Yet we have the Public Service, and ministers should act on advice - as no doubt they generally do.
Also, ministers used to take responsibility for any failure in their departments.
Our Department of Health seems to have done remarkably well, and we might have closed borders earlier than happened.
In that event, with appropriate testing, we would have had fewer cases, and the internal lockdown might have been avoided - with all its hardship.
But the decision was made hastily, and without effective testing; and we have all the consequences - huge unemployment, financial cost, disruption, and possibly greater hardship and death - unrelated to the virus.
The world may well envy our small number of cases. We can see now with hindsight, how much better it might have been.
So many lives are far from normal.
Poverty is worse and housing is not much better than three years ago. We must be blind if we simply congratulate ourselves on a job well done. Perception is political, and Bryan Gould naturally leans one way.
JOHN TRIPE
Whanganui
History's lessons
In 1977, New Zealand brought in a new law allowing abortion under some fairly strict rules, regulations, and protections. These were the legal safeguards to stop the misuse of abortion and protect the rights of mother and child.
From then until this year, those safeguards were deliberately ignored, manipulated and otherwise bypassed. Andrew Little and Jacinda Ardern told us there should not have been such restrictions and safeguards because "access to abortion is a right".
Now we are facing a new euthanasia law, the End of Life Choice law, and I keep hearing how we can trust the strict rules, regulations, and protections that will be the legal safeguards to stop the misuse of this law and protect everyone's rights.
Oh, and that access to "end of life choice" is a right.
Those who don't learn from the mistakes of history are doomed to repeat them.
A BENFELL
Gonville
Young minds
When are we going to wake up to the knowledge of what happens in our brains between the ages of 0 and 7?
We don't have to be rocket scientists to understand this, however there has to be a willingness to do something with this information.
It's like we pretend we don't [understand] this stuff when we as a society are hounding children for crimes that yes,they have done and yes, there needs to be accountability, but where is the wider korero of why these kids aren't able, or more importantly, what's been done to undo their years of conditioning and triggers, and sorry, not sorry, current mainstream methods clearly aren't working.
CARLA LANGMEAD
Whanganui
