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.    Trump: 7/10  All in all, 5% defence spending at NATO, a ceasefire that holds, and talks with Iran next week. It's not bad.    Rob Penney: 8/10  From last year to this. That's one of sports great stories, and I assume involves tremendous amounts of well-deserved satisfaction.    Whanau Ora and Tama Iti and Moana Pasifika: 2/10  Central Government yet again missing the politically triggering stuff they promised to address.    David Seymour: 7/10  As Acting Prime Minister in the house and in media, he is a very solid, considered set of hands with good wit to go with it.    Golden visas: 8/10  That is practical thinking, making tangible difference. 189 applications and $800million worth of business - let's go NZ!    Wealth and the pension: 2/10  Bum note of the week. Targeting those who actually worked hard to save to help in retirement should never be used as a punishment. And the Retirement Commissioner might like to ask herself whether she understands her job.    LISTEN ABOVE FOR MIKE HOSKING'S FULL WEEK IN REVIEW See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We've got more ageism, this time in education.  Unions are "concerned" as more teachers work past retirement age.  This in part is the trouble with unions.  1) They aren't keen on work to start with,  2) They are bogged down in old fashioned rules and views of the world.  What is retirement and how do you know you are past it?  They refer of course to Super and this tired, old business of thinking that when Super kicks in you must check out.  Obviously, the world has changed and is changing, just not that quickly in union land.  At 64-years-old if you're loving teaching, somehow chronologically at 65-years-old that desire and love of pursuit needs to be shelved, as you wander off collecting your retirement income and presumably filling your days with bowls and walks.  8000 people teaching are 65-years-old or over. That’s double what it used to be 10 years ago.  But then a lot is different to what it was 10 years ago.  Beyond the numbers, does anyone ask any questions?  Like, are they doing it because they have to, as opposed to want to? Bit of a difference I would have thought.  Most importantly for teaching, given the unions insist on the mad-cap business of time in the classroom being the measure for income, are these oldies any good?  Could they be better given their experience and institutional knowledge than the 21-year-old just into the classroom and looking for all the world out of her depth?  In sex education in 6th form at Linwood High in the late 1980's, we were 16 and 17-years-old and the teacher might have been 20-years-old. She looked like she wanted to die as the diagrams of the you-know-what's came out.  As you can tell the memory is seared in my mind 40 years later.  New isn't always best. Young doesn’t always trump older and passion and skill above all else is what should drive presence in the workplace or classroom.  Are you good? Do you like what you do? Are you making a difference?  If the answer is yes, then at what point would you be remotely interested in age, far less be concerned? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The week has come to an end and so Kate Hawkesby and Tim Wilson are joining Mike Hosking to Wrap the Week once more.  Tim is injured again, winding up on ACC after taking a tumble off the footpath, plus, Mike's made a new musical discovery.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Treaty Negotiations Minister admits people are losing patience on a Ngāpuhi settlement, but says they want it to last.  New Zealand First is launching a Bill, proposing a one-and-done treaty settlement for the largest iwi, rather than multiple hapu settlements.  Paul Goldsmith says that although he sympathises with the desire for a faster resolution, if you want an enduring settlement, you need people to be prepared to settle.  He told Mike Hosking that the settlement has to have the support of around 200,000 to 300,000 people, which has been the challenge in the past.  Goldsmith says that they have a good plan now, and they’re making good progress on the work that’s currently underway.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Education Minister is hitting back against claims she’s trying to entrench co-governance into education.  Hobson’s Pledge is claiming that the Education and Training Amendment Bill No.2 includes a section, put there by Stanford, that will force every school board to reflect “local tikanga Māori, mātauranga Māori, and te ao Māori” in their policies, plans, and classroom teaching.  Erica Stanford refutes these claims, saying that 127 was an already existing Treaty clause.  She told Mike Hosking that section is not the only clause in the Education Act to reference the Treaty, which is why there needs to be a proper review into whether or not they need to be there.  Standford says there are legitimate questions to be answered, which is why they’re looking into the act, but she did not add them in herself.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the Mike Hosking Breakfast Full Show Podcast for Friday 27th of June, it's accountability Friday! Paul Goldsmith, Tama Potaka, and Erica Stanford have questions to answer about scandals, non-scandals, and accusations.  After the unfortunate passing of Takutai Tarsh Kemp, what is the process going forward in filling her seat?  Tim and Katie talk Tim's latest injury and Mike's best musical discovery of the week as they Wrap the Week.    Get the Mike Hosking Breakfast Full Show Podcast every weekday morning on iHeartRadio, or wherever you get your podcasts.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A vast change to what's been promised for Auckland City Rail Link's opening capacity.   In 2022, it was reported 27 thousand peak passengers would be using the rail line from opening day next year.  That's now gone down to 19 thousand passengers an hour at peak times.  AT Public Transport Director Stacey van der Putten told Mike Hosking the 27 thousand figure merged a few different elements including design capacity, timetabling, and patronage.  She points out that 19,000 is still a significant increase on current numbers, as it’s still a 50% increase in patronage.  Van der Putten told Hosking it will take some effort to rebuild confidence in the rail network after the prolonged disruption, but there’s plenty of enthusiasm for the new line.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A lot of interest is expected in the by-election to fill the seat left empty by the death of Takutai Tarsh Kemp.  The 50-year-old Te Pāti Māori MP died yesterday.  Otago University law expert Andrew Geddis told Mike Hosking the Tamaki Makaurau seat was won by just 42 votes in 2023 and will be very tightly contested again.  The complicating factor this time is likely to be sympathy, he says, suspecting that Te Pāti Māori will likely run strongly on a kind of legacy argument.   The by-election could clash with local body elections.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Concerns are being raised around the use of taxpayer money to fund Moana Pasifika.  Our newsroom's revealed the Super Rugby franchise received some $8 million in taxpayer loans, grants, and funding.  The Pasifika Medical Association —which took over ownership of the team last year— has received funding from Whānau Ora contracts.  Māori Development Minister Tama Potaka told Mike Hosking there's some uncertainty about how that Whānau Ora money was spent.  He wants to know it's being used for proper purpose and has asked for an explanation ASAP.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

From the "we can't get out of our own way" file comes the question, as posed this week by the Retirement Commissioner, as to whether people who have money in the bank should get the pension.  The first part that is wrong with that is I thought we had decided many a decade ago, rightly or wrongly, that Super is an entitlement.  Its trigger, rightly or wrongly, is age, therefore the other criteria you might like to add to the equation like height, weight, job, brain power or savings, are null and void because age is what does it.  So are we changing that, are we? Because that is the inference in the question.  The inference is also this sneering socialist bend some people have around success.  "Don’t be too successful" is the message, and that’s what savings generally are. You had a plan, you worked hard, and you put a few dollars aside.  Interestingly the numbers are depressing. This is where the question came from.  There are 33,000 over the age of 65 who earn between $100-200k a year. There are 9,000 who earn more than $200k.  That’s not a lot of people. It shows you how poorly paid we are, how bad at saving we are and how expensive life is to stop you saving. A whole bunch of stuff leads us to not being a very well-off sort of country.  I have said this many times – I'm not fussed. I didn’t join KiwiSaver and I'm not relying on a pension.  Why? Because when I started work in 1982 it was very well established that the pension may or may not be around at all, so why take the risk? And in 1982, on the minimum wage as I was, I had 45 years to get my act together and do something about it.  The problem with keeping on asking these questions is it messes with people and their intentions.  Governments have been bad enough already with their constant changing of the rules and their contributions, the last thing we need is thought bubbles on what should be a long term, leave it alone, get out of the way, understanding among us all that the pension is our society's recognition of a life's work.  Change the age if you want. But penalising success is the opposite of what we want to promote. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.