Your views: Readers' letters

Suicide: scourge and shame

I'd like to congratulate the New Zealand Herald, and the Wanganui Chronicle in particular, for again highlighting the scourge of suicide that shames our society. Editor Mark Dawson's attention to Sir Peter Gluckman's recent report on youth suicide in his editorial was commendable (Chronicle, July 29).

However, it was a twisted irony to have read Steve Baron's opinion column, just the previous day, advocating for euthanasia/assisted suicide as overdue legislation ("We deserve to have the final say", Chronicle, July 28). Annette Beautrais, long regarded as this country's leading expert in suicide prevention, recently spoke at the WDHB "Suicide Summit" in Whanganui. She reportedly appealed to her audience not to "normalise' suicide.

Is no-one joining up the dots here? Suicide IS being normalised! Act leader David Seymour's End of Life Choice Bill is not just directed to the terminally ill and elderly in the last days of their life. It is available for everyone over the age of 18 years who is mentally competent and "suffers from either of the following conditions: (i) a terminal disease or other medical condition that is likely to end his or her life within 12 months: (ii) an irreversible physical or mental medical condition that, in the person's view, renders his or her life unbearable". (Clause 6, End of Life Choice Bill)

Steve Baron mocks the intelligence of his readers, assuring us that the availability of assisted suicide "would only be after extensive scrutiny to ensure this was really the best option". The same sort of assurances were given when the abortion bill was introduced in this country. Yet we saw 3270 abortions in 1974 rise to 18,511 over the next 20 years as the mental health provisions of that bill were exploited to become, effectively, abortion on demand.

If David Seymour's bill is passed, past experience has shown that "suicide on demand" will become a reality as the bill's loose intentions are also exploited.

By then it will be too late. Suicide will indeed have been "normalised," just as abortion has been.

Both are national tragedies and should be remedied by care and compassion, not termination.

JOHN MALCOLM
St John's Hill

Untruths about Winz

As a former Work and Income case manager, I am incensed by the lies being told about Work & Income by so-called beneficiary "advocates", and stunned that the mainstream media in the main don't even bother to fact-check these gross untruths.

There are no "off-benefit targets" assigned to case managers.

Case managers do not deliberately deny clients grants. In fact, the culture at Work & Income is that clients receive "full and correct entitlement" of available assistance.

Case managers are trained in both process and discretion, are bound by the Social Security Act 1964 and may at any time seek expert assistance from service centre managers if a client is in acute need above and beyond grant limits.

No-one has to pay back a food grant, and anyone (be they beneficiary or not) is entitled to apply for same, as long as they first register with Work & Income.

For goodness sake, the entire operational manual (MAP) for Work & Income is freely available online for anyone who cares to access it on the Work & Income website -- it's the same manual the Work & Income case managers use -- who needs a beneficiary advocate?

The Work & Income case managers and the managers I worked with in the main were compassionate, courteous and hard-working individuals who were there to help, not hinder, and to inform, not inflame.

Some balance in the reporting, please.

DYLAN TIPENE
Ranui, Auckland

Maggie's risky plan

"Every man to the trap!" says Maggie Barry. Please ignore her.

NZ Minister of Conservation Maggie Barry wants every New Zealand family to trap and kill stoats, rats and possums in their backyards. As well as these three creatures that she hopes will disappear from the face of the Earth, birds, cats and dogs will be injured, maimed and even killed.

This reminds me of Mao Zedong's "Four Pests"campaign in China, when the aim was to get rid of rats, sparrows, flies and mosquitoes. It was an ecological disaster, resulting in swarms of locusts and the greatest mass starvation in history.

You interfere with an ecological balance at your peril.

MERV SMITH
Bulls

Same again from Horizons

Horizons' latest grants to community groups mirror previous years'. Could Horizons do less to support real environmentalism? Twenty thousand dollars split between 12 groups.

Horizons' annual plan has pictures of a denuded landscape and two ruddy-faced Pakeha leaning on a huge water bore. In it Horizons grants several million to private farming interests when billions is already gifted to the industry through at least five government agencies, be it trade, irrigation or other subsidies .

While rates increase to pay for this farmer cartel, one area Horizons is cutting is the science budget.

Ah, science schmience. Who needs it when we have Bruce Gordon and Michael McCartney in charge?

I BARTLET
Whanganui

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