Today's Letters to the Editor from readers cover topics including spending by central and local government, and lighting in newsrooms
Competence missing, their legacy doubtful
Imagine if we had had competent central and local governments over the last 40 years.
There would be no-one living in tents or cars as there would have been planning to provide adequate housing. We know the old chestnut the market will provide is not true.
Private companies wouldn’t have made huge profits at the expense of the tax/rate-payer from the sale of essential infrastructure like Aurora.
Sound planning would have gone into training workforces in a variety of areas including health services. We would not allow companies to trash our environment and wildlife on land and sea. Short-termism would not be resulting in rubbish decisions.
Instead, we have a country with failing infrastructure and services. We also have an incompetent government which is intent on running us into the ground with no concern for the health and wellbeing of us all. This government does not care about "bottom feeders" and most MPs profit from multi property ownership.
This government seems hell bent on building ghettos of shoebox-size apartments instead of providing adequate social housing. They probably think that if you cannot afford a house, you are not working hard enough which is not based on fact but is straight out of the right-leaning playbook.
We also have a coalition party who wants to divide our country by rewriting history to please their Atlas Network mates.
I used to be a proud Kiwi. Not any more.
I am extremely concerned at where this country is headed and the legacy for future generations.
Lou Scott
Kenmure
Simeon Brown
Lacking accountability
In regard to today’s editorial (ODT 10.7.24) on local body costs, Simeon Brown, as Minister of Local Government, has it absolutely correct, to go through spending, line by line.
Clutha District Council’s bungling of forestry sales, the main street upgrades for no good reason, destination toilets for no good reason, a water pipe from Milton to Waihola when not enough water is available in summer times for Milton alone, and an almost $30 million town hall in Balclutha when a cheaper upgrade of the old one should have been done.
All this, and more, on the backs of fewer than than 20,000 ratepayers. A council lacking in moral and economic accountability.
Kevin Wightman
Milton
Limitations needed
Local authorities are allowed to increase their funding without any real cap.
Central government has a cap as funds from New Zealand Inc are finite. There is an inflationary increase on GST and PAYE as costs and wages increase.
A result is central government has to balance priorities. Local authorities don’t have this constraint. They just increase rates, no balancing required. They must only be allowed inflationary increases and then only ever allowed other increases triggered when central government increases the scope of their business, and the opposite when scope is trimmed.
Bernard Jennings
Island Bay
Joanna Paul
Light is light, no matter who is in front of it
It is a great shame that the ODT is also reporting a Radio NZ story that Joanna Paul (a newsreader employed in the early days of TV3) states that "she watched her first broadcast back and thought she looked washed out and sick until she realised the lighting was not tailored for a non-Pākehā presenter. I said there’s something wrong, I mean I look dreadful, I look like I’ve been drowned and come out of the Titanic ... I went over and over and finally figured it out, it was the lighting. The lighting was for white people. That all the lightings had always been set up for white people on air, they’d never been set up for brown people."
I speak with many decades of experience as a TV lighting director, and a technical producer when I say that I don’t think I’ve ever read something so full of rubbish. All lighting for any presenter or for the many light entertainment shows or other studio shows I, and others, have lit was the same no matter who was appearing in front of the camera.
I would strongly suggest that this is an appalling slight on those highly skilled technical people working at TV3 .
Russell Garbutt
Clyde
Address Letters to the Editor to: Otago Daily Times, PO Box 517, 52-56 Lower Stuart St, Dunedin. Email: editor@odt.co.nz
