Your views, August 16

Concerning the election, I would like to know if they were going to be doing anything about the beneficiaries. I moved out of Gisborne about 5 months ago. I had to leave my 1½ year old daughter up there with my mother, so I could come closer to Wellington to find work. Since I have moved down here, I have found a part time job, but being on the Unemployment Benefit as well does not cover the minimum bills each week. I get just over $100 with WINZ, and my part time job pays $160 p/wk, the place I am renting is $160 p/wk, then I have a home phone so I can keep in contact with my daughter, then there's power, petrol to work, and food. After these have been paid out, I'll be lucky if I have $5 left. So really my comment would be is that the people who are working or trying to find full-time work should not be penalised, and what will this election provide for beneficiaries who want to get off the benefit but just cannot find work to cover themselves?
- Childless Mother, Wellington, 16.08.05

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Why do people keep saying New Zealand is the most highly taxed country in the world? It is not true. I suggest they go to the internet and study a few countries. Even if they look only at Britain, Sweden and Australia, it would broaden their knowledge. If there were an Olympic medal for whingers, New Zealand would win gold.
- Anne McComish, Tauranga, 16.08.05

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Don Brash says he will cut back the subsidy on doctors' visits. He believes it is unfair for someone on his salary to have subsidised visits. Maybe it is, but what does he reckon the threshold should be? Most likely the same people who will get nothing for Helen Clark's Working for Families package will also get hit in the pocket with higher costs for doctors' visits. What a great choice we have in this election. One outfit is interested only in looking after the poor and the other interested only in the fat cats. As usual, you either want to be filthy rich or dirt poor to survive in this country. As for the smaller parties, they are inconsequential, and a wasted vote. Where is the McGillicuddy Serious Party when you need it?
- M. Worsley, Henderson, 16.08.05

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National Party transport spokesman Maurice Williamson has made a big mistake in reviving the defunct eastern highway. He admits it would take 10 years to build. What is needed is immediate action to reduce the traffic flow at peak hours on the Auckland motorways. Increasing heavy vehicle traffic from and to the port is causing major congestion. All Auckland MPs, including Mr Williamson, should be pressuring the port company and the Road Haulage Association for heavy vehicles, especially container trucks, to use the motorways from 10pm to 6am. Mr Williamson should also be supporting a dedicated container rail link between the port and the proposed new inland port at Wiri. This would reduce congestion on the motorways and could be available, at far less cost, within three years.
- Keith Dimond, Howick, 16.08.05

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Maurice Williamson and his buddies running the RevUp campaign might well reflect on the following quotation from James Kunstler in the Guardian Weekly. Kunstler, the author of The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century, writes: "The dirty secret of the US economy for at least a decade now is that it has come to be based on the ceaseless elaboration of a car-dependent suburban infrastructure - McHousing estates, eight-lane highways, big-box chainstores, hamburger stands - that has no future as a living arrangement in an oil-short future." Does this sound like the new Auckland? With crude oil hitting $64 a barrel and set to go higher, motorway advocates need to realise that they are arguing for a lifestyle that is doomed and which, in the short term, is likely to drive the United States and its posse pals into further oil wars.
- Terry Locke, Kingsland, 16.08.05