Let’s show we care
Letters to the editor
This is the perfect time for superannuitants to think seriously about whether they might be able to help others who are struggling. We’re keeping ourselves safe staying at home, and we’ll be doing so for several weeks to come.
Daily life for us is now so much cheaper: our cars are in the garage, no coffees with friends, no travel, no going to cinemas or theatres, no new consumables. And we’ll soon be receiving a heating subsidy twice as generous as last year’s.
In the meantime food banks are run off their feet. Let’s show we care by supporting those agencies whose volunteers are risking their health helping those now without a job, the poor, the homeless.
Agencies such as the Wellington City Mission and the Salvation Army, along with people collecting food for the needy, such as Kiwi Community Assistance and Kaibosh, deserve our donations, however small, and there couldn’t be a better way to show we care.
Ian William Gebbie, Porirua
It’s sadly ironic to see the Government asking people to report price-gouging, given that New Zealand law makes profiteering fully legal. Before Rogernomics, the old Commerce Act 1975 had its section 54 which read, ‘‘Every person commits an offence against this Act who whether as principal or agent, and whether by himself or his agent, sells or agrees or offers to sell any goods or services at a price which is unreasonably high.’’ Section 58 laid out the penalties – hefty fines and possible prison sentences.
All that was swept away in 1986 by David Caygill’s fancy Commerce Act. Then in 2008 Liane Dalziel’s Commerce Amendment Act went the extra step of explicitly allowing excess profits. Currently, as the Commerce Commission website points out, ‘‘charging high prices to consumers is not illegal’’. The only remedy the law allows is the cumbersome, designed-to-fail, Part 4 of the Commerce Act, which provides neither serious penalties for price-gougers nor retrospective relief for consumers.
So when you see big business giving Government the finger, have sympathy for Jacinda Ardern. The neoliberal legislation of the 1980s has tied her hands. Geoff Bertram, Karori
Now would be a good time to ban freedom camping in New Zealand. It would be good for the countryside and also for the hospitality industry. Make them use the camping grounds and the motels.
T.J. Grant, Levin