Missing the point and sidestepping the issue
Your coverage of Ingrid Leary’s questions in Parliament about the Counselling Workforce Report 2026 (ODT 14.3.26) missed the point: the government’s willingness to sidestep the actual problem raised by the report.
The report makes a simple point. Cost is now the biggest barrier preventing people from accessing counselling, and those who cannot afford private care are often left waiting months for publicly funded support.
At the same time, many counsellors report having capacity to see more clients.
In response, Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey responded by reciting statistics about how quickly people are seen in primary and specialist mental health services. Those figures may well be correct for those parts of the system, but they do not address the issue raised in the counselling workforce report.
The report concerns access to counselling specifically, where many must either pay privately or wait for limited funded places. Quoting wait-time targets for other parts of the mental health system does nothing to address the identified affordability barrier. It simply shifts the conversation to a different set of services.
If the government continues to respond to concerns about access to counselling by quoting statistics from other parts of the mental health system, it risks appearing less interested in solving the problem than in avoiding it.
Mental health care should not depend on whether someone can pay for private counselling.
[Abridged: length. Editor.]
Move on
Metiria Stanton Turei's column "We need to sort out the attitude problem to sort out poverty" (Opinion ODT 6.3.26) doesn't hold up on a couple of counts.
She frames the "move-on" legislation as if it's the government's main answer to homelessness. No one rational is making that argument.
Most people likely understand those laws are about keeping shared spaces usable and safe for everyone, not a substitute for housing policy. Lumping the two together sidesteps a fairly basic point about public safety.
She also suggests that lifting benefit levels is the straightforward fix for poverty. It isn't, obviously. More money in renters' pockets often ends up in landlords' pockets if housing supply stays the same.
Writing off factors like mental health and addiction as excuses dodges the real complexity.
Record keeping
I was astonished to read in today’s ODT (9.3.26) that Fenz claims to not keep a detailed record of truck breakdowns.
A fundamental principle of good asset management is recording maintenance work and issues with every vehicle, and the various items associated with them. How else will Fenz track issues and expenditure, both with the fleet overall, and with specific parts of the fleet?
There may be a particular model of truck that fails to meet expected performance standards, or conversely say a pump that performs particularly well with less servicing and maintenance than expected. Without good record keeping, they will be unable to prepare adequate maintenance budgets, and future plant replacement won’t be guided by sound empirical evidence of previous performance.
No wonder our fire crews are so fed up with the ongoing fleet issues they experience.
Oyster management praised, salmon farm queried
Top marks to Ngāi Tahu Seafood for not dredging bluff oysters for a second year running to allow stocks time to recover. Leadership in prioritising long-term recovery of the oyster beds over short-term gain is truely admirable custodianship.
However, the application for Fast Track Act approval of the Ngāi Tahu salmon farm proposals on the northern coast of Rakiura is troubling for me.
Having dived under salmon farms I consider them akin to marine pig farms with waste products that will travel with the currents across adjacent oyster beds. Surely this can't be good for the Bluff oyster fishery?
On top of this, a percentage of salmon feed is comprised of fish meal from wild-caught fish such as sardines, mackerel, anchovy, which is depriving other marine life, like dolphins, penguins, gannets and larger fish, of their food. In other words, killing fish to feed fish which is not efficient nor sustainable.
Wouldn’t it be so much better to farm oysters, mussels and scallops?
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