Walker’s demise a result of ‘political correctness’
I MUST be one of the few who can’t see a lot wrong with the actions of Hamish Walker, except that he might have been safer to have redacted the names and even then, no media outlet would have published them.
The salient points are that it seems the information was not hidden behind passwords or security cover and was not hacked . It was simply sitting around and Walker’s motives seemed to be an intent to prove to media outlets how easy it was to get it, not to embarrass the people mentioned on the list. So what?
The Privacy Act has turned us into a nation of ‘‘wokes’’, scurrying about devoting our lives to political correctness. We are one of the few nations on Earth which has name suppression on just about everything in our court system.
Compounding the whole debacle is the fact the weak National Party dropped its pants and immediately ran up the flag of surrender on the subject. I would have some respect for Todd Muller and his crew if he had just followed his political ancestors on both sides of the House and put a good spin on the motives, did a bit of tuttutting but stood by their man and moved on.
David Seymour must feel like he has died and gone to heaven. He is going to be the big winner out of this and many other issues at the moment.
Robert McCallum
Clinton [Abridged]
AFTER reading letters and articles about the National Party’s Health Minister Michael Woodhouse (ODT, 6.7.20), I cannot understand why his party hasn’t demoted him or even sacked him for what he has done.
First of all, what he did to Clare Curran with the toilet seat was pathetic, then the stories that he told about a homeless person and to cap it all off the dirty tactics and badmouthing of his old rival David Clark of the Labour Party all the time.
Mr Woodhouse seems to forget that it was under their watch it was he and his colleagues of nine years in government that left New Zealand’s health system and district health boards in such a shambles.
K. J. Hale
St Kilda [Abridged]
I WISH to add to the excellent opinion in Saturday's editorial ‘‘No place for nimbyism in Covid fight’’ (ODT, 4.7.20). It is a pity in Hamish Walker's ‘‘statement of fact’’, and nimbyism, that he did not see The New Zealand Herald’s previous week's article ‘‘Revealed: The surprising origin of our Covid cases’’ (27.6.20).
Of the 588 imported cases’ first points of departure for infected persons who travelled to New Zealand, 188 came from the United Kingdom, 67 from Europe, 151 from North America and 40 from
Australia. Mr Walker's Pakistan (2), India (8) and South Korea (0).
What was more disturbing about Mr Walker's statement is the subtle racism in his inference which has been bubbling under the surface for decades here in New Zealand.
As a mixedrace person, with a sprinkling of Mr Walker's Indian, and made in New Zealand 78 years ago, I was delighted to also read in the article Dunedin Mayor's reaction to such racism.
Well said.
Peter Vonlanthen
Te Awamutu
I AM curious to know which values do the National Party aspire to as mentioned today (ODT, 8.7.20) by Todd Muller?
Perhaps Michael Woodhouse would be kind enough to enlighten me?
Shirley Curran
Wakari
IN recognition of the importance of readers’ contributions to the letters page, the newspaper each week selects a Letter of the Week with a book prize courtesy of Penguin Random House. This week’s winner is Andrew Penniket, of Wanaka, for a letter urging tourists to take cleangreen holidays. The prize is a copy of Weed, by James Borrowdale. The winning letter was printed yesterday and can be read on the ODT website.