Letters: New Zealand’s infrastructure woes, marlin fishing, cellphones in schools - and comedy reviews

Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay on Mt Everest. Photo / Himalayan Trust New Zealand, Supplied

New Zealanders can climb Mount Everest, send rockets into space, and win the British Golf Open but we can’t sort out our basic infrastructure problems. It might be time to put a rocket up the backsides of Watercare, KiwiRail and Christopher Luxon, Winston Peters, David Seymour and Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown. It is time to drive for the summit and get a hole-in-one instead of raking the same sand around the bunker!

Bruce Tubb, Devonport.

Shocking and sad

It is shocking and sad to see the photograph of a beautiful marine animal, a marlin, hanging as a trophy after being tortured for an hour and 20 minutes (NZ Herald, December 30).

That we are well into the second decade of the 21st century and still celebrating these so-called “battles’ with wildlife is simply unacceptable. We have long since stopped celebrating the hunting of tigers and elephants in a similar way.

The blue marlin is listed as “vulnerable” on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. The striped marlin is listed as “near threatened”. All species of marlin are in decline from overfishing and commercial bycatch and their protection is called for.

Paul Judge, Hamilton.

Schools and electronic devices

I wonder if the Prime Minister knows that there is very little that can be done on a cellphone that cannot be done on another device such as a laptop, tablet or similar. At most if not all schools, electronic devices are now an integral part of the learning process. Students today are smart enough to know that if they cannot use their cellphones there are many other electronic devices that can take their place.

Greg Cave, Sunnyvale.

Person or position?

Are knighthoods intended for the person or the position?

Ken McIntyre, Sunnyhills.

Gong community servants

Gongs should only go to people who do community service outside their paid employment.

Neil Hatfull, Warkworth.

Pandemic inquiry

Regarding Deborah Chambers KC’s article, “Why Royal Commission into Covid is wrong” (NZ Herald, December 21): The impact of the pandemic on the lives of every citizen in this country was monumental, unprecedented and to some extent still ongoing.

The Royal Commission set up by the then Labour Government to examine their handling of it is by design extremely limited in its terms of reference and ability, as Deborah Chambers points out, “to ask the right questions”, or to properly “evaluate the Government’s decision-making process”. The implications had profound, social, economic, and psychological outcomes for the entire country.

Therefore, it behoves the present Government to uphold our nation’s founding democratic principles of openness, transparency, and accountability, by scrapping the Royal Commission, with its unavoidable perception of bias and replacing it with a full-scale, wide-ranging, and independent inquiry.

The New Zealand public can have confidence in its ability to find answers to the many unresolved questions that remain. As citizens we expect and deserve nothing less.

Sean Jenner, Waitakere.

Singapore statistics

V M Fergusson’s less than favourable assessment of Singapore (NZ Herald letters, December 29) needs some corrections. Rather than being “highly regulated“, Singapore ranks number one in the index of economic freedom — well above New Zealand’s rank of five in 2022. As for its “high levels of imprisonment” its prison rate, number of prisoners per 100,000 in the population, at 156 is no worse than this country’s 168 in 2023.

According to IRD data, the NZ median annual salary/wage is $54,000 in 2023; the corresponding 2022 figure in Singapore was $74,285 in NZ dollars at the current exchange rate. Certainly not a low wage economy, and its income inequality as measured by the Gini coefficient, 0.36, is no worse than New Zealand’s 0.35 in recent years.

Singapore’s press freedom, rather than zero, is restricted through self-imposition by the media.

Frank Tay, Papanui.

A pretty picture

The Herald quiz of December 31 used a quote from the late Clive James to identify the building he called “a portable typewriter full of oyster shells”. Sydney Opera House may well have been seen in that light, but the on-going image I have retained whenever I visit Sydney is one made in the 1960s liking it to “nuns bathing by the water side”. A prettier picture I think.

Emma Mackintosh, Birkenhead.

Truth hurts

Regarding Karl Puschmann’s diatribe on Ricky Gervais’ latest show (NZ Herald, December 29) he is correct in identifying some recycling of material, but that’s about where the accuracy ends. Gervais has made an artform out of mocking the absurd and the influential.

He understands better than most that societal power is found among those you cannot criticise. Special interest groups wield disproportionate societal influence from within a bubble of trendy left sanctimony. They are just and fair game to the comedian, as the king once was to the court jester.

Puschmann going on to describe Gervais’ audience as intolerant, uneducated, and foolish is a cheap shot and a Freudian admission that Gervais is right. His truth hurts.

Craig Brown, Hamilton.