We need more than warbling
Cutting a swath Any job will do
Dan McGuire thinks ‘‘New Zealand won’t be a democracy in 20 years if current trends continue’’ (Letters, Nov 22), but surely it isn’t a democracy right now.
Yes, we have a Parliament still rendering the impression that the Westminster system is functioning – but, for the first time in our history, the majority of government MPs were not elected by the people, being solely the ‘‘chosen’’ of their parties.
The coalition comprises 63 MPs, but 34 are list MPs – only 29 were voted in by the electorate. How is that representative of the people? Worse, of the 34 who’d stood for electorate seats, every single one had been rejected.
Representation demands far more than the ability to warble in Parliament. It requires business-like capabilities extending from practical backgrounds able to rationally evaluate and determine the electorate’s best needs. This coalition is loaded with posturing dreamers and one-time activists – few fulfilling, even remotely, the basics of what the country needs from its MPs.
New Zealand really dumbed down when it was persuaded to accept MMP. Democracy was the first of many casualties.
Jim Cable, Nelson
Huawei ban
Andrew Little must think we came down in the last shower, if he expects us to believe, as he said on RNZ, that political pressure from Donald Trump’s United States and Scott Morrison’s Australia wasn’t the reason the New Zealand Government has just banned Huawei from participating in building our new 5G network.
Huawei is known to be one of the world’s leading internet technology companies. It registers more patents internationally than any other competing company. Huawei technology has been an integral part of our existing telecommunication networks, and is being adopted for the development of 5G networks in more than 20 other countries.
It is of course known to everyone that New Zealand is part of the Five Eyes intelligence network, and that decisions taken by this group are not released to participating governments without the prior approval of the US.
The final piece of this jigsaw is the Trump administration has recently begun a global trade war with China, which it sees as being a threat to US global hegemony, and has focused on technology development as the aspect of Chinese growth and development it most wishes to impede.
Little’s claim that none of this is relevant to this week’s developments is nonsense, as he himself must surely know, but cannot be allowed to say.
Bill Sutton, Napier Congratulations on your ‘‘Quick, Save the Planet’’ project. It is wonderful to see you understanding, and acting on, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s latest frightening report. And the logo, of the planet burning, gives a great impression of urgency.
Just one point: the logo title, while catchy, is wrong. We don’t need to save the planet – it will look after itself very nicely, whether in hot or in cool, or healthy or contaminated, situations.
What we need to save is ourselves. By our own actions, we are destroying our foothold on the planet. By contaminating land, water and air, we are creating an unhealthy – and eventually unliveable – environment for ourselves, and for the other species which support us through food and through maintenance of the planet.
If we don’t do it by heating the atmosphere and oceans, we’ll do it by other forms of contamination which are making the land and seas continuously less nourishing.
Your headline should really be ‘‘Quick, Let’s Save Ourselves’’, or something similar.
Bruce Anderson, Eastbourne In his usual exquisite style, Joe Bennett shares an ‘‘Aw . . .’’ moment about a mower man who cuts everything but carefully manoeuvres around a swampy patch occupied by a mother duck and her brood (Man on mower a mood lifter, Nov 28).
Oh, that this groundsman could work for Porirua City Council (PCC). No delicate consideration of wildlife here.
We have a beautiful harbour with its Pauatahanui Inlet arm, home of a nationally acclaimed reserve for protected birds, but mostly edged by roadside verges.
No delicate manoeuvres by grass cutters in this city. Weedeaters and larger machines plough into the inevitable litter, leaving it strewn and chopped up into bite-sized pieces, which then blow into the water, causing harm to fish and birds alike.
The Tararua Tramping Club recently worked on the inner harbour and filled 20 large bags with thousands upon thousands of chopped-up waste items smaller than 5 centimetres square, and this over less than 1 km of beach.
The PCC does not care enough to require contractors to take pride in a good job, and so they do any job. I know how things would turn out for those ducklings in the grass in Porirua.
Marg Pearce, Whitby