Letters to the editor
Tourist spending
In deciding to defund the Arts Centre, I wonder if the city council has considered the bigger picture? The dollar value it contributes to Christchurch as a result of the tourist spending it generates must be big.
It needs to continue to be a vibrant centre of activity, rather than a collection of dead buildings, to continue to play its part in attracting visitors to the city. It is quite clear that the Arts Centre management have worked very hard to generate what income they can, and that breaking even without providing additional support is not possible.
Cities need to leverage their unique selling points to get tourist dollars, and the Arts Centre is one of ours. The council’s failure to fund it will cook the goose that lays the golden egg. Sebastian Wilberforce, Tai Tapu
Centre finances
Thank you Felicity Price (Letters, March 28) for your comments on my letter regarding the Arts Centre financial reporting.
I stand by my letter for the following reasons. Cashflow statements have three components: operating activities, investing activities and financing activities. The figures I used were from the operational side of the statement.
The investing activities show the purchase of fixed assets and property improvement of $17.4 million in 2021 and $16.9m in 2022. These are not operating expenses. The centre reported no financing activity at all for either 2021 and 2022. So again, I ask the question, why the drop in donations in 2021 and 2022 from $7.4m to $3.1m? I cannot see any notes to the financials which explain this to the public.
In fact, the accounts are devoid of any notes of substance relating to its revenue and expenditure. Hardly accountable and transparent.
Contrasting approaches
What a contrast between the beautifully crafted Good Friday opinion piece by Andrew Shepherd (Finding good in Good Friday, humanity, March 28) and the vindictive, intolerant action of Destiny Church in painting out the rainbow crossings in Gisborne and Auckland.
Whereas Shepherd portrays the first Easter events as God in Christ's love and forgiveness “breaking the spiral of hatred and violence” in His day, Destiny exhibits a narrow, judgmental conservatism which bears no resemblance to the unconditional love and inclusiveness of Jesus the Christ.
Time for introspection
The sad, but important, light shone on Gloriavale in the recent TV documentary and RNZ interview deserves our genuine thanks. It must have been hard for the people involved to be so frank.
It must be harder still for their leaders to look at themselves and see the damage they have been doing. This Holy Week is a good time for such introspection and honest, humble prayer. They need outside help.
It has to also be said: there are parallels with the Israel-Gaza situation. When people feel the outside world is not on their side they give too much power to their leaders, who cause the opposite outcomes to which they preach, be it morality or reducing an existential threat.
Disturbing doco
The television documentary Escaping Utopia brought back several disturbing memories for me. All cults play on partial truths and entrapment. Once allegiance is gained, virtually anything is permissible to those who wield the power. My heart goes out to the poor women who are coerced into submitting to this less than ideal situation.
But how very apt that this doco has come out during Holy Week: the ultimate story of betrayal, but trumped, thankfully, by the ultimate story of redemption. Charles Jaine, Staveley
Increase powers
Your March 25 news item Former minister of GCSB frustrated by agency failure, describes how former Government Communications Security Bureau minister Chris Finlayson is “very unhappy” to learn that the agency was involved in spying for another country under his watch and he was not told about it.
Nobody should be surprised. Note that in November 2021 The Press reported GCSB director Hampton as dismissing the idea that “we were somehow tasked by the US and others”. The agency has a long history of deliberately misleading the public.
Prime ministers Lange, Shipley, Clark and Key, and Minister Cullen, all had to confess to failures in oversight of the GCSB. In particular, Lange had to be told by Nicky Hager what the spy base at Waihopai actually did, and Cullen and Shipley had to admit that telling Parliament the GCSB did not spy on New Zealanders was untrue.
Inspectors General of the spooks have had great difficulty in extracting information from the GCSB, notably the investigation of the agency’s connections with the torture of Guantanamo Bay and other prisoners. It took four years to produce a report which covered only one country over a few particular years. The time to hugely increase the powers of a parliamentary committee to investigate GCSB activities, as recommended in a recent review, is long past. Warren Thomson, Cashmere
Speed limits
The new Government is about to change speed limits across the country and it can’t come quickly enough for Redcliffs and Sumner residents who have four changes between Moncks Bay and the Sumner supermarket.
In Dyers Rd it is 70kph and when you turn left into Linwood Ave, it is 60kph. Dyers Rd has a busy infrastructure area by Mr Boats, but still 70kph, but then when you turn into Linwood Ave, there is no infrastructure whatsoever, yet it is 60kph.
Get this fixed quickly, Simeon Brown. Common sense might once again prevail! Gary Blair, Redcliffs
What a day
My son had given me a SailGP ticket for Christmas but I got cold feet and told him I didn’t want to go. It's too much of a hassle with my walking frame. Trust me, he said, it won't be. What an eye-opener for me, 83 and not been on a bus in donkeys’ years.
Got to the end of a massive line of passengers waiting to board and two lady officials wiggled a finger at me and my walker. They showed me an empty special lane straight to the buses. Even the bus driver jumped down and lowered a ramp. Passengers already standing in the allocated space for wheelchairs smartly moved away for us.
Huge crowds but people just moved aside for us. When we arrived at the Platinum Lawn another official quickly directed us to a waterfront table in their accessible section. It was unbelievable the effort officials went to to assist the elderly and handicapped.
The racing was really spectacular. Really sorry that the Aussie boat was so damaged that it was withdrawn, but that was helpful to us for a great win.
We needed that win after losing to the dolphins and the Crusaders to the Blues.
But on this day, incredibly, my walker was the huge winner. DL Whittington, Somerfield [abridged]