Selective morality on show

Mark Reason’s name suits him so well. The woke warlocks of Aussie tennis and their ghastly hypocrisy was one of the most reasoned articles I have ever read. He summed everything up so well. We can all have our beliefs but tolerance of others and their beliefs must always be in the mix.

I hope Tennis Australia gets to see this. It has made a scapegoat of Margaret Court, an incredible tennis player who all Australians would have been so proud of with her amazing victories.

Mark Reason has exposed their hypocrisy and the hypocrisies of all human kind so well.

Marion Carton, Avalon

Mark Reason knows a lot about sport and he writes very well about it. His thoughtful insights into the hypocrisy of Tennis Australia, and the selective morality of so many in the public arena, should act as a wake-up call about the insidious creep of shutting down free speech in the name of ‘‘protecting freedom’’.

From the non-university (Massey) that bans speakers because of the contents of their speech, to the Auckland city mayor doing the same thing, to the thugs who break up speeches that they don’t like, just as Ernst Rohm did, all the way to proposed legislation on ‘‘hate speech’’, freedom is being denied.

Thank you, Mark, for your fightback against those who want to destroy freedom.

Paul Grainger, Christchurch

Specific needs not met

No time to care? (Jan 20) was timely. The Healthy Ageing Strategy (HAS) identifies care to be ‘‘needs based, person centred, people powered’’. It’s a pity they are still at the conceptual stage.

Anecdotal evidence gathered by Ka¯ piti Grey Power (KGP) resulted in a survey being carried out in 2018. Over eight days 16 people contacted KGP, followed by a further 22 responses along with some written ones.

What KGP found was extremely poor communication, phone messages not being followed up, support workers carrying the can. Rostering was inconsistent, unreliable or support worker not arriving at all.

Weekends and public holidays means limited or no care was provided.

Assessment is variable and may not entail a physical visit and the client may be bullied into changes in their care. Care plans can be cumbersome and not user friendly.

Time-based care makes no allowance for the complexity of the specific needs.

The current funding model does not keep up with the increasing frailty and complexity of those needing support services. Personalised care is being replaced by a warehouse model. Clients speak positively about their support workers.

Nobody goes to work to do a poor job, it is systems that give rise to problems. Margaret Robins, Paraparaumu

Concert station suffering

Sole Mio, Kiri Te Kanawa, Simon O’Neill, Michael Houstoun . . . the list goes on. These are just a few of our internationally acclaimed artists who first appeared on Radio New Zealand Concert.

The network has traditionally been publicly funded to promote New Zealand artists and their performances. They would otherwise not have been heard by

most New Zealanders.

During recent stewardships of RNZ Concert the number of New Zealand performances being recorded and broadcast has fallen off dramatically in favour of a digital diet of popular classics.

This is an abuse of the reasons Concert was established in the first place. When the NZ (then International) Festival of the Arts was first established RNZ Concert recorded and broadcast up to 32 concerts and events.

This meant not just wealthy Wellingtonians benefited from the large lump of public funds poured into the event. In the same way local orchestras, choirs and chamber music events have slowly disappeared from Concert.

The drive to increase the youth audience is short-sighted. At present baby boomers are by far the majority of potential listeners and after a lifetime of paying tax deserve to be catered for.

There are plenty of outlets catering for young people, not least the internet.

I suggest RNZ Concert has designated funding to meet the needs outlined in its charter. Wake up, minister Kris Faafoi. Sue Barnett, Masterton

Response too slow

I can’t believe that the Ministry of Health is not taking any precautions at our borders to protect New Zealand citizens from coronavirus.

Kiwis returning from lunar celebrations in China, and tourists, should be checked at the borders.

Again it is too little too late, when we may have the first cases here soon.

I’m also sceptical about the number of cases that have been circulated. Scientific opinion is that we are talking thousands, not hundreds. Get your act together before it’s too late.

Bob Grinling, Johnsonville

Property gains

In House prices-to-income ratio worsens (Jan 20) Catherine Harris quotes the research group Demographia’s annual survey as saying that prices in New Zealand are now seven times the median household income for a median house.

The survey defined ‘‘affordable’’ housing as three times or less than the median income, a ratio not seen here in New Zealand since the early 1990s.

There are many factors that contribute to the escalation of property prices, many of which are beyond our control in a free enterprise economy. But one contributor is undoubtedly the fact that most profits from property buying and selling are exempt from tax. When talking to anyone about the best sort of investment to make, it is quite clear that it’s property.

As property prices invariably increase over time, a profit is assured, and of course that profit generally attracts no tax.

This situation is a fundamental flaw in our tax system, and should be addressed by whatever political party is in power. It is an issue of fairness. Bringing all types of income within the tax system will establish equity. The taxing of property gains won’t solve increasing house prices, but it will help to dampen down the escalation of prices and contribute to a fairer society.

Ron Cormack, Tirohanga

Effective action lacking

Ollie Langridge’s excellent No choice but to care (Jan 21) spells out very clearly what we may expect from the semideliberate disregard of the everincreasing effects of greenhouse gas emissions.

Yet I doubt if even such a stark warning will have a noticeable effect – New Zealand’s emissions have simply continued to rise for the past 30 years. Many years ago The Dominion published an article of mine in which I recommended (tongue in cheek) that the best action available for a citizen to protect his or her family was to move to a fertile hilltop and fortify it. Not many will have done so!

What Langridge proposes should be done has much more merit for our society as a whole, but there has been no sign yet of any kind of genuinely effective political action.

I doubt if there will be any until politicians are terrified for their own skins, but, with luck, that may happen quite soon.

The very recent United Nations statement that climate change refugees should not be returned to where they came from was just in time for what may soon occur – a flood of Australians driven out by drought, fire, flood and dust storms.

Peter Waring, Eketahuna

Ollie Langridge was committed enough to camp out on Parliament Grounds for 100 days but I wouldn’t have had the commitment to do so for one night. He has the right to say what he did and we need to pay attention to it.

What he says is necessary is hard. In particular, we have the room in our house for a family of refugees, but I would hate to have to share. However, he is right and I would vote for it.

It is time that more of us oldies supported the likes of the ‘‘Children’s Strike’’ and people like Langridge, even though we won’t be there to experience climate catastrophe.

However, I will add one more consideration. This climate crisis is caused by humans but it isn’t just humans who will suffer the consequences. Langridge uses the word ‘‘ecocide’’. What about the rest of the living creatures that make up the ecosystems?

Being really harsh, humans can choose to do what we like if it is just we who suffer the consequences. But we have no moral right to do this to other life-forms who have no say.

Norman Wilkins, Petone

Shame at refugee rebuff

It is incomprehensible to me that New Zealand refused admission to a Kiribati refugee (Climate refugees can’t be sent back, Jan 22). Refugee from what?

His country for God’s sake, which has sunk and continues to sink below the water line.

Who are these people employed in this department of government? Where do they get them from?

If the entire population of Kiribati needed to come to Aotearoa/NZ I would have thought it should be compulsory to welcome them and find somewhere for them to live. It’s not as if people are living on top of each other in our fair land.

We’ve aided the Aussies in their time of fire-driven peril; fought in endless UN engagements; sent aid throughout the Pacific; many Christian groups are sending ongoing missionary aid to Africa, India and elsewhere.

But a lone male from Kiribati had to appeal to the UN to obtain refuge here. I am ashamed and I hope so are the crowd who denied him shelter.

John Rush, Mamaku

Net warming undeniable

While science is never settled, there are rules to so argue. In 2010, Lyman et al. (Nature 465: 334-337 ) reported measurements carried out over the previous decade that showed there was a net power input to the oceans of 0.64 W/m^2. The rule is, if you want to dispute this, you have to make measurements to show this is wrong. Sticking one’s head in the sand and saying you aren’t getting any hotter does not qualify.

If the measurements are true, there should be a slow temperature rise in the oceans. This is observed. Sorry, deniers, but there is a net warming. As an aside, whether Bas Walker (Letters, Jan 21, 22) has a qualification in climate science is irrelevant. Truth depends solely on the evidence, not on the person telling it.

Ian Miller (Dr), Belmont

Life elsewhere

I was rather surprised at the somewhat mean-spirited response of Duncan Steel (Not so fast on alien theories, Jan 22) to the article by Sarah Cruddas concerning the probability of the existence of extraterrestrial life. Cruddas may be charged with using hyperbole, but this does not make her argument ‘‘nonsense’’.

To the best of our knowledge, the development of life, intelligent or otherwise, is governed by laws of physics and chemistry that appear to be universal and will apply on a planet in the Andromeda galaxy as well as on Earth.

Steel’s statement ‘‘. . . no matter how many stars and planets are counted, if you multiply that huge number by zero then the answer you get is . . . well, zero’’ makes no sense, since the ‘‘zero’’ he refers to is the probability of life developing.

But it has developed, right here, and to infer zero probability elsewhere requires an exceptionalist argument for our planet that has no basis in fact.

Rodger Sparks, Crofton Downs