Dunedin Mayor rebuffs Calvert’s column claims

IN her opinion piece on Dunedin

City Council debt funding (ODT, 10.9.18), Hilary Calvert assumes borrowing through the Local Government Funding Agency (LGFA) has not been considered before this year. That is incorrect.

Ms Calvert appears to have forgotten that I raised the matter when she was deputy chairwoman of the council’s finance committee. In fact, since 2011 I have regularly discussed this issue with successive DCC chief financial officers and the board of Dunedin City Treasury Ltd (DCTL). I also regularly interact with the chair of LGFA.

For the reasons outlined in Mr Crombie’s response, the disadvantages for Dunedin joining the LGFA have so far outweighed the advantages. I don’t know if that will always be the case.

If LGFA rules and/or local government law change, or new ways are found to address current lending restrictions, then DCTL’s assessment may change.

I do know, however, that close attention is and has been paid to the council’s borrowing options and Ms Calvert’s simplistic criticisms ignore the facts.

Dave Cull Mayor of Dunedin

Ms Curran’s treatment

I WAS watching the television broadcast from Parliament at Question Time last Wednesday and I do not share the criticism of Clare Curran’s response to the questions from Melissa Lee.

She answered the first oral question quietly. It was not a problem as it was written on the Order Paper.

She struggled with the following supplementary question which referred to her Gmail account and clearly felt pressured.

This was difficult to watch, but since we all have seen others, both men and women, being asked an oral question at a meeting and responding with difficulty, some sympathy would have been the order of the day. Instead, members judged her on a previous error and the knives were out.

Melissa Lee is a practised television presenter and is well versed in asking questions that can elicit the reply they were planned for.

No doubt she had another to follow that would have led the minister

(now resigned) into more difficulties.

Everyone who puts themselves forward for public office and leadership roles runs the risk of ‘‘fluffing’’ their words, perhaps not understanding the question or, perhaps in this case, of needing more time to consider the answer.

That is why the first innocuous question is written and the following, sometimes five, are spoken.

I don’t believe she needed to resign her ministerships or to feel ashamed. It happens to everyone who stands up to be counted.

It is just a pity that her harshest critics have been women broadcasters. Several men have stood up for her, and it throws away the lessons of fairness and generosity of spirit right back to the dark days of the 1970s and women’s struggle for a voice in a man’s world. Anne Turvey

St Leonards I FEEL ashamed by the treatment of Clare Curran by the ODT, the rest of the media and National MPs.

Obviously she is under stress and, to plaster her photo and your enormous headline, on Saturday’s newspaper was cruel, unworthy and unnecessary.

Clare Curran is a loyal, hardworking, electoral MP who has done a lot of work in support of South Dunedin issues.

Let us give her support for her continued work for South Dunedin.

BIBLE READING: But since we belong to the day, let us be selfcontrolled. — 1 Thessalonians 5:8.