You don’t see them in the supermarket queue
Several days ago three sea lions were shot at the Waitaki River mouth.
To the person/persons responsible for this act, do you go fishing in the vicinity of the river mouth? Were you getting annoyed because the sea lions were catching more fish than you and you decided to do something about them?
When you approached the sea lions and stood with your loaded weapon, feeling only anger towards them, why didn’t you stop, admire, consider what the consequences of your actions would be and walk past?
The sea lion’s world is the ocean and this is where they get their food. They take only what they need to survive. You don’t see them down the seafood aisle at a supermarket.
Your actions have taken away something special from the coast for reasons known only to you. However, what goes around comes around.
Carrying the cost
In its first days, National gave landlords a $3 billion tax break. Soon after, Finance Minister Nicola Willis announced $14.7b in tax relief over four years—then borrowed $12b to cover the revenue shortfall.
Despite this, Willis speaks of "balancing the books" while reframing the narrative to blame the previous government. The reality is that her early decisions created a $17.7b revenue black hole, forcing cuts across essential programmes.
These cuts disproportionately harm those on low incomes, people at risk of discrimination, and the most vulnerable in our communities. Jobs have been lost, projects scrapped, and hopes for pay equity abandoned — all because of reckless tax and borrowing choices.
Willis’ approach prioritises short-term political gain over long-term stability, leaving ordinary New Zealanders to carry the cost.
RUCs and reasons
Why have a tax specifically for roads at all? We don’t do it for other government services such as health, education.
The only difference is private industry benefits directly from roads, and use and damage roads more. Scrap RUCs on all vehicles below X tonnes. That makes the majority of private motor vehicles RUC-free; eliminates the need for further public sector staffing, systems and policing.
It still ensures the private sector mostly pays their way. The 80/20 rule. Roading is less than 3% of total government spend. Why further bloat and complicate the public service unnecessarily. Is it a jobs scheme for the usual suspects?
Lights, revisited
Back up the bus, my train of thought has proven to be off track. My previous tale (Letters ODT 22.7.25) may have been a tad too thoughtless.
Some sod has turned a sod, well several sods. There is now one worksite in Tomahawk which has broken ground, digging to lay solid foundations. There is one new street light beside the work site, which surely completely justifies the turning on of all 22 new street lights.
Although I have yet to hear evidence of workers working by the streetlight. I still wake up early each morning, look out the kitchen window, and ponder the extravagance of lighting fields of green. If we assume 200W of power for each light then 200 x 21 (leaving out one semi useful light) gives us 4.2kW of power running all night.
The Aurora website has handy hints for saving power. I know the new lights are LED (an Aurora website recommendation for power saving) but how about switching off the ones not needed?
If we want a health system, fund it properly
In the last two months I have had to be taken twice to the Dunedin Hospital emergency department. In each case I could certainly see, after the event, that it was not strictly necessary, but that did not seem to be true at the time.
On each occasion, the treatment that I experienced was the best I could possibly have expected or wished for. When I tried to thank all the staff that had helped me, on the feedback comments I found that many of the responses that had been received were very critical, almost always in similar ways. For example, ‘I had to wait (some long time) to get any help", or "I had to leave before any special treatment had been given to me".
We really ought to ask ourselves how a critically under-resourced (and yet extremely good) service can be expected to operate in the way we would like. If we are not prepared to fund our public health service adequately, what do we think will happen?
I simply want to acknowledge just how special the doctors, nurses, and other staff are.
With friends like these who needs enemies
Donald Trump demonstrates a mind-boggling lack of ability to assess character and human values in people. He has befriended two of the world’s most dangerous, cruel and evil leaders: Putin and Netanyahu.
Irrespective of the rights and wrongs of historical events, they in no way exonerate these heads of state for the atrocities they are now committing. Both dictatorial despots are responsible for the mass killing of thousands of innocent men, women and children and the annihilation of large parts of their countries .
Putin invaded Ukraine supposedly only interested in military targets. In his deranged mind he keeps blaming Ukraine. The only plus is that Trump may have realised Putin was playing him for a fool.
Netanayhu continues to blast the life and livelihoods out of the Palestinians in the Gaza strip on the pretext of eliminating Hamas and getting them to release Israeli hostages The clumsy method of doing this (indiscriminate bombardment and shelling) is entirely consistent with the "asleep at the wheel" state of the supposedly sophisticated Israeli military allowing Hamas to invade in the first place.
Blaming Hamas for the current trickle of aid and food getting to Gaza, the killing of citizens at aid stations , and the malnutrition crisis just demonstrates how mentally deranged and dishonest Netanyahu and his entourage are .
Both Putin and Netanyahu are responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Neither of them want peace — they are intent on bludgeoning their target country to submission.
Simple solution
If Donald Trump is really serious about getting criminality out of Washington DC, there is one simple, effective and incredibly popular action he could take. Five-letter word beginning in L.
Address Letters to the Editor to: Otago Daily Times, PO Box 517, 52-56 Lower Stuart St, Dunedin. Email: editor@odt.co.nz
