Phosphate story not fully told

It’s not really clear what point the author was trying to make in last week’s Growing Pains series about the importation of phosphate from a disputed area of Morocco. Was New Zealand acting in a shameful manner? Or was it just the two fertiliser companies that were to blame?

The article offered no alternatives to what is an important part of farming. Soils here have not benefited from the 3000 years of husbandry in the European nations. To improve New Zealand soils, fertilisers have to be utilised. So why did the article not mention the local alternative, of utilising phosphate nodules sitting on the seabed between New Zealand and the Chathams?

Green MP Gareth Hughes argued (to the EPA) that phosphate nodule extraction from the deep seas off the coast would cause irreparable damage to sealife and coral. He provided no scientific evidence for this, just the emotive rationale that anything ‘‘big business’’ did was inherently bad.

He, and his party, are therefore condoning the cruelties of life in the Sahara. Although I’m a very tiny interested party (owning $400 of Chatham Rock Phosphate shares), I cannot sit back while the interests of New Zealand are condemned by a one-sided article.

Pete Herridge, Upper Hutt [abridged]

Want country back

I hope that New Zealanders do not forget the most important, and underlying, issue in the Stuff coverage of the Western Sahara phosphate trade.

The people of Western Sahara would simply like their country back. That is not an unreasonable desire.

Michael J Barton, Alicetown

Bad behaviour

I listened to a discussion on the radio regarding the behaviour of children in class. They were talking about primary kids of six and seven years old who were throwing school equipment and furniture around the class and the teachers can’t touch the kids to stop them! This is ridiculous.

The only way to stop this is to invoice the parents the cost of the equipment that the kids have destroyed. The teachers are not their parents. They are their guardians whilst at school. It is the parents’ job to teach these kids respect for others and for people’s possessions. We have gone from the sublime to the ridiculous.

I got the cane when I misbehaved at school and it didn’t do me any harm. I’m not saying that you have to go that far, just bring up good kids, not brats! What will they be like when they get to college?

Bob Grinling, Johnsonville

Not my taxes

In our schools today, pupils can purposefully smash up computer screens, windows and anything else they like and the teachers cannot touch them to prevent them from doing so.

The pupils now know this and many are virtually uncontrollable, other than through their being expelled. The stupidity is that once the pupil leaves the school grounds, he or she can be arrested by the police for carrying out this sort of wilful damage elsewhere.

The cost of this damage to property is coming out of my taxes, as are the wages of the bureaucrats who are telling teachers they are not allowed to restrain these out-of-control pupils. To my mind and no doubt to most other taxpayers, neither of these costs are costs I wish to have paid for by my taxes and I believe it is time the Government woke up to that fact and acted accordingly. Allan Kirk, Masterton

Rental arithmetic

Philip Dashfield (letters, Sept 13) says there is no loss of accommodation by the sale of rental properties. However, rental properties have an average over three residents while owner-occupied properties have under two occupants. So sell 10 rental properties with 30 occupants to owner-occupiers and up to 20 people have homes, while 10 or more are now looking for accommodation.

How many homeowners do you know who have a three or four-bedroom home with only one or two occupants. Any landlord renting a threebedroom home will have at least three occupants. Just ask one.

Forcing landlords out of the rental business is going to make the housing situation worse. John Joseph, Tawa