NZ drivers set tourists a bad example
Just as Thailand is known for sex tourism and Holland for pot tourism, I wonder if one of New Zealand’s attractions is “hoon’’ tourism.
Behaviour that is the norm here would earn hefty fines, loss of licence or even jail in other countries: speeding, red-light running, failure to keep left, etc.
Even if not a deliberate choice, the example set by New Zealand drivers is that anything goes. Add jet lag, driving on the other side of the road and language difficulties and you have a highly dangerous mix, sadly exemplified by the long weekend’s road toll. It is with disbelief that I read Watercare is adding $2300 to the cost of a new house by lifting its connection charges.
What started as a charge of $575 several years ago for a new water meter connection was increased to the current $9775. It is now increasing charges to $12,075 in July. It says further that it wants to lift this to $38,640 in coming years.
Perhaps if Watercare had not recently leased flash new offices in Newmarket, at some of New Zealand’s highest office rents, it could control its own costs better.
Adding this to the council new-house subdivision charge of $24,412 means the council is now on track to add an extra $63,052 to the future new-house cost.
Forget the Commerce Commission looking at material costs. It needs to look at council monopolies running out of control. Imagine that we put the money proposed for a new railway into a public self-driving car system. Imagine that we could order a car to turn up when we want, take us where we want, and then go off to its next job without our having to find it a park.
Or we could stick with last century’s technology and build a railway that will not take most people to and from where they want to go, providing little benefit to people not living close to the rail corridors.
Which is the bigger risk? Unproven or obsolete technology? We should at least be taking the alternative seriously. The original intent of the Resource Management Act was to provide a reasonable balance between development and the environment.
Unfortunately, it was badly drafted, so bureaucrats and protesters can easily delay or block almost any development.
We own a small hydropower scheme that is subject to onerous and expensive environmental requirements. When it became obvious the scheme had minimal effect on the environment and most of the requirements had no environmental benefit, we suggested to the council that we should discuss things we could do to actually benefit the environment.
It had no interest because its job was “to apply the rules”. So now we have a scheme where costs arising from the act added 30 per cent to the building cost and have conferred virtually no environmental benefit.
Your correspondent Graham Easte said 97 per cent of applications are granted. The obvious conclusion is that 90 per cent did not need to go through the process. So we pay hordes of bureaucrats to process applications that did not even need to be considered. The cost to the nation is huge.
The act certainly needs to be overhauled. It must go back to its original objective of a reasonable balance between development and the environment. A recent full-page advertisement by the World Wildlife Fund requested people to “Help save the last 55 Maui dolphins”.
The mythical figure of 55 Maui dolphins has been used for at least two years, and the results of various campaigns have seen the jobs of a number of New Plymouth fishermen terminated because of government bans on fishing in several areas without suitable compensation.
There is no scientific evidence that any Maui dolphins exist. The sub-species (of Hectors dolphins) can be identified only by DNA analysis of tissue.
None of the campaigners have ever quoted any scientific study where they have been identified, tagged and tracked to determine either their numbers or the extent of their territory.
The last supposed sighting (not proof of identity) in Taranaki waters was in 1986. Government observers on fishing boats have seen none.
Campaigners, including WWF, should be required to scientifically prove their case before embarking on emotive campaigns based on speculation. What is litigation doing to our national productivity if 26 per cent of health workers in an Otago University survey of 227 hospital staff had been subjected to litigation by patients and their families in the previous year?
Many more had experienced verbal and physical abuse, and sexual harassment.
We are third on the list of developed countries having the most lawyers per capita, after the United States and Brazil. We should have fewer lawyers per capita than any other country because of ACC’s removal of the right to sue in the case of personal injury.
Lawyers are flourishing on the litigation gravy train, as reflected in the health worker survey. This is at the expense of hard-working, innocent people and it is damaging to our national productivity. It must be stopped. The marriage of convenience between the Mana and Internet parties is what it is.
There appears to be a lot of angst in the media at the indignity of it all or is it just another way of filling their news slots? Let’s face it, the other major parties are hardly breaking-news material.
It is interesting that other minor parties with wacky policies are not considered a threat as they will never make the percental quota. The fact that the Internet Party could get into Parliament on the back of Mana seems reprehensible yet we are prepared to accept that the Conservatives, Act and Peter Dunne’s meal ticket are okay.
How much longer do we, the public, have to put up with this rubbish. Parliament has the answer and could have fixed this problem but failed to do so because it didn’t suit the incumbent party. Perhaps a good kick in the pants by a couple of rogue parties is what they need to wake them up. What a lot of sanctimonious nonsense. Carbon dioxide is not “carbon”. Carbon is an element.
The Greens use “carbon” as a politically correct term, to try to persuade the public that carbon dioxide is a nasty, dirty pollutant.
Carbon dioxide is not “pollution”. It is a natural gas, essential to all life on the planet.
If George Orwell or Joseph Goebbels were alive today, they would know that their observations, and the “Ministry of Information”, are alive and well.
The Greens’ policy statement is an absolute distortion of facts and reality. If you make the lie big enough, and repeat it often enough, the public will start to believe it.
The Greens are trying this. Their carbon tax proposal should be exposed for what it is: a thinly disguised tax grab. The report that medical records are now going to be online for every Tom, Dick and Harry anywhere in the world to access at will is appalling.
The medical information in records legally belongs to the patient who should choose whether it all goes online or to hold their own records to take to consultations.
During decades in the medical field I have personally seen the way paper then computer records are accessed by staff out of pure curiosity. This is why I have not signed on to a general practice register and prefer to pay my trusted GP the full amount rather than have information posted in such an insecure, dangerous medium as the internet.
Right to privacy has been completely wiped out by this Government. Who in their right mind would give a doctor very intimate details, knowing they will immediately be posted on the world wide web to entertain browsers.
Erroneous information remains forever — which could endanger a patient not alert enough to contradict it. Letters to the editor should be sent to: Box 32, Auckland. Fax number: (09) 373-6421 Email: letters@nzherald.co.nz Letters should not exceed 200 words and must carry the author’s signature, name and residential address. Emailed letters must include a full residential address and phone number, allowing a check on bona fides. Attachments will not be accepted. Noms de plume are not accepted; names are withheld only in special circumstances at the discretion of the editor. Letters are not normally acknowledged and may be edited, abridged or discarded.