Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern shares a muffin during a picnic lunch at Paihia School. Photo / Peter de Graaf, File
Kate MacNamara's article (NZ Herald, June 8) on school lunches was most illuminating. The question she raises is, why are lunches being provided for so many children who do not need them? In fact, why are the good intentions of so many parents being usurped by a "one-size fits all" government policy?
The article points out many students in lower decile schools happily bring excellent lunches to school. It is also well recognised that there are pupils coming to school without adequate food. These pupils are not just in lower decile schools. Good schools have always recognised this and have used a variety of strategies to provide these youngsters with food.
It is fundamental to the New Zealand psyche that families take pride in being self-sufficient. It is also fundamental that we care for those who are neglected. Good schools have always looked after those children who, for a variety of reasons, are not fed or clothed adequately.
This policy of blanket provision is an insult to the majority of families. Why is our Government not willing or able to more accurately target those in need?
John Angell, New Plymouth.
The nurses' strike is only scraping the top of the income problem.
What New Zealand really needs is to reduce the number of taxes on top of taxes that are continually growing. IRD, import duty, tariffs, land rates, water rates, electricity (which used to be Government-owned) and GST on all these services including food, medicine and everything else.
Then comes an extra petrol tax which affects any form of transport.
The list goes on until no matter what the original pay increase it's soon eaten up by the gross amounts we have to contribute to overpaid civil servants and governments.
What is the point of striking when the Government will get it back in one form or another?
To paraphrase Mr Shakespeare: "A tax by any other name will hardly leave us much".
Catherine Curleett, Remuera.
In reply to Dr Vicki Carpenter (NZ Herald, June 6). My dad was a men's hairdresser in Otahuhu and my mother worked in the shop. My parents wanted me to go to Auckland Grammar. At the time I didn't. After an interview with an official in Gillies Ave, I was granted permission to attend.
The first day was daunting but, for the rest of my years, that has been my school. I'm proud to be part of it and its traditions. I feel even more privileged to see the achievements of the old boys and students today achieve in similar ways. Some came from wealthy homes and some did not. Either way, we were all equally given the opportunity of an outstanding education.
The Ministry of Education put the enrolment scheme in place in 2000. House prices have increased in this zone because of the education and student achievements. About 20 years later, many past students can't afford to live in the zone. Equality comes by allowing old boys like me the choice to send our sons back to the school we continue to call our own, even though we can't live in the prescribed zone.
If this is privilege then let's have more of it.
Max Brown, Cambridge.
Dr Vicki Carpenter (NZ Herald, June 8) has to be questioned concerning her adamant support for the recent Government edict creating a new inflexible zoning for school entry.
She argues that anything else is a perpetuation of cultural and economic privilege for higher decile schools.
What should never be forgotten however, is that many top performing schools have moved into this category because of the ongoing support of generations of former pupils and families with their continuing interest in every aspect of their school, including governance, staff, academic success, and sporting achievements.
Historic family support is undeniably part of the life of many successful New Zealand state schools. How unacceptable to criticise this important tradition, often going back generations, with instead a wish, as is happening all throughout New Zealand society, to try and make everything equal the lowest common denominator.
Hylton Le Grice, Remuera.
Emissions plan takes power away, two competing climate change policies work against each other, writes Brooke van Velden (NZ Herald, June 9).
If you are rational and informed you will know humanity faces a crisis every bit as life-threatening as WWII. Imagine if we had allowed the market to control and direct the war effort.
Yet this is the proposal from Act, and National, to keep us on a path to net zero emissions by 2050.
Imagine how many hydro dams we would have inherited had needs been left to the free market. It's not difficult to answer. New Zealand needs to build a huge wind farm every
year. Where are they?
Our future is frequent dry years. Norway has seven years hydro storage, we have seven weeks. So we are to depend on human selfishness and greed to build a pumped-hydro reservoir?
Tell you what, when it's full, I'll walk on it.
Dennis N Horne, Howick.
Given our government has declared quite rightly that we are in a global climate emergency I would have thought that everyone needs to be considering how they are going to reduce their carbon emissions.
We as consumers have a part to play, reducing our consumption of natural resources, and need to support Initiatives like walking, cycling and using public transport or carpooling. Easing congestion by building more roads is not going to stop climate change.
Our futures are determined by our personal actions now.
Alison Feeney, Remuera.
Nurses are a vital part of our current and future health care strategy.
The America's Cup is definitely not and the cycleway… well perhaps a re-think of a tunnel under the Waitematā incorporating a cycleway, a walkway, rail and cars could be considered.
A dedicated cycleway at significant cost does not make economic sense when our nurses are likely to be attracted to Australia in droves with an active recruitment drive taking place.
An increased population coupled with an ageing population means these highly trained individuals should have appropriate value placed on them.
Long term, I would far prefer my tax and rates dollars to go towards essential services rather than "nice to haves" that the country simply can't afford.
Come on Grant Robertson and Prime Minister Ardern, get your priorities in the right place please.
Robyn Brown, Mt Albert.
In March, my son's cannabidiol (CBD) prescription was interrupted for nearly two months and violent seizures rained down on his 6-year-old life. He had never before experienced such sustained intensity of pain and brain injury.
Our doctor works around the clock to ensure continuity of supply the Ministry of Health seems determined to thwart. CBD is the only medicine to offer him any quality of life since his epilepsy started, aged 2. He has 10 days of medicine remaining.
When Labour took office, it made a 100-day promise to make medicinal cannabis available. Delivery is 1200 days overdue and not one licence granted to local Med Can industry to meet this year's again-extended deadline to October.
The backward slide of increasingly inaccessible and unaffordable medicinal cannabis because of unnecessarily stringent regulations has crippled our local market and $250,000 in compliance costs per product will be charged to patients without recourse to public funding.
Regulations like these are anti-competitive and make us the laughing stock of developed countries moving to make CBD available over the counter and classed as novel food.
Katy Thomas, Auckland Central.
Are our memories so short?
This time last year we were in the middle of a terrifying global pandemic with a vaccine being a pie-in-the-sky Holy Grail.
Despite the process usually taking years, within 10 months a safe vaccine has been developed and has been secured by our government.
Are we really complaining because the bulk of the vaccinations may be completed closer to the end of July rather than the beginning?
This pettiness astounds me.
Which country would the discontents prefer to live in?
Fritha Parkes, Mangere.
On honours
Dame Ruia Morrison. Why did this take so long? Ross Harvey, Remuera.
On nurses
If there is money available to build a cycle track over the harbour, there should be money for nurses to get a liveable wage. Liz Fleming, Drury.
I accept that nurses may be underpaid and do a sterling job but I am not sure a wage increase helps them with arriving at work exhausted. A. Walker, St Heliers.
There's always money for All Blacks sports events and America's Cup. You never see them striking. Yet they don't save lives like nurses do. Helen Lowe, Albany.
On Goldsmith
Who would have guessed Paul Goldsmith (NZ Herald, June 9) is an undercover agent for Labour? His utterances have well and truly torpedoed National. Pim Venecourt, Pāpāmoa.
On banking
What will my cheque account be called when cheques have been phased out? Chris Thompson, Rothesay Bay.
On Bezzant
Jake Bezzant states, through all his shenanigans, that there are "two sides to every story". He is wrong, in cases like this there are three sides – his, hers, and the truth. Glenn Forsyth, Taupō.
On resthomes
The price of apartments in retirement villages appear exorbitant with too few rights for the occupiers. Bruce Tubb, Belmont
The 19-year-old was found in a remote area in the hills of Upper Hutt.