At the end of an episode of Seven Sharp, host Mike Hosking offered his views on the incident of Prime Minister John Key's repeated pulling of a café waitress' ponytail.

The Broadcasting Standards Authority upheld four complaints against Mike Hosking for unfair remarks about the waitress whose ponytail was pulled by Prime Minister John Key.

In April this year, a waitress said that she took offence to Key repeatedly tugging her ponytail when he came into the cafe she worked at.

Broadcaster Mike Hosking covered the topic at the time on the television programme Seven Sharp.

He said the waitress' motivations for speaking out were "selfish" and "a puffed up self-involved pile of political bollocks".

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He also said the café owners were the "victims" of the situation.

He said: "To quote the waitress concerned today, 'I felt New Zealand should know'. What a puffed up, self-involved pile of political bollocks. She had a problem at work. The owners were the people to consult, not a blogger."

The Authority upheld the complaints that these comments were unfair to the waitress.

The comments were during Hosking's Final Word segment, where he gives his views on a chosen topic often in a provocative manner.

However, the Authority said the nature of this segment meant there was no opportunity for any response or defence to be given.

They also said that while public figures can be subjected to this sort of criticism, the waitress was not a public figure and should not have been scrutinised as such.

"[A] person who is not a public figure should be able to speak up and make assertions whether they are right or wrong without being treated unfairly and in an intimidatory way by a television presenter speaking from the platform of a powerful broadcaster", the Authority said.

The Authority held publication of the decision was sufficient to mark the breach and did not make any order.

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