The sinkhole and broken sewer main on St George's Bay Rd in Parnell. Photo / Watercare
Indictment of years of lack of planning
The Watercare report stating 150 litres of sewage a second (calculated over 24 hours there would be at least 8.64 million litres a day) is draining into the Waitematā Harbour is a damning indictment of our lack of infrastructure planning over many years.
Sir Dove Myer Robinson would be turning in his grave. To expect local authorities to agree on cooperative action to alleviate this and other infrastructure issues is a “pipe dream”.
Despite monotonous, uninformed rhetoric from many vested interests this will never occur until the principles of “Three Waters” is implemented forthwith.
There is no such thing as a “free lunch” and it will need to be paid for by the taxpayer and/or the ratepayer or a combination of both.
Bruce Tubb, Devonport
Luxon was wrong to cull route
Christopher Luxon is very proud of his commercial expertise, which he believes stands him in good stead to be our next leader.
It is interesting to note that during Luxon’s six years as CEO of Air New Zealand, the company was experiencing high growth in a period of record worldwide travel by air. Yet I believe a bad decision was the cancellation of services to London, made during Luxon’s stewardship.
Senior representatives did not have the institutional knowledge to remember the efforts that management, under Norman Geary’s leadership, took to obtain the flying rights.
It took several years of negotiation to convince the UK Government to allow the company to operate a viable daily service with suitable time slots, firstly at Gatwick and later to Heathrow.
To sell those rights to a second-tier US carrier made little sense. I suggest we will never see a scheduled Air New Zealand aircraft service to London Heathrow again.
If Luxon ever has the influence to make decisions on behalf of New Zealanders, I hope that they will be well-considered and for the future wellbeing of all its citizens.
As Winston Churchill once commented: “The further you can look back, the further you can see ahead.”
Peter Burn, Whangaparaoa
Real change needed
I am 83 years old, which means I have experienced some 20-plus elections.
In 2023, I want to thank Susan Glasgow for her opinion piece, titled The forgotten children who need your vote, (Herald, October 5), for bringing some sense of reality of the abysmal nature of the current campaigns, especially of the two biggest parties, that show no signs of solutions to the significant problems we face and the clear connections between them.
That we allow so many children to experience real poverty is an indictment on all of us.
Given the increasing banality of this campaign it is not surprising more and more people are shifting their allegiance to other parties, not necessarily because they support their policies, but more a statement of dissatisfaction with National and Labour, whose utterances lack any sign of vision, or hope, for the future.
In the same issue of the Herald, there was a half-page advertisement by a new group called RE:Shape which is arguing that our democratic systems are out of date and incapable of dealing with the issues we face. They are so right. It is time for some real change.
David Hood, Hamilton
Climate concern
Susan Glasgow’s piece in the Herald, on Tuesday 5th of October, asks us, when casting our vote, to consider children and the horrifying poverty that affects so many.
The other issue which is demanding our attention at this time is climate change and this affects children and their (future) children more than any of us present-day voters.
If we care about children and want to pass on a liveable environment, one where people can be useful, productive and enjoy their lives, we must vote for climate action above all else.
David Tyler, Beach Haven
Pharmac CEO views
The pejorative comments made by Pharmac’s CEO and her staff about Rachel Smalley, (Herald, October 6), points to a lack of rectitude on their part, as opposed to any failings on Rachel’s.
I find it hard to believe Sarah Fitt’s assertion that the comments made were not reflective of “Pharmac’s culture”. The attitude of a leader sets the tone and vision of an organisation, and I’m reminded of the old axiom that when a fish stinks it starts at the head.
It’s disturbing that within a democratic construct, Pharmac expended so much energy trying to neutralise Rachel Smalley’s enquiries into their funding model and how those decisions are made.
I can incontrovertibly state that from both a personal and professional perspective, Rachel is a journalist who abides by an unflinching standard of integrity and who is a fierce and uncompromising advocate for Kiwis who can’t access life-saving drugs.
I’m not for a moment suggesting that Pharmac has an easy task, and the funding pool isn’t inexhaustible, but we should all be alarmed at the lack of transparency on the part of this government agency.
We need to be asking the very salient question that Rachel posed: During the annual Treasury budget allocation for the CPB, (Combined Pharmaceutical Budget), is Pharmac actively lobbying the Health Minister for a more equitable cut and asking why New Zealand ranks at the bottom of the OECD for funding life-saving drugs? If we aren’t asking the question we should be, because that could be any one of us one day needing a drug that could extend or improve our lives.
Mary Hearn, Glendowie
Rental market
When demand for any product exceeds supply, the price rises. So don’t blame “greedy landlords” for rising rental costs, they are just responding to market conditions.
The real problem — the supply of rental stock failing to meet increased demand — is directly attributable to both increased immigration and government policy.
Currently net annual migration is approaching 100,000 people per year. That’s a level last seen in 2020 during the last months of the NZ First-Labour coalition which, despite all Winston Peters’ anti-immigrant rhetoric on the 2017 campaign trail, was two-thirds more than any level reached during the nine years of the Key Government.
Additionally, potential landlords are discouraged from investing in rental properties by 10-year “bright-line” capital gains taxes and punitive tax treatment of ownership costs, with the latter, not surprisingly, also passed on in increased rental prices.
While these two conditions prevail, the situation can only get worse.
John Denton, Napier
He was caught trying to trade gift vouchers for sex with a 14yo, police say.