Eighteen days too many
It’s unacceptable that the Government won’t play hardball with unions and force those employees unwilling to get a Covid vaccine to vacate MIQ premises for another 18 days.
Stop pussyfooting about and take the necessary steps to protect New Zealanders and the economy from another outbreak of Covid-19.
Giving recalcitrant workers until the end of April to get a jab is simply unacceptable. The risk to the community of an outbreak is just too great.
Today’s post-Cabinet media conference was a litany of weak leadership around Covid-related issues that cause New Zealanders
statement that “95 per cent... of people have natural immunity to this virus.” (My emphasis)
The latest statistics do not ”... show definitively that lockdowns had absolutely no effect on the transmission ... of this virus”. They show, on the contrary, that lockdowns, when properly applied, had a major effect on the transmission. If you are isolated, you cannot infect others and they cannot infect you.
It is a little hard to guess at Mr Mather’s motives. It would be trite to lump him with anti-vaxxers, though he uses some of their techniques. Some of his writings have an antimedical tone. A charitable view might huge concern.
Over 500 MIQ workers still have not been vaccinated. It’s clear from questions being asked by the media that the number of border workers skipping regular Covid tests, and who also have not yet been vaccinated, is probably even higher. These are people who were supposed to have been vaccinated weeks ago.
When is the Government going to grip up this operation? Numerous measures could be taken to ensure the risk of an outbreak is mitigated despite our hopeless vaccine rollout.
For example, daily saliva testing at the border was recommended as
be that he simply needs to brush up on his molecular biology, immunology, clinical epidemiology and history of medicine.
I feel I should apologise to him for calling his original letter ‘blather’. I should perhaps have called it misleading and in parts false.
WJ (Bill) Morris
Pukenui
This is fairer?
I wish to record my strong objection to the proposed change to capital value rating.
Firstly, the feedback has showed a majority wish to retain the current system. Secondly, the way the response form is worded is urgent by Heather Simpson and Sir Brian Roche last September, but hidden from the public until late December.
It’s still only in a voluntary pilot at a tiny number of MIQ facilities for reasons no one in the Government can adequately explain.
Sir Brian now heads the advisory group overseeing both the border and the vaccine rollout.
We need to urgently hear how his group is going to improve things before our inadequate vaccination and testing regimes cost us all again in another lockdown.
David Seymour
Leader, Act
undoubtedly deceptive. It asks: ‘Do you agree with the changes to providing fairer and simpler rates? 1) Change the rating system. 2) Don’t change the rating system.’
Quite obviously whether the changes are fairer or simpler is a matter of opinion.
By no means can it be described as certainly fairer, because it will make big changes in the amount different ratepayers are forced to pay.
Those paying more will, in the main, be those who are or have been the most productive members of the community.
I submit, given the deceptive wording, the FNDC apologise and provide a properly worded response form. They will need to go back to all those who have responded and give them the opportunity, now they are properly informed, to change their response.
The Far North District has a high proportion of retirees. Many have, by a lifetime of hard work and frugality, been able to build a substantial home they are now retired in.
They have a major asset, but in many cases are now living on the superannuation income.
Their freehold home is a big part of their retirement plan. But with the move to capital value rating their costs will rise appreciably, to the extent of being similar to still having a mortgage. They may be forced out of their homes and into much smaller low-cost premises.
Is this the penalty they must pay for their hard-won asset?
Does the FNDC really want to penalise these people? I submit this is totally unacceptable.
In effect, instead of encouraging people to care for themselves, it penalises people who have been some of the most productive members of our community.
This will contribute to what may well be an unintended consequence of discouraging savings and self-care, with a greater dependence on state care and a drop in productivity.
Likewise with farmland. I have farmed all my life. There are brief periods of relative prosperity for farmers.
However, more often than not they are struggling financially.
The description of their state is generally asset rich, cash poor.
As with retirees, this is an assault on the productive members of our society and rewards the unproductive.
These rewards/penalties will drive behaviour, and the FNDC needs to seriously consider what behaviour they want to encourage.
Danny Simms
Mangonui
A rallying call
The world is currently facing greater challenges than it has in decades, with a pandemic, a decline in democracy and geopolitical tensions on the rise.
More than ever we need to unite New Zealand behind good ideas, and that takes honest conversations about the challenges we face.
This is the worst possible time for the New Zealand Government to crack down on free speech, but that’s exactly what its proposed hate speech laws would do.
With the public largely distracted by Covid, the Labour Government intends changing free speech laws in a way that has the potential to create terrible division and resentment in New Zealand for decades to come, and Act intends to stop it. I’m embarking on a tour of 13 centres across the country to rally public support to maintain New Zealand’s traditions of free speech.
The Government is cynically using the tragedy of March 15, 2019, in Christchurch as a vehicle for pushing these changes through, with a bill that would change the incitement provisions in the Human Rights Act to be introduced to Parliament this year.