Basically, the events did not eventuate and they made a huge profit that will feed into their executives’ pockets as significant bonuses. The profits are coming directly as a result of higher premiums and lower payouts.
And they, like other insurers, continue to put premiums up again, on top of previous hikes where there were not the events they had used as a reason to hike them last time. It’s time to call this behaviour out and stop the profiteering.
Ali Jones, Christchurch.
Mandate apology
The revelation by Heather Du Plessis-Allan that the Labour Cabinet already knew in January 2022 that Covid mandates weren’t really effective, but took until September 2022 to drop all of them, raises grave concerns about that Government’s accountability and credibility (HoS, Dec 1).
It makes a mockery of Jacinda Ardern’s catchcry during the Covid period to only believe what was coming from her Government’s “podium of truth”. To prevaricate on such an important issue shows an ignorance and complete disregard for the feelings of those who as a result of these mandates lost their jobs, lost their businesses, disrupted families and caused mental breakdowns.
For many months none of this needed to have happened. Instead, there was a cavalier attitude towards those who didn’t take the jab, as demonstrated by Parliament’s Speaker Trevor Mallard when he referred to the vaccine mandate protesters in February 2022 as the “the biggest collection of ferals” he had seen.
More recently, we have Chris Hipkins at the Labour Party’s annual conference stating that his party “needed to change to rebuild the trust Labour had broken under the last Government”.
How can trust in Labour be rebuilt under any circumstances given that Hipkins has not seen fit to apologise, as suggested by Du Plessis-Allan, to those who did not want to be vaccinated when the evidence suggests the vaccine didn’t stop the transmission of the Omicron variant.
Bernard Walker, Mt Maunganui.
Education interference
The question “What is wrong with NZ schools” shows mainly Māori and Pasifika are failing (HoS, Dec 1).
This is not going to surprise educationalists, especially frontline operators — those teachers left to deal with Governments changing behaviours over the years. They have constantly interfered with different parts of the curriculum, created social divisions within our communities while providing limited support for the consequences, little help with huge migration numbers requiring second language-skilled teachers and poor offerings to support children with learning/behavioural needs.
What did the country expect? When I started teaching in 1984 we were excited to have alongside us Māori leaders from our community. They encouraged participation in Māori from teachers and students.
A number of my young children they knew well and would willingly take turns to sit in on lessons, eyeing any child that showed disrespect. It worked. This link with Māori should have been enhanced and money provided. Instead, support for any child displaying troubles became a raffle among schools for paid assistance.
The winner was the Government saving money, thereby forcing unbelievable difficulties onto classroom teachers. Had we worked, too, alongside Māori communities, Māori might not have become a “statistic”.
No foresight, no successes.
Emma Mackintosh, Birkenhead.
Wealth tax
In last week’s Herald on Sunday there was an article written by Thomas Coughlan that pointed out that the Labour Party had inched closer to campaigning on a wealth tax or capital gains tax.
If they go for a capital gains tax they would almost certainly exempt the family home and tax people’s profit on selling extra houses if bought and sold within, say, five years, plus an endless list of other things you could put a capital gains tax on (eg gold, art, rare vehicles etc).
A wealth tax would be incredibly difficult to implement as well, with some not-very-nice consequences. Let’s take, for example, a smallish working farm valued at $4 million. The house would be exempt so the farm would now be valued minus the house so let’s say it’s now worth $3m.
If they tax 2% a year that’s $60,000 a year. Most small farms can hardly pay their way now, if Labour brings this tax in they may well be remembered for the Government that destroyed small farms and financially damaged all farms and orchards in New Zealand.
Sell you say, who would want to buy a farm with that tax hanging over you?
Bruce Turner, Cambridge.
Roads of insignificance
A recent trip from Auckland to Taupō took considerably longer than usual due to numerous roading repairs.
There were three lengthy separate areas of the Auckland-Hamilton motorway undergoing repairs at the same time. These required drivers to travel at around 30km/h in a single lane. We passed a great number of large machines — most of them lying idle and very little repair activity in action.
Common sense would dictate that it would be more efficient to complete the repair of one section of the motorway before starting work on another — rather than have three slow areas simultaneously.
North of Taupō, there were more roadworks, with traffic reduced to a single lane. We waited 20 minutes for the Stop/Go to change for us to proceed. Why were two huge trucks then required to lead us for many kilometres at about 60km/h on a completed section of the motorway with the speed limit listed as 100km/h?
On the return journey we were confronted by a detour sign on the Waikato Expressway north of Hamilton There were no signs indicating a detour route to get us back to Auckland. The exit at this “detour” offered only a left turn, and we had to travel back toward Hamilton for many kilometres with no signs indicating the route to Auckland.
Clearly, the NZ Transport Agency is not concerned about efficiency or facilitating travel on what should be roads of significance.
Janie Weir, Newmarket.
