The Mike Hosking Breakfast

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon joined Mike Hosking in studio this morning for their weekly chat.
With the budget coming up this week they spoke about the pre-budget announcements so far, and what's yet to come.
Luxon said that more spending announcements will be revealed on Thursday, but the budget is strict.
"That's what we have to have, good fiscal financial discipline year in year out in order to get the ship, you know, the books back in order again."
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A couple of interesting property developments for you.
1. Half finished town houses in Christchurch.

2. Lack of demand for off the plan deals from developers.
That last one came from a select committee hearing last week. The head of Kiwibank was suggesting there is a stark lack of appetite for off the plan stuff because of the risk you take on what the value will be when its done i.e are you underwater?
And also the risk you take that the thing will never be finished.
Which dovetails into the first observation which comes out of Christchurch, a city in which you would quite rightly ask; how is it possible things aren't booming in that part of the world?
As always, the answer is in the detail.
The Christchurch problem is around small townhouse-type builds close to the city, often with no garage. In other words, building for a world view that isn't that of the average New Zealander.
Once again we are supposed to be like Amsterdam or New York. Except we aren't and will never be.
Cars are important.
You have seen it in Auckland as well with apartments with no parks. 'It's so cool, we're all on e-bikes".
Except we aren't, so the cars are stacked on the streets outside, blocking trucks and generally proving theory isn't reality.
Plans? Who would take the risk?
Tell me what the market is going to be in two years - no one can! That's a real problem and does remind us a consent is not a house.
But the key is our need and desire for housing hasn’t really changed. Cheap builds will never thrive and builds with no garages will never have a demand.
Rightly or wrongly the dream that has never really faded is a house. A detached house, maybe with a bit of lawn and most certainly a place for a car.
The stats show it. First home buyers are in the market right now and standalone homes are what they want. They will borrow and bleed to do it.
What the trendies want and what the real world is prepared to pay for it are, to some degree, at odds.
And that is why the areas of the market that have trouble, have trouble, because theory and ideology doesn’t have a deposit.
The buyer does.
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All Waikato junior league rugby games have been cancelled after fights and abuse from adults on the sidelines.
The Waikato Junior League Rugby Board said it would continue working with clubs to address the issues and ensure appropriate standards are upheld.
Sport Waikato CEO Matthew Cooper joined Mike Hosking to chat about the issues, calling the behaviour 'disgraceful'.
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Is the Nicola Willis public service announcement to be admired or condemned?
I think the former, on balance.
They should have done it properly two years ago and they didn’t, hence they probably should not be back here now, unless this was their Machiavellian plan all along.
Two public service haircuts a term. But assuming that wasn’t it, we go back to a lost opportunity that could be in the rear vision mirror by now.
What they talked was a big game. What they delivered was a surgical whimper.
Yes, it is always sad to lose jobs and restructure and cut. But few outside the Wellington bubble would argue with the fact that the growth engine of public service work was absurd and 65,000 is a city, not a workforce.
To make it worse, they got the same headlines and noise and pushback over a couple of thousand cuts as they would have ten times that.
So we are back for another crack, driven by necessity.
That’s the bit to be admired.
Laying lots of people off in election year is not really a vote-getter
Mind you it's safe, I think, to say most of the public service aren't conservatives so the vote loss, you'd guess, will be minimal.
It’s a horrible thing working in an environment where your future is part of the political wind. I faced it at TVNZ and Radio NZ. Whoever woke up on what side of the bed had some effect on what you were paid and whether you were hanging around for a while.
It's no way to have a job.
And in that sense, you can blame the Labour Government for stacking the place with well-paid work. And yet as you applied, if you thought about it, surely it couldn’t last, and it hasn’t.
As the unions bleat, this is not about the public service and its value. They do a lot of good things and a lot of vital things.
There are a lot of very capable, if not talented, people in the mix. But it’s the extra, the excess and the fat that needs the trimming.
This is fiscally desperate to a degree – an operating allowance of $2.1 billion and savings from anywhere and everywhere.
You can't accuse the Government of priming the pumps. The pumps don’t work because "the vandals took the handles", if you know your Bob Dylan.
The point is slashing spending and killing jobs is not your traditional electioneering. That's to be admired.
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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.

Tourism: 7/10
This has been a good vibe week. TRENZ had them coming from everywhere, the sentiment is good, and the numbers are excellent.

Kiwifruit: 9/10
This story is starting to outshine dairy. Not in numbers, but in terms of growth. At almost $6 billion and booming, this is mana from vines. Add it to dairy and we are laughing.

Chris Hipkins: 2/10
This has been, far and away, his worst week of the year. Mystery policy detail and the arrogance to say we aren't interested in detail anyway. He is National's election year dream come true.

Trump: 4/10
We still don’t have a deal, but we do have a slush fund. He looks increasingly tawdry. But he's just as influential – just ask Thomas Massie.

Newstalk ZB: 8/10
Guess who’s popular? Ratings day yesterday was party day – the audience is up, and on some shows, up a lot. We thank you and appreciate you, as always, from the bottom of our hearts.

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