Underinvestment is having chilling effect
Contact Energy’s CEO says they know homes are doing it tough at the moment and that they are doing their best to keep prices down (ODT 8.8.25).
What he fails to mention is that Contact Energy along with the other major gentailers (Genesis, Meridian, and Mercury) have for the last decade dramatically reduced their investment in future sources of energy alongside skyrocketing dividends.
The long-term impacts of underinvestment have become clearer in the past 12 months: high power prices for families; factories and mills shutting down, leaving workers jobless.
The gentailers are required to look after the interests of their shareholders, not those of struggling New Zealanders. A shortage of supply is good for their bottom line. Nevertheless their PR machine will continue to promote public good falsehoods.
This is well illustrated by Contact Energy’s fast-track proposal to lower the operating level of Lake Hāwea. This will result in significant adverse environmental outcomes. Their justification is security of supply — which they historically underinvested in.
If approved this will be a financial windfall for Contact as it requires no capital investment. The electricity reforms introduced by National have been a disaster. It is ironic that a National minister, Nicola Willis, is struggling to control the cost of living crisis bought about in part by her National predecessors.
No problem
What is the problem with the latest reforms to the electoral system? Everyone who is eligible to enrol in the elections has access to do so before the shut-off time. How many years have we been doing it now, without issues?
It has nothing to do with race, or trying to prevent people having their say. Maybe some people should look in the mirror to see where the problem lies. Stop blaming everybody else, get off your butt and enrol before the cut off time. It is called personal responsibility. The majority of us do the right thing.
Was it not the previous Labour government who, in 2020, changed the electoral system rule and bought the cut off-time to enrolling and voting to the day of the election when it really did not need to be changed at all.
And by the way I do not have a problem with prisoners who are serving time, not allowed to cast a vote.
Reading the opinion piece article of Metiria Stanton Turei (Opinion ODT 8.8.25) draws me to the conclusion that it is not "their people" (as she calls us colonials) that are the ones creating division in this country. You just need to read the said article to see where the fuel that sets that fire is coming from.
Meeting deadlines
I totally disagree with Metiria Stanton Turei. The government is not preventing a 100,000 people from voting: all they are doing is setting a reasonable date for people to enrol.
We all have expiry dates, acceptance dates, and multiple times and dates we have to keep on a daily bases. I don’t see any difference in setting an enrolment date.
There will be plenty of advertising, social media and individual communications between communities and different racial groups. The government is not preventing people from voting it is just setting a date.
Why not let people vote who forget to vote after the ballots close?
Finding a warm flat for next year is possible
As an elderly computer incompetent it took me about two minutes to find a variety of double-glazed new (as in no more than about 10 years old) student flats for $180-$250 approx a room for 2026.
I found a bargain 1990s two-bathroom, six-bed flat — not double-glazed, but low ceiling wall and underfloor (because it was the law from the late ’70s) insulated flat in Opoho Rd at $147 a room for next year.
Heatpumps need to be on all day at 18°C or 20°C in cold weather: it’s what most older people do. This works especially well if you have wall insulation — double glazing is not even required.
Previous generations wouldn’t believe that you can get 6kW or 8kW of heat by only using 2kW of power. Many are as cheap to run as an old one- or two-bar heater and heat the whole house, not just part of one room as the old heaters used to.
Also to the girls who turned down a good flat because of ceiling cracks: unless they’re as wide as a pencil, 99.9% of homeowners have them, due not least because of normal settlement but also because we live in an earthquake zone. We have so many we don’t even notice ones that terrify overseas visitors.
Past time for Oval evictions
I am in utter disbelief at this current council’s hypocritical incompetence — the trigger being the now year-long occupation of the Oval by vagrants who have chosen to pitch tents on council land where the local by-laws expressly forbid doing so.
This action not only seems to be tolerated by the council, but seems to be free from any infringement notice, fine or prosecution. Instead, the council would rather hypocritically divert their attentions around the Oval to putting up an extensive collection of newly installed, expensive, "No parking" signs obviously directed at parents coming to the ground for weekly children’s sports.
How these rate-paying parents must have their blood boiling when they are confronted with these new signs and additional concrete bollards placed by the council to threaten them about the legalities of them parking for an hour while their children play on the sports grounds that their rates have paid for. Adding insult to injury is having their view of the said sports event corrupted by vagrants in their tents being left to do what they want.
Ironically, even when they park one of their own cars outside their tents they do so with some impunity.
Can I remind current councillors running for re-election that such incompetence on their behalf to deal with this now long, ongoing situation of illegal squatting on council land has been noticed by the voting public.
As a passive protest I would like to encourage every person who receives a parking ticket from the council to refuse to pay it, and simply write "Oval" on it, and return it to the council. The law must be consistent.
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