the pandemic could be an opportunity to change how the world operates.
So what can we do differently, and is there a case for permanent change?
Famed British environmentalist Sir Jonathon Porritt has penned a report for the Aotearoa Circle, a think-tank of the public and private sectors.
Sir Jonathon joined Mike Hosking to discuss how the need to rebuild the economy presents numerous opportunities to refocus global priorities. 
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Rarotongan holidays are on offer, but not for Kiwis yet.
The Cook Islands are dropping border restrictions with New Zealand on July 19 and scrapping the two week quarantine.
But New Zealand's Government says a travel bubble with the Cooks will take the back seat to  opening borders with Australia.
Cook Islands Private Sector Taskforce Chairperson Fletcher Melvin told Mike Hosking it feels like they're being ignored - despite being covid-free.
He says they watched New Zealand with anticipation, thinking once they were covid-free it would be a natural bubble to establish.
“We were expecting that when NZ went to level one, we would be first in line as we are Covid-19 free."
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The world faces the worst global recession in nearly a century, a key economic body warned Wednesday, while in Europe, restrictions to fight the spread of coronavirus portend a bleak summer tourism season even as more nations announced plans to welcome visitors again.
Beginning June 16, Austria will open up to all European neighbors with the exception of Spain, Portugal, Sweden and Britain, meaning that visitors from 31 countries will no longer be required to undergo a two-week quarantine upon arrival. Greece, another European holiday hot spot, will allow tourists to fly to Athens or the main northern city of Thessaloniki beginning on June 15.
But that's hoping people have money to spend.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said Wednesday that global economic output could fall by as much as 7.6% this year if a second wave of infections emerges, with the pandemic’s economic impact expected to be even harsher in Europe because of the continent’s strict and relatively lengthy coronavirus lockdowns.
In the eurozone, which includes the 19 European Union nations that use the common euro currency, GDP is expected to plunge 11.5% this year in case of a second wave and by over 9% even if another round of infections is avoided.
"Now we’re in the midst of ... perhaps the most global health, economic and social crisis and it’s simply the most severe any of us have ever witnessed," OECD Secretary General Angel Gurria said during the presentation of the report in Paris. He named tourism and air travel among the “critical” sectors hard hit by the pandemic and urged countries to cooperate in developing and fairly distributing a vaccine for the virus.
“As long as a virus is widespread somewhere, the threat will remain everywhere and economic costs will persist as some borders remain closed,” Gurria said, with the report predicting that the crisis would leave “long-lasting scars,” including lower living standards, high unemployment and weak investment.
The virus has infected 7.2 million people worldwide and killed nearly 412,000, about 180,000 of them in Europe, according to official figures tallied by Johns Hopkins University. The true toll is believed to be much higher because many people died without being tested.
Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg said the border with Italy to the south would be open without conditions on June 16 but that a travel warning for Austrian citizens was still in place for Italy's northern region of Lombardy. That region, the epicenter of Italy’s epidemic, has still been showing triple-digit growth in daily infections while much of the rest of the country counts a handful or fewer.
While Italy opened its own borders on June 3, Austria’s reluctance to open their shared border has been a sore spot between the two.
Austrian Health Minister Rudolf Anschober said restrictions would remain in place for Spain because its own borders remain closed until July 1 for most tourists and for Portugal due to an increase in infections in recent days.
‘’Please pack your bags, but don’t forget the situation at home,’’ Anschober said, emphasizing that the virus remains in circulation. ‘’Please consider every trip, whether with the family and on business, and when possible don’t travel.’’
Italy's Coldiretti farm lobby said the Austrian border opening was critical to Italian tourism, which normally registers summer holiday visits by 3.4 million Austrians and 7 million Germans who cross Austria to reach Italy. Coldiretti called Austria’s move “an important signal.” Foreign visitors spent 167 billion euros ($190 billion) last year in Italy, a third of it on food.
Contract workers from France’s all-important food, catering and events industry held a protest Wednesday between the Louvre Museum and Champs-Elysees, saying the virus pandemic is killing their jobs. The symbolic flash mob demonstration included about 30 people dressed in...