Guy Body’s view Get ready, National
Te reo demo
Students from Westlake Girls High School, Carmel College and Milford Primary demonstrating their support of M¯aori language week on Tuesday with placards, posters and verbal chants along the kerbs of Shakespeare Rd and Wairau Rd struck me as a lesson in civil disobedience. Obviously the Ministry of Education think it is a good option to teach public demonstration but why did each school need a police presence? Who pays for the police? I don’t think we should be having our school kids protesting in that manner. I felt threatened.
Lesley Baillie, Murrays Bay.
Falling ill abroad
Your correspondent Norm Empson castigates the Government for not bringing back from Bali one of our citizens needing urgent medical attention. Bringing one person back to New Zealand for medical attention would open the floodgates to future travellers and would very quickly develop into a multimillion-dollar annual cost. The Government shouldn’t have to do what people should be doing for themselves. It is yet another example of a population who have a growing feeling of entitlement.
Richard Telford, Lucas Heights.
Aggressive question
Might I offer an alternative interpretation of the Brownlee phonecall saga? A firm of carpetbagger lawyers from the big smoke try to drum up business for themselves in Christchurch by putting the frighteners on residents of that traumatised town. A local MP rides to the assistance of his constituents and demands information from the carpetbaggers. The sensitive young lawyer who took the MP’s phone call was offended by his robust ripostes and had to go home for a cup of tea and a lie down. The carpetbaggers then saw an opportunity for a bit of free publicity and scurried off to the media.
Clearly the young lawyer’s expensive legal education failed to explain how to hang up on a phone call if you don’t like what you are hearing. Malcolm Bell, Forrest Hill.
Hands off
Before the Auckland Council puts houses on Chamberlain Park Golf Course it needs to recall that its predecessor in the 1930s rejected a housing option for what was then waste land on the grounds that the underlying basalt rock made building too difficult, and instead created a golf course for the use of the public of Auckland. The council should also recall a council survey held between November 2014 and February 2015 on uses for Chamberlain Park returned a 77 per cent “no housing” response, the highest response to any question in the survey.
Richard Quince, Mt Eden.
Criminal expense
Andrew Little’s criminal justice summit bears closer examination. It is incredible the organisers don’t know whether it was 600 or 700 who attended. It is equally unbelievable that even if there were 700 participants, the cost works out at $2142 per person. I can’t understand how that sort of money could be spent for a two-day talk fest. The taxpayer deserves a full breakdown of this criminal expense.
John Kania, Long Bay. With the Labour Party seemingly falling apart at the seams, National needs to revamp their team and get ready to make a challenge. The Bridges/Bennett leadership simply does not cut it.
National needs to look at it’s top 10 and get real strength, people we really can believe in, people who we think can take us forward into the future, as turbulent as it is going to be.
Stuart McMonagle, Greenhithe.
Unions needed
I believe Mike Hosking is wrong when he blames the unions for the ills in society and business. Without unions there would still be child labour with youngsters up chimneys and there would not be weekends off. Trade unions succeeded in curbing the excesses of greedy capitalists particularly in the USA.
I lived through the “Winter of Discontent” in the 70s in England but while I agree the unions and their excesses in those days deserved to get a hammering from the likes of Margaret Thatcher, a balance has to be struck.
Martin Pooley, Opotiki.