Rugby tackle
I read with concern your front-page article (News, May 19) which told how a Bay of Plenty rugby player delivered a "sickening arm tackle" to an opposing ball carrier's head and "knocked him out before he even hit the ground".
The offending player was red-carded and banned from playing for 12 months.
Some would say fair enough.
But was it? If he had assaulted another man causing brain injury when he was off the field, he could have possibly been liable for a prison sentence of several years.
I am not suggesting the law be applied whenever there are on-field incidents, but in a case like this, which the referee called "the ugliest incident he had seen in 12 years", surely a line should be drawn, and charges laid. (It's been done before in such circumstances.)
I pointed out in my recent letter on heavyweight boxing that a knock-out (concussion), causes injury to the most incredible and complex computer in the world.
Shouldn't we try to guard it by enacting or enforcing laws which punish people who deliberately injure it?
Don Campbell
Gate Pa
Housing crisis
Zizi Sparks, in her editorial, writes that the housing crisis "snuck up on us slowly but surely".
Really? Where was she living during National's nine disastrous years in power?
Between 2010 and 2017, it introduced three policies that ensured a housing crisis would arise.
First, it began selling state houses, most of which were bought by landlords who immediately doubled the rent.
As homeless appeared on the streets, in doorways and under bridges, National then decided foreigners could buy up as many houses as they liked.
As the numbers of homeless grew into the thousands, National doubled down and allowed unlimited immigration, with no new housing or infrastructure to service all these people. It was a perfect storm.
By September 2017, voters had had enough of watching families sleeping in cars, in tents in the middle of winter and bunking two or three families in a garage. The Government was dumped by the people, horrified that New Zealand had allowed this to happen.
Economists, at the time of the election, agreed it would take a generation to fix the problem.
The housing crisis was deliberately created by a party which has never believed the poor should be homeowners at all.
Lizzie Murdoch
Mangakino
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