Embrace China and boom
This is what I would like to happen with Shane Jones’ $1 billion yearly fund.
Queenstown Lakes District Council, Southland and Westland band together for funding of the Haast-Milford road.
Franz Joseph township (a disaster in the waiting) to be shifted along this road.
Once completed, Milford is ‘‘sold’’ as a two-day package. In 2018 to have buses run ex Queenstown-return in 13-14 hours is absurd. One could fly NZ to Tokyo or Los Angeles in that time.
Secondly, Wanaka airport, which Queenstown airport manages on a long-term lease agreement with QLDC, becomes an international, built to take the largest cargo-passenger planes.
This would be built by the Chinese on a 99-year (think Hong Kong) lease.
It would be part of the Great Belt Road that more than 60 countries have signed up to. It’s China’s offer for improving economies. NZ doesn’t have the money or workforce to have it up and running within a year.
Then the regional boom commences.
Cherries, pip and stone fruit, apples, pears, honey, venison (feral and farmed) fish from Fiordland, wines from Central Otago, root crops from Southland etc, direct to Chinese cities.
The airport to be named the Great South Lakes International as opposed to America’s Great Lakes.
The road via Haast would then be designated a World Heritage road with 200,000 Kiwis doing it each year.
Now for the objectors: China wouldn’t be the power it is today if it didn’t work 24/7 and took any notice of a few who wish to stop or stymie it for the majority.
China is not the great Satan, nor the yellow peril. New Zealand must embrace it now or be left behind.
K Sutherland
Motor home parks
Further to your article regarding NZ Motor Caravan Association’s potential lease of some reserve ground in Invercargill, surely it would’ve been pertinent to at least seek comment from the local chair regarding why, why not, etc.
Invercargill holiday park owner Phillip Todd’s self interest showed the lack of balance in his retort.
Was there not a substantial block of reserve land recently freeholded for a camp ground? Hello!
I understand NZMCA has sought to purchase but, again, often self interest tends to prevail.
If there’s any doubt about the effect motor homers have either way on a community, ask Lumsden and Te Anau where NZMCA has established parks.
Does it matter that, like presumably Mr Todd’s park, it’s frequented by out of town folk?
After travelling you do need to restock, refuel and rehydrate. You’re on a winner Invers.
B W McFaul
Council companies
The front page feature ‘‘Release it’’ (July 11) once again brought to mind the profound words of J Robert Oppenheimer.
‘‘We do not believe that any group of men is adequate or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism.
‘‘We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, and to be free to enquire.
‘‘We know that in secrecy error, undetected, will flourish and subvert.’’ Ray Willett
US no democracy
Should Aaron Nicholson (July 11) acquaint himself with the American Constitution and its Bill of Rights he will discover that the word democracy is not mentioned.
The United States is not a democracy, and its founding fathers went to great lengths to ensure it would not be. Their idea explicitly expressed is the freedom of the individual, not to be subjected to a collective tyranny. If you want to hear about democracy you need to go to Lenin and the constitution of Soviet Russian. That’s where democracy, the rule of the majority and eventually the subjugation of the individual to tyranny, is found.
The United States has been slipping down a path to democracy to its social and economic ruin.
The best example of buying votes and subjecting the individual to the tyranny of the majority is California. With 10 per cent of the US population it has the world’s fifth largest economy, 20 per cent of US billionaires and is America’s richest state in natural resources.
And it is broke. It has the highest taxes and the worst infrastructure, the worst education system, the highest percentage of homeless and people below the poverty line than any other state.
It is run by and largely populated by people who hate Donald Trump. Go figure. It’s where democratic socialism gets you.
There is a political movement called Democratic Socialism with Bernie Sanders and presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren as pin ups . Nicholson should form a branch here.
Oh that’s right, we don’t need to. It’s called the Greens.
Mervyn Cave