Today's Letters to the Editor from readers cover topics including tariffs, free speech and remembering Cookie Bear.
GST, tariffs and all other skulduggery
The best way to think about tariffs, GST, VAT, whatever, is as an impost.
Impost covers all government skulduggery of stealing your money: duties, sales taxes, rates, the list is limited only by the bureaucracy’s evil imagination. The reason governments impose imposts may vary but they all have the same effect of screwing the free market at a cost to consumers and producers alike.
GST has a far more deleterious effect than a tariff because it is applied at the consumer end of the transaction unlike a tariff which is applied producer end. Given that producers are by in large price takers because consumers have limited discretionary income GST imposes a significant costs to producers supplying the local market.
As a result Kiwis who have travelled abroad notice that New Zealand produce is far cheaper overseas than at home. The Americans regard this as a form of dumping on their market, subsidised by New Zealand consumers.
Debate that at your will but the fact evident to most is that New Zealand has the highest cost of living on the planet, engineered by the biggest rort ever perpetrated on a population - GST.
As far as Trump’s tariffs are concerned, the world has become dependent on the US living beyond its means and it is approaching the limit of doing so. If this isn’t fixed it will go down, taking all of us with it.
Selfishness is not a good strategy and New Zealand has problems to fix without blowing off on Donald Trump.
Mervyn Cave
Manapouri
[Abridged - length. Editor.]
The free speech flag
Bex Twemlow (Letters ODT 31.3.25) is correct that Future Dunedin is free to choose who they wish to have on their ticket as a candidate, and that this is not a free speech issue.
However, she then immediately makes a stronger claim: “When your words and behaviour cause hurt and division; especially in institutions like our university, you don’t get to wave the ‘free speech’ flag and call it debate.”
The problem with this viewpoint is that free speech protections are unnecessary for words that do not cause hurt or division. Nobody minds if such words are spoken. If one holds free speech as a value in any significant way, it will mean allowing words that some will find hurtful or divisive.
Ms Twemlow’s view is also at odds with the University of Otago’s Statement on Free Speech, which says: “The university affirms that it will not restrict debate or deliberation simply because the ideas put forth are thought by some to be offensive, unwise, immoral, or wrong-headed [. . .]”
Malcolm Moncrief-Spittle
Dunedin
If bigotry is unchecked
It is somewhat unusual for a group of politicians (Team Simms) to be prepared to hang their hats on some honourable principals which will test the virtues of the voters they represent come election time.
They have bravely dared to express a ‘‘not acceptable’’ to one of their initial team members.
Certainly, it’s favourable to have a variety of opinions around the table to debate and challenge ideas as part of the decision-making process. However, how can a person be trusted to perform those requirements in a respectful and constructive manner when they have publicly expressed views specifically aimed at constituents with an indigenous background?
I experienced an example of what can happen even in formal situations if bigotry is unchecked. In the early 1990s the mayor of the day officially opened Dunedin’s first Indian restaurant. The young Indian Sikh owner and his family including his parents were present and after a brief Sikh/Hindu ritual the distinguished guest stood up to perform the official opening. His first words were ‘‘now that we’ve got rid of all that shit.’’
Glenn Turner
Wanaka
[Abridged - length. Editor.]
Just the person to explain tariffs to penguins
That doyen of New Zealand mountaineers and alpine authors, Philip Temple, hides his light under a bushel in his letter to you of April 5.
He was in fact a member of an expedition in 1964 that made the first ascent of the hugely difficult highest point on the island Big Ben.
He related his terror that although he was competent on snow, ice and rock he could not swim in the almost certain event of a capsize during the landing.
In spite of that he would be the ideal candidate to lead an expedition to Heard Island to announce to the king, gentoo and rockhopper penguins that Trump has imposed on them a 10% tariff on all their exports to the USA.
The silence from the White House is deafening.
Brian Chalmers
Ocean View
Cookie Bear
My late husband, Jim Hinkley, started as a marketing director at Cadbury Fry Hudson in Dunedin in 1968. He was the initiator of Cookie Bear for the Hudson brand, later sold to Griffins.
The Cookie Bear club was so successful that five women were employed to keep up with sending out postcards on members' birthdays, etc. Eventually it had to be closed as it was simply uneconomic.
I used to sew the bear suits in faux fur that were worn at street parades but the TV bear suit was made from real fur, I understood. Cookie Bear was very popular, even visiting schools but probably not to promote healthy school lunches. The Griffin’s animated bear was not the cuddly big bear my husband brought to the Hudson’s biscuit range.
Maria Barta
Palmerston
Public health FAB as MPs playing dumb
Going high. Thunderbirds. Here is a writer who understands real public health (Elspeth McLean, Opinion 2.4.25).
Health ministers and associates who play dumb about real public health are affecting us all. They are a cost to hospitals, primary care and families in the long run.
Political party messing with the people who actually care about the determinants of health is detrimental. Public health personnel have a legislative obligation to speak out. ‘‘Brains and the effect of the air we breathe’’ is the story below. Useful public health research to protect future generations.
All strength to your pen Elspeth and to public health staff and researchers.
Louise Croot
Dunedin
Crying poor
The government is considering opening another medical school but cry poor when it comes to completing the new Dunedin hospital, which services a good part of the South Island. Another med school to train doctors to leave New Zealand for better opportunities overseas because the health system here has collapsed through neglect and blamegaming between political parties.
Where is the common sense? These major decisions should be bipartisan,particularly in a small country with a limited purse for costly replacement projects
Kay Hannan
Weston
Public vs private
The rule that determines the outcome of all decisions is ‘‘where there’s a will there’s a way’’. If this government had the will, the Dunedin hospital would have been built to plan and on schedule. Of course it would.
It’s time we woke up - they do not want the hospital. They want private health, not a huge investment in a public amenity.
Susan Grimsdell
Auckland
Address Letters to the Editor to: Otago Daily Times, PO Box 517, 52-56 Lower Stuart St, Dunedin. Email: editor@odt.co.nz
