Get rid of crutch Pseudo history

THE ARTICLE about charities being denied access to malls and retail outlets raises a number of issues ( Site refusals put squeeze on charities, Dec 30). First, Fundraising Institute of New Zealand chief executive James Austin claims that charities are stepping up to fill the gap caused by government cuts in funding. Historically, charities did not rely on government funding and were financially self-reliant.

Of the 25,096 charities currently registered with the Department of Internal Affairs, 6230 received $6 billion in government grants or contracts, $484 million in donations, $220m from investment income, and $76m in bequests. The government grants and contracts represent nearly 90 per cent of those charities’ income of $6.9b. Now, with government cuts looming, charities are crying poverty, reluctant to cut the coat to suit the cloth while at the same time sitting on $3.8b worth of investments. Charities are also becoming top-heavy with overpaid management and, in some cases, boards.

It is high time the Government implemented a productivity commission to investigate the effectiveness and efficiencies of our charities, just as the Australians have done. WHAT THE heck is up with a newspaper publishing what are nothing but barefaced lies by a white supremacist bigot (Letters, Dec 30)? What next? Letters claiming that the Holocaust was a hoax or that the 9/11 attacks were an inside job carried out using explosives? The claim made by Ian Brougham that Celts were in New Zealand prior to the Maori, like all such ‘‘whites were in New Zealand before the Maori’’ claims, is racist s . . .-stirring that have no business in The Sunday Star-Times.