The Mike Hosking Breakfast

The world's first pay it forward Shopify app has just hit the market. The app connects with a business’ Shopify sites and at the point of checkout customers can make a donation that goes to the chosen charities. The app had been in the works since 2020 by the company GoGenerosity but has been launched three months earlier to help provide some relief to those impacted by the cyclones. So far more t...

A nervous day for European share markets ahead of the first day of trading since the purchase of Credit Suisse. Markets started the day sharply lower, but have recovered slightly, with the London Stock Exchange closing on around 0.9 percent. In Switzerland, Credit Suisse's new owner UBS also closed on 1.5 percent higher. Europe correspondent Catherine Field told Mike Hosking the central banks are...

Fresh questions for the Prime Minister over how much access lobbyists have to the halls of power. Official documents released to RNZ show Government departments are paying lobbyists hundreds of thousands of dollars for communications advice. Documents also show Chris Hipkins' Chief of Staff, Andrew Kirton, was previously working for liquor firms to lobby ministers to water down the now scrapped co...

Council advocates are warning public transport and cycleways can't come at the expense of New Zealand's roading network. Newstalk ZB has obtained exclusive Infometrics analysis revealing the share of transport funding going towards roads hit a decade-low of 70 percent in 2021. It comes as the distance travelled on roads jumped from 43 billion kilometres in 2017, to 49 billion four years later. Loc...

Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta has to hold the balance between trade and politics with her Chinese counterpart today. It'll be the country's first diplomatic visit to Beijing in more than three years. The visit comes at the same time Chinese President Xi Jinping is in Russia for talks with Vladimir Putin. New Zealand China Council Executive Director, Alistair Crozier, told Mike Hosking the issue o...

Ginny Andersen has already been in touch with the police union. The new Police Minister replaces Stuart Nash in the role, having only been sworn in as a Cabinet minister earlier this year. Andersen is a low ranking member of Cabinet, but has 10 years of experience working with Police. Police Association President Chris Cahill told Mike Hosking he's dealt with a lot of Police Ministers and the ones...

The old, hi-vis honeymoon of Hawke’s Bay and disaster politics for the Prime Minister is long gone, isn't it? There he was, flailing away on Friday lining up the decision on Stuart Nash for the weekend, looking to draw a line under it so by Monday —as in today— we've all moved on. Sorry Chris, we haven't. Among the many weaknesses of the previous Prime Minister was her inability to instil any real...

So, once again, in a Matt Hancock-type revelation we learn that during the Covid years the Government considered handing us all $5,000. $5,000 for everyone. It's like Oprah: "you get a car, you get a car, you get $5000". They considered cutting GST for a couple of weeks, like a GST sale. As we sit here in what almost certainly is a recession, given last week’s -0.6% number, what they were trying t...

The latest SEEK Employment Report for February shows job ads rose 1 percent month-on-month, and are 15 percent higher compared to February 2019. Job ads decreased in Hawke's Bay, Manawatu, and Southland, remained steady in Auckland, Wellington and Waikato, and increased in all other regions. Country manager Rob Clark says candidate activity fell for the first time in a year, with applications per...

Donald Trump may become the first former US President to be indicted. In a post to his own media platform, Truth Social, Trump claimed he'll be arrested later this week in relation to a hush-money investigation involving payments to two women of around 450-thousand New Zealand dollars. US Correspondent Richard Arnold told Mike Hosking that this would be historic. Arnold says if he's charged with a...

The Greens say they'll put climate change at the top of their priority list at the negotiating table. In their annual State of the Planet speech, the party's given its predictions for the political landscape after Election Day on October 14. It says major parties will need a coalition partner, but in order for the Greens to agree, they want a commitment to climate action. Co-Leader James Shaw told...

The Early Childhood Council says the legal action against the Government over its Pay Parity policy is about taking a stand. Pay Parity aims to close the gap between teachers in education and care centres and those in kindergartens, but the council says it's making older, often female, teachers with more experience unaffordable, forcing providers to put up parent fees. The council claims it breach...

Uncertainty in Switzerland as the country's second largest bank hopes to secure its future. UBS —the country's largest— is offering to pay around 1.8-billion-New Zealand-dollars for full or partial control of Credit Suisse. Regulators have been racing to save the 167-year-old bank, hoping to secure a deal before the markets reopen tonight at 6pm NZ time. Devon Funds Management's Greg Smith told Mi...

Wayne Brown is confident he can get Auckland Transport to change its approach to traffic management. The Auckland Mayor has been calling on council organisation Auckland Transport to reduce its 145-million dollar spend on road cones and traffic management to help fill the council's ballooning fiscal hole. He's describing the spending as unjustifiable, excessive, and unnecessary. Brown says that he...

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.   Gary Lineker: 7/10 For reminding us that speaking your mind isn't a crime and having an opinion doesn’t mean you can't talk about football.   Stuart Nash: 6/10 A big price to pay for being honest. Of course he broke the rules and, no, you can't do what he did, but why did he do...

Stuart Nash's future in Cabinet remains far from certain. Newstalk ZB has revealed that Nash was given a warning for breaching the Cabinet manual in 2020 over a Newstalk ZB interview in which he advocated for police officer Matthew Hunt's killer to be imprisoned for a long time. Nash has already lost his job as Police Minister, after boasting on Newstalk ZB this week that he'd asked the Police Com...

Tiktok could be soon be having its final dance in the US after accusations that it’s a risk to national security. The Biden administration has demanded the popular Chinese-owned video sharing app be sold or risk being banned. Over a third of Americans have downloaded the app, totalling more than one hundred million people. US Correspondent Richard Arnold says that Tiktok is disappointed. He says T...

The international spotlight is on Lyttelton as competitors prepare for SailGP this weekend. Tickets have sold out for the New Zealand leg of the highly anticipated series, with thousands expected to descend on the port town. US skipper Jimmy Spithill told Mike Hosking that thanks to international TV audiences the competition has exceeded targets so far. He says that so far the streaming of the rac...

The Government says it's obvious the economy has started slowing. GDP declined 0.6 percent for the four months to December, following three months of positive growth for the September quarter. We are still waiting on data for the current quarter however if that too is negative, then it's a technical recession. Finance Minister Grant Robertson says that recent weather events haven't helped. He says...

More money is likely to go down the drain as the Government ploughs ahead with the next stage of Otago's Lake Onslow project. It's confirmed it will develop a detailed business case for the hydro storage set-up, despite the estimated cost of the project leaping to 16-billion dollars - a huge jump from the initial four-billion. Manawa Energy Chairman Paul Ridley Smith says that there are so many sm...

There are concerns about the moves the Reserve Bank might have to make to deal with economic pressures later in the year. GDP declined by 0.6 percent in the three months to December, following a two percent rise in the September quarter. The country will be in a technical recession should we see another quarter of negative growth. JMI Wealth Director Andrew Kelleher told Mike Hosking that he's wor...

So, Tuesday afternoon I get a text about someone wanting coming on the show I get a lot of texts about coming on the show but this one was from Stuart Nash. He wonders why I haven't called to talk to him about his stats on arrests of gang members. It's a good news story, he says. I think that’s fair enough, we give the Government a good session of accountability each day. No one holds them to acco...

There is a feeling around the country that our monetary policy is a mess. And a new report by the NZ Initiative is putting all the blame on the Government. The report highlights the Government’s role in distracting the RBNZ from maintaining price stability, with money remaining too loose for too long as a result of wrong inflation forecasts from banks. Along with the Governments prioritisations of...

A Kiwi company is using exoskeleton technology to help businesses keep workers safer from workplace injuries. The wearable exosuit has built in sensors that support muscles by tracking body movements. AI technology then provides real-time data which highlights health risks due to impact of repeated movements or posture, while even flagging dehydration. The robotic technology has been proven to red...

Paris Hilton has spoken of the empowerment she's feeling in telling her truth, detailing her experiences of childhood abuse. She's just released her auto-biography Paris: The Memoir . The 42-year-old addresses the alleged abuse she endured at boarding school, being raped at 15, having an abortion in her twenties and her infamous sex tape scandal. Hilton told Mike Hosking since sharing her experien...