The Mike Hosking Breakfast

A user-pays change for upgrades to our electricity network is coming for power consumers.
The outcome of the Electricity Authority's Transmission Pricing Review may be particularly painful for households.
Its chosen methodology disadvantages geographical areas furthest away from existing generation sources, predominantly located in the South Island.
Transmission Pricing Group Manager Alan McDonald told Mike Hosking nothing is wrong with user-pays, but the group doesn't think the authority has the right answer.
He says any fundamental shift to the way we pay for our electricity transmission should be made by the Government rather than a regulator.
McDonald says it will result in some regions paying more than others.
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London's mayor announced Tuesday that more statues of imperialist figures could be removed from Britain’s streets after protesters knocked down the monument to a slave trader, as the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis continued to spark protests — and drive change — around the world.
On the day Floyd was buried in his hometown of Houston, Texas, London Mayor Sadiq Khan said he was setting up a commission to ensure the British capital's monuments reflected its diversity. It will review statues, murals, street art, street names and other memorials and consider which legacies should be celebrated, the mayor’s office said.
“It is an uncomfortable truth that our nation and city owes a large part of its wealth to its role in the slave trade and while this is reflected in our public realm, the contribution of many of our communities to life in our capital has been willfully ignored,” Khan said.
Even before the new commission got underway, officials in east London removed a statue of 18th-century merchant and slave owner Robert Milligan from its place in the city’s docklands.
Joe Biggs, mayor of London's Tower Hamlets borough, said that following the toppling of a statue of slave trader Edward Colston by demonstrators in the city of Bristol on Sunday, “we’ve acted quickly to both ensure public safety and respond to the concerns of our residents, which I share.”
It was the latest sign that international protests of racial injustice and police violence that Floyd’s May 25 death spurred are already creating change. A white police officer who pressed a knee on Floyd's neck for more than eight minutes has been charged with murder.
Statues, as long-lasting symbols of a society’s values, have become a focus of protest around the world.
On Sunday, protesters in Bristol hauled down a statue of Colston, a 17th-century slave trader and philanthropist, and dumped in the city’s harbor.
That act revived calls for Oxford University to remove a statue of Cecil Rhodes, a Victorian imperialist in southern Africa who made a fortune from mines and endowed Oxford University’s Rhodes scholarships.
Several hundred supporters of the Rhodes Must Fall group gathered near the statue at the university's College on Tuesday, chanting “Take it down” before holding a silent sit-down vigil in the street to memorialize Floyd.
Oxford city officials urged the college to apply for permission to remove the statue so that it could be placed in a museum.
Another large statue of Rhodes that had stood since 1934 was removed from South Africa’s University of Cape Town in April 2015, after a student-led campaign that also urged the university to increase its numbers of black lecturers and to make the curriculum less Eurocentric.
In 2003, the Rhodes Scholarships started a new program in South Africa, the Mandela Rhodes Scholarships in partnership with the Nelson Mandela Foundation. The Rhodes Scholarships continue to operate in South Africa and around the world.
In Antwerp, authorities used a crane on Tuesday to remove a statue of Belgium’s former King Leopold II that had been splattered with red paint by protesters, taking it away for repairs. It was unclear whether it would be re-erected.
Leopold took control of Congo in 1885 and enslaved much of its people to collect rubber, reigning over a brutal regime under which some 10 million Congolese died.
In Edinburgh, Scotland, there are calls to tear down a statue of Henry Dundas, an 18th-century politician who delayed Britain’s abolition of slavery by 15 years.
The leader of Edinburgh City Council, Adam McVey, said he would “have absolutely no sense of loss if the Dundas statue was removed and replaced with something else or left as a plinth.”
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has acknowledged that it was “a cold reality” that people of color in Britain experienced discrimination, but said those who attacked police or desecrated public...

A property commentator says the market's getting back to where it was before the COVID-19 pandemic.
There's been a surge of interest in open homes since the country came out of lockdown.
OneRoof's Ashley Church told Mike Hosking it's still too early to predict where house prices will settle.
"Open homes are taking off again, there's market interest coming from investors and first home buyers.
"Price expectations around most of the country, with the exception of Auckland, Wanaka and Queenstown, are relatively positive.
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The Government's legal troubles surrounding the COVID-19 lockdown haven't gone away, since the country moved down to level one.
A number of legal groups is getting behind a Wellington lawyer who's challenging the legality of the level four and three lockdowns.
Former Attorney-General Chris Finlayson told Mike Hosking nobody will be going to jail over it.
But, advice for if we have to move back into lockdown, will hopefully come from a Royal Commission.
"After hearing all the arguments, the court will make a series of declarations about the legality of certain steps - and consequences will flow from that."
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So the day of reckoning,or at least a day of reckoning has arrived. The jig is up.
Andrew Little, the Minister in charge of Pike River, fronts the appropriate select committee and reveals what most of us had worked out well before they ever entered the mine.
The retrieval of bodies is no longer practical. The simple truth is, a decade on, retrieval of bodies was never practical.
Little perpetrates the con a little further by suggesting that the main reason they are still there, apart from perceived political gain, is to gather evidence for the crime committed.
If it needs to be stated, let me state it again, there is no evidence, there will be no evidence, and there will be no charges. I called it in the CTV building in Christchurch, I call it on Pike River.
Families who are angry, and rightly so, who want vengeance, justice, or a bit of both, all have good arguments and much emotion behind the cause. But that does not a case or charges make, or indeed anywhere close.
The Labour Party should be ashamed of themselves. They took a tragedy, saw a political gap, and leapt on it. The previous National government did what any logical, sensible, and adult govt would have done, all they could. Short of making up stories and promising false hope like the current lot have.  
They consulted experts, the experts said it was too dangerous and too big a risk. The Labour Party promised the world. Winston Peters chimed in equally as opportunistic and promised to be one of the first down the shaft.
Millions has been spent, budgets have been blown, and now the cold hard truth. There will be no bodies. The families asked for and were granted by the Labour Party their loved ones back,  but it won't be happening.
But the con is, it never was. The families were used for political gain, and cheap violin string headlines.
Most of them won't admit it, I don’t think because they all seem enamoured with the Labour Party. This was as much about being against the last government as it was about a rescue.
But the facts don’t lie, are bodies coming out? No. Were they ever? No. Will there be evidence? No. Will there be charges? No.
So what has been achieved apart from a whole new department being created millions spent for the admission from Andrew Little that was always coming?
It was only a matter of time.

The Minister Responsible for the Pike River Mine Re-entry says there's no guarantee charges will be laid, but says you have to go looking.
Andrew Little says the infrastructure of the mine was appallingly put together.
He says those running the mine were negligent and reckless, and knew how bad it was.
Little told Mike Hosking the Pike River families were made a promise by the previous government that everything that could be done safely, would be.
"The country has a moral debt to the families,  because of the loss that happened due to corporate and state failure.
Little  says the police are going through material that's been pulled out of the mine everyday.
“The closer we get to the far end of the drift, any human remains that washed out of the mine area can be recovered.
“Most importantly, it will shed light on what caused the explosion through the plant and machinery in the pit bottom and stone area, where the main workplaces are.”
Little says there's no time limit on when charges can be laid over Pike River, unlike the CTV building, which collapsed in a Canterbury earthquake.
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A group of 10 investors is being brought together in a one million dollar fund to find the next big New Zealand business.
The scout programme is part of the Hillfarrance venture capital fund with each investor putting in $100,000.
Los Angeles-based chief executive Rob Vickery told Mike Hosking Kiwi entrepreneurs have more substance and less of a sales approach than in Silicon Valley.
He's looking for the crazy and outlandish innovations which will become the next billion dollar business.
"They have got wonderful and innovative ideas, and a really key eye for building self sustaining businesses."
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An Australian liquor distiller has issued an urgent recall on bottles of gin after finding they had been filled with hand sanitiser, which left at least one customer feeling sick.

The company, Apollo Bay Distillery, says it has sold a number of the bottles with no seal, which have been labelled as gin but actually contain the sanitiser. Hand sanitiser is not safe to drink and should not be consumed.
The company said at least nine bottles of the sanitiser, labelled as “SS Casino Gin” were sold between June 5 and June 7.
A customer said she felt ill after drinking a glass from one of the incorrectly labelled bottles.
“Had one glass of this at lunchtime and had a really bad headache and felt nauseas (sic) about 1 hour after and had to take nausea tablets and nurofen,” the customer said on the Apollo Bay Distillery Facebook page.
“Thought I was getting unwell I had no idea until now! If it doesn’t taste right don’t drink it!!! Be careful!”
The company apologised to the customer and assured her the product she mistakenly drank was “not toxic”.
“Should you have purchased a bottle of SS Casino Gin between Friday 5 June to Sunday 7 June please return it to where you purchased it from for a full refund or replacement,” the company said in a statement.

US President Donald Trump has made a remarkable suggestion about a viral video of a 75-year-old protester being pushed to the ground by police during US riots.
Trump is facing a swath of criticism after alleging Martin Gugino, 75, who was filmed being pushed over by Buffalo police in a video that shocked the world, was a "set up".
The video, taken by a reporter from the local public radio station WBFO, showed Gugino approaching a line of officers in riot gear amid the George Floyd protests over the weekend.
One officer pushes him with a baton and a second one with his hand. The sound of a crack is heard as Gugino falls to ground and then blood trickles from his head.
President Trump ignored the fallout and furore over the video, which saw two cops from Buffalo in New York State charged with assault and the entire Buffalo police Emergency Response Team resigning in solidarity with the two officers.
A total of 57 officers resigned from the emergency team, the entirety of it, who refused to admit that their colleagues had done anything wrong.
The incident drew widespread condemnation on social media as protesters returned to the streets of several US cities to demonstrate against police brutality.
Gugino was later revealed to be a peace activist and volunteer at a Catholic organisation.
After the incident he was taken to intensive care and remains in a serious condition in hospital.
But in a dramatic turn of events, President Trump tweeted Tuesday claiming Gugino "could be an Antifa provocateur" and suggested he "fell harder than he was pushed" and that the video was a fake.
He indicated he had been watching news surrounding Gugino's incident on One America News Network, a right-wing network known for being pro-Trump.

Buffalo protester shoved by Police could be an ANTIFA provocateur. 75 year old Martin Gugino was pushed away after appearing to scan police communications in order to black out the equipment. @OANN I watched, he fell harder than was pushed. Was aiming scanner. Could be a set up?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 9, 2020
Trump also alleged Gugino was pushed by police "after appearing to scan police communications in order to black out the equipment".
An Antifa, or anti-fascist, is a term used to describe people or groups with far-left tendencies and who are opposed to the far right.

One of Jacinda Ardern's ministers is joining the Prime Minister in expressing their disappointment at The Warehouse.
The company has announced it'll be laying off about a thousand workers, just as the first wave of the wage subsidy ends.
Ardern said yesterday she was angry at the company.
Stuart Nash told Mike Hosking he wouldn't go quite so far.
'I think it's slightly disingenuous that as soon as the subsidy ends, the Warehouse says thank you very much tax payer, we're now going to lay off a thousand workers."
The second tranche of the wage subsidy starts from today - for eight weeks.
Listen to the audio above as MPs Stuart Nash and Mark Mitchell join Mike Hosking to debate the issues of the week.