We can’t survive without business

We are a week into the lockdown. Businesses from all quarters grimace and try to put on a brave face. It’s businesses that allow a government to function, as they are the ones generating value, which is then taxed.

It funds everything a government does. Without that money there is no health, education or welfare system. Some may not understand how this happens. Staying alive in business involves decisions – some are very hard but you learn to make them.

The style of the lockdown is to stay home. This style makes a mockery of the business health and safety in the workplace system that employers use every day to manage all kinds of risks, some very high and regular.

I believe many businesses will not restart, and if not, the Government will not have that tax for a long time. The risk of working during this time is no higher than going to the supermarket or gas station.

I recommend the ability to work safely be restored to employers with advice from industry, to get this country back on its feet. When people do not have livelihoods they cannot feed the downstream businesses, their families or get them medicine. It’s vitally important this is renegotiated.

PS: Please shut the border, it is a much bigger risk than working.

Doug Brennan, business owner and employer of 40 years, Brooklyn

The extraordinary decision of Bauer Media to close its New Zealand operations yesterday might have been viewed as a delayed April Fool’s Day joke if it was not so serious.

It shows: firstly, the risk to iconic NZ magazine titles owned by overseas companies lacking the slightest institutional or sentimental connection with the local market. Is the company seriously suggesting it can close down and then sell its titles – or is it simply walking away altogether?

Secondly, the decision suggests Bauer’s publications were already on very shaky financial ground if unable to survive a shutdown that, with weekly and monthly publications, may well involve only a few issues.

Thirdly, a Government that has put hardly a foot wrong in its handling of the Covid-19 crisis has made a monumental blunder with its initial decision to stop publication of community papers that are often the only publications read by some of the most vulnerable.

Now the ban on long-established weekly and monthly titles, when staff can work at home and their printing facilities are still doing ‘‘essential’’ work, will be considered, by some at least, as an attack on the freedom of the press.

Ian F. Grant, Masterton

The mere suggestion that Zealandia could be compromised in any way by a landfill expansion is a shocking disgrace (Councillor warns of dump extension risk, April 1). The scope for easy reduction of waste and rubbish in society remains vast.

Three easy examples immediately to mind are the discontinuation of plastic bottles for hair shampoo, use hair soap bars, and the outlawing of lightweight, unrecyclable and totally unnecessary plastic trays inside biscuit wrapping. There are plenty of good alternatives not so encumbered.

Fruit and vege packaging is an idiocy, but continues. Technology, the great paper saver, is in a league of its own for waste creation as in so many other ways.

In the radically altered post-Covid-19 world, if we have any intelligence, manufacturers of excessive packaging for everything from home appliances to confectionary will be among the pariahs of the new order.

The carrot approach is evidently not working and we are going to need much more of the big stick from stronger governments both national and local. Martin Bond, Brooklyn

I, probably among many others, have run out of yellow rubbish bags as it is yet another thing cleared off shelves by the panic buying. I queried Wellington City Council about this. My first query was ignored so a week later I repeated the query and really cannot believe the response.

Apart from saying that there was no alternative to using the yellow bags, they said ‘‘May pay to ring the supermarket or dairies to see if they have bags in stock.’’

I am sure supermarkets and dairies would be thrilled by the nuisance phone calls about yellow bag availability while they try to keep up with all the important demands, and the flow-on effect would be that I should make another superfluous trip immediately to get the bags before they disappeared.

Good thinking and appropriate responses, Wellington City Council! Chris Marshall, Johnsonville

The lockdown may slow, even reverse, the progress of Covid-19, but there is one section of society that will never conform to the rules and will serve as an uncontrolled underground transmission route.

Anyone expecting drug-user/drugpusher interaction to abate is in cloud cuckoo land. To the addict, there is nothing more essential than the next hit, and to the pusher there is nothing more essential than the money so gained.

I see no obvious way to break the chain other than introducing a legal supply. Extraordinary times may well call for extraordinary measures. I await with interest.

Ross Elliot, Motueka

Thomas Coughlan (It’ll be painful, but every crisis has a silver lining, April 1) points out, correctly, that employment inequality is likely to persist for some time, not only because of the necessary response to Covid-19, but also because of technological advances.

The solution is surely to share decent work and just taxation around, rather than confine them to the privileged and/ or overworked few. A 30-hour working week, long the benchmark used by ACC and government agencies for what constitutes fulltime employment, should become the norm.

Significant benefits would include improved mental and physical health as

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the stress of both overwork and underemployment would be relieved, improving quality of life and reducing both state and business expenses. Marilyn Head, Newtown

John Bishop (Letters) and Karl du Fresne (World will look quite different after this, both April 2) both raise concerns about the powers of the state in the unusual times we live in.

From all round the world come examples where in a remarkably short time authoritarianism has grown alarmingly. In Hungary, Chile, Bolivia, South Korea, Singapore, Jordan, Britain, Israel, the Philippines, Thailand and the US come stories of borders closed, increased surveillance, elections suspended, media restricted, courts closed and powers to detain greatly increased.

Concerns are being raised that emergency powers will remain when the emergency is over. The Patriot Act (2005) in the US comes to mind.

Not only civil libertarians and constitutional lawyers should be concerned with what is happening in New Zealand right now. In a country with no Upper House and no written constitution, every citizen should be aware of both our duties, and our rights.

The words of Sir Geoffrey Palmer in Unbridled Power come readily to mind. David Marshall, Karori

At a safe distance

Thanks for the great family photo on the front page on March 31.

Unfortunately, in contrast with the caption (Social distancing, we’re doing it wrong!), you captured our bubble going for exercise on my daughter’s 15th birthday – always at a safe distance from others, 500 metres from home.

Don’t call the police. We’re doing it right. And everybody I saw out that day at Oriental Bay was doing the same – being sensible, keeping a safe distance, and enjoying the sun.

Perhaps the picture didn’t tell the full story. Good to know we looked stylish enough to feature, though.

Michael Petherick, Mt Victoria

Editor’s note: The Petherick family was not in breach of the 2m distance requirement while out and about on Oriental Bay.