The Mike Hosking Breakfast

It's the definition of madness. And stupidity. 

How many times do you have to do the same dumb thing with no result, thus proving your system doesn’t work, before you admit your system doesn’t work and give up? 

The last of the carbon auctions was held this week. You know where this story is going. 

I first got interested in this a couple of years ago when it struck me that this auction malarkey might be one of the better examples of the sheer, ideological madness that drives so much of the climate policy. 

One of the reasons so many people have got into forestry is it's free money. 

It's on land and land, generally, is a good investment and free money isn't a bad deal either. 

Also, after a while, they might pay you some good dough for your wood. 

So if trees get carbon credits why would you turn up to an auction? You wouldn’t, and indeed this week they didn’t. 

Not one person. Not one bid. Not one credit sold. 

There are four of these each year for the past two years. No one has bought a thing. Ask yourself why. 

They have tried to price the units, to no avail, but what is really causing the issue is the Government. 

To buy something you must believe it has value. It has to have worth. 

Why would you buy into the Government carbon narrative when they keep changing the rules? 

This Government is doing their best to do as little as possible to meet their climate emissions. I applaud that because it’s the right thing to do. 

But given the rules keep changing I'm certainly not turning up to buy stuff like a credit I may not need. 

The minister, as I told you the other day, took the unprecedented step of offering commentary about the auction and telling us how committed the Government is to climate in the hope we would go "well that’s OK then, see you at the auction". 

It didn’t work. 

The auction didn’t work, again. Eight down and zero sales, no revenue. 

How long before they pull the pin on a gargantuan embarrassment? 

The longer this goes the more foolish they look. 

At the end of each week, Mike Hosking takes you through the big-ticket items and lets you know what he makes of it all.   

Consumers: 7/10 

Confidence at a 6-month high. 

On the Mike Hosking Breakfast Full Show Podcast for Friday 5th of December, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon joined Mike to wrap the year before he takes off on holiday. 

The New Zealand retail experience, as summed up by a frustrated Katherine Hawkesby as of yesterday. 

She visited half a dozen shops - one was decent and the rest were useless. 

They were useless for a variety of reasons, but the common theme was service, or lack of it. 

How is it continually possible that we have a sector crying out for support and yet so unable to offer something worth spending money on, and a country with a lot of people allegedly happy to go find a job and yet the people with the jobs are so fantastically incompetent?   

We all know the story. It's not unique to Katie yesterday, on the early burst of Christmas shopping. Retail, tragically, is filled with hopelessness, lack of stock, lack of desire and a lack of professionalism. 

Which is why the good ones are so welcome and why I have been able to tell you many times in the past few months, and can name you a decent number of operators in a variety of fields, that have weathered these past few years with no real issues at all. 

They are good at what they do. They want to do well. Word of mouth and reputation travels far and fast and they are fine, thank you very much. 

Yesterday's highlight was at a liquor shop. It's a large one and is part of a chain. 

The woman behind the counter, slovenly, full of tattoos and on the phone with no interest in service or acknowledging a customer. 

When asked, because she didn’t offer any help, she didn’t know what Prosecco was. 

How can you work in a shop that sells nothing but wine and spirits and not know what Prosecco is, or where in the shop you find it? 

Who employed her, and why? And why was there no training? This is a big brand and a brand, I would have thought, that would be interested in reputation and a decent customer experience. 

How does a person with clearly no knowledge or interest in the thing they are selling actually get work? 

Are you telling me the people who can't get work are even worse than her? 

The resentment, Katie fumed, is based on the idea that we all work hard for the dollars. 

Handing them over would be easier, nicer and more fulfilling if you thought the recipient, just for a moment, was even slightly grateful. 

The US Defence Secretary seems to be in hot water. 

A Department of Defence report concluded that Pete Hegseth put military personnel at risk when he shared information of a planned airstrike over Signal. 

The incident came to light when a journalist for the Atlantic was accidently added to the chat in which sensitive details of the strike on Houthi fighters in Yemen back in March.  

US Correspondent Richard Arnold told Mike Hosking Hegseth refused to take part in interviews for the investigation, claiming he has the power to declassify material mentally. 

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