Planet needs change

John Roughan is typical, I suspect, of those many voters (47% still support National) who seem to think things are good enough for them so are good enough for all.

Vote for “continuity” he recommends. And he denigrates the push by John Campbell and Nigel Latta in What Next to choose Plan B: a more uncertain option for change, which prioritises issues of poverty and the environment.

Mr Roughan, from your position of privilege and conservatism, you just don’t get it. We need change, to human lives and to save the planet. The city-wide protests following the Grenfell Tower burnout show that people now simply won’t accept the tragic outcome of persistent underfunding by the British Government, of social services in general and safety standards in particular.

The growing inequality in NZ too, between people who live in comfort and those who live in deprivation, and problems of an over-exploited natural environment, really must be addressed. Is the missing youth vote part of the answer?

B. Darragh, Auckland Central. citizenship rather than by dividing us by our different ethnicities.

Demands by the Pasifika, Chinese, Indian, African, and Middle Eastern people of our country for separate electorates, specific clauses in legislation, quotas in medical school, and so on, would strain our system to breaking point.

Hopefully, before then we will have journalists promoting rights based on citizenship, not ethnicity. As Bill English argued in a 2002 speech, our future must be based on a single standard of citizenship. Don Brash, Co-spokesperson for the

Hobson’s Pledge Trust.