Councillors should elect mayor

The way local body leadership is decided is strange. On the one hand, regional councils elect their chair. On the other, cities and district councils choose their mayor by popular vote. And district health boards have a chair appointed by the minister.

By contrast, council members are often elected from individual wards, where the voter roll is only a portion of those who elect the mayor. So there’s no particular reason why a council member should have the same view of policy as the mayor. It’s not surprising that there can be disagreement or disfunction; what I find surprising is that it’s not much more common.

It’s not so long ago that differences of opinion led to a change of chair between elections at the Greater Wellington Regional Council. This sensible system, which forces councillors to be responsible for the chair they elect, should be extended to the mayoralty. The councillors should elect the mayor, and thus be responsible for ensuring that the mayor is supported.

David Wright, Wellington

Reset for business

The most dangerous time for firms will be emerging from the lockdown ‘‘snap depression’’.

There’ll be painful lessons from 1987, 2002, 2008 as firms claw their way back to some kind of economic normality, clients drift back possibly, decisions considered firm are deferred, order books are clipped, and cash flow is again severely strained.

For sure the business environment has had a major reset. There’ll be a huge refocus by firms on client retention, the making and sourcing of more products locally, and to ensure all aspects of a business are functioning in a recalibrated optimum manner.

Increased financial interactions with the Government will be around till 2022. People before dollars will become the new mantra.

The need to restructure the books will require a hard look at state revenue options.

The ultra-wealthy must contribute significantly more: no to ‘‘dubious billionaires’’. Had it not been for a stable society funded by taxes they would not have been able to accumulate such largesse. We must all participate fairly in our emerging post-Covid economy.

Guy Dobson, Levin

Disgust at cartoon

I would like to express my disgust at the cartoon in Saturday’s paper depicting the leader of the opposition as Mickey Mouse.

During this challenging time for the Government he has been supportive of the difficult moves they have had to make to combat the Covid-19 threat. He has also been aware there has to be monitoring of such life-changing decisions and has set up the group to do just that and, as a taxpayer, I am very grateful.

The initial concern that our hospitals and health service could be overwhelmed by a flood of patients has been avoided thanks to the tough stance taken. We now have to look forward and endeavour to alleviate the damage to the business community and livelihoods.

Research shows that the medical aftermath to the general population increases exponentially the longer people remain under stress so, together with the backlog of elective surgery, it would be catastrophic if we exchanged one medical

emergency for another.

That is why it is essential to have Simon Bridges providing some critical analysis of the next steps and the implication we had a Disney character doing so showed little appreciation of the importance of alternate options.

Carole Wright, Khandallah

Tests pre-departure

You give too much attention (April 20) to a proposal to put a cap on tourism numbers. All forecasts suggest tourism will be one of the slowest sectors to recover from Covid-19, and that the recovery will be further dampened by very high airfares.

NZ benefits hugely from a vibrant flow of international tourists. The government should initiate international negotiations to establish a robust pre-departure CV-19 clearance system. People would depart their home country with a certificate that they have been tested, or vaccinated, and are clear.

They could then enter their destination without isolation. Probably both the WTO and the WHO should be involved. It could start with a few reliable countries and grow. In time it could probably happen at airports.

We have done it before – I have a WHO certificate of 20 years ago confirming I have had certain vaccinations, specifying the doctor and lab that did these stamped by an authorised Wellington medical centre.

If it happened, NZ would have to do this for departing New Zealanders. The cost would mainly be private, and any government cost much less than the benefits.

Neil Plimmer, Kelburn

Fuel prices staying high

Over the past six to eight weeks we have seen crude oil prices the lowest they have been for years.

Since lockdown, over 80 per cent of motorists have used their car only for runs to the supermarket and back. I haven’t filled up for three weeks and still have half a tank.

Why then have prices per litre increased from $1.83 last week to $1.87 this week? We have three petrol stations in the main road of Johnsonville: Mobil, Z and BP, all of whom have the same price for standard unleaded. They all offer similar discounts for card users.

At a time when consumers are struggling to keep costs down, why do large corporations think they can price gouge. Surely, prices are the result of supply and demand. Demand is low and the supply of petrol must be high, as hardly anyone is using it.

Another example of oil companies not lowering prices quickly enough, when it suits them. The Government keeps paying lip service to addressing this issue, but as it is the main benefactor from taxation, I wonder if it will ever be solved.

Bob Grinling, Johnsonville

Unfair blame

Murray Eggars (Letters, April 16) says ‘‘cruise ships have negative impact in some port cities and we are more aware of their ability to spread disease’’.

Can he advise what ports have a negative impact from visiting cruise ships because all I hear from retailers is that their businesses relies on revenue generated from the cruise season.

Also, surely it is time to stop bashing cruise ships as being the cause of spreading the virus. Sure, some ships have put passengers on land with the virus, but many of those passengers at the time may not have known they had it.

The virus has been spread around the world by other transportation methods such as airlines, yet there doesn’t seem to be the same negativity on this form of transport.

An infected person on an airline will be in close contact with quite a number of passengers, plus all the people they stand next to in duty-free stores, terminal, baggage handling areas, customs etc. Therefore, I think it is wrong to be blaming cruise ships in their entirety for the spread of the virus.

Ian Cameron, Ngaio

Tests on the recovered

I was horrified to read Tom Kitchin’s Recovered patient tests positive (April 18). Why are we just accepting someone’s statement that they haven’t had any symptoms for 48 hours instead of doing another test?

It is now well known that some Covid19 sufferers have hardly any symptoms, and who decided ‘‘48 hours’’ was a sufficient time lapse to assume all was OK? Please tell me that we haven’t let over 700 New Zealanders back into the community without retesting them? Lynne Godfrey, Tawa

Legality of checkpoints

I differ slightly from Martin van Beynen on Hone and his posse can’t lay down their own law (April 18). Relevantly, a state is any organisation that has a monopoly of coercion, i.e. the ‘‘sovereignty’’ mentioned in article 1 of the Treaty of Waitangi. Private security may use coercion provided it’s legally sanctioned.

If the checkpoints lack legal sanction then, by publicly supporting them (March 23), the minister of civil defence could have breached article 1 of the Bill of Rights 1688, which forbids suspending laws (e.g. ‘‘obstructing [a] public way’’) without parliamentary consent (viz. Fitzgerald v Muldoon, 1976).

Alternatively, the police may have actually authorised iwi to establish checkpoints under s88 of the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act, which provides that: ‘‘. . . any person acting under the authority of a . . . constable . . . may . . . totally or partially prohibit or restrict public access, with or without vehicles, to any road or public place . . .’’

The police commissioner should promptly and publicly clarify matters.

Either way, it’s clear that allowing for so long this legal ambiguity to surround these checkpoints has detracted from the utility of s88, it’s been inimical to good race relations and has undermined the Government’s otherwise faultless, science-driven, response to Covid-19, which must address iwi concerns in terms of the Treaty’s article 3.

Richard Featherstone, Woodridge

Council calls

I find it ironic that Kerry Prendergast now advocates for the central library when she was the very person who closed down the mobile library and subjected the central one to a ghastly business reengineering process (Forget the nice-tohave stuff, April 20).

The result of that was that interloans, previously reasonably easily obtained were then subjected to ‘‘commercial’’ rates. When people let her know they disliked this review at a public meeting I also attended, she responded that it was the best deal they were going to get.

As for Andy Foster, perhaps people should remember that the closeness of the vote shows a lot of people also did not want him as mayor, and are only too happy to see him stymied in his plans.

After all the councillors are there to represent the people of their wards and not carry out his bidding mindlessly just because he is mayor.

Peter Sullivan, Johnsonville

Airport rethink

From a Hataitai vantage point, the Covid19 generated silence from reduced aircraft operations and traffic on Cobham Drive is palpable. To the category of long-term benefits from the crisis we might add the reshaping of Wellington airport as a public service rather than a commercial business enterprise.

The airport has become increasingly a cuckoo in the eastern suburbs nest. Its plans are aggressively expansionary, moving its boundaries into Miramar, Moa Point and Lyall Bay, planning for a runway extension, generating huge amounts of traffic, setting the public up for travel delays when new construction is required, and ramping up carbon emissions leading to sea level rise and undermining climate change strategies.

The trend is accelerated by the travel industry swamping the public with offers of exotic tour packages at rock-bottom prices.

By contrast, consider Wellington railway station, which offers a public service to meet existing needs, is supporting the nation’s carbon zero programme by diverting vehicles from the road.

Covid-19 is an ideal opportunity for the airport to pass into public ownership as a genuine service provider rather than a profit-dominated business.

Richard Randerson, Hataitai

Extension of ‘emergency’

We call on the Government not to extend the national state of emergency as there is no actual identifiable emergency, only the fear of one. Even if we thought there was an actual emergency at the start of the Covid-19 panic, there is no factual basis existing now that can justify extending the emergency any longer.

The only genuine emergencies at the moment are the job loss emergency, the economic emergency, the mental health emergency and the social destruction emergency. The first step in remedying these is to stop extending the current declaration.

The Government must be able to identify a specific emergency in order to justify extending the date any longer.

Using such a declaration only to keep controlling the people of NZ and their businesses rather than using due parliamentary process shows a very immature, controlling and abusive government, something which should never be happening in New Zealand. Peter Baker, Christchurch