Time for Queenstown to take a fresh approach
Tie time?
REMOVED from the debating chamber for not wearing a tie, Rawiri Waititi said wearing a tie is not part of his culture and ‘‘it’s forcing the indigenous peoples into wearing what I describe as a colonial noose’’.
Yet he is happy to wear a Stetson, which is not part of indigenous culture, in the debating chamber.
I am surprised he is allowed to wear the hat in the debating chamber. I was always taught that wearing a hat inside was a nono.
Climate change
BAN petrol car imports, check.
Slash livestock numbers, check. Close Tiwai, check. Ban gas hobs in new houses, che. . . Wait. What?
Why not a ban on hot air wafting from the Beehive?
Les Tubman
Oamaru
SO, despite all our efforts, Queenstown is still hanging out for the rich overseas tourists over the support of its own local communities.
It is going to be some time yet before those overseas tourists can return and prop up the economy. Perhaps, in the meantime, instead of relying on the Government to continuously prop them up, Queenstown people could take on board what other suffering countries who relied on tourism are doing.
For example, Venice turned into a B&B community after all the locals left due to the effect of tourism.
Now, it has been looking at alternatives to mass tourism. It has realised that, when restricted to its immediate neighbourhood, it became clear it had everything it needed there, even without tourists.
Venice’s plight makes very good reading, something which the likes of Queenstown could perhaps learn from.
As a postscript, I remember back in the day when tourism was unheard of, the only fast food option was fish and chips, and there were no cafes and no weekend shopping — but we survived. J. Ball
St Kilda
Mt Iron
IT is amazing to me that the people who build houses in potentially dangerous places such as the red zone on Mt Iron, where there is a fire risk, now want to blame other people.
If this is an area of significant environmental interest and an area of potential danger, they should never have built there and planning permission should never have been granted.
It is the same issue regarding expanding building permission on the Otago Peninsula. This is an area of exceptional wildlife, where people come from many faraway places to see our unique fauna.
If expanding housing in this unique environment takes place, the wildlife will go, and so will the employment surrounding this tourist gem.
There are plenty of other sites for urban expansion. Leave the peninsula alone.
Peter Sinclair
Dunedin ...................................
BIBLE READING: There is no other god like you, O Lord. — Micah 7.18.