Not co-operative: Letters, 28 February

The Bay of Plenty Times welcomes letters and comments from readers. Here you can read the letters we have published in your newspaper today.

Hospital cuts plan shocking

With reference to your front-page article concerning mishaps at our local and other hospitals, I think it would be fair to acknowledge the thousands that are safely treated by professional, devoted and caring staff who go beyond the call of duty to offer support to the sick. Often, especially in the A&E; department, staff are abused by low life who are drunk or on drugs or just plain unpleasant.

It is, therefore, outrageous that Tony Ryall announces plans to cut staff.

I hope he means from the top. Those who sit on boards and pontificate and not the nursing staff who are worked off their feet.

Mention is made of a few who have fallen out of bed. How are nurses expected to watch over each patient every minute of the day? Elderly and those on some medication which can cause bewilderment will try and get out of bed and fall.

It is miraculous that there are not more. What is the solution? To strap patients into their beds?

Instead of the Government pouring taxpayers' money into endless, and often unjustified, Treaty claims (the latest figure being $952,082,645 and ongoing) how much better it would be for all New Zealanders if that money was put into health and education.

Mary Brooks, Avenues

Not co-operative

Zespri is not a grower co-operative.

It is a limited liability company incorporated under the Companies Act. Fonterra, by contrast, is a co-operative and operates under the Co-operative Companies Act.

Zespri's annual report reveals around 18 per cent of growers are not shareholders and a further 17 per cent are under-shared relative to their production.

That means that more than a third of growers do not get to have the same say as the rest of the kiwifruit growers in a company that they are compelled by law to supply.

There are also some 8 per cent of Zespri shareholders who are no longer growers. When they sold their orchards they kept their shares to enjoy the superior dividends that Zespri has been paying.

That is not a "grower co-operative".

The single point of entry is supposed to be about the greatest good for the greatest number.

Zespri does not fit that model and is a blight on the historical "social contract" that has been used to justify the single point of entry model for primary producers.

Oh, and it is rich for Zespri to want to protect its "intellectual property rights" when it has diversified itself from its core business of marketing into plant breeding and is unwilling to allow other variety owners to exercise their own intellectual property rights.

Leaving aside the tarnishing of intellectual property rights surely the social contract for the SPE and basic property rights means that Zespri must market those varieties of kiwifruit that Zespri does not own if growers want to plant them?

If Zespri does not want to market them, then those growers should not be prevented by law from selling them to someone who can sell to markets other than Australia.

Marcus Y Wilkins, Avenues