Letters to the editor: After Cyclone Gabrielle, Government must reassess its priorities

Tangoio Marae was devastated when Hawke's Bay was smashed by Cyclone Gabrielle. Photo / Mike Scott

How devasting it must be for those people who lost family, friends and all their hard-earned belongings and property including houses in Cyclone Gabrielle.

Not to mention the basics: roads, bridges, orchards, workshops, businesses of all kinds - the list is too numerous.

The Government must now step up its priorities and get these people’s lives back to normal, together with the above.

The task will be long, arduous and expensive but must be attacked as soon as possible.

This could be a great opportunity for the Government to rethink its strategy by dumping its hare-brained ideas which the majority of people oppose, and investing all that is necessary to remedy these problems.

Ewen Luskie

Katikati

Financial support for mortgage holders

I am a long-term customer of ASB Bank, along with family and friends. Even when we were kids, we learned to learn to save money.

Great days. Much later, our own children were introduced to ASB Bank at school. They soon knew what to do with their savings.

I read in the Bay of Plenty Times about the record half-year profit (net profit after tax rising 10 per cent to a record high of $840 million for the six months to December 2022) for the ASB (News, February 15 and 16). You get a warm feeling for a moment which dies quickly when seeing the number of people - 13,000 customers - who face rates being pushed up yet again later this year.

I fear they will be stressed and fearful of not being able to put food on the table or not being able to buy the equipment for school or school uniforms.

I read how ASB is going to handle this, including a process that could see financially stressed customers referred to an external financial mentoring agency. But I believe this is not the way to go because it keeps one’s fear and stress as the most important items, day after day.

In my view, ASB can do better. Keep these customers on rates of no more than 4 per cent for the length of their mortgage and ASB will get more plaudits than any other bank in town.

Those it has treated well and their families will become its most special customers. No advertising is needed.

ASB - you know you can afford it.

Russell McKenzie

Pāpāmoa

Tackle truancy first

Night after night on television, the Government is advertising for Corrections officers. Instead, they should be hiring truancy officers.

Those officials would investigate why the children aren’t at school and then make recommendations to deal with the real problem of truancy.

That way, if children have a good standard of education, we will not need the Corrections officers.

Jim Sherlock

Tauranga

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