Your views: Readers' letters

Letters to the Editor. 2016 Wanganui Chronicle Photograph by Stuart Munro

Airport cafe

It is time to practise what we preach and, of course, charge our ratepayers for -- with a $2 million-plus and growing rate on economic development.

I can only apologise to Doreen Hardy (letters, December 31) and other concerned ratepayers and visitors who have asked why most of our shops and cafes were closed on probably our busiest day of the year, Boxing Day, which coincides with the Cemetery Circuit motorbike extravaganza. And why our airport cafe closed for at least one day between Christmas and New Year.

If our council can't influence our retailers or our airport to try and reap some economic development benefits and bring back visitors to Whanganui, then what a damn waste of ratepayer money, let alone the new brand that the previous council (previous mayor and councillor Duncan excluded) was never trusted to see, have input into or approve.

"Whanganui -- all you need and then some" -- how about an inviting airport?

PHILIPPA BAKER-HOGAN
Whanganui District councillor

Confused history

Potonga Neilson's twisted truth of the real history of the Taranaki tribes (letters, January 3) beggars belief and then resorts to "ethnic cleansing" as a justification to make the confusion complete.

Does he understand what ethnic cleansing is? The Jews in World War II? The cleansing in the Middle East and Africa as is practised today on tribes?

Did Maori ever suffer such atrocities?

Mr Neilson, you conveniently left out the issue of the injustice dished out to the Moriori by the Taranaki tribes.

What redress have they been given?

The commemoration of the land wars will be a commercial operation.

Once the Treaty was signed one honoured the agreement. Tribes had to stop taking slaves, killing other tribes, otherwise suffer the consequences and your land will be taken from you also.

You have omitted that the land was given back at some later dates.

(Abridged.)

MIKE LALLY
Te Puke

Racist nonsense

The claim by Potonga Neilson (letters, January 4) that for Europeans a policy of "ethnic cleansing" is "in their genes" and that "exactly the same process was implemented in every country that was colonised by Europeans" is offensively racist and historical nonsense.

Great efforts were made by the British after 1840 to bring an improved form of government to all the people of New Zealand.

After the horrendous inter-tribal wars of the previous decades, the Maori population was in freefall, due to a catastrophic shortage of young people and women. That is shown in all the available data.

Colonisation brought an end to those wars, a process that was desired and taken up with enthusiasm by Maori across the country.

Slaves were freed and peace treaties allowed the resettlement of deserted lands such as the Auckland peninsula.

Then started a long, steady recovery, and within 50 years the precipitous decline in Maori numbers had ended and a period of population increase commenced. That turnaround, from population decline forced by pre-Treaty wars to healthy growth, is the very opposite of "ethnic cleansing".

The story is of considerable co-operative efforts by many New Zealanders -- of all ethnic backgrounds -- to seek solutions to the problems they faced and to come together as one people.

JOHN ROBINSON
Waikanae