Devils we know
PLEASE COULD WE HAVE JANE CLIFTON’S (“Where now?” June 16) informed assessment of what the National Party has to offer as a possible alternative Cabinet, post-November 2008?
Key and English do not make a government by themselves, and National still has, in its top ranks, various former Cabinet ministers with characteristics that do not bode well for the rationality or reliability of any future government. And that leaves aside those of its MPs whose apparent ability to be thoughtfully intelligent – let alone wise – is, at best, extremely doubtful.
If we should be forced to vote for the lesser of two evils, we should at least know which of the two devils we think we know best.
It seems to me that the key to evaluating any actual (or potential) government is to know just how much its Cabinet ministers are (would be) in command of, or merely followers of, the official advice offered by their departments and ministries.
But that is almost impossible to judge when the Opposition does not know what official advice is being given to the government, and so cannot make evident what (if any) alternative actions it would take with that advice.
One of the logical consequences of MMP should have been that all official advice given to Cabinet ministers would automatically be published, so that both the Opposition and the voting populace can more easily judge how various ministers are actually handling their portfolios and also whether all the official advice they are getting is soundly based or not. Confidentiality of official advice should have been discarded along with dictatorial single-party governments.
For instance, I have no idea whether Clayton Cosgrove actually believes his claim that “the leaky housing syndrome” was caused by the National government “de-regulating the building industry” – or whether he really knows that this is a piece of nonsense he can employ as a political smokescreen. Part of the reason why I can’t judge Cosgrove’s real view is that his Opposition shadow, Nick Smith, appears not to have enough sound information to be able to show whether it is Cosgrove, or his chief adviser, who is not just provably wrong, but also blind to the still unaddressed primary causes of that social disaster.
Given that, I can’t tell whether Cosgrove or Smith might be the better minister to have in 2009. This situation makes an unsatisfactory kind of democracy.
Roger Hay – (Johnsonville, Wellington)
ASIANS AND ASPIRATIONS
As a private educator, a parent, a high academic achiever (an honours degree at 17 and a PhD at 22), and of Asian descent, I read Joanne Black’s “Greater expectations” (June 9) with great interest.
While I am enormously proud of my Chinese heritage, I am uncomfortable whenever anyone mentions the topic of “Asian” academic achievement, because it is too easy to conjure up an illusion that high academic achievement, or, worse, intelligence, is somehow related to an ethnic or cultural difference. We must debunk the myth that academic success is “for Asians only”. We can discuss at great length why Asian values produce better students, but as John Hattie and others rightly say, it is really about hard work and perseverance, and nobody should feel there is any kind of cultural barrier preventing them from achieving.
Yet, I wonder whether this work ethic is really so foreign to New Zealanders. Even our most talented sporting heroes have to put in the hard yakka to perform well at the highest level. If children can understand that playing hard on the sports field is not so different from working hard in the classroom, they can transform a love of sport into a love of learning.
This is what I try to impart to all of my students, and it makes a huge difference to their motivation levels, self-esteem, and consequently their performance.
There is no doubt the family environment is a huge influence on a child’s attitude towards education.
However, I would prefer to see parents set high aspirations for their children, rather than high expectations, which implicitly put pressure on their children to perform.
It is fine (good, in fact) to share parental aspirations with our children, but the key is to help them find their self-motivation, their own sense of achievement and satisfaction in learning a new skill, their own sense of pride in being good at something.
In this way, children will start to set their own high expectations, and then all they need from their parents is love, support and encouragement.
Audrey M Tan (Dr) – (Avonhead, Christchurch)
CONNECTIONS
Everybody seems to have been led astray by media coverage of the unfortunate disconnection of power to a home where a supplementary oxygen system was in use (Editorial, June 16).
Now the government wants to legislate against such actions.
How are they going to legislate against the big wind which brings down the power pole and cuts the power to this household?
How are they going to legislate against the crazy drivers who slam their vehicles into power poles and cut the power?
Surely the focus should be on providing a back-up oxygen supply, independent of electrical supply.
Surely the focus should be on instructing families in this situation of loss of power, to phone an emergency number at the hospital they were dealing with?
This is a medical problem, not a power supply one.
Peter Croft – (Mt Pleasant, Christchurch)
MODELS ROLLED
Having become almost used to the notion that those delivering news on screen must be of model (if not always supermodel) standard, I’ve found this policy has certain drawbacks given that New Zealand has extremely limited resources of good-looking and intelligent TV personalities.
Glaring blunders in pronunciation (that once would have been terrible gaffes but are now not noticed) by TV journalists I’ve noted recently include “Tucks-in” for Tucson, “tenements of Christianity” for tenets and “unalienation” for annihilation.
In the unseemly race for anyone on TV to stamp him- or herself as a celeb, inspired by the excesses of “reality” TV, these journalists insist on putting their own twisted view of reality across.
Recently, in an item on the Evers-Swindell rowing twins, it was reported that they would be striving to redeem themselves after their “disastrous” third placing at the world championships.
I would have thought that someone coming anywhere near the top 10 in the world would be highly commendable, and a bronze medal at a world competition in any event would be a personal and national triumph.
Judged by these lights, should we tell all those with bronze medals from Olympic, Commonwealth and World games, to biff them as evidence of their disasters?
Gary De Forest – (Te Atatu Peninsula)
KING COAL
Rebecca Macfie (“Coals on the table”, June 9) recounts uncritically the advocacy of the former minister for the environment Simon Upton that “we are entering the great age of coal … it can be converted economically to liquid fuel for transport, and it’s going to happen”.
Most scientists knowledgeable about these ideas oppose them.
Three decades ago, a director of the Dow Chemical Co, chemistry Nobel-prizewinner Melvin Calvin, passed through Auckland with the Pacific Basin chemicals manager of Dow.
In their briefing session for energy specialists, they dismissed outright the whole concept of bulk transport fuels from coal, which Upton now condones.
Carcinogenic chemicals are released from such processes on such a scale as to rule them out of consideration, said those experts (who could not be accused of undue concern about pollution).
I am not aware that these difficulties have been much diminished by research since then; if it’s “economic”, why isn’t it being done, especially in countries like India, which lack both oil and strong anti-pollution regulations?
For those interested in what to use instead of dirty, non-renewable coal, Macfie states (not quite ascribing this to Upton) that problems remain in harvesting the sun economically. This is misleading.
Solar water-heating has been economic for several decades, and widely deployed in some countries. Solar air-conditioning is even better value and can substitute for several large power stations in New Zealand.
Indirect solar energy in the form of wind does not, contrary to Macfie’s assertion, “present all kinds of difficulties for energy grids”; indeed 1500MW of wind energy can be added to the New Zealand grid, thanks to the existing hydro stations which can compensate for the variations in windpower supplied to the grid.
Upton stated in an address in Zurich this March: “It would be absurd to ‘plan’ an energy future by laying our expensive, publicly funded bets on particular technologies.”
This is no more than a new wording of [former finance minister Sir Roger] Douglas’s irrational assumption that because some very bad planning was done by Maiden, Birch, Muldoon, etc, we should abolish planning and turn main resources over to a group of robber barons, many of them foreign.
I see no reason to regard lawyer Upton as an energy expert.
Our country needs wise energy planning; the stupid experiment of turning it over to the fabled “market forces”, beloved of Upton, Douglas, Max Bradford, etc, has, predictably, worked out very badly.
The natural monopolies of the main utilities should be under democratic control.
Robert Mann – (sometime Senior Lecturer in Environmental Studies, University of Auckland)
UNSPORTING
Paul Lewis was quite unjust (Sport, June 2) to blame the New Zealand Government for not calling off the New Zealand cricket tour to Zimbabwe, when Australian Prime Minister John Howard called off the Australian tour.
The difference between the two cases is that the Australian Government has the power to cancel passports, which no sane New Zealander would want any New Zealand Government to be able to do, ever.
Jocelyn Harris – (Emeritus Professor, English Department, University of Otago)
