Robertson’s honest appraisal
We read in The Post that Grant Robertson (March 20) is signing off from the political scene and states the highlights and low lights of his career and also offers comment that "I don’t think there's any doubt we did bite off more than we could chew“.
That is a very honest statement from a past Minister of Finance who because of his inexperience of managing finance successfully he completely destroyed the New Zealand economy putting our country into an unbelievable debt position that will be extremely difficult to rectify by a new NZ Government.
The voting public has the common sense to get rid of a consistent failing Government in favour of a major improvement. It is also noted that this damage was done by a Government that had total responsibility, was not hindered by a multi-party split where consideration of other points of view is necessary to satisfy all parties opinions and thereby provide a satisfactory and successful partnership.
The benefit we have now is a Government with some excellent ministers controlled by a leader who has had success in business and made a company efficient and profitable.
Let us hope with his group of very talented people he can do the same to make New Zealand efficient with a thriving economy and all public services efficient providing well to all in need.
Henry Ward, Waikanae
Green tinges fading
The recent unwanted publicity attributed to some members of the Green Party smacks of a hidden agenda by "the enemy within”, but isn’t it more of a party once known for it’s gullibility, naivety, unsophistication and idealism being inhabited by a “new guard” mantra of “welcome to the real world” taking over.
The Jeanette Fitzsimons and the Russell
Normans of the green world are well and truly gone, even if some of their idealism lives on.
James Shaw was perhaps the only knight on a “white” charger who could have saved them from a dirty shade of brown attaching itself to the once bright green image of a party that could keep them honest.
Steve Anderton, Paraparaumu
Faux tension
Many people sympathetic to environmental issues remain critical of the Green Party for also having social policies. In his article Launchyear for the Greens is struggling for liftoff (March 16) Luke Malpass rightly highlights that this tension between environmental and social concerns is also within the Green Party.
I am not a Green Party member, but I feel obliged to point out, as modern environmental academics have done, that human beings are also an intrinsic part of the environment. For example, how can anyone with a conscience care about West Coast frogs without also caring about West Coast people? When we had a high rate of unemployment, Sir Geoffrey Palmer expressed the same view in saying that people would care more about the unemployed if they got caught in drift nets.
The Green Party does care about both, as it should. I see no reason why this should be thought of as a tension.
Carey Sage, Lower Hutt
Show some spine
How disappointing to witness the lack of backbone from our elected politicians.
I would imagine there would be several
National Party MPs who do not agree with all the policies being rushed through by their party.
Are they so lily-livered and weak-kneed that they cannot cross the floor and vote in a way their constituents may well expect them to.
Or are they so intimidated by the bullying tactics of the three-headed boys’ brigade that they can’t speak for themselves?
To remind the people in Parliament, Winston Peters received less than 8% of the total vote and David Seymour, around 10% and yet you allow them to have more than 50% of the say.
Please show some intelligence and make some wise decisions on behalf of all of NZ. That’s what you were voted in to do.
Pip Murdoch, Kelburn
Paying the price
Tom Brodie (Letters, March 20) says that landlords, manufacturers and others “pay for New Zealand”, but doesn’t say how it is that they can.
A desert island castaway who wants to build a 10-storey building knows they probably can’t. A person in Wellington who wants one knows that with the right combination of financial capital, expertise and other resources it would be possible. The community makes all the difference. The other resources include things such as timber – where some costs are likely charged to the environment via slash – and transport of materials.
Transport is a great example of the free lunch. The damage to the roads from a heavy vehicle has been known since US experiments in the 1950s to be many times that of a car. It might be in the hundreds or even thousands of times as much.
Even at the new rate of $38 per 1000km the plug-in electric vehicle is being taken for a ride by the road transport folk. They pay only some hundreds of dollars.
Capitalism might be made to work better for all of us if resources were properly priced and paid for. Presently, the main beneficiaries of community welfare are certainly not the poor. David Wright, Hataitai
Ripping it up
Not wanting to start digging another conspiracy rabbit hole, but a bus trip round Evans Bay has left me wondering. There was a perfectly good cycle way round Evans Bay to the city, yet there are now two major excavations going on there. The sea wall has been breached and the work evidently still has a way to go.
I cannot escape the suspicion that the Transport Agency is quite happy for this sort of thing to go on as it makes cycleways, which the car-obsessed Transport Agency strongly dislike, look expensive. Having made extending cycleways unpopular with the funding sources, the Transport Agency can return to it’s own agenda of building more roads for ever more cars. Hardly a responsible attitude in an era when we are trying to reduce transport emissions.
Can anyone from the responsible agencies please explain the necessity for such extensive and expensive work?
Graeme Buckley, Miramar
Transport woes
Another front page article in The Post’s nonstop anti-WCC campaign, this time blaming the council for parking woes around the hospital (March 21). These woes are caused by several factors.
Most importantly, the hospital itself does not provide enough parking for staff or patients of such a large facility – zero criticism on that from The Post, of course, as it only has the council in its sights. The other main factor causing the trouble is that New Zealanders are stuck in a 20th century mindset where everyone owns a car and makes pretty well every journey by car.
Cities do not have enough parking for that mindset and certainly shouldn’t try to provide it, for it is the daily avalanche of motor vehicles that makes living in the city unpleasant.
What we need is far more people on bikes, scooters or public transport. That is where all transport investments should be going not into more big roads encouraging people to keep on driving.
Laurence Harger, Seatoun
Cuts from the top
It will be interesting to know if the Prime Minister is cutting 15-25% of the staff in his office. The same with all the other Cabinet Ministers.
Jenny Gigg, Titahi Bay