Who will monitor iron ore miners?
When will the Environmental Protection Agency, and all other government agencies tasked with similar challenges, realise that it can put in place as many environmental conditions as it likes, but none will be worth the paper they are written on if there are no agencies to monitor and control the outcomes.
Mining iron ore from the bottom of the ocean must surely rank as one of the hardest operations to monitor.
And then if, heaven forbid, one of the precious conditions should be breached, and even if that fact is discovered in a timely fashion, what possible chance is there of remedial action? The damage is done, and no amount of handwringing will undo it.
Sue Smith
Waikanae
GREAT WORK
Every Thursday Ron Russell can be seen around Paraparaumu Beach delivering the weekly Kapiti Observer. Whether it’s raining, sleet or sunshine, Ron is ever-present on Thursday. He has been delivering newspaper for at least 17 years. Well done Ron.
Bernie Randall
Paraparaumu Beach
PAYING FORWATER
Kiwi farmers should not have to pay for natural water, any more than they should have to pay for the sunshine which ripens their crops, or the air which their animals breathe.
The exploiters who take millions of litres of water every year, and pay next to nothing for it, and export it for massive profits which are not returned to New Zealand are the ones who should pay, and payment is long overdue.
Mike Malone
Raumati Beach
BOOT CAMP PLAN
Apart from ignoring the advice of their science adviser’s report in 2012, the National Party’s boot camp policy is back to front.
If children aged between 9-14 are running the streets, unsupervised, and after midnight, the fault surely lies with their parents?
Where are the guardians? These miscreants realise the police have their hands tied as regards consequences because as children, and aged under 14 years, the law protects them.
The children understand the law.
It is a fact that children know right from wrong even as eight year olds. It is time to change the law and insist parents accept their role in accountability.
Keith Williamson
Raumati Beach
TRAINS AND BUS BOOST
Transport Minister Simon Bridges is to be commended for his announcement to invest in passenger rail in the Wellington region.
One might be forgiven for thinking the move now has a lot to do with the election in a few weeks, but the recognition of the necessary place of trains and buses is overdue.
At the risk of overstretching the minister’s generosity, may I point out that the plan under a previous regime was for the rail service to go beyond Waikanae, where it ends now, to Otaki and Levin.
The hundreds of cars from all points north parked every day at Waikanae testifies to the need.
And the cost of double-tracking is far, far less than the add-on to the expressway currently planned.
Selwyn Boorman
Waikanae
CITIZENSHIP PLAN
Further to the revelation that Australian Deputy PM, Barnaby Joyce, is a New Zealand citizen by descent, and therefore ineligible to serve in the Australian parliament, may I suggest that our New Zealand Parliament urgently passes legislation before it rises for the election, to confer full New Zealand citizenship on all Australian politicians.
Maybe even grant New Zealand citizenship to all Australians, without exception.
This would undoubtedly benefit both New Zealand, and our new ‘‘West Island’’.
John Duncan
Whitby
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