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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.
Good ideas: 7/10
Not a bad week. Monthly inflation data, the census scrapped, the Housing Minister to overrule council and health targets improving. Things feel a bit like they're moving.
The Crusaders: 7/10
A great comeback story for Rob Penney, who was vilified a year ago, on the verge of being a hero this weekend.
Nico Porteous: 7/10
Story of the week in some ways for me. Living his dream, charting his destiny, and mature beyond his years. I wish him well.
Venice: 3/10
They're protesting the Jeff Bezos wedding. He has booked the place out, he is throwing money at the joint, and they are a tourist town. What is it you want?
Radio NZ: 4/10
They're looking for people to quit and that, sadly, is what you get when the Willie 'Snake Oil' Jackson rolls his circus into town to hand out lollies that can never be real.
The world: 4/10
It’s a mess, isn't it? This time last week yet another war started and where traditionally we have a country and a leader that rises to the occasion, sadly these days there's no such luck. He's too busy launching his gold phone.
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I think this was the move of the week.
Housing Minister Chris Bishop dropped the bombshell on local body operators that the Government has decided to give him the power to intervene around housing in local body decision making.
Mind you, we could argue scrapping the calamitous Census was a good move, and indeed I'm a massive fan of reporting inflation data on a monthly basis, which sort of makes us look like a first world country. These are all good decisions.
But as regards councils and housing, in the broader interests of this small country finally getting its fiscal act together, this move cannot come soon enough.
The simple truth is we are over councilled. We have ludicrous numbers of local do-gooders in a vast array of fiefdoms making decisions that may, or may not, make any sense locally, far less incorporating themselves into the bigger national picture.
Part of the problem is too often councils have not been up to much. Too many councils are littered with acrimony and in-fighting, progress is stalled, or watered down, or major work is ignored in favour of more headline grabbing material that makes the local representatives look good.
Not all of course, but too many.
From Tauranga, to Wellington, to Christchurch, to Invercargill; the infighting and dysfunction has become legendary.
What you can say about central Government that you can't say about local Government is most of us took part in the democratic process and as a result this Government, rightly or wrongly, has a mandate to get on and do stuff.
Mainly, stuff that got cocked up by the previous Government.
If there has been a constant theme of this current Government, even from its broad-based supporters, it is that they haven't done as much as they might have.
They have plans and ideas and announcements and KPIs. What they don't have is a vast array of results.
They don't have tangible things that have been changed leading to us quite clearly being better off.
With the Bishop announcement it would appear that message and the lack of traction is finally hitting home, and they have sat around the Cabinet table and worked out they have about a year left to put some major runs on the board so that election time is about delivery and not more promises.
The country basically is too small for this many councils and committees. A lot of decisions have major national economic implications and as such, central Government has, or should have, a say.
They will hate it of course. They will gnash and wail and moan about local democracy. But guess what? Big picture economic success is more important.
The big picture, generally, is more important. The national story is more important.
Christchurch learned this last week over their intensification scrap, which lasted years and cost them millions, that this Government is serious and on a central vs local head-to-head, only one side is coming out on top.
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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Are early finishes to blame for the surgical backlog?
Surgeon Chris Wakeman claims that public health professionals won’t perform surgeries past the 4pm cutoff, causing backlog issues.
Health NZ’s Chief Clinical Officer Dr Richard Sullivan told Mike Hosking that early finishes do occur.
The rosters generally run until about 4:30/5pm, and he says that there are very few operations that can be done in less than half an hour.
He says they’ve been running weekend theatres to try get more people through, but you need quite a big work force to do that consistently.
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With Matariki this weekend, we’ve come to the end of a short week.
Kate Hawkesby and Tim Wilson joined Mike Hosking to get their session of Mike-bullying in early – going after his expensive tastes, his lack of control over his life, and his special burgundy suede loafers.
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The latest carbon auction was a bust.
It attracted zero bids, becoming the eighth auction to be declined.
The secondary market currently sits around $58 a tonne, while the auction price sits at $68.
ACT’s Climate Change Spokesperson, Simon Court told Mike Hosking it shows that industrial emitters, such as coal users, already have enough units in the carbon bank to pay for this year's emissions.
With the success of the secondary market, Court says it’s evidence the Emissions Trading Scheme and the carbon markets are working quite well.
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The Crusaders’ current Super Rugby season is like chalk and cheese when compared to the las.
They missed the playoffs in 2024, with just four wins in 14 matches.
In contrast, this year sees them host the grand final against the Chiefs – clashing at the Apollo Projects Stadium in Christchurch on Saturday.
Coach Rob Penney told Mike Hosking the Chiefs have beaten them twice this year, but neither team is the same team as they were on those occasions.
He says it’s going to be another tight match, and the team that holds its composure the longest, prepares the best, and plays the best will be the ultimate victors.
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On the Mike Hosking Breakfast Full Show Podcast for Thursday 19th of June, what will our GDP number look like? It’s set to look quite healthy, but will that give us false hope in Q2?
The Crusaders are going to win the Super Rugby final this weekend, so coach Rob Penney is on to tell us how they’ll do it.
It’s a short week, so Kate Hawkesby and Tim Wilson get to have their Mike-bullying session slightly earlier as they Wrap the Week.
Get the Mike Hosking Breakfast Full Show Podcast every weekday morning on iHeartRadio, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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A sleep-expert assures Melatonin is safe, but is still urging people to take caution.
Medsafe has given approval for the sleep drug to be available over the counter at pharmacies.
It is commonly used to treat insomnia or jet lag.
Sleepwell Clinic Director Alex Bartle says potential side-effects are fairly minor, and long-term effects aren't fully understood.
However, he doesn’t believe it’s as valuable as it’s made out to be.
Bartle told Mike Hosking behavioural treatments are much more effective.
He says a 2017 study shows a person's total sleep time after taking the medication didn't improve, and says he doesn't prescribe Melatonin at all.
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There are concerns scrapping the traditional census won't deliver the desired results.
Stats NZ is moving to a system using Government collected admin-data, saying the current five yearly Census is financially unsustainable.
Census-style questions will still be asked in much smaller annual surveys looking at a small fraction of the population.
Former national statistician Len Cook told Mike Hosking data-wise, this won't cut it.
He says admin-data comes from about a dozen different sources, none of them complete.
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The economy is expected to look better than earlier predictions.
Figures —due out from Stats NZ this morning— are expected to show the country's GDP grew 0.7% for the first quarter of the year.
It's slightly higher than 0.4%, predicted earlier this year.
ASB chief economist Nick Tuffley told Mike Hosking things are expected to slow through the middle half of the year.
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Now, perhaps the most startling thing of the news yesterday that our old mates at the state radio broadcaster have opened a voluntary redundancy programme, is that they've never done that before.
100 years they've been doing the business at Radio New Zealand. 100 years, never had a voluntary redundancy. Tells you something about how insulated the real world from the real world they are.
Mind you, I don't even know that's true actually, because Radio New Zealand used to be a whole different beast.
In my early days of broadcasting, Radio New Zealand encompassed commercial and non-commercial radio stations, and there was, I can tell you from personal experience, no shortage of carnage fiscally. The place was run by halfwits and we were permanently in a state of flux, if not carnage.
The most famous might have been a thing called Project Aurora, where we allegedly all took pay cuts – that was a scandal in and of itself.
So it's not like the media hasn't seen tricky days, and I think that's the ultimate point here, isn't it?
There's a tremendous amount of coverage of the media, too much, really. And if I can be a little bit blunt, a lot of the tough stuff in the industry is no more upsetting than the dark days for any number of industries.
Also, and this applies to Radio New Zealand, if you live in a false world, it will catch up with you eventually.
Yes, media like a lot of industries is changing, but then it always has. 44 years in and counting for me, I can tell you media has been in a constant state of change, if not upheaval – it's all I've ever known. No, it wasn't always Google or Facebook nicking the ad money, but it was video, or TV, or deregulation of licences, or rubbish management.
Having worked at Morning Report myself, you've never seen such a sheltered workshop of lavish staffing and indulgence. They enter the Radio Awards every year and apart from not winning, the joke in the industry is the number of producers they've got: 19. Are you serious?
For contrast, this show, which 1. wins and 2. has more listeners, has three. And that includes Glenn, which is debatable as to whether we should include him at all.
I wish no one ill will, don't get me wrong. I wish no one ill will. I wish boom times prevailed across the whole landscape. But equally, I wish people lived in the real world. And Willie Jackson handing out tens of millions is irresponsible politics, not a business plan.
Willie and his ilk, as always, never paid the price for this. The poor sap who took the new Radio New Zealand job will.
The money that pays for jobs has either earned or it's given. If it's given, it's always on a whim – in this case a political one. It is not their fault that Willie is an idiot.
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Right, let's deal to the economy.
There were two interesting things yesterday.
The first was the food price inflation number showed it is not contained.
Why it is increasing beyond broad inflation is a many and varied thing, and the upside of these numbers is we can control them to a degree.
You don’t have to buy chocolate, given cocoa is through the roof.
You don’t have to buy butter, or a lot of dairy.
Vegetables are up, but that is seasonal. Seasonal fruit and vegetables are always reasonably priced.
Water though, which was the second thing, is not a luxury. Our bill arrived yesterday and, yet again, the price is going up, this time by 7%.
It's like rates and electricity – they're all going up and they're all going up beyond the band of inflation.
The trouble with this is severalfold.
Firstly, this in and of itself is inflationary and it isn't productive. In other words, we are no better off. I still use the same water, it just costs more.
Ideally what you want is more stuff done to produce the income to afford the bills. So if the cost of living is going up 3% and your income is going up 5%, we are okay and are ahead of the curve.
This, sadly, is not happening.
So we most likely have no growth driving the economy and yet we have increasing costs to operate that non-productive economy. That my friends is called stagflation.
So, can we control Israel attacking Iran and the oil price spiking? No.
Can we control the cost of the ship through troubled Middle Eastern waters? No.
But can we control, to some degree, this incessant cost-plus accounting that’s going on domestically by people who got the taste of price increases during Covid and basically never stopped? You would hope so.
This is a central Government thing, especially given a lot of these businesses, weather and power companies, water agencies, or councils have a major central Government input.
If the banks were right yesterday upon the release of the services sector numbers when they said this was an economy in recession, again, price rises in food and water aren't helping what is becoming an alarmingly large hole.
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Moana Pasifika are downplaying their dependence on outgoing skipper Ardie Savea.
He will miss Super Rugby next year to take up a sabbatical in Japan, before making a 2027 return.
Savea is signed with NZR through to the end of the 2027 World Cup in Australia and will end up spending half of that cycle playing in Japan.
Franchise boss Debbie Sorensen told Mike Hosking that Savea’s contribution might look inordinate, but there’s a lot of things that go together to make the team work really well.
She says that he’s worked quite hard to ensure he’s not the single outlier, working hard to bring the squad together and mentor other players.
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Mark Mitchell's hoping to broaden relations with China in his role of Minister for Ethnic Communities.
He's in the Chinese economic capital of Shanghai with Prime Minister Christopher Luxon.
Mitchell's meeting with the Kiwi business delegation today to plan out what they want to achieve.
He told Mike Hosking trade, food, and education are on the agenda.
Mitchell says they're all ambassadors for New Zealand, aiming to solidify a relationship with China.
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The Government's having another crack at mental health, allocating $36 million to suicide prevention.
Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey's unveiled a five-year approach for addressing high suicide rates.
The new Suicide Prevention Plan includes strengthening the workforce, targeting higher-risk populations, and improving community care.
But Mental Health Foundation CEO Shaun Robinson told Mike Hosking they remain in a very resource-constrained environment.
He says everyone will do their best with what's available from the Government, but a lot more is needed.
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On the Mike Hosking Breakfast Full Show Podcast for Wednesday the 18th of June, our food prices are on the way back up. Is it seasonal or is something happening behind the scenes?
Our health stats are slowly trending in the right direction, and Health Minister Simeon Brown also answers the question as to why surgeries in public hospitals don't happen past 4pm.
Ginny Andersen and Mark Mitchell talk Mark's lengthy trip over to China, scrutiny week, and the elective surgery load being taken on by the private sector on Politics Wednesday.
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The Government is delivering an increased number of elective procedures to try to meet patient wait time targets.
More than 84% of cancer patients are starting treatment within 31 days – 1% more than last year.
Health Minister Simeon Brown told Mike Hosking they want that up to 90% by 2030, and are working to speed up treatments.
He says they've swiftly outsourced nine thousand 500 electives to the private sector in an effort to get Health New Zealand moving faster.
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It's being suggested the pricey cost of our food baskets is great for the economy but bad for our wallets.
Food inflation has risen 4.4% annually, the highest in 18 months.
Meat, poultry and fish had the biggest increases, while butter, milk and cheese drove grocery prices.
Foodstuffs North Island CEO Chris Quin told Mike Hosking increases in foods like Kiwifruit and butter is fantastic for New Zealand's economy, but tough for households.
Quin says they're doing everything they can, but they can't contain the same costs of energy and people.
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It's being suggested small businesses are finding it tougher to get loans than big businesses, despite being a safer option.
The latest data shows the compound annual growth rate of bank lending has slowed from 6% to 1.5% since 2013.
Small Business NZ Founder Phil Wicks told Mike Hosking most banks are making business hard.
He says lending to someone with skin in the game should be more attractive to banks.
Wicks told Hosking many banks assess loan risks like it was centuries ago.
He says there are small businesses with strong work ethics, no debt, and personal guarantees, still being declined
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President Donald Trump's recent social media posts hint at major escalations in the Iran and Israel conflict.
Israel and Iran continue to trade strikes, with at least 224 Iranians and 24 Israelis killed since hostilities began after Israel's initial attack on Friday.
US Correspondent Richard Arnold told Mike Hosking Trump's posts mean we could be on a brink of a rapid shift in the American role in the Iran and Israel conflict.
He says Trump wrote that they now have complete and total control of the skies of Iran, which echoes exactly what Israel's leader Benjamin Netanyahu said in his most recent US interview.
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