Missing out

In the 1980s I lived and worked in Cannons Creek in Porirua. We shopped at the local supermarket. That supermarket shopping is not available to Cannons Creek residents and that children are going to school without food (Hungry school kids to benefit, stuff.co.nz) seems appalling to me nearly 40 years after my shopping expeditions to Charlie Grant’s supermarket.

Nowadays I live in the comfortable western suburbs of Brisbane. I can shop at Coles, Woolworths or Aldi, which are all within a stone’s throw of each other.

Yet we are often told here on this side of the Tasman how the New Zealand economy is booming, a model which some would lead us to believe is the envy of the entire developed world.

It would seem however that Cannons Creek has somehow achieved ghetto status during this apparent boom. As a Porirua expatriate, I find this rather sad. CRISPIN WALTERS

Queensland