Letters to editor: Road safety, TECT proposal and Waitangi Day

Prime Minister's words on Waitangi Day have not gone down well with one reader. Photo / George Novak

TECT proposal

The 56000 consumers of TECT are in turn representative of their families and are the beneficiaries of the proportion owned by them of Trustpower assets.

This in reality is nearly everyone in the former Tauranga Electric Power board area who originally provided the assets of Trustpower.

Twenty per cent of the income paid to TECT is presently paid out to local charities and now the TECT trustees want to disenfranchise the consumers, pay them a fraction of the equity and distribute all the residue to the charities of their choice into the future.

How transferring ownership of assets will future-proof them is not explained.

How trustees can manage distributions better than the consumer beneficiaries is also not explained.

TECT trustees should read their own overview and be guided by that as they seem to have lost their way.

Graeme Faulkner
Tauranga

Waitangi Day
"We have failed in our partnership" - the words of the Prime Minister on the Waitangi Treaty Grounds presages a rough and expensive time ahead for most New Zealanders with a government that is corrupting the words of the treaty and apologising to Maori for problems that are mostly of their own making.

Madam Prime Minister, there is no partnership. We are all equal subjects under the Crown. That is what the treaty says.

Bryan Johnson
Omokoroa

Be safe on roads
On Monday morning I was awoken by the sound of a fire siren.

It transpired that there was another crash on SH2 between Omokoroa and Katikati.

This seems to be an almost daily occurrence these days.

Statistics show that in 2017 more people died on SH2 between Katikati and Tauranga, than died in 'commercial' airline accidents worldwide in the same year.

I am appalled by an advert on television at the moment promoting an SUV with built-in touchpad and screen that says the car can more or less drive you. This reminds me of a pop song we used to sing in the 1960s.

Keep your mind on your driving,

Keep your hands on the wheel,

And keep your snoopy eyes on the road ahead,

We're having fun sitting in the back seat ...

With the phone or pad and that's where they should stay!

Incidentally on the way home the same evening from Tauranga there was another accident at the junction of Omokoroa and SH2 with the fire brigade and police in attendance. Can it get any worse?

Ray Gregory
Omokoroa