Prime Minister Christopher Luxon pictured during his hard-hitting speech to the Local Government New Zealand conference in Wellington on Wednesday. Photo / Mark Mitchell
OPINION
Remember when our #nznationalparty #actparty sold our powercos without a mandate?
We had a referendum and the majority voted not to sell our assets.
They kept 51% ownership, though, so should have enough influence on boards to set a direction of lower power prices and to increase generation into more diverse areas. The profits have been huge and might help out the Government to subsidise landlords.
They could start work on the wind farms that have been permitted but delayed. They could also work to create more household solar generation. Both will be quicker than trying to find gas. There have been several ongoing exploration permits that have found nothing yet, so that could be a dead duck.
The companies and our Government need to catch up with the modern world, with more green energy.
There have been so many innovative, dual-purpose projects overseas including solar panels on motorway median strips with cycle lanes underneath, or massive solar farms where panels shelter farm animals and protect the ground from drying out.
They just need to look to find ideas. Let’s hope they do.
Mary-Ann de Kort
Re: August 22 column, “Energy source diversification vital to keep the lights on”.
Yes, it’s pretty clear that energy security is becoming paramount. We need to increase our reliable baseload production, which has been made more difficult by the previous Government taking the boot to oil and gas investment.
Now we’re left with the short-term solution of dirty Indonesian coal and the medium term of imported gas to keep the lights on. We also have several power plants near the end of life.
Wind and solar are unreliable and because of that, require generational capacity many times more than a reliable fossil fuel plant.
So renewable options are highly costly – this is only starting to dawn on some.
Hydro is maxed out, and while it has provided the backbone of power generation for decades, it too isn’t completely reliable – as we’re currently finding out.
Nuclear is the obvious option but if we can’t agree on what is a woman as a country, this option will never fly.
And this week we had the Climate Czar claiming 75% of us will be driving BYD EVs soon – where is all the electricity going to come from?
Current estimates suggest we’ll need to double our energy production to meet climate goals – well, we can barely supply enough today.
When you have opposing forces like this, the path forward will never be smooth. What is required are sensible, pragmatic, medium- to long-term solutions to secure power supply – and if that means some have to compromise their idealistic beliefs for the greater good, then so be it.
Iain Boyle
Re: “Let’s stay GE cautious”, August 21 letter.
All new technology needs to be approached with caution. The Royal Commission on Genetic Engineering report in 2000 didn’t include gene-editing technology like CRISPR-Cas9 because it wouldn’t be invented for more than a decade.
As the paper cited alludes to, there are a range of solutions for the risks identified and newer CRISPR-based tools aim to reduce risks of chromosome arm truncation by avoiding the double-strand breaks that can lead to genomic instability.
The technological developments are moving so rapidly, it’s probably already obsolete, but a useful summary of the situation was published last year by Hunt, J.M.T., et al: Unintended CRISPR-Cas9 editing outcomes: a review of the detection and prevalence of structural variants generated by gene-editing in human cells.
To date, no adverse events related to these issues have been reported in clinical trials.
Manu Caddie
Re: “Rating method questioned after bill doubles”, August 21 letter.
Thank you, J. Koia, for your informative letter. It seems to me that you and your sibling are receiving the same services as before, yet with a doubling of your rates. Best course of action is to request an invoice from the council to see how much you are being charged for each service and how each service has now increased.
The new Government wants to make it easier and less costly for people to add a granny flat to their section, but it seems unjustified council rates act as a barrier.
I hope everyone heard the excellent speech by Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, delivered on Wednesday at the Local Government New Zealand conference, where he said local councils need to rein in the fantasies on spending.
He and Minister of Local Govt Simeon Brown seem to have heard ratepayers’ pleas and have a good understanding of the core issues. I hope our local council takes the PM’s advice seriously.
I signed this petition by the Taxpayers’ Union this week – tell the Government to limit council rates hikes to 3%: www.taxpayers.org.nz/email_cap_rates.
It says: “While household across the country are being forced to tighten their belts, councils continue to spend unsustainably leading to eye-watering rates hikes. Local government can’t be trusted to get spending under control, they must be forced into the same financial discipline as the rest of the country. If councils want to hike rates by more than 3%, they should be forced to put it to a referendum and make the case to ratepayers that there’s no more waste that could be cut. Tell Christopher Luxon and Simeon Brown to impose a limit on council rate hikes.”
Simin Williams
Re: “Govt acting on maths achievement, water infrastructure and road safety”, August 20 column.
“Alcohol and drugs” should read “alcohol and OTHER drugs”. This is not a criticism of Dana specifically, because fear of the “o” word in this context is almost universal in official statements about alcohol, and is a significant impediment to dealing with alcohol abuse.
Martin Hanson
'For the unluckiest people, we are very lucky.'