 Good introduction music for Mark Mitchell. The blue cork and the red cork. That's stupid man. Good morning to both of you. Good morning, Mike. Good morning, Nancy. Hello, Mitch. Hello, Mike. I do love it, mate. You need to get to the 21st century. Do people still buy CDs? I reckon they buy CDs, don't they? I mean, I've listened to that. Finally, it's good to hear some good music on your show. You like this? Is this you? Is this a bit of you? Absolutely, yeah. Oh, here we go. The hitmaker you can vote for. You don't use Facebook. You buy CDs. What do you actually say you would make a move from another race? Yeah, but he loves McLaren, so I say no more. Yeah, that is... Have you got a couple of McLarens in the garage, Mike? So I like a McLaren. Nothing wrong with a McLaren. Now... James Shaw. Let's start with... I'll start with you, Mark. Is, first of all, is it a resignation offence? Look, I think that it's getting close to that. I like James on a personal level, but I think that he has shown extremely poor judgement in terms of the decision around the funding for the school, and for a whole range of reasons. But I remember marching in Queen Street back in at the start of this government's term because they were threatening charter schools. And Vanguard in particular was a school that was kids from my electric were going to that were failing in the mainstream and they were getting picked up and excelling at Vanguard. And then it's a huge slap in the face when the government completely departs from its only ideologically driven policies and starts funding a green school with 50 students put on top of that effect. The Treasury said that it hasn't even got full private school registration. There would be completely inappropriate doing in funding, and actually the potential growth fund is the wrong fund to use. Can you, Stuart, divorce yourself enough from the coalition partner to see this? Do you reckon to a resignation offence or not? No, I don't think it's a resignation offence. But, you know, you talk about resignation offence as Mike. I mean, Judith Collins had to apologise in Parliament because the general manager of the National Party put it at which was deemed to be misleading. I think that's a resignation offence. James is a really good guy. He has very strong values. He's admitted that he got this wrong. And, you know, that's an important part of his rehabilitation. He admitted he made a mistake. He's the first politician I see. First of all, everyone seems to like him. I don't think there's a single person who doesn't like him. Second of all, he goes, I feel really terrible or something like that. You never hear politicians say that, so I think he's probably heartfelt in this. But when the bloke we had on, Stuart, earlier on this morning, Martin Chamberlain from the Secondary Principles Association, he blames you guys as much as he blames the Greens because you guys must have overseen this. You're all part of this. You're in it together. Oh, look, as far as... Look, I'll tell you my stance on this, to be honest. I think that that state funding is for state schools. I think private funding, private schools are funded by people who can afford to send their kids there. I'm quite clear about this. I mean, I don't think we should be funding this. That's my personal view. But, you know, James he advocated for what he believed was a shovel ready project that was going to create a whole lot of jobs in Taranaki. Which is true, it does. Or will. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, he thought he was doing the right thing and hindsight when he's taken a look at this, he's admitted that he made a mistake. I mean, people do make mistakes. He says he feels terrible. I genuinely believe him. He's a genuinely good guy. Mark, how much this goes on in government, though. He held the government to ransom over a $3 billion fund to get $12 million. And I think this is where the real difficult situation for James is that he held them to ransom and said that we will not support advancing any of the other projects under the shovel ready when the country's in a situation where we're fighting Covid. And we have to get these projects, and those projects have to get started. So, I think that's the real political issue that he has to face. And by the way, I think that Labour does have some culpability in this because that has to be signed off by Grant Robertson and Chris Hipkins. So, No, it doesn't have to be signed off by Chris Hipkins. It was actually Phil Twyford and Shane Jones. What I will say, Mike, you know, you talk about holding people to account on this. Judith is still talking about bringing in international students at a time when we're fighting to keep Covid out of this country. No, she said she's going to bring in international students when it's safe. Yeah, but they've been talking about bringing in international students when, I say, Dave, the National Party have been talking about bringing in international students the last three months. It's a fantastic pivot, Stuart, but you're not interested in it, Mike. Here's my point on the international students. You're going to bring in people from Australia right now. You want to look at Australia as an example of how to do things well. I mean, you know, they're having deaths in Victoria. New South Wales is looking at That's not Australia. That's Daniel Andrews and Victoria, which is separate to the rest of Australia, which is doing great. Yeah, but what we want to do, Mike, is make sure that New Zealanders are protected. You're bringing people from across the border who aren't Kiwis. When we are safe, when we have got things sorted, we are not at that point yet, and yet the National Party keeps going on about bringing in international students. I think you'd be surprised at how many people support the idea. Mike, if you could do it now, what's wrong with bringing CC? You've got 100 people coming in from wherever, pick China or Korea or whatever you like. You put them in isolation, they come out the other side. They've been tested negative. They're back at school. Where's the problem? Yeah, well, we have to get ourselves into that position. It's important for our future without a doubt, but I think that Nassie just sit down and say, you've got a vaccine. The reality of it is we need to start planning that it may not be a vaccine around for two years, and actually he's right, the border is not sorted. Once we get the border sorted, once the public can have a high level of conference that the government's able to manage that, whoever's in government live, that we are, then we can start looking at re-kicking the economy in areas like international students right now. The public don't have confidence to be able to do that. They do feel like they'd be too much risk because the thing that I find highly offensive about the Green School approval too is that I put up Penlink in my electorate, which is a big infrastructure project. I believe it's around public safety because a whole lot of people that live on the peninsula, they've only got one way on, one way off, and it would provide enormous relief to our transport network. I put that into the house. Yeah, but it's a road, though, isn't it? Yeah, it's a road. Why didn't you make it a cycleway? Yeah, it was. It's not going to be a cycleway, but the point is I put that into the house. Labour, the Greens and New Zealand First all voted it there. One supporter, it's ready to go. Just to wrap the sure thing, Stuart, do you reckon it's going to damage the Greens and they're in trouble getting to 5%? No, look, I don't know. I don't know what's going on within the Green Party in terms of their membership. I think they've got a very strong base. I think James is seen by the vast majority of people, Greens and others, as a man of integrity. So, you know, as mentioned, he's made a mistake. He's got nearly seven weeks to fix that and I think he will because people see him for who he is. What do you reckon, Mark? I think they are in trouble because they are on the 5% threshold and going into the election on E-Day, you always see that the Greens, in fact, most parties take a drop of 1-2% on terms of what they're pulling. So I think they are in trouble. Here's my prediction. If you think about it, the people successful people who've been said, hey, we had to keep in mind it, 40,000 Kiwis have returned home through isolation and not one person is allowed isolation without a negative test. country? They're still flooding into the country and from all over the world actually because they're looking from where they are and seeing New Zealand as the safe haven that it is and seeing how well Jacinda has managed this and admitted by Jacinda has done a very good job of admitting it. And they're saying we want to come home and they're coming home to Jacinda. I'm sitting here in Knightsbridge and I'm going oh Jacinda's calling me I've got to get home from London. No but it's not Jacinda's calling them it's their parents who are saying come home we're in a safe haven we're looking at what's going on in the UK. Come home. I tell you what here's my thinking Mark no one is allowed to leave no one is allowed to leave managed isolation but here's my concern about the border correct me if I'm wrong Mark we still don't know what happened for level three we don't know what happened with this community cluster we cannot say for you I think it's the border I think we all know it's the border because it wasn't the community they still haven't nailed down it was what part of the border which means we don't know we're not going back there again do we? I've never felt from day one that the border has been safe I think that the government still I keep saying is operating the contingency type mindset with hotels scattered everywhere I just don't believe that that is a sustainable model and I believe that we'll have the breaches in the future and we just can't afford to do that we do have an opportunity to throw every government resource at this work with the private sector make sure that our border remains absolutely airtight in terms of letting this virus in. So Mitch you would rather have the private sector guard our hotels than the army and keeping in mind you're a former minister of defence so you know how good the men and women of our armed services are they are fantastic they're well disciplined and they do an awesome job I think the army do a better job than the private sector to be honest but you know you said earlier on that you want to bring students and we can do this and you say that you know we haven't got the capacity to manage Kiwis. The government's got the lead role to play but I'm telling you now that it can be very well supported by the private sector as well so I've written it's a common model around the world now we government's outsourced because actually the private sector often more efficient and well you've got both as far as I can work out and let me ask you about Sam Morgan who doesn't like you guys anymore buried among people who are useless deep inside ministries who can't just deliver this he's right isn't he. No he's not right at all you know what Sam is suggesting is that every Kiwi you know man woman child wonders ran with the lanyard and that we're going to get away with that I mean you know people who have to wear lanyards where their work struggle with that but yeah we've got at the moment with you know any man this dog carries a phone I don't know about you but I'm assuming 99.9% of your listeners Mike log on to their to their tracing app and look at the QR code wherever they go it's working well you ask people to wear a lanyard wherever they go just I just think Sam's dreaming. All right what do you say Mike? No I just think that and we've announced this in our border policy there's an opportunity to use Bluetooth technology to allow to bolster and strengthen a tracking trace system which fundamentally is going to be critically important for us as a country over the next 12 to 24 months. Good on you guys nice to catch up you have a good one we'll see you next Wednesday Mark Mitchell Stuart Nash Wednesday mornings exclusive to the Mike Hoskin breakfast day 22