Let's hear it for our volunteer lifesavers and all the other great New Zealanders making a positive difference. Photo / Michael Cunningham, File
Let's hear it for our volunteer lifesavers and all the other great New Zealanders making a positive difference. Photo / Michael Cunningham, File
Letter of the week: Anne Parker, Green Island
That we should look after our world is a no-brainer. We all make mistakes and need to fix things up and make up for our errors but there are ways and ways. Using children to push our political views is mean andcruel. Mental health in children today is becoming a real problem. I watch them on TV, angrily yelling accusingly. They are distressed. Once, as a teacher, I stood in front of a class of 11-year-olds and suggested they write an essay about when they are grown up and immediately their faces fell. The whole class. I stood bewildered by their reaction and finally, a boy raised his hand to explain. “We won’t be alive.” He said. The class nodded. The whole class. Putting the burden of responsibility on children and organising them to strike from school is a terrible thing to allow to happen. When those in charge paint a picture of the future so bad and hammer us every day on news bulletins. It’s pretty miserable for adults, let alone children who often take everything at face value. The earth is a masterpiece and the children should study how amazing it is and how wonderful some people are on it e.g. Doctors without Borders, volunteer surf lifesavers, firemen, meals on wheels helpers, Habitat for Humanity, SPCA and I haven’t got started.
Broken care
The grieving father of Cassandra Fausett (Weekend Herald, March 25) states he has no confidence change will be made in the provision of mental health services for young people. As a former patient of Kingseat Hospital, I attended the hearings of the Royal Commission into Abuse in State Care and heard one patient after another say that the mental health system is totally broken. Manukau mental health services states all recommendations from the inquiry into Cassandra’s treatment have been implemented, yet just this week I heard of a self-harming and suicidal teenager having to wait three months to be seen. Rotary would run youth mental health services more efficiently. The lower North Island Rotary initiative Lifting the Lid provides immediate help for teens. A vulnerable child in crisis can be pushed over the edge by being told they cannot be seen for months. Our tamariki are a far higher priority than sport, culture, film-making, tourism or the changing of the names of government departments. Our broken system needs to be fixed so that young people like Cassandra are saved when their whānau cry out for help.
A friend of mine asked me to photograph the “Let Women Speak” rally on Saturday. My friend was thinking of speaking and was a bit scared about what might happen in New Zealand after the controversies in Australia. She knew I’d worked in big crowds before and I thought it would be a comfort to her, knowing at least one person in the crowd had an eye out for her personal safety. We were inside the Albert Park rotunda, jammed between the crowd and the piece of fencing holding the banner about 10 minutes after Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull had been hustled out of the same position. It had appeared spontaneous to me, but someone in our little group was organising a way out. Four or five of us then grappled together around the three or four remaining speakers and pushed through the crowd until it stopped pummelling and kicking and tripping us. That was just my side of the group of terrified Kiwi women. One in a hijab; one in a Panama-style hat, one black-haired lady with red lipstick, a bearded ginger-haired one beside a suited guy later named Chris; and I linked arms with a woman bearing a stunning moko kauae, mostly strangers to me. In the days since this occurred, I can’t shake the fact that Kiwi women were beaten in public in New Zealand and many people are celebrating.
British activist Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull aka Posie Parker takes a photo as she is drowned out by trans-rights supporters at Albert Park. Photo / Dean Purcell
Argument clinic
As a city centre resident, I found the anti and pro-transgender protests in Albert Park rather sad. From Brian Tamaki’s black leather jacketed bikies to fringe political groups and enflamed anti-Posie Parker protesters, frankly it was worthy of a Monty Python skit. I know there are issues of human rights and free speech at stake, but it was also strangely absurdist and self-defeating. There were angry militants on all sides who firmly believe they are absolutely right and not interested in listening. Reason and compromise, as always, was the big loser. That thousands of young activists turned out for this spectacle, and much smaller numbers turned out for the recent climate change protests is absurd to me. It’s like bitterly arguing over deck chairs while the Titanic sails blithely toward the iceberg.
Jeff Hayward, Auckland Central.
Damn the dam
Steven Joyce is to be complimented on his writings (Weekend Herald, March 25). Building a dam at Lake Onslow that is supplemented by using yet more power to pump water uphill so it can be reused again is complete nonsense. All at a cost of $16 billion. What Megan Woods overlooks is Rio Tinto, the owner of Tiwai Pt aluminum smelter, is always complaining about the cost of power from Lake Manapouri, its sole supplier. Okay, let’s take them at their word and discontinue supplying power to Tiwai Pt. Then put lake Manapouri on to the national grid at a fraction of the price of Lake Onslow. All our hydro-power supply problems are solved and without having to pay $16 billion for a power supply that is already available from the existing dam at Manapouri.
Michael Walker, Blockhouse Bay.
Words worth
Thanks for his concern, I’m happy to report to Stewart Hawkins (Weekend Herald, March 25) that I enjoyed several “gay” meetings that week; ones which referenced both original and newer usages. My earlier comments on the meanings of “woke” noted the unusually fast and complete reversal of that word’s meaning. I think Jane Austen might have said it was a “nice” observation.
Once a week I drive the St John Health Shuttle out of Thames and take people to medical appointments all over the Waikato and, occasionally, to Auckland. On the drive home, the conversation in the van, virtually without exception, is about the appreciation and gratitude they feel for the excellent care and treatment they have received by doctors, nurses, technicians, therapists and from the efficient and kind frontline administration staff. We all acknowledge the health service is troubled (particularly around wait times), but it must be said that every day in New Zealand hundreds, probably thousands, of people’s health is being seen to by skilled, attentive and very hard-working practitioners.
Kathryn Reed, Thames.
A quick word
Michelangelo’s statue of David offends sensitivities, and Agatha Christie gets rewritten. Don’t throw away that box of old crime novels in your garage – they could be unexpurgated “first editions” and worth money. Arch Thomson, Mt Wellington.
Marama Davidson has shown the Green Party is not a conservation party at all. Social justice crusades and social engineering are their focus and conservation is the smokescreen they use to help them gain parliamentary seats. Craig Brown, Hamilton.
Christopher Luxon on education is another gumboot policy and yet more evidence that our children would gain more at school if politicians kept right out of the classroom. Barry Moffatt, Māngere Bridge.
National has now alienated 190,000 NZ teachers and even more parents, by suggesting a curriculum rewrite and effectively a rerun of the disastrous national standards. Roger Laybourn, Hamilton.
One common argument against cycle lanes is that they are not seen in common use and that argument is often repeated about the buses. Fair enough, let’s be consistent: Footpaths. Wesley Parish, Tauranga.
Considering the state of our education system, it is hard to understand how someone (WH, Mar. 25) found the abbreviation for “what a terrible failure” (WTF) on a sign during the recent teachers’ strike showed “a troubling lack of decorum and bad taste”. Lorraine Kidd, Warkworth.
Regarding the incredulous letter (WH, Mar. 25) about the proposed $3.9 billion upgrade of Auckland airport terminals. It would be a bit of a stretch to upgrade train and ferry services to take travellers to Australia, let alone to the rest of the world. A J Petersen, Kawerau.
If America sneezes the world gets cold. If there is a problem in American banking, European banks fail. Sivaswamy Mohanakrishnan, Mt Roskill.
Thank you to the Green Party and counter-protesters for giving Posie Parker an even louder voice and a bigger audience. Simon Huggett, Franklin.
Shaneel Lal (WH, Mar. 25) says they are tired of living in constant fear of violence. Posie Parker could say the same, at least when she visits New Zealand. David Mills, New Lynn.
The reality is, it is a very dangerous precedent to set when minority groups are telling us what we can or cannot listen to, or think. They are engaging in the very type of behaviour they accuse others of. Ralph Rogers, Silverdale.
I wish I could be paid handsomely for publicly expressing my opinion. Even if it is drivel. PK Ellwood, Beach Haven.
Auckland Council’s proposal to save money by cutting funding to the arts makes me think of a Dutch proverb: “If you can afford two loaves of bread, buy one loaf and a tulip.” Anne Martin, Helensville.
