Whanganui letters: District health board debt servicing 'shock'

Whanganui District Health Board allocated $3.5 million for debt servicing in its 2019-20 budget, writes Heather Marion Smith.

Dear Editor - $45.4 million - that's the amount of capital charge (debt servicing) allocated by just three of our 20 district health boards in their 2019-20 budgets. Counties Manukau DHB - $32.5 million; Taranaki - $9.6 million; Whanganui - $3.5 million*. Anyone game to research the rest? If so, be prepared for a shock.

What is really disgusting is not just the dollars, but the determined dedication to debt funding by a government promoting an image of social responsibility.

Meanwhile, the Reserve Bank has recently declared that "deepening the capital markets" is its main mission - in stark contrast to its original purpose.

Means that funding our DHBs and Crown entities requires extracting huge sums from their revenues to feed the private players on the debt markets where local and central government securities are auctioned. Takes precedence over awarding our nurses a modest salary increase.

There is no legislation actually forbidding RBNZ from credit funding our DHBs. If anyone can find such a law, let us know where it is hidden. And who is hiding it.
[*Sources: DHB annual reports]

HEATHER MARION SMITH
Gonville

McLachlan documentary

It was disappointing to read the Louise Nicholas criticism of the TVNZ documentary that had not even been screened (Chronicle, June 8). How would she know the programme content was inappropriate?

The Craig McLachlan case was a trial by media and he was deemed guilty even before the court case was heard. It did not matter that he was subsequently found not guilty as by then he had lost everything. The only support was from his wife, who stood by him throughout.

Perhaps Nicholas would have also banned the recently screened I Am Not a Rapist documentary showing three young men falsely accused of rape, or the Snapped series, which shows that some women, too, can commit serious domestic violence against their partners.

Men, too, can be victims but receive no support as shown in this documentary, but are still convicted by the media.

ROB THOMSON, social worker
Parapara

Amazon tragedy

The article on the shooting of Sir Peter Blake has simply highlighted the huge problem of the despoiling of the Amazon forest.

It is a tragedy on a large scale being enacted before us - don't we care? The future of the species there, animal and vegetable, are at high risk and moreover it is the "lungs of the world" - if the forest goes we go, the whole world.

Why are the collective governments letting them do it? ... Why is the rest of the world not stepping in? They are quick enough when money is concerned.

M HANNAY
Whanganui

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