It was interesting listening to Mr Joyce saying that by proposing to pass legislation around foreigners buying residential property in New Zealand, Labour was fixing a problem that had already fixed itself. Anybody who has successfully run any enterprise knows that when you have a problem you put in place measures to prevent a recurrence as soon as possible. Not Mr Joyce. He is the sort that would say, why fix the hole in the roof, it has already stopped raining?
Colin Rennie, Orakei.
Golden rule
Why do some men have difficulty knowing about their behaviour? Here is a simple test which we women who have been "admired" or "patted" or called "girls" or "dear" at work know. A man should ask himself, would you say or do that to another man? If not, don't try it on a woman colleague. Admiration and respect and humour is good, of course. And so is this simple boundary.
Christine Smith, Northcote.
Low value work
We are wondering when AT will pull its overalled workers, their machinery and road cones from the almost unproductive replacement of kerbing around Grey Lynn, Mt Eden, Mangere and other places and relocate them. Park 'n ride areas nearly all need to be extended, some resealed. Wide berms could be resurfaced for angle parking. We would then see something for their efforts.
I would be interested to find out where the "salvaged" bluestone kerb blocks end up. They did look better than the new concrete ones.
Barry Wilson, Orakei.
Wet spring no excuse
The council's weak excuses for the neglected state of the city's parks only serves to highlight the problems with the contractor model. If our parks were looked after by local park keepers, during a rainy spring time they would have got the weedeaters out and cut the grass on the boggiest patches, and mowers would have done the firm areas. And the sorry state of Albert Park would be solved by the daily attention of a dedicated park keeper, rather than the occasional visits by a team from contractor Ventia.
Tony Waring, Grey Lynn.
Tram stops
Your correspondent Ross Boswell claims Dominion Rd which is already congested will become well nigh impossible if trams are introduced, because he says all of the traffic will have to stop when the tram stops. Mr Boswell is obviously not old enough to remember when Auckland had trams on all of the busy roads, such as Queen St and Symonds St, there were platforms for tram passengers and traffic did not stop. I would suggest any new tramways will have these platforms at all stops and the traffic on Dominion Rd will not have to stop.
David Mairs, Glendowie.
Building inspiration
Steven Joyce, the former Finance and Infrastructure Minister, is reported saying he can't see how the new Government can build the promised 10,000 affordable homes a year. Well I can because it has been done before. In the post war reconstruction of Great Britain an impoverished, exhausted nation with a desperate shortage of materials managed to build not a piffling 10,000 but 100,000 brick and tile social houses a year. A staggering three quarters of a million in only eight years, so well built that many are still in use today.
They did the impossible because they wanted to; through imagination, organisation, the determination to house their citizens and the courage to borrow the money to achieve this - all qualities which we like to claim for our own but which Mr Joyce is denying. He is telling us wealthy New Zealand with the only liability being the legacy of indifference and somnolence left by his ousted Government, cannot aspire to one tenth of the British achievement. I think we're better than this. We can do it.
Patrick Cotton, Remuera.
Jacindarella
Some of us can't help wondering when the media inspired Jacindamania will metamorphose to Jacindarrhoea. To date Ms Ardern must be given high marks for rhetoric and slogan based visions for New Zealand but low marks for practicality and financial acumen.
A question mark must also exist over leadership and management skills required to bring vision to reality with the disparate mishmash selected to govern. Perhaps when the red, rosy, artificial glow subsides, much maligned Andrew will seem a solid and honest but lost opportunity for the Left.
John Makin, Devonport.
Battle centenary
Minister of Defence Ron Mark should declare it totally unacceptable that the sacrifice our soldiers made in helping win the battle of Beersheba 100 years ago, should be cynically misrepresented to the children of a New Zealand school by those in our Jewish community who sponsored the planting of commemorative trees there, as having been fought for the establishment of the state of Israel. It wasn't.
M. P. Evans, Tamaki.
Neglected parks
Anyone who regularly visits Auckland parks and reserves will agree with the criticism in Bernard Orsman's article on Tuesday about the council's increasing lack of regular maintenance to keep paths, grass and trees in good condition. And this withdrawal of services is occurring just as more and more pressure goes on all of Auckland's open spaces due to the rise in high density living where an increasing number of residents have no backyards of their own.
But I was still taken aback when phoning the council to ask about some local commuter tracks at the bottom of my street that are thick with leaves and mud. Apparently there are now no regular schedules of parks maintenance. I was told by the council's reception, "It's now up to the public to report and request what's needed." Weeks later I'm still waiting for my logged job to be attended to.
M. Carol Scott, Birkenhead.
Australia's refugees
Sending a frigate to Manus Island to take off their refugees is just a pie-in-the sky suggestion by Brian Rudman. What government would interfere in the decisions of another, no matter how close? No matter how noble, calling out or shaming another is just not on - unless you happen to believe in social justice, of course, and in a family of interdependent nations.
The faulty logic that puts stopping boats above asylum rights is not just that some unintended consequences are the result of well-intentioned policies. The tragic fault here is that these results of outsourcing refugees were entirely foreseeable.
The out-of-sight, out-of-mind thinking shared by both major parties in Australia needs to be challenged for what it is: an outsourcing of ethical responsibility.
Steve Liddle, Napier.
Sugar tax
New Health Minister David Clark needs to stand firm when he gets to meet Coca Cola's Oceania general manager Sanhya Pillay.
The company will argue that they now have a "Coke No Sugar" product which tastes almost identical to Coke Classic.
They might try and convince our Health Minister they too are serious about reducing the obesity epidemic. This of course is nonsense and the only thing corporate giants are interested in is profit.
Coke Classic is the number one selling product in all supermarkets and they will do anything to protect that lucrative market.
In my view our new Government should get really tough and slap a 20 per cent tax on sugary drinks. Mexico, France, Denmark and other countries have a 10 per cent tax but we should be leaders not followers.
Glen Stanton, Mairangi Bay.
