Letter of the week: Linda Moses, Remuera.
As Stacey Morrison on the cover of Canvas (Weekend Herald, September 18) said "You don't lose something by learning, you just gain more." The Herald did that each day, providing stimulating material for Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori. How good it was
to have the resource of time to absorb the knowledge shared.
Like Diana Wichtel, I had heard Rodney Jones the Covid-19 modeller's words last Sunday on Q&A. Acknowledging that we can no longer ignore inequality in our country, rang out loud and clear.
Jones referred to the Great Depression leading to the creation of our welfare state and stressed it was time for us to rethink how we move forward, to make socially deprived communities safe. This reminded me of the whakataukī "Ka mua, ka muri". Looking to the past to inform the future, would indeed turn a negative situation in our country into the right sort of positive. Our team of 5 million will not be safe until every community is safe.
Tēnā koutou to NZME for all the mahi/work keeping us pai-hono/ connected.
Waiho i te toipoto, kaua i te toiroa - Let us keep close together not wide apart. The 2m apart rule is likely to persist for a while but we need to remain connected taha wairua /spiritually.
Succinct summary
Sincere congratulations to Cecilia Robinson for her incisive article (Weekend Herald September 18).
As she says "lockdown is taking a massive toll on New Zealanders" and "lockdown is not about going hard and fast early, it's about failure to prepare ... We had the choice to prepare our health system for an outbreak of Covid and we made the choice not to... While the rest of the world started vaccinating we were still preparing to begin... We need to shift our MIQ facilities out of the centre of Auckland."
Sir David Williams, QC, Remuera.
Cut the carp
Leanne Pooley (Weekend Herald, September 18) is absolutely right about the endless carping over the handling of the pandemic – not least by those in the media.
Every Covid-19 press conference, I await question time with interest to see how skillfully a journalist can cast the day's developments negatively, as in "Do you admit you failed to do x ?" , or "Why did you not order sufficient quantities of y ?"
By all means, hold the Government to account but spare us the "gotcha" journalism and focus on eliciting information that enlightens rather than enrages. We can see what you're doing, and we're over it.
Helene Wong, Meadowbank.
Aukus threats
A point that appears to be missing from your review (Weekend Herald, September 18) of the Aukus agreement is the place of Russia.
Russia and China are, in all but signatures on paper, allies. They co-ordinate their international diplomatic efforts, and hold military drills which include using each other's weapon systems. Both diplomatically and geographically, they have each other's backs. Aukus could find itself in a two-front war.
Another point is that the US has to change its fighting methods. In all recent war games over Taiwan, they lose heavily because the Chinese have demonstrated the ability of their anti-satellite missiles to do the job, thus being able to cut US command and control communications in the event of a shooting war.
G. N. Kendall, Rothesay Bay.
