The Mike Hosking Breakfast

What are the rules of engagement in this election campaign?
Prominence was given by media for a good chunk of yesterday to Kieran McAnulty's crack at Christopher Luxon and how Kiwi families were $6000 worse off under National.
Now for a start, it isn't National, it’s the Government, and the Government is three parties.
So McAnulty got his headline. If you don’t read past a headline, you never discover what a crock it all is. Should media give away such easy coverage, should any claim be able to be a headline no matter how absurd?
$120 a week, Kieran goes on, swallowed up by higher prices. Higher prices for what?
Food, petrol, power, rates, healthcare, and getting kids to school.
Let's dissect this: food is not the Government's policy. They don’t regulate food, peripherally, and we have had the debate. They may, or may not have a bunch of settings around market participation, the Commerce Commission may or may not look at mergers and competition generally, but governments do not price food.
Petrol? Petrol is oil, oil is the war – surely we know that.
Power? The government does not set the power price. Ironically you could blame Labour for cancelling oil and gas exploration, which put pressure on the spot price, but the government does not control power, nor rates – councils control rates. Councils are a separate thing. Surely we know that too?
Healthcare? What's that mean? The GP? It makes no sense. Public health is free – it doesn’t carry a cost. Insurance?
That’s private, the government doesn’t control that either. Getting kids to school? Once again doesn’t make sense – the petrol? Can you blame things twice? Uniforms? The government doesn’t set a price – schools run uniforms.
It’s a lesson in a couple of things:
1) How much Labour wants you to believe governments directly control things when they don’t
2) How easy it is to create a headline with BS
Does anyone check this stuff? Push back, ask questions, or is this campaign literally a free for all where you make stuff up until you're called out.
If you are ever called out – which in McAnulty's case was not until now.
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Today on Politics Wednesday, National’s Mark Mitchell and Labour’s Ginny Andersen joined Mike Hosking to break down the biggest stories of the week thus far.
They discussed the latest education results, and whether political debates in their current form are still worth it, or if they’re just a waste of time.
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On the Mike Hosking Breakfast Full Show Podcast for Wednesday 14th of October, we watched the multi-party debate so you didn't have to and have condensed it all into a handy three-minute package.
Air New Zealand are on to talk about their punctuality, fuel, and ending the codeshare with Qantas.
Mark Mitchell and Ginny Andersen debate all things education and whether debates in their standard form are still worth it, or are a waste of time on Politics Wednesday.
Get the Mike Hosking Breakfast Full Show Podcast every weekday morning on iHeartRadio, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Our economy seems to be faring better than our neighbour across the Tasman.
The International Monetary Fund has issued a stark outlook for the Australian economy, as it’s dealing with some of the worst inflation in the developed world.
It’s forecasting GDP growth of just 1.6% next year, and the biggest rise in unemployment among developed economies – going from 4.4% to 4.7%.
ANZ Chief Economist Sharon Zollner told Mike Hosking in growth terms, particularly compared to Australia, we look great.
She says we’re growing out of a hole, with 2.6% growth coming off a weak period, compared to their 2.1% off the back of a quite strong period of growth.
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Air New Zealand says it is confident punctuality is achievable at a large scale.
The airline says 87.3% of its flights arrived within 15 minutes of schedule over September, up 2% on August, and up from 75.5% a year ago.
Total cancellations have also fallen to 1.4%.
Regional services hit 90.3%, with the airline now ranked third in Asia Pacific.
Chief Operations Officer Kate Boyer told Mike Hosking it's a proud achievement, as they’d made a commitment to customers that they were going to turn their performance around.
She says even during school holidays, with over 500 flights per day, it was still at this level, which proves they can maintain it on hard days and can do it at scale.
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