Quips& Quotes

“We cannot leave politics to the politicians.”

–MP Chlöe Swarbrick announcing she will run for the Greens co-leadership

“The clock of climate change has been brought forward by about a decade by our findings. So things that we’re thinking would have happened 10 years hence are actually happening now.” – Malcolm McCulloch, lead author of a study showing global temperature rise may already have exceeded 1.5°C

“[Can we] take a bit of steam out of the hāngī?” – NZ First MP Shane Jones urging the public not to worry about the proposed Treaty Principles Bill.

“Let us remain peaceful, humble, but don’t drop our guard.” – Ngāpuhi leader Hone Sadler

“There’s never been a better time for a woman in the music industry, but we are starting from a spectacularly low bar.” – Former music executive Mike Smith

“If anyone can get the US government to take deep-fake porn seriously, it’s Swifties.” – Guardian journalist Arwa Mahdawi

“New Zealand [women’s football] is going to fall behind if we can’t keep up even on a fitness level, let alone a tactical, technical level. It’s going to be very difficult for us to maintain any type of performance.” – Retired Football Fern Abby Erceg

“For more than 30 years, I’ve had this dream of walking into a cafe that was solely filled with redheads.” – Hastings redhead celebration organiser Reverend Jill McDonald

birds, listeners would get to appreciate them more. Bruce Barnett (Taieri Beach)

THE RWANDAN OPTION

I was pleased to read Jane Clifton’s View from Abroad, (“Boarding school bluff ”, February 3). She writes that the UK threat to send illegal immigrants to Rwanda is now a promise.

Who are these refugees? I met many when l volunteered in Calais, France, in December 2022 and again last July. I worked with an NGO which gives essential aid to these asylum seekers . They live in appalling conditions and are desperate to get to England. They are harassed regularly by the local French police. There were many from central and northern Africa, and of course many Kurds, Iraqis, Syrians, Afghans, and Iranians. Many spoke good English.

We gave out tents, bedding,

food, clothing and a British phone number to ring if they were put in detention in England and threatened with the Rwanda option. Many did not want to hear about possible removal to Rwanda. I understood this, because, once you have survived a trip from your home country, then a sea crossing, England would appear just so close.

These people are not economic refugees. They are fleeing wars and persecution. Many have lost contact with their families because of the turmoil and civil wars. We hear so little about them. Many are barely surviving on the west coast of France, waiting for a boat or truck to land them in England. They are desperate.

Anna Williams (Wellington)

PAYING THE PRICE

Thanks, Virginia Nicholls ( Letters, February 3) for

informing us of the 16% of New Zealand’s adult population drinking hazardously.

Hazardous drinking by pregnant women or by drinkers who drive and crash is included in this 16%. Sadly, pregnant women giving birth to 1800-3000 NZ babies each year with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) concerns all our communities.

Would the Alcohol Beverages Council pay the salaries of all teacher aides needed in our schools to help those with FASD be less disruptive in classrooms? Lynne Stewart (Clyde)

HERITAGE CULLED

If madness is permitted to masquerade as normality for long enough, anything goes. There is much to admire in Peter Huck’s “Weed them and weep” ( January 13) on the management of beloved books.

However, his discussion

on the National Library of New Zealand’s “cull” is uncritical, when even a brief online inquiry yields shades of alternative, unflattering perspectives.

The library’s team determined without stakeholder consultation that 600,000 books be removed. This was on the demonstrably fictive grounds of lack of space. In an earlier iteration of its programme, management cleared the entire ground floor of its shelves of books for a public, digital bazaar.

The one class of books exempt from banishment would be works of Māori and Pasifika – uncontroversial, one would hope, and New Zealand books, music and family history. However, this once-scholarly pillar of open democracy, with its commitment to research material covering the spectrum of human endeavour and interaction, became a sponsor of not a cull, but a purge of everything from Australian trade union history to Virginia Woolf and Jack Kerouac. Thousands of texts carefully acquired over many years decreed unwanted were given away at a Trentham book sale, some to such places as the National Library of Greece.

Many distressing strands of degenerative government, traversed in the Listener in several articles last year by Danyl McLauchlan, are responsible for the actions of those charged with management to essentially protect and curate the collections. Not least is that the Department of Internal Affairs, an accumulative ragbag of an agency, has zilch interest in heritage. But neither did its four consecutive ministers in the previous Labour-led government.

New Arts, Culture and Heritage Minister, Paul Goldsmith, the ball is in your court.

David Young

Book Guardians Aotearoa

Oh my goodness, what a nerve Peter Huck has touched. Just into a new year, shortly after my 86th birthday, and my partner is talking about moving into a smaller, more manageable, property, putting immediate focus onto the fate of my book collection, acquired after decades of assiduous, and, I admit, thoroughly enjoyable, hunting.

I am not a fan of David Bowie, but I see a book brother in his heartfelt declaration: “I can’t throw it away.” Culling, under gentle urging to relieve shelf pressure at home, for donations to the Lions for their admirable annual fundraising sales has been like pulling teeth. And I usually found untold treasures to replace them at the same sales, which somewhat defeated the purpose.

I guess Huck’s dealers could be interested in my first-edition collections of Frank Sargeson, Maurice Shadbolt, Denis Glover, Maurice Duggan and David Ballantyne. And I’m sure there are bibliophiles to lust after the magnificent 11-volume reprint of Pepys diaries published in London in the 1970s. (I put it aside for my retirement, and 11 years later, Sam awaits my devoted attention.)

But are there buyers in New Zealand for my collection of John Updike first editions, including a signed copy for which I paid an unconscionable sum off Charing Cross Rd in 2015? Not to mention the shelf about Ned Kelly, who captured my imagination when living in Sydney in the 1960s, and my accumulations of the works of journalistic heroes James Cameron, Jan Morris and HL Mencken. Which leads me to my collection of 150-odd books by or about journalists and newspapers, acquired during 60 years of reporting from more than 50 countries. Casting modesty aside as I prepare to face my maker, I would like it preserved as a collection for young people interested in the trade of journalism rather than commercial PR or government spin. But the Alexander Turnbull Library turned it down and response from the journalism school I approached was less than enthusiastic.

David Barber (Waikanae)

LETTER OF THE WEEK

ON THE RECORD

Thank you to reader Michael Richards for correcting the record on Graham Nash, of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, performing in New Zealand (“Harmony preserved”, January 27). He did in fact play here once before, in the latter part of the 20th century.