National leader Chris Luxon announcing his boot camp policy. Photo / NZME
Forestry land not lost forever after planting
In accusing the government of sitting on its hands while foreign companies buy good arable land and plant trees solely for carbon credits and that, once planted, the land is “gone forever”, your correspondent Vince West is factually incorrect. Land that is going into forestry is unprofitable sheep and beef country, continuing a trend that has seen a three million hectare decline in that land use since 2002.
More than 90 per cent of the land that is currently being planted is intended for harvest, producing useful wood products like timber, pulp, paper and packaging.
Post harvest, land can be converted back to pastoral use, as evidenced by the vast tracts of former pine forest in the Central North Island and Canterbury Plains that have been converted to dairying over the last two decades. The foreigners that Mr West objects to include companies such as Oji, who employ thousands of New Zealanders.
Greg Mann, Whangaparāoa
Benefits a safety net
The letter writer (November 20) has the wrong point that increasing benefits decreases worklessness. There is a very strong positive correlation between increasing benefit payments and the rate of worklessness — i.e. benefits rise, worklessness increases.
Countries such as Singapore that have strong personal savings systems and lower benefit payments have fewer people on long term benefits.
Benefit systems are designed to be a safety net for bad times; unfortunately, modern benefit systems entrench long-term worklessness, not minimise it.
Andrew Parsons, Ōrākei
Stint at military camp in 60s changed me for life
Chris Luxon has copped a bit of flak for suggesting youth who have committed offences should be sent to military-style boot camps. So perhaps it’s time to see how that worked for me.
I was called up in the late 60s to do compulsory military training (CMT). So, I duly reported to Burnham Military Camp to do my stint along with lots of others.
I went there determined to hate every minute of the time there.
After a day or so I had completely changed my attitude. I found I was really enjoying the life. All you had to do was obey orders from a fearsome Māori sergeant major. You got free board, food and cheap beer. And also, free evening lectures on military strategy, tactics and logistics, which were not compulsory but which stood me in good stead in my later work life. And with outdoor skills I still enjoy using today.
I went into boot camp a somewhat lazy lout of a young man. I left a confident, independent, strong, fit and organised person able to face the challenges of life. (And able to see that fearsome Māori sergeant majors were good people who really do care if you cannot make a bed to a certain standard!!)
Boot camp as Chris Luxon proposes will not suit everyone.
But it sure helped me much more than I knew at the time.
Michael Walker, Blockhouse Bay
Luxon a lame duck?
The Murdoch media has turned on Trump after nearly all of his endorsed candidates failed to win their midterm elections. Heather du Plessis-Allan (HoS, November 20) sensing that lame-duck Luxon is also on his way out, has turned on him for his flip-flopping and inability to understand policy. How long before he does a Todd Muller?
Mark Nixon, Remuera
Supreme Court over-reach
I don’t have any particular issue with the voting age being lowered to 16. But I do have an issue with our Supreme Court using its muscle to engage itself in social engineering.
If a voting age of 18 is contrary to the Bill of Rights Act, then so is a voting age of 16, or any other age. So, too, a whole host of other aspects of society that bear age restrictions, among them getting a driver’s licence, leaving school, accessing licensed premises, purchasing alcohol, purchasing cigarettes, and so on. Those are all matters for the government to determine, utilising its interaction and consultation roles with the people at large, not for Supreme Court judges who appear to seek to emulate their equivalents in a Donald Trump-type America.
Social engineering is not the raison d’etre of our justice system, but regularly we experience “creep” in that direction. Of more recent times we see the courts handing out discounts (like some major retail organisations might do), for offenders having had a disadvantaged childhood and such like, no matter how heinous the crimes for which they have been convicted.
Enough is enough. Our judges need to stick to their knitting.
Phil Chitty, Albany
Getting tough on crime
The death of the Sandringham dairy worker could have been avoided if the Government agreed this dairy needed smoke guns. Sadly,we have been waiting for a fatality because of the very little action and support from the Government and now, sadly, it has happened.
Bollards and smoke guns are essential, but so is teaching these thugs/murderers it is totally unacceptable to do these things.
I agree with certain ministers that a harder line needs to be taken for these thugs/murderers, including sending them away from home, stringent exercise, a good diet and to be taught life’s values. From there they can learn a trade to be once again valued in the community.
This is not a prison. These thugs need to be assessed often to mark their progress and then when let back into the community they require constant followup.
Sadly the break ins are becoming a daily occurrence and they need to be stopped in their tracks. If the offenders knew the outcome was to be sent away for hard manual labour maybe they would think twice before hurting others.
Marilynn Cure, Papamoa
Reserve Bank out of touch
The admission by the Governor of the Reserve Bank that they have engineered the current recession just goes to show the lack of tools available to address the economy. They either print more money to satisfy a Government that thinks it can spend its say out of a recession and then when they have deliberated heated the economy to almost a bonfire they throw record-high interest rates on the bonfire, which is like throwing petrol on it.
But for me the last straw was the directive from this out of touch bureaucrat that we “stop spending”. That is not only nonsense as we have to eat (or perhaps he should have said “let them eat cake”). There are many small retail businesses with their backs to the wall as the last six months have been a disaster if you are not a bank, petrol company or food outlet. We have been clinging on hoping that the summer will see people spending their money in the country instead of travelling overseas. The ad campaign “see the country” has been, effective but right when we think things may improve [Orr] uses his high paid platform to warn the country to stop spending. If this does happen then many businesses will close their doors adding to the unemployed list and fuelling the recession. But maybe that is part of the grand plan as they keep telling us low unemployment fuels inflation. It is so callous to deliberately create more unemployment so you can play with arbitrary figures to show your boss that inflation is being cooled. Unemployment is not an economic tool to work with, it creates misery and hardship in families leading to violence and even suicide to name a few. The bureaucrats and politicians play their games while Rome burns around them.
Geoff Minchin, Kawakawa
Relief for workers
Now that the Reserve Bank has confessed to its complicity in increasing inflation and is engineering a recession, perhaps the government should think about supporting workers getting thrown out through no fault of their own. At least more than the $300 a week they will get, or the big fat zero when the partner is working.
Kushlan Sugathapala, Epsom
Reduce AT’s budget
I wonder if Mayor [Wayne] Brown has given any thought of reducing AT’s budget by $295 million, thereby solving the shortfall problem. It seems to me AT waste most of their budget on personal agenda items.
G H Butler, Auckland
The 19-year-old disappeared without her wallet or mobile phone.