He is not that different from a Korean who kills three people in Korea and is allowed to enter New Zealand, or a Chinese student who kills a fellow student in Auckland and stuffs his body in a suitcase and throws it into the Auckland harbour?
I can think of five similar incidents and there are more, but the Justice Department doesn't have public records of foreigners who kill New Zealanders.
The best I kept for last — Kim Dotcom. He has cost this country millions in legal expenses, and Immigration screwed up allowing him into NZ in the first place.
Our Gambian friend is lined up for a standard of living he has never had before — three meals and his own room for the next 10 years, paid for by the NZ taxpayer.
BOB WALKER
St John's Hill
TPP signing
Open letter to Trade Minister David Parker:
Thank you for your invitation to join you in Chile on March 8, at my own expense, for the signing of the resurrected Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement that your own party in Opposition said was seriously flawed.
I'm afraid that is not my idea of inclusion. I want and expect people to be engaged with and listened to during the entire decision-making process and for negotiations to be based on a genuinely progressive mandate and conducted in a democratically transparent way.
Instead, I will be spending March 8 in Colombo, where I hope to contribute to more positive outcomes by presenting at an UNCTAD High-Level Policymakers Workshop on digital trade and e-commerce — an issue of major concern in the TPP that you are about to sign and with which your government has still not come to grips.
Perhaps former trade minister Todd McClay, who says he was not invited to the signing, would like to take my place.
PROFESSOR JANE KELSEY
Faculty of Law
The University of Auckland
Toxic waste
Recently we attended Professor Paul Connett's talk on the dangers of water fluoridation.
It would have been good to have seen some district health board members there (all invited), especially considering they could be soon deciding, or more likely rubber stamping, this disgusting practice if the Government has its way and mandates it.
After all, they are elected to oversee our health, and none would be such an expert on this topic as Professor Connett, who has travelled to New Zealand 13 times on this issue, in a voluntary capacity, as he is so concerned we realise the truth about it.
Great to see three WDC councillors there, as they will be the people carrying out the dirty work of dumping this hazardous waste into our water.
With no right of refusal, the current bill before Parliament would slap $200,000 fine and thereafter daily $10,000 for non-compliance. How can this be?
It would have been very good if more of our elected representatives took an interest and made a stand against it.
Please be aware that hydrofluorosilicic acid is not only a toxic waste in its own right, it also has many heavy metals that will not only be bad for our health but you can say "goodbye" to organic gardening.
Please, please don't put it into our water supply.
If people want to use it, there are toothpastes or tablets available. People's choice.
L D PORT
Whanganui
Attributions
Mr Benfell (Chronicle, February 19) likes to know where I got the information used in my letter.
Kate Raworth, in her excellent Doughnut Economics book, has a graph showing data from the Greenland ice core. Temperatures have gone up and down for some 100,000 years but have been remarkably stable during the last 12,000 years.
This coincides with the roving bands of Homo sapiens settling down, beginning agriculture and building the great human civilisations.
The Mexican children left on the US border I think I got from the Chronicle.
Mexico, like Middle Eastern, Indian and African countries on the same latitude increasingly suffers from man-made droughts, a big factor in social unrest and wars.
Thank you, Mr Benfell, for reminding me to state chapter and verse in any future letters. I hope you will do the same.
NICK PYLE
Whanganui
Discrimination
In my opinion, society in New Zealand is often constructed by the way one looks, not the way one perceives and understands human nature.
Under the Health and Disability Act, people can discriminate based on the one's appearance.
This is rather inequitable.
I feel it relates to human society in the modern day and age, as it produces stereotypes.
What does the rest of society feel about this social construct? In my opinion, it is not about the way one physically looks but it's all about charisma.
M LEE
Tawhero
Send your letters to: The Editor, Wanganui Chronicle, 100 Guyton St, PO Box 433, Wanganui 4500; or email editor@wanganuichronicle.co.nz
