Today's Letters to the Editor from readers cover topics including mining, more accommodation and a cow to melt your heart.
Let’s have a fair debate and show respect to all
The Santana gold mine in central Otago is causing quite a debate.
This, of cause, is good in itself, as this is what democracy is all about. I can fully understand both of these sides’ view and opinions, and I can see where everyone is coming from.
What I can’t understand is why each side doesn’t respect the other side’s views and why the personal attacks?
I am utterly appalled by the disgusting behaviours of some of these keyboard warriors who feel the need to threaten Sir Sam Neill’s life. This is definitely not democracy, but outright thuggery.
Grow up people, act like the adults that you are supposed to be, and show respect to others.
Noel McAnally
Dunedin
Mines and wines
The comparison that Peter Dymock makes (23.4.26) between the Santana mine proposal and the Hunter Valley coal mine and viticultural industry in New South Wales is not valid.
Whilst I am not an expert in mining, these coal mines extract the coal and then it is exported. The Santana mine extracts rock, crushes it, puts it through a toxic chemical process to extract the gold and then holds the residual toxins in a supposedly secure dam.
This is an entirely different situation.
John Guthrie
Waimate
Needs and wants
Recent correspondence here regarding mining and marketing: there are those who meet our needs, there are those who create our wants.
Mike Palin
Belleknowes
Flat policy
It is good to see student housing finally on the agenda in this council by-election. Apartments and townhouses in the student precinct make sense.
But the issue isn’t just quantity. From my own experience, including landlords trying to fill empty flats, Dunedin doesn’t simply lack housing. It lacks housing people actually want to live in. Too many flats remain cold, damp, and poorly maintained.
My concern is that without stronger expectations, we repeat the same cycle. New developments go up, standards slip, and in 20 or 30 years we’re back where we started.
I think that’s avoidable. But it requires a council willing to focus on quality, not just supply, and councillors who see decent housing as something worth sticking up for.
Liam White
Dunedin
[Liam White was the 2025 Otago University Students Association president.]
Lowering debt
Somehow credit agency Fitch has formed the opinion that Labour, and National, will reduce debt if it gets in a position to form a government after this year’s election (ODT 29.4.26).
Fitch needs to be quizzed about the origin of this opinion. Labour is insisting that their only increase in tax revenue will be the already announced limited capital gains tax which is earmarked totally for free doctors visits and there will be no other tax increases. So where will the debt reduction money come from?
One can only surmise that in its interview with Labour Finance spokeswoman Barbara Edmonds, Fitch learned that Labour is relying on MMP to provide it with at least the Greens as a coalition partner, so bringing the opportunity to include multiple taxes as a necessary part of an agreement.
The Greens have four new taxes on their policy list - plenty to choose from - and Labour could still claim honesty.
John Day
Wanaka
A frosty day and a cow melt a reader’s heart
It is rare that I feel moved to write a letter to the paper. However the magnificent photo of the cow at Millers Flat by Julie Asher (ODT 24.4.26) deserves an exception.
What an expression on that cow’s face, the single horn giving it a rather dashing look, a firm resolve in its mouth. A magnificent beast.
Thank you, it has made my day.
Paul O'Donnell
Belleknowes
Aggressive advice
Yet again I have read advice from a so-called retirement savings expert that we really need $500,000 to $1.5 million in savings to fund a reasonable retirement. This just serves to make the majority (who probably have $500 to $30,000 saved) feel inadequate and hopeless.
Is that a kind thing to do, especially to the ailing and elderly, who may have just enough to bury themselves - often via a funeral policy - and a few hundred or thousand dollars besides.
This is immature, passive aggressive schoolboy stuff of yesteryear.
If you haven’t got what I’ve got or do what I do, you’re useless.
George Livingstone
Roslyn
Address Letters to the Editor to: Otago Daily Times, PO Box 517, 52-56 Lower Stuart St, Dunedin. Email: letters@odt.co.nz
