Move election to Anzac Day

Your story of preserved thumbs in Waihi mining times (News, April 11) was a sobering reminder of desperation before social welfare. It reminds me of the dire conditions that prompted a similar sacrifice by World War II Kiwis working down mines from Stalag 8B in then East Germany, now Poland’s Silesian Valley.

Desperate to survive and knowing their captors’ fastidious respect for conventions, many called a Heretaunga soldier ‘‘the doctor’’ because he used wire clippers or mallet to snip or smash the next-to-index finger (opposable thumbs were a loss too far by then) to render them unable to work down too-often deadly mines. More than 1500 New Zealanders were transported there – and often remained traumatised by the experience long after they returned home.

My hope is that this history too is brought to mind on Anzac Day. Perhaps one day we could establish April 25 as our usual election day in honour of the democratic freedoms such servicepersons won for us. Steve Liddle, Napier

Board’s Covid jabs

I always enjoy reading Alison Mau’s column, but I do feel the need to provide a correction in the part of last week’s column (‘‘Has one DHB shot itself in the foot?’’) where she criticised board members of the Auckland District Health Board (ADHB) for getting their first shots of the Covid vaccine.

There are a few points your readers might consider:

The ADHB has embarked on a vaccination programme for everybody on its payroll (that’s about 11,000 people!), following in the wake of border workers and those in primary and community care.

ADHB members are on that payroll (yes, we get paid and are counted as employees, albeit part-time).

If the board of directors are not willing to get vaccinated (say, for ‘‘personal reasons’’), what signal does that send to any other members of staff who might have qualms about the programme?

The pandemic has brought out some of the best in New Zealand’s culture and institutions. It has also opened up some bleak corners , and the vilification of ADHB board members for doing their duty in the staff vaccination programme has been one of them.

Peter Davis, elected (and partvaccinated) member of the Auckland District Health Board

Hong Kong’s plight

In newspapers around the country John Bishop has written that all colonialism has been ‘‘evil’’. In some cases, yes.

But in Hong Kong a benevolent dictatorship produced a well-run, prosperous, law-abiding society. It became a top trading nation. It boasted proud achievements in justice, health, affordable housing, welfare, banking, transport, aviation and communication systems .

All this painstakingly built up over one and a half centuries, and now sadly being dismantled by de-colonisation, a return to an autocratic regime reducing it to a mere province.

Wayne Wilson, Christchurch

Define ‘essential’

I have to say I am tired of the whinging around the topic of ‘‘essential’’ workers.

It has been a shock to me in this Covid-19 year to learn how much of our economy seems to depend upon workers from overseas, ranging from the ridiculous (shearers and nannies, and tractor drivers), to the more plausible, (health workers).

Could an economist please explain how this happened and whether or not these imports are all justified. Am I right in thinking this just happened in the last 20 years or so? And what has been the impact on our housing and infrastructure crisis?

Narena Olliver, Greytown

Right to super

Re: Daylight robbery’’ (Business, March 21).

Superannuation is a regular payment made into a fund by an employee towards a future pension . Any employer’s contribution to that fund will form part of the employee’s total remuneration package.

In New Zealand, superannuation is treated as ‘‘savings’’ and as such the employee has title over that money. ‘‘Title’’ is absolute, it can only be relinquished by the owner/title holder. Therefore no entity can make an arbitrary decision to withhold what belongs to the individual. Remedy may be found in the Bill of Rights Act 1990, s.27 – the right to the principles of natural justice. About 1992, the politicians made enhanced overnight changes to their government super fund. For the minister to say that making deductions from someone’s ‘‘savings’’ is ‘‘fair, equitable and affordable’’ is a wrong.

Government pensions, on the other hand, are entitlements and are sourced from taxes. Not forgetting that super funds have their ‘‘profits’’ taxed.

John Fittock, Christchurch

Song of praise

Given recent comment about New Zealand becoming a country of non-belief in God as

portrayed in Holy Scriptures, it was interesting see the significant number of parliamentarians who joined in the singing of Whakaaria Mai (How Great Thou Art) during a memorial for Prince Philip in Parliament on April 13 – there must not be as many nonbelievers as some people think. Wayne McNeil, Auckland

Abortion barriers

Amongst other matters, Andrea Vance (Sunday Politics, April 11) bemoans that ‘‘unacceptable barriers to . . . abortion still exist’’. It seemed that the decriminalisation of the laws concerning the killing of unborn children was enacted specifically to eliminate all barriers to this procedure. Just how far does Vance wish the change to go?

Like most commentators of her type regarding women’s health, she overlooks the fact that at least 50 per cent of those killed by abortion are female.

Are their healthy lives of no value? One group of females lost forever and another emotionally damaged seems a high price to pay for feminist ideology.

Philip Lynch, Upper Hutt