Shane Jones was right to rev up Air NZ

I HAVE just read a fascinating opinion piece from Civis (ODT, 31.3.18) explaining to me, via the Companies Act, why I have to put up with having to regularly pay several hundred dollars more for a shortterm return to Auckland from lovely Dunedin rather than Christchurch (which is a full 80% of the distance).

Apparently, the 51% Government shareholding does not entitle the Minister for Regional Economic Development to inform the Air New Zealand board that serving the whole of New Zealand is part of their mandate.

And yet I read that in the United Kingdom exactly the same proportion of shareholders is enough to hand control of the massive and longstanding engineering giant GKN over to Melrose (a finance entity) to play with and be rewarded with hundreds of millions of pounds for the trouble. This is against the wishes of the GKN board, the UK public, Airbus, the defence industry, Her Majesty’s Opposition, Michael Heseltine, the terrified GKN employees and even the Daily Mail.

One is reminded of the Cadbury takeover.

Could Civis please use the Companies Act to explain the apparent discrepancy here? John Stewart

Dunedin

AS Civis points out (ODT, 31.3.18), Air New Zealand is deserting the provinces, so Mr Jones’ comments are pretty tame stuff in the context of how deserters are usually dealt with. Nevertheless, Civis helps with some sensible suggestions that Air New Zealand might have considered to avoid its deserter designation.

The airline should have worked closely with Air Chathams and other small airlines to ensure the provinces retained meaningful and seamless air services — including code sharing, flight coordination and negotiating government subsidies where needed.

This would have given some indication it understood its role as national carrier and the importance of the provinces to our economic development.

It’s a pity Sir John Key and his fellow directors and management could not be as passionate in servicing their majority shareholders in the provinces as they have been in putting money in Barack Obama’s pocket.

In my view, Mr Jones’ ‘‘tuning up’’ of Air New Zealand was timely and appropriate.

In fact, I’m starting to like the cut of the man’s jib. Allan Portis

Waverley

St Clair rubbish

WITH the glorious Easter weekend, alongside all the visitors to Dunedin including the South Island surf champs at St Clair Beach, it would have been appropriate for the Dunedin City Council to have been proactive in ensuring that the rubbish bins in the Esplanade area were emptied regularly.

Although people seem to have had the will to keep the areas clean, overfull bins and the nice stacks of rubbish by the full bins is not a good look and also has the potential for all the rubbish to be blown straight out into the ocean.

This clearance of rubbish should have been done without a complaint having to be made and even then only half the bins were emptied on Sunday night. Basic infrastructure planning DCC. Pauline Dicker

St Clair

Getting priorities right

I LOOK forward to the day when people experience as much outrage over the plight of those in Syria, and the Rohingya people escaping persecution in Myanmar, as they have over cheating in a game of cricket.

Lou Scott

Kenmure ...................................