Honours and community service
It is very hard to decide if those who are awarded 2026 honours are deserving of the awards.
What would be helpful would be to list their community contributions outside their paid occupations. As a general observation, the majority of winners are very wealthy due to their skill in their chosen occupation.
Being successful in the public service or business, which includes professional sport, should not be a criteria for honours.
John Kirwan is a fine example of someone deserving of honours. Yes, a very successful All Black, but he went on to front mental health issues for the benefit of the community.
Neil Hatfull, Warkworth
New Year disappointment
What a disappointment, I missed out again on the New Year Honours list.
When I look at some of the obscure reasons for awards, I can’t see why I don’t get one for my services in writing letters to the editor at the Herald.
Maybe next year.
Jock Mac Vicar, Hauraki
Unsafe in the city
Recently in Italy, I was amazed by the prominent presence of police, all easily recognisable in their sharp, well-fitted uniforms, and the palpable sense of safety and community on the streets.
Italy boasts over 335 police officers for every 100,000 citizens, whereas New Zealand has only about 190 to 200. This means that Italy has approximately 70% more police per capita than we do.
Lay on that our alarming homicide statistics that indicate New Zealand’s rate is nearly three times higher per 100,000 individuals.
Living in Ponsonby, I seldom see police officers outside their vehicles; they are more likely to zoom by with sirens blaring.
Our inner-city streets are home to many facing complex challenges, including mental health issues, substance abuse, homelessness, and unemployment. Meanwhile, ratepayers are urged to celebrate significant infrastructure projects and promotional initiatives, such as the seemingly endless multibillion-dollar rail link and the rebranding of the inner city as a vibrant destination.
However, during a recent lunch on Karangahape Rd, a staff member at our table was threatened with a knife by a distressed woman clearly battling mental health struggles, highlighting a critical area of support that is chronically underfunded.
In spite of the statistics and the visible realities, the Minister of Police, Mark Mitchell, the Minister for Mental Health, Matt Doocey, the Minister for Social Services, Louise Upston, and the local MP for Auckland Central, Chlöe Swarbrick, are no-shows, seemingly unable to front up, let alone present a co-ordinated or effective strategy to tackle the major social issues unfolding in our city.
Russell Hoban, Ponsonby
MMP party lists
Russell Hoban’s letter Problem of parties, (NZ Herald, Dec 30), is a very good analysis of the downsides of our electoral system.
Our political parties love the party lists in the MMP (mixed member proportional system) because it allows parties to bypass the electorates by giving their favoured candidates a safe place on their party lists.
In the Report of the Electoral Commission on The Review of the MMP Voting System 2012, clause 3.22 states: “A further argument for keeping the present closed list system is that it allows political parties to include candidates in winnable positions on the list who might otherwise have difficulty getting elected in an electorate.”
Well, what do you know, isn’t this what we want to stop? For this reason, we need to change to a single transferable voting system (STV). Because the political parties find MMP a useful tool to protect their unpopular candidates, they will never initiate such a change.
When some senior politicians fail to answer questions, they frustrate democracy and deserve to be booted out of Parliament.
Hugh Webb, Hamilton
Climate’s destructive forces
The token effort to clean up the Hauraki Gulf belies a much greater problem from the pollution of the world’s oceans by human activity, such that only 13% of the world’s oceans still have intact ecosystems while the rest have been plundered.
Three billion, over a third of the earth’s population, depend on the oceans’ marine life as a source of protein. When you combine that with shrinking crops from heat waves and storm damage, the United Nations’ prediction of the world running out of food by 2050 becomes real – that is, if we don’t die from breathing in polluted air now affecting 99% of the earth’s population first.
Recent events in southern California highlight the powerful forces that climate’s destructive forces can unleash.
Will we learn from that? I think not, when the most powerful leader capable of making change calls the whole climate change catastrophe a hoax.
Gary Hollis, Mellons Bay