Getting on with tackling emissions

The Government’s move from vague long-term targets for reducing carbon emissions to real action is criticised as premature by climate-change deniers ( Editorial, April 28). On the contrary, after decades of procrastination, encouraged by the same deniers, the need for action has become urgent.

As economist Nicholas Stern said in 2006, the maths is simple and easily understood: the sooner we begin cutting emissions, the less painful the process will be. But further delays will eventually require a much faster rate of reduction.

If we seriously intend to halve carbon emissions by mid-century, we have 32 years left to achieve it. Spreading the reductions evenly over that period would require an average 2.1% cut each year – hard to achieve but possible.

We blew our chance of an easier transition in the 1990s, when we could have had more than 50 years to honour our Kyoto commitments with average annual cuts of less than 1.4%. If we delay starting for another five years, the cuts required go up to 2.5%, and a 10-year delay pushes it over 3%. Sustained cuts at these levels could well stall the economy. Graeme Easte (Mt Albert, Auckland)

KILLING THE ROAD TOLL

Julie Anne Genter’s plan to reduce road deaths to zero by 2020 may be a dream ( Editorial, April 21), but at least she is keeping road safety in the public consciousness. It’s my dream that compulsory thirdparty insurance (CTPI) be part of a road safety strategy.

CTPI is law not only in Sweden, which Genter holds up as an example of a country that has drastically cut road deaths, but also in the UK, France, Germany and, of course, Australia. All are high in OECD road-safety statistics. New Zealand, by contrast, is near the bottom.

Insurers warn that CTPI would raise costs. However, there are other figures that should be considered. The

New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) estimates the value of a life at $4.14 million. If 10% of the forecast 400 deaths this year were prevented by CTPI, the annual saving would be $165.6 million.

The Accident Compensation Corporation’s personal injury liability provisions are cited by the insurance industry as a barrier to CTPI. A simple amendment to the Accident Compensation Act would remove this obstacle.

CTPI is the only road-safety measure that can improve driver behaviour on all roads under all conditions, because it will pay to drive safely to keep premiums low.

CTPI will save many lives and injuries and pay for itself over and over again. Genter says all options to reduce road carnage will be considered. I hope CTPI is one of them. Evan Robinson (Blenheim) I was a traffic officer when our road toll was twice today’s, I have been a driver tester, and I have driven about 750,000km on motorbikes and in cars. I have a bit of experience.

Our problem isn’t speeding. I travel at 100km/h where it’s legal and I’m usually the fastest driver on my route.

Our roads are unforgiving. We are unique in the Western world in having a two-lane state-highway network. We design roads that kill. One example is our predilection for decreasing-radius corners. Nothing is surer to send a vehicle across the centre line than if corner entry is misplaced or too fast.

The fatality rate on the Auckland Harbour Bridge, from memory, was nearly one a week before emergency doctors successfully campaigned for a centre barrier. Deaths on the bridge are now a rarity.

Our car fleet is old; our drivers are abysmally trained; and many think it’s okay to straight-line bends to save tyre wear or do their make-up and have breakfast while driving.

The Editorial’s assertion that

fuel taxes will lower the road toll is right – the number of deaths has followed economic conditions closely over the years. It is also right that our accident statistics are falling. The present moral panic is fuelled by the media and used by cynical politicians to further their anti-private-travel agenda.

There are ways to make our roads safer. They can be found in Europe, not at Melbourne’s Monash University, the font of all NZTA knowledge. Luigi Girardin (Nelson)

THOSE OTHER WASPS

The story on wasps (“Killers on the wing”, April 28) failed to mention one variety, also known as white Anglo-Saxon Protestants.

Most of them would take offence at being referred to as common or vulgar. Since they arrived here without being properly introduced, they have interbred with the indigenous population, making them impossible to eradicate with

any of the methods suggested.

They have no distinctive markings and therefore cannot be easily spotted. What sets them apart from other varieties is their size. They are thought to be intelligent, but only by themselves. Barbara Harwood (Kohimarama, Auckland)

INSIDE STORY

The article on Epuni Boys’ Home (“Inside story”, April

21) was gruelling reading. There are many adults living as best they can after childhood abuse by families or people in authority. Many cannot adapt. And how many children remain in such situations?

Christchurch’s McKenzie Residential School, which closed in 2013, was an establishment with a reputation a far cry from Epuni’s. It was superbly led by the principal, who ensured staff guided disturbed boys from all over the country into positive thinking

and behaviour. The boys, aged from eight to high-school age, had firm but fair boundaries, regular meals and bedtimes, excellent 9am-3pm teaching, consistent consequences for inappropriate behaviour and rewards when expectations were met.

More McKenzie-type facilities should be opened around the country to give vulnerable kids a chance, particularly when suitable foster homes can be difficult to find. Heather Giles (Christchurch) LETTER OF THE WEEK

CRYBABY WARNER

Abject public apology is a ritual (“After the fall”, April 21). Considering the effect his crying on television would have on his infant children, it is hard to understand why David Warner agreed to make that particular public appearance.

The future may well belong

to crowds; the present owes a lot to Salem, Massachusetts, 1692. Alan Beck (Dunedin)

INTENSIVE CARE FOR HOSPITALS

Politics (“Perfectly stormy weather” April 21) usefully brings to light the capital charges levied by the Treasury on district health boards. The capital charge is in fact a property tax based on a DHB’s net worth and paid quarterly to the Ministry of Health.

In Canterbury, we can expect a massive increase in capital charges once hospital rebuilds are completed. The

Government imposes the charge to recoup money that it would otherwise have earned if the funds had been in the bank. So taxpayers pay twice: first through income tax, then the property tax.

Canterbury District Health Board is so underfunded that it has had to go to the public for $1 million for a hospital rooftop helicopter pad, which is as essential as a ground-level ambulance bay. Labour has previously indicated that it will remove the capital charge, but Health Minister David Clark does not yet appear to have moved in that regard.

Charity-run private hospitals

are exempt from such a property tax, as well as being exempt from income tax and receiving other charity-related fiscal benefits.

As for public-private partnerships, the private finance initiative (PFI) model used in the UK’s National Health Service is a failure. A report last year found that PFIs, described as “perfidious financial idiocy”, were leaking millions of dollars. Over a six-year period, companies running PFIs had profited by £831 million.

Enough of new public management theory. It’s time for rationality to prevail in healthcare provision. Michael Gousmett (Rangiora)

BURNING BRIDGES

Simon Bridges’ example of the previous Government “assisting in the building of new facilities – for example, Grey Base Hospital” will have caused hollow laughter on the West Coast (“Man on a mission”, April 14).

As a former elected member of the West Coast District Health Board, I am aware that the process towards the urgently needed new hospital has dragged on for a decade, not least in recent years because the so-called “West Coast Partnership Group” is made up of people who live elsewhere (four in the North Island) as both National and Labour appear unwilling to permit any local representation.

The latest absentee board appointee is former Labour MP Clayton Cosgrove. Given Coasters’ legendary ability to achieve much with limited resources, surely an injection of local knowledge would have helped to keep Wellington’s planners on track.

As an example of the previous Government’s

performance, Health Minister Tony Ryall announced in December 2012 that the hospital was being “fast-tracked”, but work did not begin until May 2016. Subsequently, as noted in a Greymouth Star editorial, work “appeared to have stalled” last Christmas.

Meanwhile, staff and patients face the possibility, according to Cosgrove, of making do with leaking and decaying earthquakeprone buildings until Christmas 2019.

If Greymouth Hospital is the best example Bridges can find of the previous Government’s achievements in provision of health facilities, it would seem that he is worryingly unaware of events in the rural South Island.

David Tranter (Blackbutt, Queensland)

FOLAU AND GAYS

The media are having a ball dancing around Israel Folau and his hell-fire comments on the fate of gay people ( Sport, April 28).

Who gives a brass razoo about what Folau thinks? Having exceptional sporting skills is not a qualification to comment on wider society issues.

Brian Marks (Paihia)

CHICKENS COME HOME

Campylobacter can cause miscarriages and death, according to the World Health Organisation ( Nutrition, April 28). Yet about 30,000 of us get the disease each year and 600 end up hospitalised.

The main culprit is chicken. If any other product caused so much illness, it would create an uproar. How does the poultry industry escape? Maybe it’s consumer complacency.

My household has taken a simple stand. We’re not eating chicken until the industry cleans up its act. Michael Dally (Levin)