Mind that organisation

I’m appalled at the changes taking place within Plunket and upset for the nurses and volunteers (“Mind that child”, July 7). The vast salaries paid to six managers, irrespective of some of them “taking pay cuts to take their jobs”, and the huge sums of money paid for consultancy fees and marketing are, unbelievable. The people most affected could have been consulted for nothing, and the marketing could have been, and always has been, done by volunteers.

I was a Plunket nurse in Māngere and Meadowbank, and the work we did with families in both areas was the fence at the top of the cliff, not the ambulance at the bottom. We received unstinting support from all our volunteers and the East Auckland branches supported those in South Auckland.

As Plunket nurse Tracy Edwards is quoted in the story as saying, we were often the only people going into homes in such places as South Auckland. We were non-threatening and helpful and able to make a difference. That was immeasurable by consultants.

I deplore Plunket’s new centralised approach and feel the people of New Zealand who led the way in child health have been let down. I am sorry that those in high places have seen fit to be doing what they are and I hope the late consultation in Karori makes them re-evaluate the future. Helen Tomson (Tauranga)

I was a Plunket baby in 1938 and, in 1957, an elderly Plunket nurse was a lifesaving, regular visitor at my door. I would greet her in my husband’s dressing gown and socks, tired, possibly weepy, and certainly not visitor-ready.

There, on the step, was a lovely, motherly looking woman, warmly smiling, waiting to come in. In two ticks she would pick up my little boy, exclaim, “What a beautiful baby!”, and make me feel completely whole.

At 18, I had been a sixmonths pregnant bride. My new husband and I only wanted each other and our baby. We rented a sunny old villa in Kilbirnie. He had a good job and we were happy.

All of my children, grandchildren and now greatgrandchildren were and are Plunket babies. Sir Truby King did an amazing thing when he started the Plunket Society.

He didn’t want babies dying unnecessarily. Karitane Hospitals were our nation’s pride and joy. I hope the people in charge of it all now are sure they know what they are doing, but it doesn’t sound very promising. Helen Gray (Raumati Beach) LETTER OF THE WEEK

FOR THE BIRDS

We are in a newish subdivision and have found that most of our neighbours have planted their sections in lawn and flowering bushes and plants (“A wing and a prayer”, July

7). That may provide nectar for insects, but there are few native birds around.

As we are interested in the environment, we have planted only native trees and shrubs on our property, with native grasses in between, so there is no need for a mower.

We enjoy sitting on our deck listening to and watching the silvereyes, tūī and fantails. At night we go to sleep to the sound of morepork.

We are lucky that there is also a council stormwater catchment pond with a run-off reserve next door to us. With those areas also planted in natives, it adds to the birdlife. Patte Williams (Warkworth)

WEET-BIX AND BASTARDS

Russell Stone ( Letters, July 7) believes the words for WeetBix, sink and dish in te reo Māori are “inaccurate Māori synonyms, bastard transliterations or a simple repetition of an English word”. He believes, for some reason, that this means “attempts to make the Māori language a linguistic medium are doomed to disappointment”.

Leaving aside his strange belief that Māori is not a linguistic medium at present, I concede that before Pākehā arrived, we had no word for Weet-Bix. But neither did

Pākehā for the best part of a century. The words came into the Māori and Pākehā languages at the same time. We certainly did have words for dish (paepae, tīhake) and sink (puoto).

The Māori language has had three great periods of expansion. The first was on arrival in Aotearoa with the need to name new things: pounamu; previously unknown fauna and flora such as takahē, tuatara; wētā, ngutu kākā.

New cultural forms developed requiring new names, sometimes based on old words no longer used in the same way: marae, poi, whaikōrero.

Then came the Pākehā and our need for words such as rino (iron), mīere (honey) and tūpara (shotgun). As with Weet-Bix, many new words for the same things appeared over the next couple of hundred years at the same time in English and in Māori: tīma (steamer); waea (telegraph).

Te reo Māori, however, began to fall behind as Māori were excluded for one reason or another from many areas of scientific and technological expansion. This led to the last great wave of Māori lexical expansion of the 1970s and 1980s, which is continuing. Major curriculum areas such as science, maths and art are being successfully taught and