Dig and plant vines, don’t dig a big hole
Our government’s latest attempt to facilitate overseas investment, and by extrapolation eventual overseas ownership of our country, ought not to go unchallenged.
Currently, under the pretext of streamlining various government and local body services to speed up the endless consents allowing anything to be accomplished, this unfortunate coalition seems to have thrown open the door to overseas investment, as if that, somehow will be the universal panacea for all our country’s ills.
There is no more glaring example of this than Santana’s tactics in attempting to quash any dissent regarding its ill-conceived and potentially environmentally disastrous project.
Kiwi enterprise has succeeded in making parts of Central Otago a significant grape-growing, wine-making region.
Over time we might aspire to rival McLaren Vale, the Barossa Valley and other wine-making regions, in quality, if not output.
Can you see the wine-makers of those regions tamely rolling over and allowing their tummies to be tickled by the likes of Santana if it means the sacrifice of their industry, because as sure as hell, I cannot?
Most open-cast mining ventures have a finite life. Santana, without greatly expanding its operation, might see out two or three parliamentary terms.
Wine-making with its tourism potential and offering downstream employment for the people of the region, is not the one-way route to perdition that mining is.
With sound management it could be endlessly cyclical, perhaps to the end of this century and beyond.
If Australians want to mine gold, let them do it on their own patch.
It has a great deal more land area, much of it already only semi habitable, to bugger up, than we have.
Ian Smith
Waverley
[Abridged: length. Editor.]
Queen’s on a high
2025 is proving to be a productive year for past students of Queen’s High especially the recipients of Class Act Awards.
Lara Wall has laced up her boots to play for the Football Ferns against Australia. A few weeks ago a former 2019 Class Act awardee, Chloe Robertson, returned from the Hip Hop Unite World Championships in Prague as world champions with her team Mega Crew from the Euphoria Dance Studio in Christchurch where she is the team dance coach.
Well done to both girls, your old school will be so proud.
Ashley Boorer
Andersons Bay
Passenger trains
Now that the Dunedin Railway Station is named amongst the best in the world (ODT 27.11.25), it is time to get passenger trains back here regularly.
What a difference it would make, not only for local people but for tourism. We all need to get behind this and make our voices heard.
J Park
Wakari
K9 cancer detection
The K9 Medical Detection NZ charity was established by Pauline Bloomfield in 2018 to train dogs to detect bowel and prostate cancer, apparently with a level of accuracy of 96-100%. I understand the training and testing is being expanded to detect other cancers.
Why, with the backlog of testing in our public hospitals, has this simple test not yet been implemented? It could save lives and money.
Carolyn Richardson
Dunedin
The ongoing invasion of NZ English by the US
Civis' column Passing Notes (Opinion ODT 29.11.25) makes an interesting point about American language and traditions invading New Zealand.
I have noted this trend since at least the 1960s. At the age of about 10, I wrote a fictional story about goodness knows what; referring to one of my characters as going to the ‘‘penitentiary’’.
My teacher was not impressed, and corrected me. It's ‘‘jail’’, not the penitentiary, he said.
The TV diet of most kids back then included Star Trek, Bonanza, High Chaparral. All, of course, American fare. Quite recently we have begun referring to ‘‘flats’’ as ‘‘apartments’’, and we have American giant Coca Cola to thank for signing up St Nicholas to become the image of who we know now as Santa.
It was America's free-market economy - as opposed to tough government regulations around broadcasting in other countries - that ensured it became the creator of content for the entire world, establishing itself forever as a major cultural influence globally.
It continues apace to this day. I had wondered what ‘‘Black Friday’’ was all about.
Susan Grant-Mackie
Mornington
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