Letters to the Editor

Brigade numbers down

In reply to ‘hot topic’ (Letters to the Editor, Mangawhai Focus, August 23).

The Mangawhai brigade is presently down on membership numbers. The brigade has been recently recruiting for new members in the Mangawhai Area. As a result, four new members have joined in the last few weeks, which will bring the brigade numbers up to approximately 70% of establishment once recruit training has been completed. 

If anybody is interested in joining the Mangawhai brigade as a fire fighter or as operational support or brigade support please contact CFO Doughty 027 339 4237.

It is common practice to send neighbouring brigades to cover brigades with low numbers or unable to turn out in the day. Kaiwaka brigade has provided this response cover for the Mangawhai brigade and has done this for many years for property fires to provide a two-appliance response 

The brigade have sent fire fighters to fire training with Wellsford and Warkworth brigades recently and some will be attending a Fire Camp in Dargaville in a few weeks time. The brigade sits in the top half of 15 brigades in the Whangarei-Kaipara area in the dashboard system.

Extinction is forever

Why wasn’t Ruakaka included in your notice “Help protect our shorebirds”? Don’t our 2,500 Godwits and Redknots count?

The Ruakaka Wildlife Refuge is also host to many shorebird species including dotterels, variable oystercatchers, Caspian terns, banded rails, wry bills – just to mention a few – so it also needs volunteers.

The Ruakaka refuge is already threatened by the destructive activities if kiteboarders and the local ratepayer and residents association. However I must admit that the threat posed to the critically endangered fairy Tern at Mangawhai is even worse. Here the harbour protection society combined with kiteboarders and waterskiers have the potential to consign these little birds to extinction despite the valiant efforts of dedicated monitors. Hence the cry for help!

How come there appears to be an increasing number of residents in these areas and beyond that have no environmental ethic or respect for wildlife? What’s wrong with these people? Do they not realise that the planet has not evolved for them alone but has to be shared with a myriad of species if we are all to survive long term?

Remember, extinction is forever and that the human race is not exempt from that fate.

RESPONSE: The published notice was sent from the Mangawhai group but The Focus is only too happy to give voice to the Ruakaka group also if we receive the information – Ed.

Issues about the issues

Some issues with the last issue.

The front page article quoted KDC chief executive Steve Ruru as saying that by restructuring unsustainable debt ‘We estimate council will save in the order of $250,000 to $350,000 a year.

It saddens me that our CEO does not understand the word saving. Monies paid in usurious interest charges is money unproductively wasted. Ask any of the many bankrupted farmers or former home owners in the district. I’m sure they will back me up on this. Rearranging loans so that less money is unproductively wasted does not equal saving – it merely represents less money thrown away. If I cannot afford to buy a new BMW and consequently do not buy one I cannot boast of saving $90,000 can I?

In your editorial you are dismissive of admitted and alleged illegalities surrounding actions of KDC, the Auditor General and Central Government and seem to expouse the concept that something only becomes illegal if prosecuted and found guilty by a court. This is incorrect. If I commit fraud, burglary or assault I have committed an illegal act whether or not I am caught and subjected to due legal process. Current police clearance rate on burglary is 22%. This means that 78% of burglaries are unsolved there are no charges laid and nothing is proven in court. By your definition these then are not burglaries at all and the police may as well claim a 100% clearance rate.

The next error is the claim that ‘This is part of the democratic process’. This is very wrong. The processes of law are not and have never been part of any actual or claimed democratic process. Judges and Juries are appointed not elected. English common law, from which our judicial processes have evolved, have their origin in the signing of the Magna Carta in the year 1215. 

Lastly, Jo Roberts quotes from the undemocratically appointed ‘’Review Team’’ report, “that it expects members of the community to engage in such processes, if established, in good faith and approach them with a spirit of reciprocity and as an opportunity for a new beginning.”

By definition there can be no ‘’new beginning’’ until such time as the reported $85 million debt is defaulted on or discharged. No counsellor, staff, review team, Auditor General, minister for local government, newspaper, consultant or ratepayer has been able to yet clearly identify the causes of the problems. Until this is done a solution will not be possible and any good faith would be misplaced.