Proactive on road safety

Correspondent L Morgan is correct regarding road safety: “one accident is one too many”. One industry that regards safety above all else is commercial aviation: and when compared to that industry’s philosophy, road safety rates a poor second.

This is because aviation safety is proactive and preventative. Road safety on the other hand is largely reactive: reacting to the past.

Worse still, instead of concentrating on accident prevention (drink-driving excepted), the safety efforts appear to be all about mitigating the effects of an accident — making accidents more survivable rather than preventing them: “the faster you go the bigger the mess” slogan.

When the penalties for illegal parking or pedestrian infringements can be far higher than those for dangerous driving, something is sadly amiss.

Perhaps a dedicated “education blitz” might help change driver attitudes?

Robin McGrath, Birkenhead.

Hop cards better way?

At present if you want to use a bus in Auckland you must have an AT Hop card — you cannot use cash. This does not work for visitors to Auckland and as tourists return the problem must be addressed. Last week I had three young relatives to stay with me in Epsom where we have an excellent choice of bus routes. However, to get on a bus they had to walk 2km to Newmarket to buy a Hop card. (In fact, I dropped them off). The card cost $5 and they had to put $10 on it.

They went into the city, spent the day there and took a bus to Epsom. They used $2 each on their cards.

Two of them have returned to the UK and one to Wellington. I now have three cards with a credit of $8 each on them which are no use to me.

There must be a better way of doing this. Other countries can use payWave or similar.

Stephanie Watson, Epsom.

Wealth creation not dilution

Revenue Minister David Parker has sparked debate regarding wealth tax. In these uncertain times, however, we must concentrate our energies on wealth creation, not dilution, to encourage financial independence and address anaemic productivity, a matter which has been neglected and which drives wage increases and prosperity unlike Government's pending Fair Pay Agreement, conceived instead to lift wages artificially by centralised arbitration despite wage growth exceeding rising costs since the '80s. If enacted, this legislation will further impede businesses already struggling with recent impositions, retrograde it will revive confrontation, dormant since the 70's.

P.J.Edmondson, Tauranga.

US parks model

Garry Law ( Weekend Herald, May 7) correctly says “hands off” plans to sell public reserve land. A better way of assisting our cash-strapped council would be to adopt the revenue-generating American National Parks model. Leases and concessions for restaurants, cafes, and souvenir shops located sensitively within park boundaries, and using retirees as gatekeepers to collect a modest admission fee from out-of-towners and tourists can contribute to parks upkeep and general council revenue.

Larry Mitchell, Rothesay Bay.

Education system overhaul

What has happened to NZ's world-class education system?

The reports of homelessness, rental crowding, prevalence of foetal drug and alcohol syndrome, pre- and postnatal depression, suicides, “child farming” in early childhood centres, abysmal achievement in primary schools and up to 56 per cent truancy rates in secondary schools. This is not the way NZ wants to treat its future generation.

The whole sector needs [an overhaul]. Then start teaching parenting skills and mothercraft in secondary schools, fix antenatal and postnatal systems and give greater and longer support for mothers and fathers by bringing back Plunket funding and get paediatric and parenting help for those in need. Only register those childcare centres who are staffed with or are required to gain ongoing mandatory qualifications, eg playcentres, kohanga reo, daycare etc. These should be regularly checked by qualified inspectors with set standards in curriculum, equipment, appropriate staff ratio levels and safety standards.

Home-based primary schooling could be available with resources for “stay-athome parents”. Toy libraries could run along with mobile library services.

With our highly transient population due to the housing shortage, many families are falling through the systems (especially health) by not being registered anywhere. All births must be recorded, registered and followed up by welfare personnel so no one is left behind. The bulk of the millions of dollars the Government intends to throw willy nilly at education would be better targeted at those who really need it.

Marie Kaire, Whanga¯rei.

PM ‘can’t win’

John Roughan ( Weekend Herald, May 7) thinks Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern didn't show her usual empathy to the “anti -everything” protesters and that is why Labour is polling badly. How soon people forget. During the protest, we were all horrified daily by the abuse of Parliament's grounds and the vile behaviour of protesters. People were demanding they be punished much more severely than trespass notices. Many of us worried some crazy protester would carry out the death threats being hurled at the PM daily. But had she reached out to them in a placatory, calming way, her detractors would have claimed she was “soft on crime”. It seems she just can't win. Sadly, misogynism and ingratitude for all she has done for this country under extremely challenging circumstances are the order of the day.

Sue Rawson, Tauranga.

NZ vs Australia

There is much discussion at the moment, comparing NZ with Australia, but NZ shouldn’t get too worried because two of the world’s most respected indexes place NZ above Australia. The Legatum Prosperity index, measuring overall prosperity, places NZ in eighth place and Australia in 16th. The Democracy index, prepared by The Economist Intelligence Unit, places NZ second after Norway, and Australia ninth.

David Mairs, Glendowie.

Playground language & beyond

What a wise and illuminating piece of writing Eleanor Black submitted in Canvas ( Weekend Herald, May 7).

As an ex-teacher I can sympathise with much playground language which often reflects their home environment. It certainly isn’t learned at school.

Black comments on her boys watching and absorbing good male role models as household chores are shared. It makes caring for everyone a part of life.

But a worrying occurrence rears it head too when bringing up boys and raising them to be gender balanced. They become more aware of their responsibilities as partners and open to abuse themselves. For instance, when out with his partner and her friends and drinking heavily, responsibility will often fall on his young shoulders, putting him in danger, which may leave him badly scared and traumatised.

As this could be a growing problem, there needs to be within homes and schools a gender-balanced discussion covering not only the mistreatment of women, but also individual responsibility to themselves and others, all the while looking ahead at consequences.

We need to look after our young men and women. Parents need to ask the hard questions and not see it as interfering, especially now many teens are living at home. Better that than a damaged life.

Emma Mackintosh, Birkenhead.

Cycleway ‘conspiracy’

Has anyone noticed the reason for Auckland Council plans to replace roads with cycleways is its undertaking to reduce the city’s emissions by some heroic amount over a short time? How else might such a target be met? The lanes will take a decade to build, result in untold misery to drivers and in theory force them onto public transport. Conspiracy anyone?

Gehan Gunasekara, Stonefields.

Tooth decay

So once again it's everybody else's fault that we have such a problem with tooth decay in children. It's up to parents to make water the drink of choice and sugary drinks an occasional treat. That's how it used to be and probably the reason why at 77 I still have my own teeth.

Pauline Paget, Campbells Bay.

Another reason I became an Australian citizen is to access the superb, well funded Australian health system. In Australia they are very big on preventative health and I knew as I aged I could not rely on the NZ health system. Bruce C.

It’s shocking that latest medicines are not funded here yet they’re available in places like Greece and Spain whose economies are presumably worse than ours. The Government can spend $500m combating gangs but not bettering the health of law-abiding Kiwis it seems. Rod C.

Did [Paula Bennett] push for this when she was part of the Government? This has long been a problem. Is National/Luxon going to improve this? No! They're too busy cutting expenditure and giving massive tax cuts to top earners and stealthily abolishing the top tax rate. Jason P.

Labour has had almost five years to fix the problem — maybe stop revisiting the past and look at fixing the present. How do you know that Luxon/National will not resolve the issue? Gary W.

Knee-jerk spending based on sad stories is not a good way to drive policy. No matter how much money we spend on drugs, the pharmaceutical industry will keep coming up with new ones that we can't afford and the sad stories will continue. Robert O.

We are a third world country pretending to be a first world country.

Sarah M.