Does anybody know a 15- to 17-year-old who responds to being told what to do in a loud voice?
Reg Dempster, Albany.
Closing the gap
New Zealand’s brain drain to Australia did not start in the last six months.
After his scathing attack on the recent Budget, I hope correspondent Jeremy Coleman (NZ Herald, June 14) took time to read Matthew Hooton’s piece in the same edition.
Hooton recounts how Act’s Rodney Hide, when in coalition with National, forced Sir John Key and Sir Bill English to agree to Don Brash leading a working group to close the income gap with Australia by 2025.
Brash came from a background as governor of the Reserve Bank, when he lowered inflation from around 7 per cent to under 3 per cent. His group, called Taskforce 2025, produced 35 recommendations and was ready just a year after the 2008 election.
The Beehive leaked the pre-release courtesy copies to TV political editors who trashed them and that was the end of that. According to Hooton, Key’s Government was quite happy winning elections by borrowing rather than boosting productivity, and successive governments since then – including Dame Jacinda Ardern’s Labour, and now Christopher Luxon’s coalition – have continued the practice.
Personally, I would not put Grant Robertson or Nicola Willis in charge of the housekeeping.
David Howard, Pakuranga.
Public service overstaffed
A recent correspondent has criticised the coalition Government’s pruning numbers of public servants.
The public service payroll increased by about 40,000 during the previous six years, much in the same way Helen Clark’s Government increased the public service so as to make unemployment appear to be only 2 per cent.
The coalition parties campaigned on reducing numbers to 2017 levels and that is what is happening now.
Surely that will not reduce efficiency, but rather overcomes overstaffing.
A.J. Petersen, Kawerau.
Mining spoils
Matthew Hooton makes out we will go bankrupt as a nation if we don’t open up to all sorts of mining (NZ Herald, June 14).
He claims that we need to be like Norway and develop a sovereign wealth fund from mining and resource windfalls. At the time that Norway developed Statoil and its associated sovereign wealth fund, there was considerable political debate in Norway about that, with warnings from the right that it would become a socialist state.
At the same time the UK, which equally gained from the same North Sea oil, decided it was best to let the private sector manage the resource and take the tax gains. Norway went down the path being lauded by Hooton (surprisingly, as he could hardly be described as an advocate of socialist ideas) and the UK squandered its windfall with the resulting mess its economy finds itself in.
Hooton also seems to forget that at about the same time New Zealand had the windfall of the Maui oil field. It too was not put into any form of sovereign wealth fund, but squandered with “Think Big” and the resource handed over to the private sector.
Frankly it is extremely unlikely that this coalition Government would want to put any mining resource gains into some “socialist” sovereign wealth fund. They just think we can fast-track our way to mining wherever regardless of environmental concerns, tax the private sector and that all will be well.
The history Hooton describes says otherwise.
Neil Anderson, Algies Bay.
Marokopa musing
In the 1960s, an experienced bushman, sentenced to prison for theft and car conversion, made three escapes, one lasting 65 days, a second lasting 172 days.
On these two occasions, a huge manhunt was formed before he was eventually captured in dense bush. His name was George Wilder and, such was his fame/notoriety, a song was made about him.
Today another bushman alleged to have committed an armed robbery, and accompanied by three young children, has eluded authorities for nearly 900 days. There has been no huge manhunt, despite the seriousness of his offending and the concern for the safety of the children.
His name is Tom Phillips. Will there be a song written about his exploits?
Ian Doube, Rotorua.
