The Mike Hosking Breakfast

Chinese visitors are making a resurgence.
Latest Stats NZ data shows more than 408 thousand overseas tourists visited in February – an annual increase of more than 53 thousand.
Chinese visitors topped 61 thousand – the highest monthly figure since early 2018.
Tourism New Zealand Chief Executive René de Monchy told Mike Hosking Chinese New Year played a part, but there's been an acceleration in general.
He says Chinese visitors have been growing at over 30% in the past six months.
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There's division among economists regarding how soon the Reserve Bank should start raising the Official Cash Rate.
Many now expect the bank to bring forward OCR hikes, with ANZ forecasting three before the election.
But Kiwibank Chief Economist Jarrod Kerr warns that could be reckless and counterproductive.
He told Mike Hosking right now we're dealing with more temporary inflation due to higher diesel prices, which should hopefully fall back.
Kerr says more persistent forms of inflation, like wage and rental inflation, are quite benign at the moment.
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Retailers are on a “knife edge” deciding when to pass on increased costs to consumers.
Retail NZ CEO Carolyn Young told Mike Hosking that retailers had been absorbing the immediate increase in import costs.
But domestically, 93% of freight was moved on New Zealand roads, with 98% of those trucks using diesel.
“Businesses can no longer absorb that. We've been talking to retailers this week and they're on the knife edge as to when they pass on those costs that they've been increasing, but it's going to be pretty soon.”
Retail spending was up 2.9% at the start of March, mainly because of a “frenzy” of fuel buying, she said.
“Everyone was queued at the fuel stations, at the petrol stations, and that meant that consumers clearly haven't been spending elsewhere as that's consuming up a big significant chunk of their disposable income.”
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I'm an AvGeek. I like plane and travel videos and one of the regulars I watch is a guy called Nonstop Dan.
He's American and has just been here giving the world the predictable view of the place.
He can't believe how amazing it is, he can't believe how remote it is, and he is thinking of moving here.
He won't of course because most don’t. But you get the vibe when you come from outside that this really is an extraordinary place.
Part of it is that nothing happens, which is why one of our offshore children was telling us how ridiculous this country looked to him and his mates this past week melting down about the cyclone that wasn’t.
Not the actual weather, or the bits that got hit, but the mad buildup. The endless, angst-driven hyperbole as day after day the media told us to take action, run for our lives, pack a go-bag, duck for cover and change our travel.
From the other side of the world, they could not believe what too many were turning this into.
His conclusion is we are so small and literally nothing happens, so we need to invent stuff and upon receipt of some weather we went to town on it.
Another relative told us yesterday he was convinced if we were to organise a lockdown reunion, with special sourdough segments and a reprise of the Pulpit of Truth, you'd be amazed at how many would be into it.
Maybe that's the trick. Maybe that’s why the media, or bits of it, are a bubble. They can't see it, they don’t get out and they just co-exist in their microcosm of smallness feeding off each other.
Maybe you need to live on the other side of the world, where it's kind of chaotic and busy to get a better perspective.
If a 24-year-old can see it from Britain you then need to ask what is the balance between Nonstop Dan looking at our beauty and serenity and wanting a slice of it, and our small-village idiocy that must be damaging our reputation, not to mention our productivity? And how do we strike a balance?
Our isolation and location are a wonder to many. Yet our fear, myopic navel gazing, and predilection for being told how to live our lives and behave has got to be holding us back.
We seem to be a bit lost trying to find the sweet spot.
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While many may not have heard of ‘Viva la Dirt League’, their kids probably have.
Self-described as a ‘bunch of nerds who play games and make comedy sketches about games,’ they’re a YouTube sketch comedy group and independent production company based in New Zealand.
But what was once a channel that made a couple of hundred dollars a month has grown into a multi-million dollar business, with millions of subscribers, billions of views, and their own streaming platform.
It was founded by Alan Morrison and Adam King in 2011, with Rowan Bettjeman joining a couple years later.
Like many, the content they produce has changed throughout the years – beginning with parodies before pivoting into shortform comedy when it became unprofitable.
“We pivoted pretty hard into comedy sketches quite early,” Morrison told Mike Hosking.
“Like two or three years in. We literally found there was a tech store called Playtech that allowed us to film there after hours,” he said.
“And we just filmed in the store and got like, one sketch out every couple of weeks.”
For some success comes fast and hard, but for others like Viva la Dirt League, it takes a bit longer.
“It’s been a slow burn across out entire lifespan,” King told Hosking.
“There were the odd sketch here and there, we’ve had a few, what you’d call ‘viral successes.’”
But it wasn’t until they committed to a consistent schedule that they really started to take off.
“When we were committed to doing three videos a week, the algorithm was like, okay, these guys are reliable and started to present us,” Morrison explained.
But consistency isn’t the only factor in the group’s success.
“Part of our success and the success of people online is people don't necessarily want you to just make the exact same thing over and over,” King said.
“They want to see your creativity, and often the videos that do best are the ones that we’ve thrown our heart and soul into that might be a little bit different.”
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