Today's Letters to the Editor from readers include candidates' comments on flooding, vision for Dunedin, and Smooth Hill alternatives; as well as readers' views on war and health.
Flooding key to land becoming productive
Your article (ODT10.9.25) states that Gary Kelliher calls the nature-based solutions to flooding proposed by the Otago Regional Council “an utter joke” and thinks that 20% of productive land is on the table here for change.
He forgets that these productive areas are productive because of flooding. He is quoted as saying he doesn’t know “where this may be leading”. I would have thought that, being part of Vision Otago, he would have some idea.
Let me share a vision of where it is heading. Nature-based solutions for flooding, along with diverse land use, will result in reduced water run-off. Mixed wood lots with different rotation periods will reduce the risk of soil erosion and dangerous debris-laden flood flows from clear-felled pine slash.
Restored wetlands will absorb as much floodwater as they can. Flood plains will be replenished with a thin fertile layer of silt. Waterways and wetlands will be thriving with biota.
There are plenty of catchment care groups implementing these and other solutions throughout the country, and guess what? The farms are just as productive despite having retired more than 20% of the land.
Phil Glassey
Musselburgh
[Phil Glassey is an engineering geologist and ORC candidate.]
Good news day
While running down my ambitious plans and bold vision for Dunedin, there is very good news for your correspondent Philip Temple (Letters ODT20.9.25).
If he is satisfied with double-digit rates rises, Dunedin growing at half the rate of the national average, a lack of cohesive economic development and the homeless problem being left to others, then Dr Temple has the option to vote for the status quo and get more of the same in the next term.
There is good news too for those voters who share my ambition for Dunedin and who wish to vote for real change in 2025. From the candidates standing it is entirely possible to elect a much better mayor and council for the DCC in 2025 by retaining the good, hardworking councillors and then by bringing in a new mayor and several new councillors with a fresh perspective and greater ambition for Dunedin.
Andrew Simms
Dunedin
[Andrew Simms is a Dunedin mayoral and city council candidate.]
Research needed
Andrew Simms' much-touted 400 hours of research into alternatives to the establishment of a waste station at Smooth Hill needs considerable elaboration if we are to take it seriously. Four hundred hours to decide upon trucking our waste into green, arable fields around Winton looks astonishingly like flippant desperation.
The obvious analogy is that we toss our rubbish over the fence into our neighbour’s property - an act of callous disregard.
What were the considerations Simms used? Did he consult with the folk in Winton? Has he considered the cost of trucking our waste or is he proposing to reestablish a railway link?
Had he consulted with Waka Kotahi on the resultant wear and tear to the highway, or the increase in carbon emissions? Has he considered any alternatives which investigate reducing waste?
Marian Poole
Deborah Bay
[Marian Poole is a Dunedin City Council and West Harbour Community Board candidate.]
Wars are a plague upon all of your houses
The soul-destroying Middle East conflict has been well documented with polarising comment from a number of contributors.
I have noted the to and fro of both camps and there is merit in some of your most cogent and rational individuals in both. I respect their commitment and dedication.
The thing that keeps recurring to me, time and time again, is the word religion. This current conflict is a war on ideologies and beliefs, not an isolated incident. Our world history is peppered with religious wars.
For me, as the years have passed I haven’t quite become irreligious but am sorely sceptical now that our lives are pre-ordained by some ethereal being, whatever religious base they come from.
The simple fact for me now is no higher authority would ever allow such atrocities to prevail in a supposedly civilised world.
He/she wouldn’t allow our approach to actively destroying our environment and in turn the world. Nothing will convince me otherwise.
I am sure someone will respond based upon their beliefs, maybe a few words from the Bible or Koran ... to me, irrelevant and misleading.
Religion has a lot to answer for.
Graham Bulman
Roslyn
A win is a win until it is not
The wish of Health Minster Simeon Brown, to refer the present dispute between Health NZ and senior hospital doctors to binding arbitration may bring wry smiles to those of us doctors old enough to have been practising obstetrics in the mid-1980s.
The Maternity Benefit, paid, in accordance with the Social Security Act of that time, to both specialist and GP obstetricians, was a ‘‘total benefit’’ for GP obstetricians - unlike specialists we were not allowed to charge the patient any fee.
By the time the Lange-led Labour government was elected in 1984 increases in the maternity benefit had lagged far behind inflation, but in, I think, 1985, the Health Department offered only a 3% increase in the benefit, and refused to negotiate anything higher. The NZ Medical Association, negotiators for the medical profession, invoked the clause in the Act which allowed either party to such negotiations to opt for binding arbitration. That led the department, despite its previous refusal, to offer a 9% increase, but the NZMA insisted on arbitration.
That final binding arbitration awarded an average increase of 110%, and attached to the decision a comment remarking on the restraint which had been exercised by the medical profession over the previous few years. We GP obstetricians were delighted.
But, as a result, that provision of the Social Security Act was doomed. It’s not just officially right-wing governments which are unscrupulous.
Soon after the arbitration decision was gazetted, when the House of Representatives was sitting through the night under urgency to pass an unrelated Bill, Dr (PhD, not medical) Michael Bassett, Minister of Health 1984-87, added a clause to the Bill which removed the binding nature of such arbitration.
As the Psalmist said, ‘‘Put not your trust in princes, nor in any child of man’’.
Tony Fitchett
Dunedin
[Tony Fitchett is a retired GP and GP obstetrician.]
Address Letters to the Editor to: Otago Daily Times, PO Box 517, 52-56 Lower Stuart St, Dunedin. Email: letters@odt.co.nz
