We do, indeed, need to just get on with it
Professor Robin Gauld’s comment that "The DCC needs to get on with it" (ODT 7.5.25) is right on the mark. Many Dunedin residents are struggling to afford basics like housing, food, and electricity. Last year’s 17.5% rates increase was eight times the inflation rate. This year’s proposed 10.5% rise is four times inflation. If any business operated like this, it would not survive.
It seems the council has become distracted by an ever-expanding list of secondary priorities and policy initiatives. While goals such as environmental stewardship, cultural engagement, and social equity are important, they cannot come at the cost of financial sustainability or essential services.
Now more than ever, the council must focus on what matters most to residents — affordability, infrastructure, and economic resilience. Dunedin needs leadership that puts the wellbeing of its community at the centre of every decision.
Is growth good?
There are simply-ascertained truths about the current human predicament. Firstly, we are overshot as a species, having achieved that state by drawing down one-off resource stocks. Secondly, anything which is unsustainable will not continue.
Having recently attended a DCC-organised gathering of folk clearly ignorant of those facts but hell-bent on growth, I wondered who should be held accountable for that ignorance locally; surely it has to be, largely, the media?
So, remembering that omission has the potential to resemble outright falsehood, I ask when was the last time this newspaper journalistically ascertained whether economic growth was still a valid societal goal? Whether it was leading to near-term collapse rather than to broad, sunlit uplands? Where we are on that trajectory?
No to Green bashing
Yet more Green bashing (Letters 7.5.25). Even a cursory glance at the Greens policy website reveals a plethora of pragmatic environmental, conservation, and climate policies from their 2023 manifesto; one could anticipate a similar manifesto for 2026.
As an "angry young individual" myself, I am gobsmacked by the government’s daily attacks on working people, immigrants, the rainbow community, beneficiaries, women, and disabled people. The government is declining 500 emergency housing applications a month, but you’re telling me Swarbrick and Davidson are the issue?
Volunteer firefighters petitioned Parliament for access to ACC coverage; National didn’t want to touch it, but Greens MP Benjamin Doyle supported them, even while being attacked by the deputy prime minister for their gender identity. I don’t think the issue here is the young, energetic Greens MPs. It’s the greed and cruelty of the coalition.
Neutral space
Cr Steve Walker’s tirade (ODT 6.5.25) suggests that he has not learned that a council is a representative organisation for all citizens in the community. The council must present a neutral political voice on behalf of the city they are representing. It is not the place for individual councillors to promote their personal political views.
Mr Walker is freely entitled to march through the city and stand in the Octagon waving his flag and espousing his personal political concerns about the behaviour of both Israel and Hamas.
The fact that he has a BA degree and wide Middle East experience does give positive credence to his opinion, but it does not give him permission to display those views from a politically neutral forum.
Deep disappointment at progress on hospital
Charlie Wilson (Letters 8.5.25) defends Labour’s record on the new hospital build, pointing to the near-completed outpatient building.
Well, all right. But that was the easy bit. That building only needed lots of rooms and decent plumbing. Far more importantly, the main, inpatient building is the one that matters, that will have all the complex stuff, including operating theatres, intensive care, imaging, maternity, and so on.
All we have currently to show for the new inpatient building is a forest of piles, after Labour had six years to get on with the job. National is similarly culpable: they came into power, with a hiss and a roar, their promise that "the new Dunedin hospital will be built better and sooner under National". A year and a-half on, it’s still just piles. And from Minister Brown’s recent pronouncements, it seems a rewording is necessary: the new hospital will be built worse and later under National.
Neither party can take any credit for properly looking after the best interests of the health of those in the South. They have both disgracefully let us down. Neither is defendable.
I am disappointed but not surprised by this coalition’s slash and burn with our hospital. My faith is hanging by a thread based upon the fact the hospital will be built as needed, even when it opens and there are some empty floors.
If all floors are there they can be outfitted when finances allow and given this will be a hot topic at next year’s election I predict one or more parties will front up and commit to outfit as needed.
Maybe, in the interim we need to get creative instead of howling in anguish at each other. I don’t care if its "Joes Garage" 4th floor or "Bills Takeaways" 7th floor, start thinking outside the box we all seem to be in at present
Address Letters to the Editor to: Otago Daily Times, PO Box 517, 52-56 Lower Stuart St, Dunedin. Email: editor@odt.co.nz
