Pigeons of stadium funding home to roost
In all of the current furore over the possible sale of Aurora Energy by the Dunedin City Council, it should not be forgotten that the prime and root cause of the failure of Aurora to provide a dividend to the ratepayers of Dunedin was the commitment of the DCC to go ahead and build the new rugby stadium.
Councillors at that time decided to go along with the proposal to contribute $85 million with a further $6m for future maintenance. They also paid $5.6m for feasibility studies as well as writing off ORFU debt.
In March, 2008 the council voted to go ahead with the project and instructed Dunedin City Holdings Limited to provide a stated level of dividend to assist in financing the project, and further to borrow to provide that dividend. To say that this was irresponsible is, in my view, an understatement.
Equally irresponsible in my view was the associated decision by the Otago Regional Council to contribute $37m to build the roof of the stadium. Just why an entity charged with administering water and air issues of the environment even contemplated getting involved has never been explained.
The reaction of Aurora and their associated company, Delta, was to cease all expenditure that wasn’t absolutely necessary. The flow-on effect of that was to cease maintenance and development in Central Otago which inevitably led to the spectre of power poles falling down, failures of supply of energy and then a realisation that huge expenditure was necessary to catch up. This ultimately led to the huge increases in line charges we are now witnessing.
Aurora was a guaranteed cash cow if it hadn’t been nobbled by past poor decisions.
[Abridged — length. Editor]
Corporate responsibility
Given the recognition that the massive and appalling abuse of some 200,000 of those in care amounts to a "national disgrace" we wonder if there would be support for a proposal that a day of national mourning be designated.
Might that be an appropriate way for us all to accept our corporate responsibility for this suffering?
Test when appropriate
Neither the Minister of Education nor the Education Review Office chief executive seem to have much understanding of what 5-year olds bring to the classroom.
Optometrists estimate that 5-10% come with unrecognised or untreated vision difficulties.
Another group of children come with undiagnosed hearing difficulties.
Both of these problems need to be solved before phonics testing at 20 weeks.
Speech sounds develop at different rates for children.
100% of children between 6 and 7 will be unable to pronounce "th" clearly.
They have lost their baby teeth and front teeth have not filled the gap.
Some children come unable to identify all upper case and lower case alphabet letters.
This knowledge is crucial to learning phonics. Other factors which influence learning include the oral English to which they have been exposed pre-school, English as a second language, and other health issues.
Phonics is a useful tool but testing at 20 weeks will produce many failures which are beyond a teacher’s power to change. This is cruel to children.
Teachers are wonderful people who give of their best for their pupils.
They cannot be expected to cure all conditions which make phonics difficult in the space of 20 weeks.
Trees a help, not a hindrance, to climate goals
Both Jen Olsen and Aaron Nicholson are concerned with forestry's role in climate change (ODT 25.7.24).
Stopping coal trains only puts the backs up of working Kiwis going about their daily business.
She would be better off supporting moves by forest industries setting up biomass torrefied pellet plants to replace coal for electricity generation, as recommended by Huntly Power Station. Or businesses converting coal burning boiler into wood chip heating.
Forestry is not just about growing trees to mitigate climate change. It is a whole industry — the fourth-largest in land-based exports.
Aaron Nicholson suggests dispensing with fast-growing exotic pine trees for slow-growing conifers. He suggests Californian Redwoods.
A hundred-year-old Sequoia Dendrum has much the same growth rate as native podocarp species. In the meantime radiata pine will be into its third rotation of a production forest, sequestering a considerable higher tonnage of carbon.
On top of that wood-based products retain carbon and residues manufactured into biomass cuts emissions by nearly 80% compared with fossil fuels.
In the public's and conservationists eye a landscape covered in permanent exotic pine trees is not a desirable sight. The media really has to define permanent forests grown solely for carbon credits and productions forests, which has huge impact on industries, particularly now on climate change.
A mix of species does have a role, particularly as erosion control, and native forests encouraged to re-establish in sensitive areas.
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