That was the first 100 days — what’s next?
Now that the coalition's feigned urgency of negating existing legislation has passed 100 days we can expect the government to come up with some policy of their own.
"Back" was National's war cry during the campaign and they have already demonstrated that, fortified by equally benighted team-mates they can indeed take the country backwards.
Back to inequity, back to injustice, back to hand-to-mouth existence, back to destruction of land and sea . . . let's see what they have in mind to go along with tax cuts for the rich.
Fairness and justice
The semi new government has to be congratulated on actually implementing many of the items on their 100-day checklist. It matters not if some people don't like some or many of the actions, people knew what they were voting for or against.
But along the way the government seems to have forgotten they need to live and work in not just a legal way but also in a just and fair way. Mr Luxon learnt the hard way that his sense of entitlement in claiming $52K of taxpayer money to live under one of his own many roofs may be legal, but it certainly isn't morally correct for most New Zealanders. It is all very well to curb pension increases and force cuts to public services across the board, but start at home please.
Irony abounds
Irony aplenty in the ODT today (8.3.24). No 1: in all the fuss about the Hurricanes' women's haka, it has gone unremarked that the team then proceeded to indulge in the cultural appropriation of a game devised for privileged young Englishmen, at least in part to prepare them for their colonial careers.
No 2: An item on International Women's Day features a photograph of a discussion panel of five people; four women with a chap in the middle holding the microphone.
Credit where it’s due
You devoted an entire article published on the front page of today’s ODT (11.3.24) to the commemorative stained glass windows recently installed in All Saint’s Church.
The gifted and skilled artists who created those beautiful windows were not named. What a glaring omission and lost opportunity to acknowledge and celebrate their craftsmanship.
The windows were by artists Jenna Packer and Peter McKenzie and stonemasons and sculptors Marcus Wainwright and Josiah Stevenson. Ed.
Media scrutiny safeguards public spending
The rapidly shrinking local and national news media is worrying.
Very few people under 40 watch TV news, let alone know the difference between uninterested, (which they are) and disinterested (which reporters should be).
Media companies are losing vital revenues as it is getting harder, with dwindling audiences, to persuade vendors to buy advertising time during TV news or current affairs programmes.
Newspapers have already suffered a similar loss of revenue.
With young people no longer buying or even reading newspapers, and since the likes of Trade Me vacuumed up all the "small ads," many daily newspapers have been forced to cut their production to four days a week or less, and close local offices just to break even.
For more than 30 years I minuted council meetings.
On the rare occasions when the local reporter was absent, politicians would often make the most inappropriate comments and suggestions that they wouldn’t have uttered if a reporter had been present.
Without the independent checks and balances journalists provide, even prime ministers bent on "saving" public money, would not be held to account and asked why they paid themselves $1100 a week from the public purse to live in a house they own.
Stretching the budget
Tens of millions to renovate the Prime Minister's house. Really? They should watch Selling Houses Australia and see what can be done with $50K.
Address Letters to the Editor to: Otago Daily Times, PO Box 517, 52-56 Lower Stuart St, Dunedin. Email: editor@odt.co.nz
