We need to be wary of olive branch from China

I BELIEVE Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta has made a creditable start to her tenure in this position, one that I hope will continue.

As a country, we are famous for giving people a ‘‘fair go’’, but I am slightly uneasy about us becoming the Switzerland of the South Pacific with regional tensions the way they are between the United States, Canada, Australia and Japan with China, and to a lesser extent Russia.

Uneasy, because the olive branch China extends to anyone these days comes at a cost.

I have no desire for New Zealand to become a suburb of Beijing, nor would I be comfortable with China pouring megadollars into New Zealand as part of its ‘‘Belt and Road’’ initiative.

The aforementioned countries are in a stoush with China — Australia keeps digging the hole deeper — but it does not necessarily follow that we should be on the same bandwagon.

I worry that most all of our eggs are already in a Chinese basket, and should our efforts at a diplomatic level fail, our economy could be seriously imperilled.

If the situation of the Uighurs in China blows up bigger than it is now, we will need to make a stand. I believe that will happen sooner rather than later.

I have never been a fan of the US, finding its arrogance, hypocrisy and at times astounding indifference to others galling — but ‘‘better the devil you know’’?

Graham Bulman

Roslyn

Live animal export

IT’S disappointing that the Prime Minister and Agriculture Minister are happy to allow a further 200,000 New Zealand cows to be shipped overseas — to be permanently confined in concrete intensive farms and inhumanely slaughtered — before ending the trade (ODT, 27.4.21).

And what about the suffering of chickens? In 2020, New Zealand exported over two million dayold chicks to be reared for meat or egg laying in Chinese factory farms.

Clearly, these birds will suffer enormously in a country with no animal welfare laws.

All live export needs to end.

Jenny Moxham Victoria, Australia

Council service

EARLY last week, we telephoned the Dunedin City Council inquiry line and reported a pothole at the junction of St Leonards Dr and Pukeko St, St Leonards. The council team got on to it very quickly and we were delighted to see that by Friday, April 23, it had been repaired. We very much appreciate such a prompt service. It is good to see the council working for the wellbeing of the community.

Anna and John Holmes

St Leonards

Trotter column

CHRIS Trotter wrote about what John A. Lee, as a minister under then prime minister M.J. Savage, managed to have built (ODT, 30.4.21).

If correct, this is a remarkable record.

From 1935 to 1941, three out of nine being war years, 40% of houses built were state houses. Mr Trotter does not quote actual numbers.

The NZ History website states that in 1978, the 100,000th state house was completed in Christchurch. Nearly all of these new houses were of modest size, and if that size standard were to be used today, they would be hugely more affordable than the alternatives currently being built to extract as much profit as possible from private sale.

The current Labour Government could well copy the example of the 193549 Savage government regarding construction of ‘‘State Housing’’. The country needs something like that.

B. Swale

Clyde ..................................

BIBLE READING: O Lord, be gracious to us; we long for you. — Isaiah 33:2.