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January 18, 2026 12 mins

THE BEST BITS IN A SILLIER PACKAGE (from Monday's Mike Hosking Breakfast) Give Me Strength/Enjoying the Mike-ro Climate/Things Are Definitely Looking Up/Things Are Definitely Worse Than Ever/The Issue's Bigger Than Razor

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Speaker 1 (00:09):
You're listening to a podcast from News Talks. It'd be
follow this and our wide range of podcasts now on
iHeartRadio Rewrap.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Okay there and welcome to the Rewrap for Monday, all
the best bets from the mic asking breakfast on news Talks.
He'd be in a sillier package. I'm Glen, and you're
not hearing things. This is actually me and there's actually
my earlier than I can even recall it coming back
to work. So we'll find out how some of this
holiday went anyway, we'll find out how the economy is

(00:46):
going to go, why dollar is so terrible, ed who
should be coaching the all blacks and with it that
will make any difference? Before any of that, a little
preview of the year A here.

Speaker 3 (00:55):
So I don't think I don't think there's a scriptwriter
in Hollywood who could out dramatize real life. Right now,
what do you reckon? It seems the show is back
just in time for a year of Lord knows what
Venezuela was It illegal? Probably, but key question is who's
going to do anything about it? And if you protest,
you look like you're backing a dictator and a thug
don't you Greenland. I think a deal will evolve eventually

(01:16):
where NATO boost's resources should have been done years ago,
remembering the thinking behind it. If America doesn't plant a flag,
China might Cuba Columbia also linked to the China obsession
Trump has, but their small fry, they'll ultimately get settled
and sorted Minnesota, proving this acts locally as well as internationally.
Trump is rewriting the world. Note Rubio's using the term

(01:37):
Western hemisphere. A lot that's deliberate goes back to President
Monroe of the eighteen hundred. All of this is fascinating,
not necessarily good or bad, but gripping. Nevertheless, if you're
watching the New Night Manager season, the overthrow of a
government is the plot? Is it fiction or a doco?
These days? See you don't know?

Speaker 2 (01:52):
Do you?

Speaker 3 (01:53):
Locally? Apart from being bored witless as local media obsessed
about endless weather warnings and crime, we've got a lot
to look forward to. In case you forgot, this country
is actually on a bit of a roll. The pre
Christmas GDP number Q three Remember that July, August and
September Gangbusters. While so many moaned about our lot, we
were in fact going and growing very nicely. Thank you.
No reason to believe Q four when we get it

(02:15):
won't be about as good. So that sets the year
up election year with the government who's delivered we haven't
even got to a run. Or the astonishing cock up
elban easy managed to make of the Bond II tragedy
the Supreme Court in tariffs, speaking of which are ind
FTA came too late for the good news coverage it deserved.
Oh and the Fed Reserve DOJ scandal that dragged down
Reserve Bank governor into the political world of Winston Peters.

(02:37):
You can't make a lot of this stuff up, and
yet it's all happening, it's all changing, it's all on
What a year. It's going to be awesome.

Speaker 2 (02:46):
I think Mike feels very differently about things, like I
don't know elections and I do. I'd rather that we
stop having them all the time. Certainly, I think you'd
get them down to four years or every five years.
That'll be my preference. That's that's certainly at least one
Saturday night that's going to be completely spoiled for me
this year. It's rewrap anyway, Mike, I've sort of got

(03:09):
a bit of survivors guilt as I come back into
the office this year, because one of the weeks I
spent away, I was walking the Queen Charlotte Track and
it was absolutely stunning weather. Terrible weather leading up to it,
and terrible weather after we left. I think it might
have been the same at Mike's place.

Speaker 3 (03:25):
Mike, it's great to have you back again. I hope
you had a good holiday. I did, And I don't
know that it's that appropriate to mention at this particular
point in time, given what's happened in the last twenty
four hours or so. But I thought the weather was
fantastic and my part of the world, it was brilliant.
When I stood out there looking over the acreage, I thought, Jeers,
I could use a bit of rain. He's quite the
microclimate on the very microclimate. It's very very microclimate. But

(03:46):
I had all the rain I wanted, and I had
all the sun I wanted. I had some of the heat,
had some of the cool. I just had the perfect
weather and I had the perfect.

Speaker 2 (03:53):
Was it all just at a wired up or something?
Have you got like a little.

Speaker 1 (03:56):
App for it?

Speaker 3 (03:57):
What's done on? What's going on? But I was happy
with it. I mean, obviously I feel bad for you
if you close the state highway to on the coast
there up north. But apart from that, as far as
holidays goes, I had a very fine time. Did I
tell you I'm back two weeks early? I mention that, yes, yeah,
I thought so, I'm back two weeks early.

Speaker 2 (04:12):
Yeah, you do feel that that's staying that you've had
a great time and seeing we've got the best of
the weather. When people are sending you videos of their
camping trip where they're standing next to a small community
hall that literally has a bank that's fallen down behind
it and now has water running through it, not running
water in the water running through it and out the

(04:34):
front steps. Yeah, sorry about that, Northland right. Not sure
what kind of effect that well, that's going to have
on the economy, But it seems like those green shoots
that we keep hearing about last year are basically turning
into bamboo.

Speaker 3 (04:48):
But this year is going to be very much about
the economy. Economies win and lose elections, and there's enough
there to feel reasonably bullish if you want the government
re elected. As far as I can work out, this year,
a lot can change in a year. Of course, I'm
assuming the elections in November October November. There's no reason
to think it'll be any other time. But the manufacturing
greg gave us, I mean, the manufacturing numbers were stonking,

(05:10):
and you can't argue with them because they're fact It's
not a mood, it's not a vibe. It's numbers. It's factual.
Consumer confidence, which is a move that is a vibe,
highest level in more than four years. It's up three
to one hundred and one point five. So we're in
expansionary territory, which is good. Inflation expectations are down, food
seems to be coming under control. Read a story over

(05:31):
was it last week? Somebody's going the price of white
bread's up sixty percent. I mean, don't buy a white bread.
It's crap. It's bad for you. Business optimisms up seventeen
points seventeen business optimism, and they think unemployment may have
peaked at five point three. So at one point they
said it could be as bad as six. They curtailed

(05:51):
that back to maybe five five. But Westpac I note
last week were suggesting that maybe five point three is
about it. So that's a lot of good economic news.
In which to launch your political year. Don't you reckon?

Speaker 2 (06:02):
There you go. You can wipe everything that's happened for
the past five or six years off, dusted off, forget
it happened, and we'll just move on.

Speaker 1 (06:12):
So rewrapped.

Speaker 2 (06:13):
Actually hang on, I know, I said everything was great,
just then it turns out that everything's terrible.

Speaker 3 (06:18):
So I was on the phone with my mate last
week who lives in Sydney, and he asked, he said,
what's going on with the dollar? I said, well, the
dollars stuffed is the problem. That was my expert reaction
to his fairly, but it was at eighty five to
the early sixth this morning Australian which is embarrassing. Remember
it wasn't that long ago. Every now and again over
the years we've talked about parity. We're never going to
get parity with the Australian dollar. But we get to

(06:39):
the well into the nineties, and so when you go
to Australia, you're not sort of thinking, oh, I wonder
how much this is going to cost, whereas now you do.
Fifteen percent's a lot. Anyway, this was the piece I referenced.
Before seven o'clock this morning. There's a big divergence going
to go on this year. Unfortunately, it's currently sixty six US.
This is the Australian dollar sixty six. They reckon it's

(07:00):
going to appreciate somewhere between ten and forty percent this year.
They think Bullock, as in the Reserve Bank governor is
going to hike rates and this is where the divergence
with US comes in. So we're on hold worst case scenario.
We're still cutting. She's looking to increase. So there is
your divergence. In other words, why is she increasing because
the Australian economy is strong? Why are we holding it

(07:21):
if not cutting? Because our economy is still building back
ahead of steam. So that's your divergence. And so they're
thinking the Australian dollar is going to appreciate ten to
forty percent, a price target of seventy two cents by
the end of the year. Seventy two cents US by
the end of the year. That'll be the highest value
for the Australian dollars since twenty twenty two. That's from
amp ubs. They say it could go to ninety two

(07:46):
ninety two US cents to the Australian dollar. Now, if
that happens. I don't think it will, but if it does,
what do you reckon? We're going to be against the
Australian and that is I mean, all good for the exporters,
but for anything else, it's no good at all.

Speaker 2 (08:02):
Is it not time we just got rid of the
whole national currency thing and disc all had one currency
and it was all just one mark? And can we count?
I know there's probably some reason why we can't do that,
but it seems like everything. Why are we competing against
each other all the time? Why can't we just work together?

(08:23):
Even the Prime Minister on our show this morning he
seemed to think that because Mike asked him about you know, empires.
Have we seen the rise of empiricism? Is that the
word he used? It was some weird like that in
relation to you know, certainly to Trump and you know
China seems to go from strength to strength and India?

(08:43):
You know, is it the age of empires that that
we're heading into? And luck it seemed to say, yeah,
rep anyway, Scott Robinson's time as emperor as well and
truly done? Is that going to fix everything?

Speaker 3 (08:57):
I've got to tell you, I'm still a little bit
exercised about Scott Robertson because I like Scott and I
thought he was a very good coaches record at Canterbury
spoke for itself, of course. See trouble in this country
is we can't have a sensible conversation about the all
black coach because so many of us come to it
with myopic emotional views driven by idiocy like geography and
personality expectations that have nothing to do with the actual job.

(09:18):
See Hanson had pro and anti Campston, the as did Foster,
as does Robinson. Waste too much energy. Also, we might
just be a little bit then energized or exercise because
we're a small country with not a lot to think about.
See in the NFL, which I follow, as you well know,
in the NFL at the moment there are nine head
coaching vacancies, nine after eight sackings and one quitting. That's
over a quarter of all jobs in the NFL are

(09:40):
up for grabs, and that's not unusual. I mean, as
for the EPL, they're sacking somebody every second day, as
far as I can work out. What I can't work
out is when David Kirk says we aren't where we
need to be at this point of the cycle. What
does that mean? Where specifically do we need to be?
I mean, once upon a time when the All Blacks
won every test as of right, we still didn't go

(10:01):
on and win the World Cup. So presumably when we
won everything, or were winning everything, we must have felt
in a pretty good place. Didn't work out well though
it Also, how is it Robinson as banned from going elsewhere?
I mean, this is a great question that remains unanswered.
How is he banned from going elsewhere? In other words,
he's not good enough to coach us, but he's too
dangerous to ply the trade off shore now apart from

(10:22):
paying him not to work, and that involves a tremendous
amount of money. As far as I know, I wouldn't
have taken that deal. I would have told him to
get stuffed. Also, I can't work out just how much
this is player driven and of the player feedback. How
much is personal versus professional? I mean, how much responsibility
does a player have for what happens on the field
as opposed to a coach. See back in the NFL,

(10:42):
there's a blow called Rabel who was sacked from Tennessee
because they weren't winning and after he left they still
haven't been winning. But the team he's gone to, New England,
who are playing today, by the way, they were hopeless
until a year ago. They might now they'll probably win
today and if they do, they'll go and to win
one more game. They might well be in the super Bowl.
So is that him or is it luck or other factors? See,

(11:03):
someone always seems to have to pay the price whenever
someone else decides things aren't right, which is the other weird.
But the All Blacks winning record is an increasingly competitive world.
It wasn't that bad, so why the panic. Loyalty, consistency,
and longevity are all traits that are of value, but
you've got to recognize them. If you don't, you tend
to make mistakes by going round sacking people with no

(11:26):
obvious next step in place.

Speaker 2 (11:28):
It concerned me a little bit, well only, I mean,
if I cared about rugby and what happens to it,
it would have concerned me when I heard Andrew Saville
on the Monday Winning Commentry Box Disappointing on the Mic
Hosking Breakfast say that that perhaps the more important positions
that need to be filled at New Zealand rugby are
the what were they called? There was one the high

(11:49):
performance manager, I think there was one, and then the
professional athletes manager or something like. I say, I can't
even remember exactly what those positions are. I certainly don't
know what they do, and apparently they are more important
than the.

Speaker 3 (12:05):
Coach of the team.

Speaker 2 (12:06):
So yeah, everything's fine. You stealing rugby, I am being heard.
Tell your friends it's all back on. These podcasts tend
to have a little bit of a slump when I'm
not doing them. It tunes out for people are as

(12:27):
interested in listening to a podcast that's not actually being
refreshed every day, but now it is. Make sure you
go out and tell everybody we can boost it on
up again. Thanks for that, and make sure that they
listen to News Talks they've been as well. I'll be
back with both of those when I say both of
those that and tomorrow see you then see it's very good,
very good podcast.

Speaker 1 (12:53):
For more from News Talks ed B listen live on
air or online, and keep our shows with you wherever
you go with our podcast on iHeartRadio.
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