Murray Hunter, Titirangi.
Secret society
I believe that the NZ public are totally sick of all the secrecy that is happening in our country.
Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau playing secret squirrel over the Reading Cinema is plainly nuts, there is no reason for any public servants to have all these secret “workshops” and closed council meetings, commercial sensitivity is clearly a total copout, and should be illegal.
We also have preferred suppliers who are given secret contracts, anything to do with so-called preferred suppliers should be totally transparent and able to be scrutinised. Why do we need preferred suppliers at all?
Why are AT’s costings so hard to discover? Parliament’s Speaker is enabling preferred lobbyists to maintain secrecy, why? Secrecy or privacy should only apply to personal matters, not to contracts, the only reason for contracts remaining private is to avoid any competition, and to keep nepotism and cronyism away from public scrutiny.
Secrecy is the mother of corruption.
Neville Cameron, Coromandel.
Breaking news
The cancelling of TV3′s Newshub is a major travesty. We have watched this channel exclusively since day one all those years ago. It’s like the death of a cherished family.
The news on 3 has always been non-biased and up to date, the investigative journalism being top quality and trustworthy. This is a blow for democracy to have only one news channel going forward.
My heart goes out to all those who worked so hard at TV3 to bring New Zealanders news issues ethically and with the highest skill in journalistic professionalism. This is a sad time for all Kiwis.
Marie White, Pukekohe.
History of exams
The main problems with NCEA are firstly the decision to create three qualifications in the last three years of secondary school, the only country in the world to do so.
That is a tremendous load on students and teachers. This is why many schools are abandoning NCEA Level 1, but also because Level 1 has no value in the marketplace. Level 2 is now the base qualification for entry to employment or further education.
Secondly, was the decision to require the achievement of an arbitrary number of credits to be awarded for any one of the three qualifications. This inevitably led to debates on the relative value of different subjects, especially between “academic” and “vocational”.
Neither of these were recommended by the NZQA board back in 1992. NCEA was intended to be one qualification awarded when students graduated from school, and would record all credits achieved at whatever point in time in their schooling.
These recommendations were strongly opposed by a lobby group of mainly “prestigious” state and private boys’ schools. The result is a system now being criticised by James Bentley of St Peter’s College (NZ Herald, Feb 27).
David Hood, NZQA CEO 1990-97.
How to hurt gangs
Correspondent Gary Hollis is correct in saying that starving the gangs of their income is the best and only way forward (NZ Herald, Feb 28).
But he is incorrect in saying Labour’s drug busts are the way forward. Wastewater analysis proves that drug busts have a negligible effect on supply.
There are only two ways to keep drug money away from gangs. One is to abolish cash. (A partially effective half-measure would be to get rid of paper money.)
The second is to legalise all drugs and sell them in government-owned shops. Neither of these things will happen so gangs will continue to make a lot of money, and the gang lifestyle will continue to be an attractive alternative to a minimum-wage job.
Chris Elias, Mission Bay.
