Letters: The cunning plan to disrupt Big Banks; Auckland airport passenger woes; dangerous fog drivers

The Commerce Commission has a plan to increase competition in the banking sector by turning Kiwibank into a “disruptor”.

Letters to the Editor

Kiwis pay for lack of disruption

So the Commerce Commission has a cunning plan to increase competition in the banking sector by turning Kiwibank into a “disruptor” (NZ Herald, Aug 21).

Wasn’t that the intention when Jim Anderton had a similar vision over 20 years ago? While Kiwibank is a perfectly good bank, it has not made one iota of difference to competition within the sector and never will unless the Government increases its funding and accepts lower returns than the rest of the sector. Either way, New Zealanders pay.

And if that’s the strategy for a more competitive economy then let’s have a KiwiMart to smash grocery prices, a KiwiStop to smash fuel prices, a KiwiRail to smash... err, boats, and three government majority-owned power companies to smash electricity prices.

That’s all worked well, hasn’t it?

Carl Bergstrom, Glendowie.

Airport woes

Auckland International Airport must be the only airport in the world where there is no taxi service outside the terminal for arriving passengers.

They must walk some 10 minutes – often in the rain or dark - to find a taxi, and there is no clear signage outside the terminal indicating which direction they should walk. It is some distance before taxi signage appears and which lists taxis in two different directions.

It turns out one direction is for pre-booked taxis, and the other for available taxis - but this is not explained in the signs. Wheelchairs are in short supply.

A friend who had booked a wheelchair from the plane had to leave it at Customs because it was required to bring more passengers off the same plane, so she had to struggle to the terminal exit. When she found there were no taxis outside the terminal, she tried to get another wheelchair, and was advised it had to be obtained from the same airline which she had travelled on.

There are only two disability parking spaces outside the terminal and these have to be booked in advance – which creates further limitations.

Janie Weir, Newmarket.

Democracy in action

In reference to David Seymour’s recent comments about his coalition Government partners, might I suggest that he is incorrect (NZ Herald, Aug 21).

Since before the last election, both National and NZ First have held basically the same positions on the legislation. Therefore, voters had the opportunity to voice their opinion of the Treaty Principles Bill by casting their votes for the party that best represented their views.

Based on the election results, it would appear that the voters have in fact been treated respectfully as has our democratic form of government. They voted for a party other than Act.

Is it possible that David Seymour and the Act Party simply did not convince a majority of the electorate that the Treaty Principles Bill was something worth their vote? Sorry, David, but I am afraid that you and Act will need to respect the democratic outcome of the last election.

Dunstan Sheldon, Hamilton.

Foggy drivers

I am a Hato Hone St John Health Shuttle driver based in Waihī. On Wednesday morning, I had to take a patient to Waikato Hospital to be there by 9.25am. This meant leaving Waihī at 7.30am and when we got to Paeroa we ran into dense fog which lasted all the way to Hamilton.

The conditions were the same on our return about an hour later. I am appalled by the number of vehicles on the road in poor visibility without any lights on.

Modern cars turn their headlights on automatically under normal conditions, but in fog conditions this sometimes doesn’t happen, and although the daylight running lights may be on, in dense fog these are hard to see.

I wonder why police aren’t taking this issue seriously. A parked car with an officer on the side of the road flagging down motorists without any lights would certainly help. These drivers without any lights on in these conditions are a danger to all other motorists and need to be checked.

Derek Mills, Waihī.

Cathedral rebuild

The news that the National Government is unable to assist financially to complete the extensive rebuild of the Christchurch Cathedral is of no real surprise.

The damage was a direct result of the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes and the reinstatement project work started in 2020, some 10 years after the building was “brought to its knees”.

This means that only four years has elapsed since the actual building project started - this is not long in “cathedral” terms, for example the Basilica de la Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, the largest unfinished Catholic cathedral in the world, was started in 1882 and has a completion date of 2026. That is a build time of 144 years.

The architect, Antoni Gaudi, when questioned as to when the cathedral would be completed replied “my client is not in a hurry”, in other words that the cathedral would be built in God’s time.

Perhaps this is the patience that Christchurch requires until the fundraising is complete, after all the original cathedral building in Christchurch, started in 1864 took some 40 years to build.

Randal Lockie, Rothesay Bay.