Are we doing enough to prepare for the weather extremes that will accompany climate change? Photo / Bay of Plenty Helicopters
Our future challenges
It’s a tough read through the Herald’s Infrastructure magazine, but an interesting view on what we need to do as a country to bring our performance up to a standard that deals with these issues as we look into the future.
I read enough for me to understand the future health of our country is paramount. What concerns me, though, is very little mention of what we need to do to keep our country and its people safe from climate change. What is the point in pouring money and expertise into infrastructure if we ignore the destruction approaching our shores, our livelihoods, our way of living?
While preparing for our future needs, is it not paramount to first establish a plan to help stop the heating of our planet?
First, we need to rid ourselves of the need to use fossil fuels. Second, we need to prepare our land and our people for approaching disasters we cannot stop immediately.
The planet is already facing floods, fires and vicious storms, leaving desperate people on the move.
This need is not chicken/egg situation. Without putting it in place first, all the hard work and financial input would be useless.
Emma Mackintosh, Birkenhead.
An NCEA alternative
In 1998, in response to the clear flaws in the qualifications reforms being pushed through at the time, I led a team at the University of Waikato that developed and implemented in 2002 and 2003, in a number of secondary schools, an alternative qualification to the NCEA.
It was in part modelled on the excellent Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) in Australia.
Our qualification, initially in the subject of English, was owned by the University of Waikato, and registered on the New Zealand Qualifications and Credentials Framework.
The team of developers, mostly heads of English departments, addressed all issues associated with developing a qualification: curriculum design, assessment, reliability, progression, moderation, workload, cost and reporting. It used A-E standards-based assessment.
It was independently evaluated by Professor Cedric Hall, and the results published.
After two years of successful implementation, it was torpedoed by the NZQA, at a time when a number of schools were planning to adopt it.
The model and the research associated with it is available and in the public domain. It was, and still is, a better model than the NCEA was ever going to be.
Terry Locke, Emeritus Professor of Arts and Language Education, University of Waikato.
Impact on our humanity
It is clear that the starvation of, and attacks on the people of Gaza, and on the infrastructure there, is devastating, but it is also having a worrying effect on those of us watching events.
We Kiwis, along with most of the rest of the world, have become like the audience in the Colosseum watching the Christians being fed to the lions, as we watch online in real time the events unfold in Gaza. We feel powerless to do anything. As a result our very humanity is also under attack. We are being conditioned to watch relentless attacks on our fellow human beings, and to accept that as normal. This is deeply concerning.
In the future, our grandchildren might ask, “You knew what was happening. What did you do?” And then, how shall we answer?
Claire Chambers, Parnell.
Follow Ireland’s lead
I urge fellow New Zealanders to support Ireland’s call for a humanitarian corridor in Gaza. The scale of human suffering is immense, with civilians enduring famine, disease, and relentless violence. Ireland’s proposal offers a critical lifeline – protected access for aid, grounded in international humanitarian law.
Inaction is not neutrality – it is complicity.
We have a moral obligation to speak out. The lives of countless innocent people depend on it.
Paul Emmerson, Rotorua.
Wrong sort of growth
Simon Wilson writes (August 6) that when the Government abandoned plans for thousands of new Kainga Ora homes, it “sounded the death knell” for much of the construction industry, and that “17,000 people lost their jobs in the construction sector in the last 18 months”.
A functional government would have boosted public-sector housing. Instead, I see that the Government is now considering expanding the Hawke’s Bay regional prison to take another 464 inmates, part of a 36% increase in the nationwide prison population expected over the next 10 years.
So much for National’s “growth strategy”.
Pauline Doyle, Napier
Add 15% to the bill?
A Royal New Zealand Air Force Hercules rescued three American people needing urgent medical attention from their base in Antarctica. It was a dangerous and daring mission to help friends. I presume we won’t send an invoice, but if we did, perhaps we should add an extra 15 % surcharge.
Steve Horne, Raglan.