Labour is accusing the Government of pushing forward with its boot camp pilot even in the face of obvious failure. This comes as two participants who fled the programmewere arrested by police officers responding to a carjacking in Hamilton yesterday. CEO of the Billy Youth Foundation David Graham says the longer the young men are in the bootcamps, the less likely they are to transition back into the community, and asks what the function of the camps is. LISTEN ABOVE.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It is customary when governments announce restrictions on farmers’ ability to do anything that there be howls of protest – but not with this one. The Government has announced sweeping changes to limit the amount of full farm to forestry conversions. And the reason that there's very little in the way of dissent is that farming groups and rural communities have been raising concerns over the amount of productive farmland being converted into forestry for several years now. You'll have seen many billboards, and we’ve discussed it before on the show.   Minister of Agriculture and Forestry Todd McClay said the changes made delivered on a key election commitment to protect food production for farmers, while still providing ETS certainty for foresters. He told Mike Hosking this morning that while New Zealand absolutely needs to do its bit in terms of reducing harmful gases, we should not be leading the charge to the detriment of our economy.   “We only need to focus on what New Zealand does. We don't need to lead the world, we don't need to do more than others, we don't need to be right out in the front. We need to focus on what our obligations are and so that's what the Government is likely to do. But the Climate Change Commission is also going to come out with their report very soon. We'll take these two bits of advice, we'll look at it, take some time to be sensible next year, and then cabinet will make a decision.   “You know, there are two views out there. We should be right at the front of the queue, leading the world. That's harmful to New Zealand consumers and it's harmful to the economy. We are very small emitters compared to almost everybody else, but that's not a reason for us not to do our fair share. We should be leading the world in innovation, not in closing down businesses.”  Absolutely. There are a number of concerns around turning farms into forests. One is that rural communities and economies are being changed due to the replacement of good quality farmland with pine plantations. So if you've got a working farm, you've generally got two or three or four families who are working that farm, their kids go to school, and they buy at the local shops, and it's a village. If you've got a forest there, you just let it grow. You plant it, you leave. There are no families there, so school rolls drop and businesses suffer.   The second major concern was that the carbon forest would only be used to gain carbon credits and produce lumber, and then balancing those concerns with the property rights of farmers to choose what they wanted to use their land for.  Many, many, many, many farmers, the vast majority, only realise the work, the human investment, and the monetary investment they put into their farms when they sell them. They work every hour God sent and then, provided they live long enough, they sell the farm. Then they've got some good years, and their hard work has paid off. If they want to get the best possible price for their farm and somebody buys it, then they turn the farm into forestry, what's the farmer to do? And they can say I didn't know it was going to be forestry. They can say I did know it was going to be forestry, but I’ve got one shot at this.   So that's what the Government was trying to do. Federated Farmers has welcomed the news. Forestry spokesman Toby Williams said it was great that the Government was taking steps to stop the relentless march of pine trees across productive farmland. But he said it was also important changes were made to the way New Zealand set international emissions targets. He said New Zealand's rural communities are bearing the brunt of misguided climate change targets, as over 200,000 hectares of productive sheep and beef land have been planted in carbon farming in the last five years alone.   The Greens say it's not enough, that they're just tinkering around the edges and that it really needs to start at the production of the gases, not trying to mitigate the gases. And it all needs to be native forest anyway – but then nothing will ever be enough for the Greens until we're roaming from sustainable village to sustainable village by torch light, because there will be no power poles, and we'll be wearing hemp loin cloths, and I'll be trading my snapper for your kauri pole, and that will be the end of that. Nothing will ever really be enough.   The farm-to-forestry changes involve a lot of numbers. For example, an annual registration cap of 15,000 hectares for exotic forestry registrations on LUC 6 farmland. I'm not going to list out what the changes are, Google them if you wish, but changes there will be. I totally accept Todd McClay saying we need to do our bit, we have to do our bit, but we do not have to be leading the charge. We don't have to be bigger, better than, or more morally robust than China or the US, or all of those countries where it absolutely matters. So there's that part of it. We must do our bit. We must be the most efficient in the cleanest possible way. That's a great goal, but setting arbitrary targets that most countries are failing to meet, just seems pointless.   I'd love to hear from the farmers themselves. You've got one shot when you sell the farm – is this going to mean you're not going to get the best possible price, or that the price will be reduced somewhat because you're not going to have the same competition when you had foresters looking to put the farm into pine forest?  And what's it going to mean for the rural communities too? Is this an injection, a rejuvenation of rural communities that have slowly been dying?   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Finance Minister Nicola Willis is promising tax changes ahead for charities and the closing of loopholes, and the details of that will be announced in next year's budget. And not before time, you'd have to say.   There's about $2 billion, it's estimated, in untaxed profit in the charitable sector, and politicians of varying hues have been eyeing up that revenue potential for some time. I think both Christopher Luxon and Chris Hipkins have said on this show that the charities loophole is something they want to look at. There's also the issue of fairness. A number of charities, operators, businesses —think high profile ones like Sanitarium and Best Start— compete with non-charitable businesses that do not have tax exemptions. The tax working group estimated that about 30% of charities were likely to have some sort of trading activity.   So when is a charity, not a charity? Michael Gousmett, from the University of Canterbury, says look at Christ College in Christchurch. He says they're shareholders in a forestry company, and he says if they're sending young men up to the North Island to teach them how to grow straight pine trees, how to mill timber, how to market it and so on, that would be advancing their education under charity law. The fact is they don't. Those boys wouldn't know a pine tree if it fell on them. It was a purely commercial operation, same as the chap down the road growing straight pine trees. The difference is one pays tax, one doesn't, and where's the fairness in that?   I think we need to tighten it up. It's not so much a loophole as what Michael Gousmett, describes as “a failure of fiscal policy”. The fact is, there's provision in the Income Tax Act for exemption for charities – he would argue that it's too broad. And you'd have to agree with him, and a number of people have said much the same thing when they have rung in when the topic has come up, and when we've had the leaders of the parties in for a chat. You've got Ngāi Tahu and their seafood businesses. Michael Gousmett said seafood production is not the same thing as advancing the purposes of iwi.   I mean, while you can get away with it, go for it. I mean, there are plenty of people who are setting up trusts to avoid paying the maximum amount of tax. They try to minimise their tax return, and that's legal at the moment as the way the law is written, but I think Nicola Willis is casting a gimlet eye over the law and looking to tighten it up. We're all agreed, aren't we, that the sooner that happens, the better? We've been going on like pork chops about Sanitarium and some of the iwi who are operating very, very successful businesses. All well and good to have a charity, set up your scholarships to send kids off to school and grants for housing and health and what have you – great, fabulous. But when the loophole exists, you know it exists, it's been pointed out people can see it, politicians of all shades have said this is a nonsense when we need every last bit of cash. Couldn't we do with Grant Robertson’s $600 million down the back of the couch right now? We need every last bit we've got.   High time the loophole was closed. I'm just sorry it's going to be next year's budget, and it couldn't happen with a stroke of a pen today.   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Charities are going to be seeing some changes to their taxes from next year.  Finance Minister Nicola Willis has confirmed that there will be tweaks to the charity tax regime, but she is mindful of striking the right balance.  They want to ensure that people can’t structure their affairs as charities while building up funds that aren’t used for charitable purposes.  Best Start and Sanitarium were examples she gave of such trading entities.   Bruce Bernacchi, tax expert and partner at Dentons Kensington Swan, told Kerre Woodham that charities are well regulated in New Zealand, and running one isn't for the faint of heart.  He says that while the changes may result in additional scrutiny for smaller charities, the real focus is likely to be on business income, and whether that income is distributed and applied to charitable purposes.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As Jobseeker numbers continue to rise, the government has announced targeted management of Jobseeker beneficiaries. 8000 more people were receiving a Jobseeker benefit in the last quarter, and that'll come as no surprise to anyone who was reading the news and seeing factories closing, and more media outlets closing, and more jobs in the state sector being lost. The total number on Jobseeker benefit is just over 200,000. It’d be a big ask to achieve the Government-stated aim of reducing the number of Jobseekers to 140,000 in the first instance.   But the government is hoping that giving job seekers targeted assistance will see them get the skills and the confidence they need to get off a benefit and into work. Up to 70,000 Jobseekers are to receive a new, more comprehensive needs assessment of the challenges holding them back from finding work, and a personalized job plan to help overcome them, because of course, not all job seekers are created equal. You will have people with PhDs looking for work, classed as job seekers, alongside people who left school at 14, never got any formal qualifications, know how to work when they can work, but are quite often the first off when projects are cancelled.  And then you've got people who are completely overwhelmed at the thought of going to work, and need to be coaxed, cajoled, given a few light taps to get into work. So not all job seekers need the same assistance, need the same support, need the same encouragement. Social development and Employment Minister Louise Upston told Jack Tame on Heather du Plessis-Allan Drive last night that they knew that the numbers were going to get worse before they got better, and they do have a plan to get people back into work.   “As I said, the numbers were forecast to get worse before they got better, which is why we've now got 70,000 people in case management, 10,000 over the phone, which is a new initiative and working really well. As part of our Welfare that Works reform, for the 70,000 that are on case management, they will have an individual needs assessment, and then they'll create a job plan with their manager.   “So we do know for some people they've got more barriers to work. It might be childcare, it might be they don't have a driver's license, it might be that they've got literacy or numeracy challenges. So they'll have those sorts of activities built into their individual job plan to improve their chances of being in work. So they'll, they'll create their individual plan, with their case manager, so if they need a driver's license, then yes, we'll connect them with a MSD funded program and there's some great programs around the country. For other people, it might be more complex, and so we want to make sure that we are addressing the individual barriers that someone faces to improve their chances of getting a job.”  Which I think is a good thing. I mean, when I look back, I was a single mother. And if I had been on a benefit, and somebody said, what are your issues? And I said well, nascent alcoholism, probably, single mother, rental accommodation —that's a bit precarious— and childcare. But I had a village that helped out, so I didn't need a benefit. I could go to work, and I had friends and family who helped me, who helped me do that, so I never needed to rely on the state.   But what if you don't? What if you don't have friends and family that can help out with the childcare? What if your alcoholism has gone from being sort of ‘oh, that was probably one too many’ to unable to get out of bed in the morning, it's a real addiction that you need to address. What if you haven’t got your license? It will be very tricky to find work if you haven't got your license.   I like this idea. If we spend a little bit to get people out of the torpor, and the lethargy, and the misery, really of having people controlling your life. Wouldn't you want choices? Under Labour, Louise Upston says, if someone under the age of 25 came on to a benefit, they were predicted to be on welfare for about 20 more years over their lifetime. That’s an appalling statistic, a really sad statistic. It is imperative for young people, especially, to see that they can be self-determining, that they can have choices, that they can be successful. They're not some loser with their hand out. That's certainly what I've been told, you start to feel like you've got nothing to offer because nobody's telling you that you're valuable, that you're essential – without you being part of the team, they couldn't do the job. That's a huge part of working, is being part of a team, a wider team.   I can’t imagine how soul destroying it must be to have you-yourself, the only person you see in a day, no money, nothing to spend it on. If there are ways that we can get people to understand that they they're valuable, they have skills that are valued and people will pay for those skills, it would be fantastic. We've also got highly skilled people who don't need to go along to “How to write a CV”, so it'd be great to see more targeted assistants. What would that look like for you, if you are one of those people, perhaps in the great public service job cull? Do you need assistance to find work or is it simply a matter of waiting for the economy to pick up and you'll be fine? Thanks very much. You just need to wait until people get over the collie wobbles and start hiring again. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Boris Johnson is unapologetic about taking his country out of the European Union.   He's in New Zealand for a speaking event and to promote his book 'Unleashed'.   The former British Prime Minister says while there was panic about Brexit at the time, in the long term it's been good for the UK.   He told Kerre Woodham that the split from the EU came in handy during the Covid pandemic.    He says it allowed the country to get early access to vaccines before other European countries.  Johnson says the massive Conservative loss in this year's UK General Election can't be blamed on him.   The Conservative Party's defeat by Keir Starmer's Labour was one of its worst-ever losses.   Johnson told Woodham had he and Rishi Sunak teamed up, it would have been a different result.   He says if they'd been able to put into action some things they'd planned, they would have wiped the floor with Starmer.  He's denied any responsibility for the conflict between Ukraine and Russia, and says progress has been slow since he left office.  The former Prime Minister says it's "absolute bollocks" to suggest the UK could have a role in negotiating peace between Ukraine and Russia.  Johnson says the West has a pathetic paranoia about humiliating Vladimir Putin - and is too half-hearted in helping Ukraine. He says he's fed up with hearing the nonsense idea we'd risk a nuclear confrontation.  LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Labour Party wrapped up its conference yesterday, was a big deal because it was the first time the members had got together since losing the election last year. And if you listen to Andrew Little and Chris Hipkins with Mike this morning, you would hear from them that the conference went very well, the party is in good heart and Chris Hipkins is going to lead the Labour Party to victory in 2026. Will he be able to do that based on the promises he made at the conference? This was Chris Hipkins talking to Mike Hosking on the Mike Hosking Breakfast this morning: CH: I think AUKUS ultimately is a nuclear submarine pact, if you look at Pillar 2 of AUKUS it's not something that we think is going to be in New Zealand's best interest to be involved with and you know ultimately we've made the decision that New Zealand's best interests will be best be served through our existing international arrangement, including things like the five country partnership that we have (Five Eyes) and any access to things like new technology should come through that avenue not the AUKUS arrangement. MH: Dunedin Hospital – to what extent will you build it no matter what the bill? CH: We said that we'll build it to the specification that we agreed to at the last election or before the last. MH: No matter what the cost? CH: Well, I mean, bearing in mind that the current government before the election was saying we're going to build a hospital that was even bigger than the one that we were committing to. MH: Yeah, but forget that, this is your promise, at no matter what cost, you were, whatever it was going to be specification-wise, you will pay that bill. CH: We will build a hospital to the spec that we had agreed to before the last election, that’s right. So that's pretty much at whatever cost. So, what did you make of it? If you were one of those who are middle-of-the-road voters, you'll go where the policies are, you're not absolutely tribal, you're one of the 30 percenters – you'll go if you think that there is a vision that party has, be they Labour or National. If you like the cut of the leaders jib, if you find policies that resonate with you, you can swap your vote between blue and red. So among the promises: Labour will build the new Dunedin hospital as you heard. Pledge to keep New Zealand out of AUKUS, announced Kieran McAnulty as the party's 2026 campaign chairman. Good idea keeping him close. And promised a publicly owned InterIsland ferry connection, including some form of rail transport. Is that enough to turn dissatisfied Labour and centrist voters away from National and NZ First and towards Labour? I wouldn't have thought so, but I would say I wouldn't have thought so yet. We all know that parties seldom give away their big policies two years before an election, so it is very early days. But there's going to have to be a little bit more forward-thinking than what they came up with at the conference. Willie Jackson when he spoke, criticised the coalition leaders for their respective roles in the Treaty bill. But he did say that there needs to be, an appeal to middle New Zealand. He said that the Labour Party conferencegoers had to remind their friends and fellow members that Labour was not under the influence of the Māori Party. He said working-class Labour values are to work together, not just for one's own interests, but everybody's interests. He said a middle-class New Zealand would support some policies from the Greens and Te Pati Māori, but they'd never agree he said about a Māori Parliament. He said we need to have Māori and Pakeha and middle New Zealand together with us so we can be the next government. Which is remarkably conciliatory for Willie Jackson, I think you'll agree. So they understand they need to appeal to the middle, they need to appeal to that 30 percent, those people that will switch where they see the best policies for New Zealand or for themselves where they see the most sensible and capable members of Parliament will be.   And hopefully though, the issue of who is going to lead the Labour Party to the next election is done and dusted. Because we do not want to see a repeat of the David Shearer, David Cunliffe, Andrew Little, Jacinda Ardern shenanigans. Because it still blows me away that Chris Hipkins said, yeah, we weren't really ready for Parliament. After nine years in opposition you're not ready to be in Parliament? What were we paying for? Why were we funding your wages? If you're going to use all of your taxpayer-funded salaries to faff around and spend the time trying to find a leader that is not money well spent, that is not a good return on investment for the taxpayer. So if what they're going to be doing is looking at flaws in the Coalition Government's plan for New Zealand and coming up with a better alternative, if they're looking at bold, innovative ways to grow the economy, to protect vulnerable New Zealanders, to create a more robust health system, great. But if all you're doing is faffing around doing third-form schoolyard politics to choose your leader, that is not a good return on investment. So, so far so good. Chris Hipkins said well, yes, I might be tainted by the last regime, but hey, I'm here for the long haul, I'm basically the best guy for the job, prove otherwise. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As you will have heard in the news, Australia has passed landmark rules to ban under-16s from social media. In a world first, social media firms will have to take all reasonable steps to prevent young teens from gaining access to sites like Facebook, Instagram, X - formally Twitter - and the like. The firms who own these sites will face fines of up to $50 million AUD if they fail to comply. The tech giants themselves have described the laws as vague, problematic and rushed, and that's probably quite true. The current legislation offers almost no details on how the rules will be enforced. Seems they're leaving it up to the tech giants to ensure compliance. It will be at least 12 months before the details are worked out by regulators, and the ban comes into effect. Naysayers say it's going to be impossible to police; young people will always find a way around the rules if they want to find them.  And that is quite true. Just as I'm sure there are young New Zealanders who have managed to get around the cell phone bans in schools that the government introduced earlier this year. But it's drawing a line in the sand. It's saying being on social media sites is harmful for young people, that the bad outweighs the good and that we as a society and a community are going to recognise that. We're not going to accept that just because everybody's on it, that it's going to be really difficult to police, that kids will always find a way around it. We're not going to accept that. We're not going to accept that the genie is out of the bottle and that there is nothing that can be done except endless hand wringing about the harm that's being caused. People said it would be impossible to stop kids using cell phones at schools and that the children themselves, the young people, would never put up with it. Well, guess what? It's working for the vast majority of students. Even the principal’s who said look, this is just not going to work, the kids have them, they’ve had them for a while now, it's part of their lives, we're not going to be able to police it. We don't want to spend our time policing this rather than teaching - even they have been forced to admit that concentration has improved. That young people are more interactive with one another. They're not heads down on their devices, they're not using their devices to cause harm or to receive harm. Again, it's that drawing a line in the sand just as a line has been drawn in the sand over school attendance. There are all sorts of reasons why our school attendance is so appallingly low. And it's going to be incredibly difficult to achieve this government's target of 80% of kids attending school, 90% of the time. But baby steps, baby steps. An expectation was made that you will send your children to school, that will become the norm. And so in term 3 of this year, 51.3% of students attended school regularly. Which is bloody low, but it is still an increase of 5.3 percentage points from term 3 of 2023 - baby steps. I feel like if the wind's blowing in the right direction, then. You know, encourage the kids to go to school, the expectation is there. That your children, our children, will attend school regularly. People have responded to that expectation. They rise to meet it. There is an expectation that children will be free from cell phone distraction at school. It wasn't there before. You know that expectation was not there. It was just oh well, we kind of have to put up with it, they're part of everyday life. This government came in and said no, there is an expectation that children will be free from the tyranny of their devices and schools and young people have responded to that. Even more topically, there's an expectation that gang insignia won't be flaunted in public. And as the police minister Mark Mitchell reported this morning, even the gangs are responding to that. The expectations have been made clear to them at hui and in the meetings around the country. And in the main, they have responded to that. So set expectations, don't settle for being steamrollered by the lowest common denominator. Or for being manipulated by billionaires, tech companies, or for the facile argument that everyone's doing it, nothing can be done. You know, have a go, set expectations if something is wrong, say so. The harm that is being done to young people by being on many of these social media sites outweighs the good. Acknowledge that, set expectations that they will be safe from that while they are at their most vulnerable. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In a year, under 16's in Australia will no longer be allowed to access social media. The Australian Senate has passed laws banning them from accessing the platforms. The ban will come into force at the end of next year -- social media companies will face fines if they fail to take reasonable steps to keep children off. Senior researcher at Koi Tu Centre for Informed Futures Dr Felicia Low, told Kerre Woodham parents need to be able to have a say in what their children are doing. She says it can be easier if there's a top-down approach where a law is in place, so children can't argue against it. LISTEN ABOVE. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The first phase of the Royal Commission of inquiry into the COVID-19 response will be handed to the Government today. There’s one of finding I know is going to really resonate with a section of this listening audience and members of the wider community. The head of the inquiry, Professor Tony Blakely, says vaccine mandates caused huge pain to a “substantial minority” during the pandemic, and the government should consider whether their benefits, that is the vaccine mandates, outweighed their harms. The report found while the mandates during the later stages of the pandemic were supported by most New Zealanders, the damage to social cohesion needed to be considered when planning for future outbreaks as he told Mike Hosking on the Mike Hosking Breakfast this morning.   “I think a lot of us around the world are learning that those mandates might have gone a bit too far, for a bit too long and it's a very delicate balance. In a future pandemic, which is what we're really focused on now, you can't rule out the need for doing mandatory measures again because the virus might be two/four times as fatal, and two or four times as infectious, and you just need to do everything. However, if we had something like Covid again, I think all of us are saying that if we prepare better, have better contact tracing, then we'll need less of the mandatory measures like lockdowns and vaccine mandates.”  Absolutely. I heard Mike too say this morning that inquiries and reports aren't really worth the paper they're written on. That enormous amounts of energy are expended on them, and then they're delivered behind closed doors, and that's that. He said the response to a crisis will depend on whomever you have in government – if they're halfway capable, you get a halfway capable response. If they're not, you don't. But I disagree. I think you can learn from what you've done right and what you've done wrong, and I think the way the government handled the mandates, among other things, was poor.   I mean, first of all, not getting the vaccines when they did so we're behind the eight-ball. And I would have put anything, anywhere, up any orifice, to get the hell out of lockdown. The frustration and fury felt by many, mainly North Islanders, over following increasingly more ludicrous rules as we struggled to get to some arbitrary vaccination target is still ongoing. As is the fury felt by the significant minority of New Zealanders who lost their jobs and their livelihoods, because they refused to get vaccinated – and this is despite Jacinda Ardern saying in September of 2020 there would be no forced vaccinations and there weren't, and those who chose to opt out, more importantly, would not face sanctions. So that's what she said, and then it all changed again.   So people chose not to get vaccinated for many, many reasons. Do not lump them all into one basket. I mean, there were some basket cases in amongst them, the people who had the tin foil on top of their heads, but there were also people who were extremely genuine in their motivations and their reasons for not getting vaccinated. Think Novak Djokovic, sort of as the poster boy for that - very, very careful about what they put into their bodies and why they choose to put into their bodies what they do. I mean, these were not the lovies who jumped on the bandwagon who were pumped full of Botox and filler and the like. There are many, many reasons why people chose not to get vaccinated, and initially they were assured by the Prime Minister they wouldn't have to and there would be no sanctions if they chose not to.   So I think Professor Blakely is right, that you can learn from the past and you can learn how to manage it, because the fallout is ongoing. Every time we get something about the rising colorectal cancer - well, yes, that'll be the vax. So, you've got people who don't believe in science. You've got vaccine fatigue. Now we've got a rise in whooping cough because people are just sick to death of the of the word vaccination. They don't trust vaccinations. They don't trust governments telling you to get vaccinated because of what has happened, and this is the Western world over, not just in New Zealand. So the fallout from not managing the vaccination program is going to be felt for years to come. They did say in this first phase of the Royal Commission of Inquiry that some aspects were handled well. The first six weeks – great. After that, the wheels fell off. I think he said the wheels were wobbly, I'd go further and say the wheels fell completely and utterly off. I think we can learn, and I think we should learn, and I think there are lessons that can be learned, and the first phase of the inquiry has proven that. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.