The rattle of the bones on the old main street
It disturbed me greatly to be in the very centre of the recently rebuilt George St shopping area on Thursday mid-morning to find more seagulls present than people.
The silence was deafening across the acres of grey paving stones. Twenty-five empty shops. No moving traffic. I could only imagine the retailers huddled inside wondering if they would have any human contact that day.
I grew up in Dunedin decades ago amongst busy pedestrians and shoppers, with busy traffic including cars trucks, vans and cycles. Busy shops and family businesses, constant energy and activity. And now? It’s very pretty but what is our collective plan to save it from dying? Will the instigators try to impose a similar fate upon Princes St too?
Antithetical statements
I would like to comment on the letter from Ewan McDougall (ODT 10.8.24), in which he launches into a vitriolic and stupid attack on the people who do not agree with Māori wards.
He writes that people like myself are flat-out "racist and espousing the tyranny of the majority".
He would be quite correct if he substituted the word racist with democratic and the word tyranny with wishes.
By his previous statement he obviously agrees that the majority of people are against Māori wards.
He goes on to say that by not supporting Māori wards it is the antithesis of an enlightened, modern, bicultural democracy.
He obviously hasn’t got the memo that New Zealand is a multicultural society.
His final shot was that we colonialist bigots should pack up and leave Aotearoa, obviously so that he can have his bicultural nirvana to himself and his like-minded minority.
Welcome to Pyongyang
Surrounding all the brouhaha regarding Māori wards on councils, one question remains ignored and doggedly unanswered by the likes of Ewan McDougall.
Why should one person who may have some Māori heritage be entitled to have more representation on a council than another person? Any believer in the concept that one person is more “special” than another is not “enlightened” as Mr McDougall asserts. Such views are simply racist, divisive and anti-democratic.
One person, one vote is a concept that many New Zealanders have long believed in and indeed have lain down their lives for. If Mr McDougall wishes to live in a country where such basic views are not upheld, I’m sure that he would be most welcome to reside in somewhere like North Korea.
A despairing doctor
I rather fear, that despite my high expectations and hopes for the latest Health Minister, Shane Reti has shot the messengers. In 2021, David Williams wrote in Newsroom that the market-orientated reforms of the 1990s (read "Rogernomics'’) heralded in a new era in medicine, where bureaucrats would run the health services. Look at the results.
By sacking the Health NZ Board, Dr Reti has cemented in this bureaucratic domination, which is the underlying cause of our failing health services over 30 years. Outcomes are not important to these people; think waiting lists removed rather than reduced, and allowing primary care to founder.
Despite the damage bureaucrats have done, they are now the sole gatekeepers for all information Dr Reti will hear. Clinical engagement with front-line workers is even further removed from health services. I despair.
Is it time for the Greens to swallow a dead rat?
Most people think Darleen Tana should leave Parliament after being ejected from the Green Party for undeclared association with alleged migrant worker abuse in her husband’s company.
She is happy to stay on as a list MP without a party. The Greens are considering ejecting her from Parliament, employing the waka-jumping law which, until now, the Greens have rightly seen as noxious legislation, giving party chiefs far too much control over their members’ voting behaviour.
It is only there because Winston Peters demanded it as part of coalition deals.
He has never been able to get over numerous NZ First MPs jumping from his waka before the 1999 election. It is the Peters Revenge Law and should never have been countenanced.
MPs of whatever stripe should be allowed to leave their party on genuine matters of principle, and leave judgement of their actions to voters at the following election.
Ms Tana does not fit that description but for the Greens to use the waka-jumping law would be an abandonment of basic Greens principles.
Some say they should "swallow a dead rat" in using it, but I suggest they should "swallow the dead rat" of Tana remaining in Parliament in order to preserve their integrity as a party.
If they don’t, then they join NZ First in the revenge camp. No other party supports the law.
In any case, Darleen Tana is unlikely to survive two years of attack and abuse before the next election, and the migrant worker case has yet to be fully investigated and concluded.
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