Letters: Why sick pay is a difficult subject to deal with

Are landlords being treated unfairly by some politicians and by some media outlets? Photo / Ted Baghurst

Letters to the Editor

How to deal with sick pay

Sick pay is a very difficult subject. It appears that currently a person working for one day each week is entitled to 10 days’ sick leave a year. Would this enable a person with five different workplaces each week to gain fifty days’ sick pay each year?

Given the Employment Relations Authority’s apparent anti-employer stance, being a small employer is totally impossible.

Given that all humans are autonomous people, it seems odd that an employer is responsible for an employee’s health. And needless to say, there are privacy issues involved including stress, mental health, fatigue and various imponderables, including relatives.

The obvious solution is to pay all employees an additional, say, 5% and let them look after their own sick pay.

Neville Cameron, Coromandel.

What about the landlords?

Landlords are continually being berated by some politicians and some in the media as if they are the prime cause of declining home ownership, high house prices and homelessness.

Currently, the primary argument seems to keep focusing on the so-called tax rebates that landlords receive.

Further, the argument continues that landlords are the cause of high rents and the shortage of housing. In doing so, they are “demonising” one part of our overall economic system.

Certainly, there are landlords who rip the system off, and fail to maintain “healthy homes” and treat their tenants fairly. Conversely, there are tenants who are, for various reasons, a landlord’s worst nightmare.

Landlords receive their income from rent received. Out of this income they have to pay rates, insurance, ongoing maintenance and management fees to name but a few expenses.

Fortunately, like any business, landlords can now deduct expenses from their income again, so that tax is paid on net income. It is unfair economic policy to have to pay tax on expenses.

Reducing the number of rental properties only means a shortage of rentals and, therefore, higher rents. The bottom line is that rental accommodation is an essential part of our economy, as it is in any part of the world.

Yes, it needs to be properly regulated, but there need to be modest incentives.

Bruce Owen, Drury.

Israel-Iran conflict

This is not the first time Israel’s leadership has issued dire warnings about Iran’s nuclear programme. In 1992, Benjamin Netanyahu claimed Iran was “three to five years” away from building a bomb. He repeated the claim in 1995, 2002, 2011 and 2012. Decades later: no bomb, just more instability.

Now, Israel has carried out an illegal strike inside Iran, with no imminent threat and no evidence of an impending attack. As international law expert Bulama Bukarti explains, pre-emptive self-defence is only lawful under strict conditions. This strike failed to meet them.

At the same time, attention is being shifted away from the ongoing atrocities in Gaza, where entire neighbourhoods have been wiped out and thousands of civilians killed. This attack on Iran plays into Netanyahu’s long-standing strategy: deflect, escalate, and prolong conflict.

Israel refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, yet is widely believed to possess nuclear weapons. It cannot be allowed to continue acting with impunity.

New Zealand must speak up. International law cannot survive if it’s only applied to some and ignored by others.

Dana A Patterson, Waiheke Island.