Don’t change our gun laws

I am totally confident New Zealanders will be aghast at the plan by the coalition to have a major shake-up of New Zealand’s gun laws (NZ Herald, April 9).

We are decent people who care about the safety of the wider community.

We are informed people, who know that the perpetrator of the Christchurch mosque attack used war weaponry — semi-automatic firearms and assault rifles — to murder 51 and wound many others.

We know that the evidence of this, and other global mass murders, present unchallengeable evidence that if the weapons are out there, they do fall into the wrong hands.

The murders went viral — but so did the response of the Labour-led Government to ban these weapons.

There was global acclaim that New Zealand acted with speed to prioritise lives over the right to own and use military-style firearms.

Surely we will scream and yell and stand absolutely steadfast behind the moral authority of the Imam of the Al Noor Mosque in Christchurch, Gamal Fouda, to ensure that his plea to the Prime Minister to maintain the current gun legislation is heard and met.

Angela Yatri, Ora¯ ¯ tia.

Stats attack

Kate MacNamara’s article on public service cuts (NZ Herald, April 9) highlights the problems faced by the coalition in achieving meaningful savings within the bureaucracy. More drastic action is required.

An example might be Stats NZ and its annual budget of $350 million or so.

Its 1000-plus employees are mainly engaged in producing quarterly CPI stats and processing Census data to a leisurely timetable that hasn’t changed in decades.

Instead, let’s tender this work out to a tertiary institution. Key requirements would be to produce monthly CPI data within five to seven working days and to process Census information within six months. Ministers would have near realtime data at their fingertips to guide policies and measure their effect.

Political, social and economic research would also benefit enormously from access to up-to-date information. All of this should be achievable for a fraction of the current budget.

A similar examination of other “makework”

entities is likely to produce more impact than chipping away at the margins against an entrenched public service, which, as MacNamara points out, is not even taking us back to where we were six months ago, let alone six years ago.

Duncan Simpson, Hobsonville Point.

Truancy carrot

Us oldies must be despairing about the problem of schoolchildren failing to attend school, with obvious consequences for them and for our country.

At my excellent school in the 1950s, a certificate was awarded for a 100 per cent attendance.

Is it possible to create a scheme where attending school for five days of the week, or even four, results in the student receiving an award?

It is a solution based on a carrot rather than the stick. This is a suggestion still in a crude state and perhaps experts can expand on it. Surely it is better to spend money to achieve a good result than on punitive measures.

Incidentally, I made sure I missed a couple of days from school the next year.

My old school now has 7200 fee-paying students and three campuses.

Wake up New Zealand, this is the competition of the future. There would need to be a maximum number of awards a term.

Dail Jones, Stanmore Bay.

Holiday homework

Kudos to David Seymour for suggesting fines for parents who take their children out of school to take advantage of cheap airfares overseas. This happens throughout the term.

Something else that needs addressing, — and maybe some schools do have a policy regarding this issue — is that often these parents, after informing the teacher of the coming holiday, expect the teacher to prepare work for the child to take with them. Sometimes it can be work covering as many as three weeks away from school; the concern being the parent doesn’t want their child to miss out on what would be happening in the classroom.

On returning, the parents then expect the teacher to mark all the work and address any problems, generally at lunchtime.

Lorraine Kidd, Warkworth.

Keep cats in

I have read about cats being killed at night by roaming dogs. While I think that these dogs need to be dealt to, the solution is to keep your cats in at night.

I know that there are people who say that it is not natural for cats to be kept in, but I have had cats all my life and trust me, they get used to it. Especially in the winter, which is fast approaching, when cats actually enjoy being inside at night.

It is also a great saving on vet bills, as they don’t get into cat fights as well.

Julie Pearce, Matamata.