Paul Brooks' easy-to-follow article (Midweek, August 23) points out that we voted in MMP and voted out FPP in central government elections as an unfair system of representation. Do you understand MMP and how the votes are calculated? Does that aspect matter?
I would like to see STV voted in on September 13, but if the status quo prevails, councillors should then motion to build in FPP/STV and other topics (as mentioned above) into a governance-based binding referendum for the 2019 election.
If our current mayor wanted a clear mandate to lead, then under FPP and 2017 he didn't; he got 39 per cent of the FPP vote. This may not be the mandate he would like going into 2019.
FPP is brutal and, like MMP, STV is fairer. Change is always uncomfortable. You have been using STV for district health boards for years; it's already in practice. As both WDC and DHB must be done by law at the same time, using the same system makes it less likely to mess up your vote by using the one system. Will it get more people out to vote, fewer anarchists, or stop blank voter forms, or even stop the apathy? No!
Will it give you a fairer system and more personal control by listing the order of your preferences and, a distributing calculation that supports each of your choices? Yes.
You do it for the DHB elections; why not for WDC?
ROSS FALLEN
Aramoho
World security
K A Benfell's letter ("Trump's right", August 22) praises Donald Trump for taking decisive action against North Korea, concluding that, "The alternative seems to be the acceptance of an unpredictable and probably crazy North Korean leader having control of a growing and developing nuclear arsenal ..."
Love it! So we save the world by having an unpredictable and probably crazy US leader launch nuclear attacks on an unpredictable and probably crazy North Korean leader in order to reduce nuclear arsenals. I feel so much safer knowing that.
JOHN MARTIN
Owhango
Consider this
Treasury has spoken, and we stand around to see which of the contenders will find the most alluring package to woo the voter. It's worth factoring two main events
1. In the very early 21st century, it was touch and go that China would successfully convert its economy into a credible trading nation. In other words, China could make things the world would buy, and most significantly, pay for them.
New Zealand's share of this almost perpetual bonanza has been a solid underpinning of our superb dairy industry. If China had faltered, thus keeping its need for protein muffled, we would not be shuffling around the voters' raffle board with the same gay abandon.
2. For a variety of factors, well researched and perpetually mined, the expanding trauma of the Middle East fiasco is beginning to impinge on hitherto European and North American automatic entitlement to play the tourist in our oldest parts of the world. Thus we are beginning to notice increased tourist traffic down under, to that point, coupled with reverse diaspora of Kiwis, we are experiencing a people inflow repetitiously.
Add in our clever, well educated and resilient workforce; New Zealand is doing very well. One of the few ...
Some would have it that our country is staggering on the cusp of social and environmental collapse. Damned if I can see it.
BERNARD J CORKERY
Whanganui
Time for change
I think the election is wide open here.
We have three ladies standing in Whanganui so far, all different. All are local, and it will boil down to who can do the best for us socially, economically and caringly.
One stands out as having all the credentials to represent us in the halls of power and reverse the stagnation and neglect that has been evident here for the past nine years.
Steph Lewis is Wanganui-born, a past Whanganui City College dux, lawyer with a university education. Steph certainly has all the skills and energy to drag this electorate out of the doldrums.
Steph was raised here and in Waverley, and she certainly has the qualifications required to get this electorate up and trucking.
A vote for Steph will help reverse the downward spiral of the past nine years by a tired and hopeless mob whose only claim to fame is debt by borrow-and-hope policies.
Time for a change, and Steph and Labour are the way to future prosperity for the region and a fair go for all, not just the top 10 per cent.
L GOLDSACK
Gonville
Euthanasia
Steve Baron is unaware of the natural progression from one thing to another. The point many are making about the dangers of "voluntary euthanasia" is that what starts as a selective and careful application of a new "legal right" will inevitably be the thin end of the wedge leading to much less selective application in future.
This has been the case with the abortion law. Once people are accustomed to something, they rarely question it.
Considering life and culture in NZ 40-50 years ago, we have seen society become less and less egalitarian, locks on doors and cars become a necessity rather than a decoration, divorce rates skyrocket, increasing urbanisation, Hollywood/McDonald's/KFC-fuelled Americanisation, digital devices dominating life, etc.
These were gradual changes.
Allowing any form of euthanasia will ultimately lead to softening of attitudes to other forms of "mercy killing" (what an oxymoron that is).
MANDY DONNE-LEE
Aramoho
