Pay negotiations need a rethink
The failure of intervention mechanisms on the nurses’ dispute with district health board negotiators, and statements in the media since, raises many questions about the process of negotiating pay in the public sector. Especially in and on social and essential services.
Commentators on both the Left and Right suggest this Government has unnecessarily locked itself into not borrowing just when it makes sense to spend on long-term infrastructure.
Leaving aside the essential question of whether spending on the human capital of more nurses is infrastructure, is the present system of negotiating any longer appropriate?
Negotiating teams dealing with the public service seem to operate with business model manuals that demand they receive something in return for increased spending.
The result is increases over two to three-year terms that seldom even keep up with inflation. And which trade off money inputs for needs-based ones – staffing needs in particular.
It is good to hear nurses articulate their real concerns – staffing levels that will enable them properly to care for their patients. Then money, but only because it will enable them to recruit and retain enough staff to do that.
Come on, coalition partners – how about real long-term change, and solutions.
Steve Liddle, Napier
Council made the call
Activist Valerie Morse reportedly said that Lauren Southern ‘‘boarded a boat in the Mediterranean that shot flares at medical boats seeking to rescue refugees who were drowning in the water’’.
Columnist Grant Shimmin downgraded that to Southern ‘‘attempted, using flares, to stop a boat carrying asylum-seekers from Africa reaching Sicily in March 2017’’ (July 14).
Southern claims she used a handheld flare in a speedboat so that they could make a clip at night as they protested over the NGO ship Aquarius leaving an Italian port to pick up illegal economic migrants from Libya.
She also points out that the Italian government has recently stopped the Aquarius from docking in Italy and that Germany’s AfD party is now bringing human trafficking charges against the NGOs.
It would have been interesting to confront her about the discrepancies when she came to New Zealand. But Auckland Council did our thinking for us when it denied her a council venue, which stopped her from coming.
Happily, you can still hear her explanation and see the clip on YouTube, ‘‘Vindicated! Europe Stops Migrant Boats’’.
Barrie Davis, Island Bay
Careful with branding
Several letter writers have expressed their dislike at being termed Pa¯ keha¯ . Those who dislike the tag have every right to express their dislike and to use a public forum in which to do it.
Fact: the word Ma¯ ori did not originate from the first inhabitants of this beautiful land, but was introduced by missionaries in the early 19th century to term the above said people into one group.
We called ourselves ‘‘people of the land’’ or tangata whenua; wherever a village was situated the people there were of that land. We don’t necessarily like the term Maori, yet are branded with it. I have a ‘‘spit’s worth’’ of native blood in me; indeed I am more Scottish than tangata whenua, but I am branded as Ma¯ ori whether I like it or not.
Ray Taunoa, Napier [abridged]
Know-how on plastics
Many countries, including New Zealand, seem to be stuck with the problem of plastic waste and pollution from unwanted plastic products.
It is amazing that this problem seems intractable. Organic chemists and petrochemical engineers have many and varied processes for getting useful products from crude oil. These refinery processes of distillation, cracking and synthesis are used daily to get petrol, diesel, bitumen and plastic ingredients from very heterogeneous, dirty crude oil.
The sticking point on recycling plastics seems to be that different types of plastic are mixed together in recycling collection. Surely the petrochemical engineers must know how to melt or dissolve mixed plastic types together to get an artificial heavy crude oil that can be refined in the same way as natural heavy crude?
We can’t leave this problem to a fledging recycling industry when the technology and know-how are out there with oil companies and petroleum engineers.
Peter D Graham, Island Bay
Expressway fiasco
One would think no-one in the world, let alone New Zealand, had ever built a dual carriageway before. We live within sight of the Ka¯ piti expressway.
On the day it opened, it was already a patchwork quilt of surfaces and certainly did not look like a new road.
Ongoing noise issues raised by local residents, together with the revelation (July 14) that extensive repairs are needed, strongly suggest the build was not fit for purpose. Who appointed the contractors, what references were sought and who approved the design? This fiasco is nothing short of disgraceful and surely an inquiry is needed. It does not bode well for Transmission Gully, Peka Peka to O¯ taki and subsequent dual carriageway construction in the Wellington region.
Rachel Kirsopp, Raumati Beach