I refer to Brian Rudman's well considered opinion piece regarding the proposed PPP arrangement for building the Auckland SkyPath. The supposed benefits of PPP arrangements often end in tears particularly for the city fathers promoting the arrangements. These often take the form of ways to improve transportation where a toll can be imposed to justify the financial institution's involvement and satisfy the financial returns to shareholders or owners.
I am familiar with the 91 Freeway in Southern California where a toll road was placed in the middle of the freeway at great cost in the 1990s. The expectations of the developer partner and council were not realised and after years of dispute the toll way was returned to city ownership. It is interesting that in the mid 2000s the Auckland transport authorities were advocating such an arrangement to alleviate our transport problems while the parties in Orange County were litigating to get out of the agreement.
We in Auckland City have already gone through proclaimed "exceptional" financial experts and I would not be surprised that the failure of this proposal, if it proceeds, will become another ill-founded dream.
Peter Burn, Gulf Harbour.
Bowel screening
Your editorial (New Zealand Herald July 17, 2017) contributes thoughtfully to the bowel cancer screening debate by raising the issue of rising rectal cancer rates in younger people. The point is valid. However numerically this group remains small. The risk of bowel cancer goes up with age and of greater concern is that almost all public screening programmes have an upper limit (74 years for bowel cancer). In the modern world 75 is not old and the risk of cancer rises steeply above this age. In short, older people are where many cancers are. In the private setting screening is only limited by fitness and not by age itself. The other under-emphasised point is that bowel cancer screening is more about preventing cancers (through removing polyps) than finding them, although the cancers discovered are earlier stage and therefore curable. However many more cancers are prevented rather than found.
John P. Dunn, FRACS, Surgeon Director, Endoscopy Auckland.
Turei's confession
As usual the media and the Herald in particular have totally misunderstood what Metiria Turei's confession is all about. It is not, and never has been about her. It speaks to the dire situation that many beneficiaries are in right now.
The editorial is written through the lens of what Metiria is today. As if, because she is now successful, in some way she was less needy back then. The amount of money people should be able to live on, then and now, are determined by a political agenda and do not reflect reality. As such the laws are unjust and we have a moral obligation to challenge them. Only a week ago, this same paper was rightly celebrating the pardoning of people criminalised by anti-homosexual laws,
At what level of hardship do we accept that it's okay to break the law? The Herald states there is no level of hardship sufficient. Fortunately, that is not true of all laws with hardship routinely used by tenancy tribunals to void legally binding tenancy agreements due to changing circumstances. Public anger should be reserved for a punitive Winz who've forgotten what their core function is.
Jill Cooper, Mt Roskill.
Birth control barriers
Professor Lesley McGowan appears to use financial barriers as a reason a substantial number of low-income New Zealand women are not able to access reliable contraception. Did the 50 per cent of South Auckland women surveyed who had not planned to be pregnant at that time advise why they had become pregnant? Were they restricted by cultural or religious beliefs and attitudes? Did the fathers use contraception? Did their own contraception fail? Reliable female contraception, including a "one off" that can last several years, is actually free or heavily subsidised depending on income and circumstances. Male and female sterilisation are also options. Personal responsibility and communities changing their attitudes from within are huge barriers that need to be overcome.
Fiona Allen, Papatoetoe.
Northland's bridges
It baffles me why a publication that attempts to hold itself up as the "older statesman of the Fourth Estate" does not vet letters to the editor. A newspaper should not be printing letters that spread misinformation. I refer to the letter "On rail link" (Jackie McCabe, July 17), which queried our pledge on rail for Northland because "Winston" had not fulfilled "the promise of eliminating one-way bridges in Northland". The facts are generally known, and legendary in Northland - it was the National Party that promised to build 10 two-lane bridges. This promise is just one of several that remain unfulfilled. In over two years since the byelection not one two-lane bridge has been started. The letter took it further claiming there's been a promise by me to eliminate all the one-way bridges in Northland. There's been no such statement.
Rt Hon Winston Peters.
NZ First supporters
As a recent observer of the NZ First Party at public meetings, I have been surprised and delighted by how culturally diverse NZ First supporters seem to be. In one meeting, I counted at least seven different cultures in attendance. I say "surprised" because I have been led to believe via various media reports that NZ First doesn't like immigrant cultures, and "delighted" because the very people other political parties say that NZ First is advocating against, seem to be the very same people supporting the NZ First Party in the flesh.
Dylan Tipene, Ranui.
Retirement age policy
So, let me get this right. Under John Key National didn't want to raise the retirement age, but Labour went into the 2014 election with the policy of gradually raising the age to 67. When Bill English became PM National decided it did want to raise the retirement age to 67 over the next 20 years, but now Andrew Little says Labour wants to keep it at 65. Please, can we have a bit of consistency? This is a multi-generational issue which needs cross-party consensus, not party flip-flopping for short-term electoral gain.
Jonathan Jepson, Torbay.
Leaky home accountability
I fully back Paul Lochore's article on leaky units (NZ Herald July 18). The Government should bear the major responsibility for this as they allowed the use of untreated kiln-dried framing timber in the mid 1990s.
Government and council employees made many trips at the time to study the leaky unit problem in Canada and the United States. However, the Government still approved the use of untreated timber.
I have seen numerous examples of the effect of moisture on untreated timber and also on H1 timber, the lowest level of timber treatment. Untreated timber exposed to moisture will deteriorate to the consistency of balsa wood and easily crumble in a short period of time. H1 treated timber, however, which is only the level needed to control pests, in the same situation will still retain its structure and basic strength. Any simple testing at the time of the government decision would have shown this.
Another issue was the allowing of solid floor decks or balconies at the same level as the interior flooring in units. Any building 101 course will tell you that a deck should be below the unit floor level.
As suggested in the article, the Government should offer either bond facilities or guarantees for those owners unable to meet the financial burden. This is the least they can do. The work done on this issue to date falls far short of the responsibility to the people affected.
Peter Cowley, Mt Roskill.
