The Mike Hosking Breakfast

The primary teachers' union is doing my head in.
This country needs fewer people like them and more people wanting to get on with it, get ahead, dream big, be bold, work harder and generally look at life in a more upbeat way.
The latest problem for the union is they want facilitated bargaining. I bet they do.
Unlike just about everyone else union based who has signed a deal, the primary teachers lot think they are so special and so different that the fact they can't reach a deal like everyone else must be someone else's fault.
My line, and it's always been this way, is have a structure, a couple of cracks, a bit of back and forward, a best and final offer and then if you can't agree go to compulsory arbitration. Not facilitated. Make it compulsory.
You argue your case, the decision is made and that's the end of that.
These cases we have seen of late all go on for literally months, and all end up literally the same. In the recent cases everyone has got about 2% this year and 2% next. That is not a result that required that amount of angst and anger and walk outs and placards and TV news stories with moaning unionists talking about unfairness and shortages.
What the unions have never quite gripped is social licence.
The broad idea of unions representing the most vulnerable of workers is not a bad one.
But like so many of these things, it's turned into an industry where hundreds of people on large salaries rely on division and upset to have a job.
Happy workers do not make happy unionists and teachers especially are not vulnerable. Cleaners are vulnerable. Teachers are largely on six figure salaries.
On a bang for buck basis unions don’t pull their weight. They are not worth it. Stalling is not a productive tactic, and placards are last centuries technique.
Compulsory arbitration – I dare them to give it a go. It's short, it's sharp, it ticks a box and we can all move on.
But why would you want to solve an issue quickly when your very existence relies on the opposite?
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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.

The war: 6/10
As much as you want to give a war a number, this is not World War III, it is not going to last four years. It most likely won't last four weeks.

Helen Clark: 2/10
Everything that is wrong with ideological jibber-jabber. From Hipkins to Starmer to Clark, their theory is less relevant in this modern chaotic world than ever.

Dairy: 9/10
Honestly, is it now close to being ridiculous? Five auctions from five. The protein surge is real and we are making bank.

Bill “I saw nothing” Clinton: 4/10
Overshadowed by his wife who looks as feisty as ever and, all things considered, came out of it pretty well – almost as though they were called as a political stunt.

Dave Rennie: 7/10
Got there at last. How low-key was that? Is it possible we just aren't as invested as we once were in All Black rugby?

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Where are we at with the war?
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard makes a very compelling case that this thing is over in four weeks because that’s about when the petrol reserves in America get drained. The Strait is closed, no LNG is getting through, Trump cannot tolerate $100 a barrel and so he will capitulate.
China can hold out. The Iranians, if they have kept a bunch of attack drones back, can hold out too, then go for some fuel sites in Arab states. You see his theory? It's not to be dismissed.
But that’s not the only scenario. Bluster aside, and there is plenty of that from the White House, it does seem, as far as these things go, to be going well.
The navy is gone, commercial planes are slowly flying again, Israel seems devastatingly effective in Lebanon, and the Kurds are in place with CIA-supplied weaponry, ready to jump the border.
Whether the people rise up, when that happens, I have no idea, which could lead you to believe that what we end up with is not a complete transition but more a half-baked mess with vacuums and disorder. But a country that looks radically different to what it looked like a year ago, and with a decimated ability to be a nuclear threat, could be sold by Trump as a win.
Of course, the people could rise, alongside the Kurds, storm the barracks, get the Shah's son ensconced and it's what, loosely, you would call a complete victory, which would be historic if you’ve followed the story of American interventionism.
The cold, hard truth though is Trump in election year cannot afford to lose. So as make-shift and spontaneous as this may appear to some, he is not an idiot and never underestimate his passion for self-preservation.
It's why, by the way, for those who worry, Russia and China are nowhere to be seen for their Iranian friends.
Self-interest is the greatest weapon and motivator of all.
If this works though, as in the Iranian regime we have known with its killing and evil is wiped off the face of the Earth, then everyone from Macron to Starmer to Clark to Hipkins will be working hard to explain why sitting around for decades gasbagging about how unacceptable it is and yet achieving nothing, is somehow a more effective strategy than actually taking the problem and solving it.
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US President Donald Trump has told a US news outlet he wants to be involved in picking Iran's next leader.
He's told Axios that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's son is a lightweight and unacceptable to him.
Meanwhile, the death toll in Iran has risen to 1200, multiple Gulf countries are continuing to intercept missiles, and in Azerbaijan, an airport and a school were hit by Iranian drones.
US Correspondent Richard Arnold told Mike Hosking that Iran is firing fewer drones and missiles as the US and Israeli forces expand their control of the air and sea.
He says the Pentagon says they’re finding and destroying Iran’s mobile missile launchers.
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It seems you really can’t beat locally grown produce.
Recent numbers show farmers’ markets around the country now support over a thousand food producers – attracting more than 50 thousand shoppers every week.
Tony Cato, owner of Pirongia Mountain Vegetables, told Mike Hosking that the industry’s been doing nothing but growing.
They’ve been in the markets for nearly twenty years, he says, and especially after Covid they’ve seen an increase in customers wanting to know exactly where their food comes from.
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