The Mike Hosking Breakfast

This time around the Brooke van Velden-led employment law changes have been described as a shake-up, even a major shake-up.
But as someone who well remembers the Employment Contracts Act and Bill Birch, what is being offered is merely a righting of a badly out of whack employment market.
The usual whining from unions has ensued. In a nutshell, there is a limit on personal grievance procedures. It defines what a contractor is, as opposed to an employee, and the 30-day trial rule is gone.
If you earn a lot i.e. over $200,000 you can't go to an employer for wrongful dismissal.
I have experience in this area. I was effectively sacked by TVNZ about 25 years ago and I was on over $200,000. Under this new law I couldn’t have gone after them.
But guess what? I didn’t go after them anyway. Why? Because who wants to work for people that treat you that way?
And in that is a lot of what the workplace is about.
There are bad employers and good employers and a lot of employers in between. Rules are based on worse-case scenarios.
It has never been a better time to be a worker in this country. Yes, jobs are tight as of late. But if you're good and determined you can get work, because good people are hideously hard to find, and you can succeed quickly.
Most people, and I cite 45 years in the workplace here, at the very least mean well. Many are actually quite good.
Work should be about enjoyment and learning and development of skills and the climbing of ladders. If you are bogged down in worse-case scenarios, you go nowhere.
Equally as an employer, how do you grow your business when you are ankle tapped by a mindset that infers you are bad news, so all sorts of guard rails need to be enacted in law?
Bill Birch's law was not the end of the world. Brooke van Velden's won't be either.
The workplace recipe should not be complex; if you work hard, you do well.
If you're slack and entitled, you need to be sacked. If you're young and inexperienced you don’t get to be the boss in your second week. Not all your personal problems are your employers' problems, and not all employers are out to get you.
By and large unions are trouble, negative, and potentially ruinous and I have yet to see one that has the country's best interests at heart.
We're all in this together. Too much employment law pits us against each other, and no one wins.
Brooke van Velden's laws are fine. No one is going to die.
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Another country star on the rise.
Jason Aldean is performing at Spark Arena tonight, and he’s bringing with him Corey Kent – the latest Red Dirt star, according to Rolling Stone.
Despite having been performing since he was a kid, it was a bumpy road to reach this point, complete with a happenstance performance with Willie Nelson, a change in jobs, and a lot of dedication.
Kent’s since gone triple platinum, released four albums, and had over a billion streams.
He joined Mike Hosking for a chat about his career to date, and regaled him with stories of country legends Willie Nelson and Paul Simon.
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On the Mike Hosking Breakfast Full Show Podcast for Thursday 19th of February, we cover the OCR, yet another report reinforcing our inability to protect our most vulnerable children, and the rising use of hard drugs.
Reserve Bank Governor Anna Breman explains her OCR call and whether she or the economists got it right.
Country music star Corey Kent is in the country with Jason Aldean, and popped in to regale us with stories of Willie Nelson and Paul Simon.
Get the Mike Hosking Breakfast Full Show Podcast every weekday morning on iHeartRadio, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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The Reserve Bank's kept the OCR unchanged at 2.25% and isn't forecasting any change until the end of the year.
Governor Anna Breman says inflation should be back within target this quarter.
She says the economy fundamentals are consistent with inflation falling to, and remaining at, 2% over the medium term.
Infometrics Principal Economist Brad Olsen told Mike Hosking the Governor is playing with a pretty straight bat.
He says it’s a tricky balance, as the economy doesn’t quite feel like it has recovery momentum, and they don’t want to cut that off at the knees by spooking anyone, but they do have to be focused on inflation.
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The Independent Children's Monitor says it's clear our child protection system is under immense stress.
Its review shows carers killed 24 children between December 2021 and June 2025.
It finds no improvement, despite recommendations in a review of the murder of five-year-old Malachi Subecz in 2021.
Children's Monitor CEO Arran Jones told Mike Hosking that while there are deep-seated issues that go beyond what the agencies can respond to, there are certainly things that can be improved.
He says the lack of progress up to this point is an issue of prioritisation, and it’s about making sure the problem is front of mine not only for Oranga Tamariki, but for all the agencies that have a role to play.
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