Letters: Australian bush fires show 'how vulnerable we all are'

Photos of the fires captured by Jamie Rhodes. Photo / Supplied

I know it's easy to look back in hindsight but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out that Australia should have jumped on these fires at the start.
No wonder the Australian public feels let down and it showed with the reception the Prime Minister has received.

In my opinion they have been behind the eight-ball all the way through and are in full damage control now with the Army and Navy brought in.
What I can't understand is why they let these fires get so established before reacting.
Surely they must have spotter planes up so they can react quickly?
It's a bad situation and just shows you how vulnerable we all are.

Gavin Muir
Springfield

Treaty: 'We've got to be fair'

Re Buddy Mikaere's column on the Treaty of Waitangi (Opinion, January 2).

I found this column interesting and learned a lot from, but cannot agree with Mikaere's comment that the Treaty was "not so much about nation building but more to assist with the speedy acquisition of Māori land." To support this he cites the Treaty's provision that Māori land could only be sold to the Government, and "the flood of legislation in the 1860s backs this up."

But surely the provision regarding only selling to the Government was to stop the wrongful acquisition of land by the New Zealand Company? Had this provision not been included Māori would have been cheated out of much more land, with subsequent warfare between the victims of such cheating and the Europeans, as at Wairau and Waitara.

Surely the "flood of legislation" in the 1860s which endeavoured to legitimise the wholesale confiscation of land, was not, as the column says, to back up the land acquisition policy of the Treaty, but was in contravention thereof.

The Treaty of Waitangi is, as Mikaere says, all about a "fair go", but I also believe we've got to be fair to those who drafted the Treaty in respect of their intentions.

Don Campbell
Gate Pā