Government needs to listen to general public

QUESTION: When did New Zealand’s policies change from being a democracy to being a dictatorship?

I for one haven’t received a memo, email or text message to say it has.

No, I’m not ‘‘just’’ talking about the Covid19 situation, but also all the other policies that this Government is pushing through like the ones affecting farmers, housing (using prime farm land), the Three Waters, and the list goes on.

The prime minister and members of Parliament need to remember that they are our employees of the nation, and not the employers.

Go back to listening to the whole general public — your employers — and run the country under democratic policies.

Enough of your bulldozing ways is enough.

Noel McAnally

Green Island

THE prime minister always quotes that lockdowns and Covid19 policy decisions are made after she refers to health advice to justify her decisions.

Isn’t it time instead for her to refer to analytic experts?

They would show everyone the hard facts that really matter.

The few dying are either very old, or have already had very serious disease or sicknesses that contribute to their death with Covid in the mix, or have a combination of both, or have not have had the jab.

Those in the first three groups should be targeted, protected and cared for by doing everything within the country’s power to do it.

The rest of us should be handed back our freedoms to live.

Peter Yarrell

Queenstown [Abridged]

‘Proequity’ model

ACCORDING to Prof Crampton (ODT, 8.10.21) the ‘‘proequity’’ model designed for the selection of Maori students needs to be widened. Proequity in the late 1980s was called positive discrimination, which it was. As a public servant at the time I had mixed feelings about discriminating on the basis of race. But I thought, OK, give it a go for 10 years or so.

However, despite some abuse, it worked. More Maori took up responsible positions and the positive results of so many Maori role models in highprofile positions is evident today.

However, let’s not get carried away by redefining merit to mean ‘‘indigenous perspectives and lived understanding of socioeconomic adversity’’.

The legup was a success, but it’s now 30 years later.

Nowhere in the article is there any acknowledgement of a Maori middle class and a Pakeha lower class. This is patronising to Maori and insulting to Pakeha who, despite the sneering label of white supremacists, brought in positive discrimination.

It is a myth that there is no class struggle in New Zealand, and that struggle is not confined to one ethnic group. If students, Maori and

Pakeha, having had a poor start at home and school are keen enough to study, extra help at university would be a fine thing. But let’s not confine the help to one race.

Christopher Horan

Lake Hawea

REGARDING your story about ‘‘meritocracy’’ (ODT, 8.10.21), it is time someone called out this nonsense seeping from our universities for what it is. What sane person would choose to be operated on, not by a surgeon who was accepted into and flew through medical school and was appointed as a surgeon based on ‘‘talent, effort and achievement’’, but by someone who had ‘‘indigenous perspectives and a lived understanding of socioeconomic adversity’’?

Peter Mander

Queenstown ..................................

BIBLE READING: The Lord will protect you from all evil; He will keep your soul. — Psalms 121.7.