November 12, 2025 • 10 mins
THE BEST BITS IN A SILLIER PACKAGE (from Thursday's Mike Hosking Breakfast) That's Why Jobs Are Too Hard/Maybe Just Do Water at All/Bad Time To Blow Things Up/Stop Doing Polls/Hosk's Hot Desk Party
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
You're listening to a podcast from news Talk ZEDB. Follow
this and our wide range of podcasts now on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
The Rewrap Today There, Welcome to the re Wrap for Thursday.
All the best bets from the mic asking Breakfast on
Newstalk ZEDB and a sillier package Ian Glen Harten Today,
what's happening with the water reform? Seece It's been a
long time coming, this WAD reform, doesn't it? Where has
all the T and T gone? We've got another poll
(00:45):
which we should definitely ignore, and a little bit more
of past granting about work from home. But before any
of that is the problem with this disparity between the
number of unemployed and the number of jobs that are
available out there, the fact that the unemployed people don't
have the skills to do those jobs.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
In America at the moment. So there's a lot of
talk about the K, the K shaped economy right cardis
seeing if you've got a good, safe job, good income,
you're in the markets, investing in AI before it all pops,
of course, you're feeling good, you're up. You're up well,
you're the up part of the K. So you're buying
a flash new car with carbon ad ons and all
that sort of stuff. Now, if you've been laid off
(01:24):
or about to be by a robot, you hate ii
AI are because you never ended enough to buy any
stock in the first place, and your snap payment hasn't
come through because of the shutdown. You're holding onto your car,
not to mention sweating making ends meet. You're the downward
part of the k You see what I'm saying here.
So it looks like we may have a similar story
here in this country because the recruiters Robert Walters are
already warning of the increased cost of labor in the recovery.
(01:47):
Our recovery are because people with the skills that are
going to be in demand, they can charge more. Why
because we're short of them? Why because the others in Australia.
So in ideal times, as an economy recovers, you hoover
up those who have lost their jobs when the times
were tight. So this time, anyone who was marketable left
the country, And what we have, sadly, are a group
(02:07):
of people who, it would appear or not available to
take part as growth returns. I mean, yes, there are
plenty of unemployed. Five point three percent are not to
mention a growing number of the so called underutilized. But
as far as skills go, that's where we have an issue.
Not everywhere and not everyone, of course, but it is
becoming increasingly obvious that there are too many underskilled, underqualified
people in this country. And that is sadly what eventuates
(02:29):
when you have a system that spits kids out at
fifteen or sixteen or seventeen without a pathway to success.
When times are good, any number of people get swept
up for bits and pieces type jobs. Lots of employers
can afford to fork out on those sort of jobs,
but they're the first to go, of course, and when
the rest of the talent bails, the ones without the
skills aren't the ones to fill the growth areas. Hence,
(02:49):
we will once again rely on imported labor, which this
time around may or may not be available to us,
depending on whether they still see us as a cool
place to be. If they don't, numbers would suggest they aren't.
Are that weighs on recovery and the speed of which
we pick up. Robert Walter seems to suggest this is
going to be an issue. But for those who stayed,
and if you've got the skills, You'll be in a
(03:11):
new car before you know it.
Speaker 4 (03:12):
Yes, is my problem. I don't have any skills.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Yeah, school, My basic skill set revolves around me just
blurting out smart ass remarks about things. So really I've
got limited options there. It turns out it's true nobody
really likes a.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
Smart ass rewrap. All right, do we want water done well?
Or would do? I think we just want it done,
don't we?
Speaker 3 (03:38):
It's simply standard and Pause have made an interesting observation
over our water reforms. They worry that the new system
local water done well will end up costing more than
the previous government's three water So score one for labor
if you're playing politics on this one. Now to their point,
which is more based on accounting than ideology, which I'll
come to in a moment. It points out the councils,
although they have a lot of choice as to how
(03:59):
they handle their water, still run the risk of ending
up in physical trouble. The reason as many councils have
already are already deeply in debt and water are four
miliads that but under the new rules, the water entity
becomes a problem for the council. If the water entity
falls over or gets into trouble. In that lies the ideology.
Now under the new scheme, central government's not really part
(04:20):
of the mix. It's your water. You can do it
well for yourself. Now, under Labour three waters was everyone's water,
including an overt Mari influence, which of course is what
rucked us up in the first place. But the separation
between local and central government wasn't as great as what
we have now. There is also a lesson, I would
hope in this for local councils who find themselves a
bit balls to the wall, as they say, when it
(04:41):
comes to debt. The mechanism set up allows councils to
borrow from a facility of better rates than the otherwise
would have been able to, but the pressure comes from
the fact that they are already deeply in debt. Why
would that be because historically, of course, they've borrowed and
spent on frippery and not fundamentals like water. Not all councils,
of course, but a lot. So this is a kind
(05:02):
of lesson from Wellington. Grow up, learn to run a business,
do your job, provide the basics and you'll be a mate.
At how much simpler life is does their predicament brought
about by debt and largest present risk, as S and
P suggest. Yes, but it's your area, your water, your problem.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
You do wonder when you see complete clusters like Wellington
and perhaps to a lesser degree, Eve in Auckland's water systems,
if some of those unskilled workers that we were talking
about earlier somehow found their way into positions of running
things like water departments a rewrap. And it's not even
(05:40):
like we can blow it all up and start again,
because there ain't no T ANDT.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
You know what's everything from your cell phone to your laptop,
to the roads you drive on, the homes you live in.
Just about everything you use on a daily basis starts
from what that has become more expensive T and T.
That is what I'm reading yesterday, things that it's gone
from fifty cents a pound this is American fifty cents
(06:03):
a pound to twenty dollars. Over twenty dollars a pound,
you get everything needs to be blown up very beginning
of everything. Something needs to be blown up. And it's
expensive to blow stuff up. And if it's expensive to
blow stuff up, the end product becomes expensive. Why are
they short of T and t the war.
Speaker 4 (06:18):
Don't you just send off to acme for more. That's
what the coyote did.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
It always did in those road runner jeans, not that
it ever was worked out super well for him, and
saying that the re wrap right, How excited do you
think we are here at the Mike Hoskin greet First
that another pole came out last night.
Speaker 4 (06:37):
We love poles.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
The pole at yesterday. Now am I being picky here?
But the coverage of the pole that came out yesterday,
This is the taxpayer Union courier pole. If you missed
the numbers, Labors up a little bit, Nationals up a
little bit, but that came at the expense for labor
of the Greens who fell New Zealand first fell, So
you know, in other words, who is the a change
of government?
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Know?
Speaker 3 (06:57):
So nothing actually happened. And I would argue when I
look at these career poles, I don't know what their
methodology is, but I see them going up and down
too much on any given month. If you look at
a party like the Greens at nine percent, there's no
way in the world you can tell me they've lost
three I mean, that's a third of their support gone.
I mean, that just doesn't work. I just don't believe
the numbers. But the point was in the coverage is
(07:19):
is that they link it or tried to link it.
Labour's increased to the capital gains tax now, as far
as I know, correct me if I'm wrong. There was
nothing in the poll that suggests do you support labor
now because of the capital gains tax announcement? No question
was asked. I just saw labor going up. So they've
taken two dots and joined them together. And I don't
think that's fair, and I don't think it's accurate. You
(07:42):
don't know that labor went up because of the capital
gains tax. They might just have gone up because the
poll last time was wrong and it's corrected itself. And
unless you ask a question specifically about a policy, you
can't correlate the policy to the overall number, can you?
Or is that me and the weeds being weird again?
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Yeah? I just I don't know why he keeps Does
he keep bringing up the poles only to tear them
apart in an effort.
Speaker 4 (08:06):
To get them to stop doing them?
Speaker 2 (08:09):
I just feel like he's drawing more attention to them,
and the more attention that people paid to them, the
more they'll keep doing them. The rewrap tell you something
for nothing. Things would be different if he was in charge.
Nobody would be working from home, that's for sure. Why
except home obviously, Mike.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
You're always saying that people who work from home are
taking the mickey. I had a role that required me
to work from home, and the reality is you're always
at work, and you work more, not less. Modern open
plan workspaces are also terrible for productivity, as they're noisy
and full of distractions. On that clear, you're right, and
most of the time when I talk about working from home,
I'm taking the mickey. Don't take me seriously. Half of
what I say these days is sort of, you know,
(08:43):
made up on the spot, just to rack you up.
I mean, I work from home most days for goodness sake.
I go home and do a lot of work from home.
So what iway, I know, and I do the hot
desking thing. If I could change the world, I would
ban first thing when I run the country. And don't
think that's far away. When I run the country, the
first thing I'm going to ban is hot desking. It's
going to be my first piece of legislation. There will
be no more hot desking.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Is this you announcing the Mike Hosking Hot Desk Party
for the next year's election.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
It's early days, Glenn. You don't want to pick too soon.
You don't want to fizz people up too soon before
the campaign. Stand by in April. Or maybe it could
be an announcement coming you never know.
Speaker 4 (09:16):
Hosk's Hot Desk Party. That has a bit of a
ring to it.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
And even after all that, I'm still not really sure
if he's po or against people working from home.
Speaker 4 (09:27):
There was a discussion in the control room this morning.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
About whether he actually does work from home or if
he just works at home, and if there's a difference,
which I don't think there is. And then there was
an argument about whether what he was doing there was
actually work. And then there was a claim made that
the important stuff all happens between six and nine here.
But I don't know if that any of that stuff
could happen if you didn't do the other stuff at home.
(09:52):
This is the kind of interesting conversation that goes on
off here. It's really compelling, is it.
Speaker 4 (09:59):
Are you still there? You're still there? Why you're still there?
Don't be still there? But come back again tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
I'll see it. M hmmm. For more from News Talk
set B listen live on air or online, and keep
our shows with you wherever you go with our podcasts
on iHeartRadio
You're listening to a podcast from news Talk ZEDB. Follow
this and our wide range of podcasts now on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
The Rewrap Today There, Welcome to the re Wrap for Thursday.
All the best bets from the mic asking Breakfast on
Newstalk ZEDB and a sillier package Ian Glen Harten Today,
what's happening with the water reform? Seece It's been a
long time coming, this WAD reform, doesn't it? Where has
all the T and T gone? We've got another poll
(00:45):
which we should definitely ignore, and a little bit more
of past granting about work from home. But before any
of that is the problem with this disparity between the
number of unemployed and the number of jobs that are
available out there, the fact that the unemployed people don't
have the skills to do those jobs.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
In America at the moment. So there's a lot of
talk about the K, the K shaped economy right cardis
seeing if you've got a good, safe job, good income,
you're in the markets, investing in AI before it all pops,
of course, you're feeling good, you're up. You're up well,
you're the up part of the K. So you're buying
a flash new car with carbon ad ons and all
that sort of stuff. Now, if you've been laid off
(01:24):
or about to be by a robot, you hate ii
AI are because you never ended enough to buy any
stock in the first place, and your snap payment hasn't
come through because of the shutdown. You're holding onto your car,
not to mention sweating making ends meet. You're the downward
part of the k You see what I'm saying here.
So it looks like we may have a similar story
here in this country because the recruiters Robert Walters are
already warning of the increased cost of labor in the recovery.
(01:47):
Our recovery are because people with the skills that are
going to be in demand, they can charge more. Why
because we're short of them? Why because the others in Australia.
So in ideal times, as an economy recovers, you hoover
up those who have lost their jobs when the times
were tight. So this time, anyone who was marketable left
the country, And what we have, sadly, are a group
(02:07):
of people who, it would appear or not available to
take part as growth returns. I mean, yes, there are
plenty of unemployed. Five point three percent are not to
mention a growing number of the so called underutilized. But
as far as skills go, that's where we have an issue.
Not everywhere and not everyone, of course, but it is
becoming increasingly obvious that there are too many underskilled, underqualified
people in this country. And that is sadly what eventuates
(02:29):
when you have a system that spits kids out at
fifteen or sixteen or seventeen without a pathway to success.
When times are good, any number of people get swept
up for bits and pieces type jobs. Lots of employers
can afford to fork out on those sort of jobs,
but they're the first to go, of course, and when
the rest of the talent bails, the ones without the
skills aren't the ones to fill the growth areas. Hence,
(02:49):
we will once again rely on imported labor, which this
time around may or may not be available to us,
depending on whether they still see us as a cool
place to be. If they don't, numbers would suggest they aren't.
Are that weighs on recovery and the speed of which
we pick up. Robert Walter seems to suggest this is
going to be an issue. But for those who stayed,
and if you've got the skills, You'll be in a
(03:11):
new car before you know it.
Speaker 4 (03:12):
Yes, is my problem. I don't have any skills.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Yeah, school, My basic skill set revolves around me just
blurting out smart ass remarks about things. So really I've
got limited options there. It turns out it's true nobody
really likes a.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
Smart ass rewrap. All right, do we want water done well?
Or would do? I think we just want it done,
don't we?
Speaker 3 (03:38):
It's simply standard and Pause have made an interesting observation
over our water reforms. They worry that the new system
local water done well will end up costing more than
the previous government's three water So score one for labor
if you're playing politics on this one. Now to their point,
which is more based on accounting than ideology, which I'll
come to in a moment. It points out the councils,
although they have a lot of choice as to how
(03:59):
they handle their water, still run the risk of ending
up in physical trouble. The reason as many councils have
already are already deeply in debt and water are four
miliads that but under the new rules, the water entity
becomes a problem for the council. If the water entity
falls over or gets into trouble. In that lies the ideology.
Now under the new scheme, central government's not really part
(04:20):
of the mix. It's your water. You can do it
well for yourself. Now, under Labour three waters was everyone's water,
including an overt Mari influence, which of course is what
rucked us up in the first place. But the separation
between local and central government wasn't as great as what
we have now. There is also a lesson, I would
hope in this for local councils who find themselves a
bit balls to the wall, as they say, when it
(04:41):
comes to debt. The mechanism set up allows councils to
borrow from a facility of better rates than the otherwise
would have been able to, but the pressure comes from
the fact that they are already deeply in debt. Why
would that be because historically, of course, they've borrowed and
spent on frippery and not fundamentals like water. Not all councils,
of course, but a lot. So this is a kind
(05:02):
of lesson from Wellington. Grow up, learn to run a business,
do your job, provide the basics and you'll be a mate.
At how much simpler life is does their predicament brought
about by debt and largest present risk, as S and
P suggest. Yes, but it's your area, your water, your problem.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
You do wonder when you see complete clusters like Wellington
and perhaps to a lesser degree, Eve in Auckland's water systems,
if some of those unskilled workers that we were talking
about earlier somehow found their way into positions of running
things like water departments a rewrap. And it's not even
(05:40):
like we can blow it all up and start again,
because there ain't no T ANDT.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
You know what's everything from your cell phone to your laptop,
to the roads you drive on, the homes you live in.
Just about everything you use on a daily basis starts
from what that has become more expensive T and T.
That is what I'm reading yesterday, things that it's gone
from fifty cents a pound this is American fifty cents
(06:03):
a pound to twenty dollars. Over twenty dollars a pound,
you get everything needs to be blown up very beginning
of everything. Something needs to be blown up. And it's
expensive to blow stuff up. And if it's expensive to
blow stuff up, the end product becomes expensive. Why are
they short of T and t the war.
Speaker 4 (06:18):
Don't you just send off to acme for more. That's
what the coyote did.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
It always did in those road runner jeans, not that
it ever was worked out super well for him, and
saying that the re wrap right, How excited do you
think we are here at the Mike Hoskin greet First
that another pole came out last night.
Speaker 4 (06:37):
We love poles.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
The pole at yesterday. Now am I being picky here?
But the coverage of the pole that came out yesterday,
This is the taxpayer Union courier pole. If you missed
the numbers, Labors up a little bit, Nationals up a
little bit, but that came at the expense for labor
of the Greens who fell New Zealand first fell, So
you know, in other words, who is the a change
of government?
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Know?
Speaker 3 (06:57):
So nothing actually happened. And I would argue when I
look at these career poles, I don't know what their
methodology is, but I see them going up and down
too much on any given month. If you look at
a party like the Greens at nine percent, there's no
way in the world you can tell me they've lost
three I mean, that's a third of their support gone.
I mean, that just doesn't work. I just don't believe
the numbers. But the point was in the coverage is
(07:19):
is that they link it or tried to link it.
Labour's increased to the capital gains tax now, as far
as I know, correct me if I'm wrong. There was
nothing in the poll that suggests do you support labor
now because of the capital gains tax announcement? No question
was asked. I just saw labor going up. So they've
taken two dots and joined them together. And I don't
think that's fair, and I don't think it's accurate. You
(07:42):
don't know that labor went up because of the capital
gains tax. They might just have gone up because the
poll last time was wrong and it's corrected itself. And
unless you ask a question specifically about a policy, you
can't correlate the policy to the overall number, can you?
Or is that me and the weeds being weird again?
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Yeah? I just I don't know why he keeps Does
he keep bringing up the poles only to tear them
apart in an effort.
Speaker 4 (08:06):
To get them to stop doing them?
Speaker 2 (08:09):
I just feel like he's drawing more attention to them,
and the more attention that people paid to them, the
more they'll keep doing them. The rewrap tell you something
for nothing. Things would be different if he was in charge.
Nobody would be working from home, that's for sure. Why
except home obviously, Mike.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
You're always saying that people who work from home are
taking the mickey. I had a role that required me
to work from home, and the reality is you're always
at work, and you work more, not less. Modern open
plan workspaces are also terrible for productivity, as they're noisy
and full of distractions. On that clear, you're right, and
most of the time when I talk about working from home,
I'm taking the mickey. Don't take me seriously. Half of
what I say these days is sort of, you know,
(08:43):
made up on the spot, just to rack you up.
I mean, I work from home most days for goodness sake.
I go home and do a lot of work from home.
So what iway, I know, and I do the hot
desking thing. If I could change the world, I would
ban first thing when I run the country. And don't
think that's far away. When I run the country, the
first thing I'm going to ban is hot desking. It's
going to be my first piece of legislation. There will
be no more hot desking.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Is this you announcing the Mike Hosking Hot Desk Party
for the next year's election.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
It's early days, Glenn. You don't want to pick too soon.
You don't want to fizz people up too soon before
the campaign. Stand by in April. Or maybe it could
be an announcement coming you never know.
Speaker 4 (09:16):
Hosk's Hot Desk Party. That has a bit of a
ring to it.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
And even after all that, I'm still not really sure
if he's po or against people working from home.
Speaker 4 (09:27):
There was a discussion in the control room this morning.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
About whether he actually does work from home or if
he just works at home, and if there's a difference,
which I don't think there is. And then there was
an argument about whether what he was doing there was
actually work. And then there was a claim made that
the important stuff all happens between six and nine here.
But I don't know if that any of that stuff
could happen if you didn't do the other stuff at home.
(09:52):
This is the kind of interesting conversation that goes on
off here. It's really compelling, is it.
Speaker 4 (09:59):
Are you still there? You're still there? Why you're still there?
Don't be still there? But come back again tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
I'll see it. M hmmm. For more from News Talk
set B listen live on air or online, and keep
our shows with you wherever you go with our podcasts
on iHeartRadio
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