A good Samaritan

I had a great experience last Tuesday (March 30).

I was walking along Commerce St about 11am. I passed a money machine, and a middle-aged bloke walked away from it and headed for

not form the basis of a settled, productive life.

At the census there were 247 homeless people in the FNDC region, and that is not an impossible number to deal with. I hope that some of the money will go to solving this social problem.

Bob Bingham

Kerikeri

Our missing mayor

Several weeks ago our mayor and several councillors were emailed about the road closure at East Beach and a community meeting at the point at Kaimaumau. Only one councillor, Mate Radich, was interested. Our mayor didn’t even send a courtesy email, which I thought would be standard mayoral practice.

The meeting was held, and, true to his word, Cr Radich was there with all the information he could gather given the short notice. I asked where the mayor was, but no one knew. I suggest that maybe his absence was due to no TV camera.

We emailed Cr Radich and the mayor over another concern we had. The next morning Cr Radich phoned the stairs to go up to the bank. A lady fronted up to the money machine and suddenly looked frightened. She turned to me with four $50 notes in her hand, and said, “Where’s he gone?”

back and discussed the concern. But once again still no response or courtesy email from the mayor.

At this stage I was quite concerned for his wellbeing, and was thinking of putting in a missing person report to the police. But to my surprise, guess who was on TV that night. Yes, our mayor. He was highly concerned about the lockdown in Auckland, as nobody would be able to see our beautiful spots in the North. But hold on ... this is exactly what the meeting at Kaimaumau was about, no one being able to see East Beach.

If anyone knows or sees our mayor, could they please advise him there is a follow-up community meeting at the point at Kaimaumau on April 16, at 10am. We can’t guarantee him that a TV camera will be there, but can guarantee him heaps of local ratepayers who were the ones who voted him in as mayor.

If he doesn’t turn up I think it’s time for a change of direction, maybe put

I pointed up the bank stairs and she raced up and handed him the money he had mistakenly thought wasn’t coming. What a great person. Clive Patterson

Coopers Beach

out to pasture ...

A Tracey Kaimaumau Editor:Mr Carter said he had not attended the Kaimaumau meeting because he was in Whanga¯ rei that morning, keeping an engagement with the Northland DHB chairman and chief executive, who briefed the region’s mayors and MPs on the findings and recommendations of the Health and Disability System Review, health issues facing Northland, and the condition of facilities at

Wha¯ ngarei Hospital.

He had subsequently devoted a great deal of time and effort to resolving the issue of maintaining public access to East Beach, and continued to do so.

Shame

Hamilton’s mayor Paula Southgate says “establishing Ma¯ ori wards without first consulting the wider public would not achieve the right outcome”. (Stuff April 1).

This (public consultation) is exactly what Democracy Northland and the 15,000-plus petition signatories asked the Whanga¯ rei District Council, Northland Regional Council and Kaipara District Council to do, and it is what they should have done.

Mayors Mai and Smith and chair Smart should hang their heads in shame. By foisting their personal ideology of separatist Ma¯ ori wards on our multicultural communities without public consultation they have failed their responsibilities as leaders.

Geoff Parker

Kamo

No excuse

Once again the Government is long on self-congratulation but late on delivery with its announcement of a travel bubble with Australia, but Jacinda Ardern couldn’t treat us like lucky little prisoners any longer.

In an extraordinary admission today, Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said each country would be making decisions unilaterally. In other words, there is no bubble, New Zealand will just start behaving like an Australian state but six months late.

Today’s announcement, incidentally, aligns with the policies Act has been espousing for months, all of them in our Covid Response Plan 2.0.

For the Prime Minister to get up today and talk about ‘green zones’ at airports like she discovered something new and deserved a Nobel Prize for it is galling in the extreme. Holding up a traffic light system on a sheet of A3 paper like the one epidemiologist professors Michael Baker and Nick Wilson mooted months ago is also outrageous.

It’s been obvious that all these steps were the way forward since New South Wales introduced them in October.

We know the bubble will work, and it will improve the lives of countless New Zealanders and Australians. It’s how the Australian states have been working for months, and there is no excuse for New Zealand being so late to join.

David Seymour

Leader, Act

No connection

Wally Hicks responded (Living with Covid, letters April 1) to my letter re vaccines with quite an outpouring that seemed to have no connection to my letter. However, Wally seems to think the ‘great reset’ will lead to peace on Earth.

If, Wally, you mean the ‘great reset’ as per Klaus Schwab’s address to the Davos Mutual M.... Society, it was certainly not about peace but rather slavery for all except for the ‘masters’as in feudal times. Or was your response just an April Fool’s joke?

As for “it’s not difficult to find out about cause of death on a death certificate”, yes Wally, that is the point, ie the pressure to have anyone that has a Covid positive test then list them as a victim of Covid whether or not it had any relation to the death means that the cause of death cannot be relied on and has completely skewed all the results, not to

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