Word or two on berms from faraway Auckland
I visited Dunedin last week and somehow became involved in the "to mow or not to mow" your berms argument. There are points on both sides, of course, but I want to add a word or two from faraway Auckland.
Our green spaces provide food, shelter and habitat for our wildlife, including our pollinators. Berms support natural biodiversity for plants and invertebrates. We need to have more "wild" spaces to improve air quality, absorb carbon and reduce stormwater runoff. These green spaces reduce stress, anxiety and anger and can improve concentration and attention. There can never be enough of them.
Mowing lawns short and using pesticides is destroying the ecology for our invertebrates. When Covid was rife, and commercial lawn mowing contractors were told to stop work, the clover in my berm here in Auckland grew long. I was thrilled to see NZ blue butterflies dancing around the flowers — a beautiful sight! Our butterflies are trying hard to breed on their host plants — and then a lawn mowing contractor comes along and kills them off.
From my own experience as founding trustee of the Moths and Butterflies of NZ Trust, our NZ butterflies are already diminishing. Many people today don't even know that we have any other butterflies besides the monarch and the cabbage white. Our butterflies and moths and many other invertebrates are key pollinators — let's give them a better chance to survive.
Build it once
Mayor Radich has recently lauded the government’s hospital plan, which includes 16 fewer beds than the existing hospital, as a "big win".
This is an embarrassing concession and, frankly, a failure of leadership.
Dunedin has an ageing population, which means demand for hospital beds is rising. Our current hospital is already over capacity, and the new hospital isn’t due to be completed for another six years. By the time it opens, we will be in a considerably worse position than we are now.
Simeon Brown’s announcement was a sign that the pressure was working, which is the best time to push for what we actually need as a city.
Whatever happened to "Build it once, build it right"? The government can afford a proper hospital, and people will die if we concede to this half measure.
The protests will continue with or without Mayor Radich. Dunedin deserves better.
A victory for capitalism
It looks like unfettered capitalism is doing well. One can usually tell by the amount of sad-looking beggars on the street, especially on the sidewalks around the Meridian Mall.
I almost felt compelled to ask one what happened, although I did translate some scrawled writing on what was once a piece of cardboard box: it looked like "Victim of Private Equity" which I thought was interesting.
Now I miss the more cheerful buskers of old, and when the state once looked after our broken people.
Prisons do work: they keep crims off the street
I think the article on Australian prisons (Opinion ODT 7.2.25) would have been more interesting had it represented the views of victims as well as academics. Prisons are an embarrassing necessity.
We could start by asking why it is that New Zealand is producing ever-growing numbers of violent, horrible men, but in the meantime, the focus should be on keeping women and children safe. If that means locking up perpetrators, so be it. As long as we maintain humane treatment in prisons and ensure new prisons are built to prevent overcrowding, we have nothing to feel guilty about. Spend the money and keep good people safe.
There are those who believe prisons should be abolished but they don’t come up with practical alternatives. They complain that prisons "don’t work". Of course they work. They keep criminals off the street. What about rehabilitation? One of the conclusions of the largest penal policy review in New Zealand stated, "Prisons cannot rehabilitate and cannot be expected to do so."
On the other hand, criminals can change themselves by listening and reflecting on their beliefs and attitudes.
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