The Mike Hosking Breakfast

The wool sector is continuing its rebound.
The latest auction prices are sitting around $6.80 a kilo – the best returns in 15 years.
Strong demand and low global supply are driving the recovery.
Federated Farmers Meat and Wool Chair Richard Dawkins told Heather du Plessis-Allan that the rising cost of synthetics means they’re no longer the cheap and reliable option.
He says the pressures caused by the war in the Middle East won’t last forever, but once people make a conscious decision to switch to wool and renewable fibres, they don’t generally go back.
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A youth programme leader is delighted to see the Government prioritise early intervention through sport.
Sport and Police Minister Mark Mitchell has confirmed an $8 million cash injection for established initiatives supporting troubled young people.
Blue Light Ventures Chief Executive Brendon Crompton told Heather du Plessis Allan every dollar put into their programmes returns more than seven to the community and taxpayer.
He's thanking the Minister and NZ Sport for recognising that a kid in sport stays out of court.
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An MP facing Chinese sanctions is refusing to apologise for visiting Taiwan.
ACT's Laura McClure has been banned from China for a year, along with NZ First’s David Wilson, Labour’s Duncan Webb, and National’s Maureen Pugh.
The four visited the self-governing island territory last month.
McClure told Heather du Plessis-Allan it's an intimidation tactic – likely to put people off visiting Taiwan, but she hopes that won't happen.
She says Taiwan has long-been an important economic and cultural partner, like China itself.
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The Trade Minister believes the US is simply looking for a new reason to reintroduce tariffs.
The Trump administration announced a new 12.5% tariff on dozens of countries, including New Zealand, Australia, and many of our major trading partners.
It's accusing us of not doing enough to prevent the importation of goods produced by forced labour.
Todd McClay told Heather du Plessis-Allan he and his international counterparts are all of the same view.
He says irrespective of what anyone has done, the US is putting the tariff regime back in place and looking for a new legal basis.
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Credit to Simon Watts.
Some time ago he told me he was going to do something to stop councils like the Far North District Council.
They put ten iwi representatives, not elected by ratepayers, on a committee with six councillors who were elected, with full voting rights, thereby outnumbering the elected folk.
I sent him a text two weeks ago asking him when I should check back in with him to see what he was going to do.
He responded. Asked me to give him two weeks.
Two weeks ran out yesterday.
Yesterday is when he announced that he would be changing the law to take those voting rights away from unelected representatives on councils.
This has become something of a race relations issue because the greatest number of unelected members that get attention are Māori, iwi reps, and mana whenua reps.
But it’s actually more than that.
It also involves youth representatives, under 18's who haven’t even learned to live in their own houses and pay their own power bills, who are given permission by councils to vote on council issues without being elected.
And yes, it is about race relations and trying to stop the spread of this strangely fashionable idea that one ethnicity gets special treatment.
But it is also about a fundamental of democracy – you choose who governs you.
Ratepayers are being bled for money at rates none of us would’ve thought were possible ten years ago.
For our entire lives that has come with the right to then also vote for the people who we best trust to spend that money, even if that is a low bar.
Somehow in the last few years that has started to change, and councils have told us how much to pay and then also who will govern.
That needed to stop.
Yesterday’s decision is welcome. But I’d like it to go further.
I’d like all unelected representatives now removed from councils because, in many cases, they are a cost.
They are paid, sometimes, the same as elected representatives and they are unnecessary in an age where advice and input is easier to find than ever.
But given the likely kickback this will get from the handwringers, good on Simon Watts for making the right call.
And on deadline too.
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