Letters: Watching Question Time is like a bad comedy show; Trump is no champion for peace

The National front benches during Question Time in Parliament in March this year. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Letters to the Editor

Parliamentary comedy show

Watching Question Time when the House is sitting is becoming increasingly and embarrassingly like a bad comedy show. I wonder what the rest of the world thinks when these antics are reported overseas.

All MPs are selfishly vying for their pet project and making insulting jabs at those who have differing opinions, swiping out previous good policies and so fixated on money that one would think it was coming out of their own personal pocket.

We are a small country of 5-plus million, ruled by three party heads who fail to work as a team and give little consideration for the taxpaying people who pay for their representation. No wonder New Zealand is in a financial mess with low growth. Our MPs are showing a very poor example and little respect for the vulnerable, to whom they should be showing leadership. Petty squabbling is no way to run a country!

Marie Kaire, Whangarei.

James Cook High School

Captain Cook is once again in the news, but not as the revered explorer, navigator and cartographer, this time it is because the James Cook High School is to have a name change to “Te Haikura a Kiwa” after having consulted local iwi and the Māori Queen (June 28). The principal, Tina Filipe, said that there had been ongoing pressure from students over the last seven years to change the school’s name.

Are we also to see Rutherford College and Sir Edmund Hillary Collegiate follow suit perhaps?

Randal Lockie, Rothesay Bay.

America’s Cup

Bernard Walker, like many others, seems to be under the impression that America’s Cup regattas are raced between government-funded international syndicates. This has never been, should not be, nor hopefully ever will be the case.

Mr Walker is correct in saying that these events are a “rich man’s sport feeding the egos of multi-millionaires”, those being members of various worldwide yacht clubs and/or companies that sponsor challenges for the trophy. I’ve followed this contest for more than 60 years, when Sir Frank Packer was the first Australian to challenge the New York Yacht Club with the 12-metre yacht, Gretel.

Sadly, over latter years an overabundance of money and egos have tainted the game forever. There is no national pride involved whatsoever, only that between the clubs who can afford the latest technology, (which I do admire to a degree), and buy the most talented sailors they can. Sportsmanship has not for some time interested those who can afford to play. Only the bragging rights at the end.

Jeremy Coleman, Hillpark.

Nobel Peace Prize

Matthew Hooton’s opinion piece (June 27) proposing Donald Trump as a deserving candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize would be laughable if it weren’t so chillingly detached from the state of the world. To argue that we are somehow safer, more stable or economically secure because of Trump’s presidency, his bombing of Iran or his siding with Netanyahu is a rewriting of history so bizarre it borders on propaganda.

Let’s be clear: the world is not more stable. It is more dangerous, more fragmented, and far closer to global conflict than at any point in recent memory. Belligerents are openly taking pot shots at each other in proxy conflicts and direct attacks — Ukraine, Gaza, the Red Sea, Taiwan Strait. Diplomacy has been replaced by online posturing and political theatre. We are watching the steady erosion of global norms and alliances that have kept a fragile peace for decades while America slides closer and closer to civil war.

This is not an age of peace – it’s an age of information-fuelled hostility. Social media rabbit holes have become radicalisation machines. Fake news, once a fringe concern, now drives entire national agendas. Corrupt strongmen, egomaniacs and theocrats are running countries not for the good of their citizens, but to maintain power and settle scores. And Trump – whose tenure emboldened authoritarians, mocked alliances and turned disinformation into a governing tool – helped usher in this chaos, not prevent it.

To hand him a peace prize as Hooton suggests would be to reward the very forces that are unravelling the international order. If this is the world “peace” Trump created, it is a terrifying and unstable one, teetering on the edge of something far worse. If Hooton was trying to be sarcastic or attempting to be humorous, he profoundly missed the mark.

Stuart Watson, North Canterbury.