Letters to the Editor

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Who is right?
I refer to the letter by Graham Mackenzie and the report from commissioner John Robertson in your July 22 publication. Both make statements about the level of KDC debt.

Mr Robertson has reported many times that the KDC debt has been held at $80m and will be reduced considerably by 2022.

Mr Mackenzie states the KDC bank debt to be $88m plus extras for ratepayers, developers and the Mangawhai Endowment Fund.
Mr Mackenzie gives some detail while Mr Robertson provides no breakdown at all.

One of these sets of figures must be incorrect and yet Mr Robertson has not refuted publicly those of Mr Mackenzie. Why?
Perhaps your publication can research which of the two statements is the true situation.
 
R Horsfall
Mangawhai
  
Muldoon vs Key
To put an end to speculation I agree with (Mangawhai Focus editor) Rob Pooley. Muldoon and Key are as different as chalk and cheese.
Rob Muldoon was blunt to the point of rudeness. You knew if you were in favour or in the crap straight away. You could spend your life thinking John Key was your best buddy only to find out, on your death bed, he hated your guts.

John Key is Captain Charm. If he were the captain of the Titanic he would have been able to convince the passengers that they were just stopping off to get more ice for the first class bar, when the ship hit the iceberg.

They could not have co-existed in the same cabinet but their differences in personalities reflects the major changes in New Zealand society from a basic agrarian society to a sophisticated society of city dwellers.

Muldoon's style would go down like a lead balloon today: Multi-racism is a fact of life, gay marriages are legal, and dawn raids to weed out Polynesian overstayers would cause a major riot.

John Key's charm and ever-smiling countenance does not reflect what often lies beneath. The recent encounter between him and Mr Dotcom was like a couple of hypnotic cobras seeking the right milisecond for a death blow.

At the end of the day, for good or bad, John Key has far greater control over the New Zealand voter than Muldoon ever did and gets away with much that would have caused a riot had Muldoon tried to pull the same tricks.
 
Roy Vaughan
Mangawhai
 
 
Ed note: Roy Vaughan was a journalist with the NZ Herald for 20 years and in that time interviewed Muldoon quite a number of times on topics ranging from Pacific Island affairs to shipping and NZ politics. He also knew him on another sphere.
Vaughan ran T.S. Achilles, a Sea Cadet unit in Muldoon’s Tamaki electorate. He was good with the kids and turned up at parades at Okahu Bay and also at a National Sea Cadet Camp at Whangaparaoa.
He saw Muldoon as a complex character in some respects but seemed to value loyalty among friends and followers most, rather than riches.
 
 Installations illegal
There has been little or no correspondence re the quality of the so-called Mangawhai Wastewater Scheme which is only one of the reasons for the financial failure of the Kaipara District Council.

I have had a registered electrical engineer inspect 11 properties that have grinder pump installations and his findings make interesting reading.

A. The electric cable from the switch board to the pumps is underground, however the average depth of the cables was only 80mm below the surface. The regulation requires a minimum of 600mm below the land surface.

B. As well the electrical connections are hard wired directly into the household switchboards with no isolating switches which is illegal wiring and a contravention of the regulations.

If you are a Mangawhai property owner and have a grinder pump installation I recommend you have it inspected by a registered electrician and send the bill to the Kaipara District Council who signed off these illegal installations.

Also, I am familiar with three commercial properties where the wastewater pipes come to the property boundary and the property is not connected to the said wastewater pipes. The whole installation is a dangerous shambles. When a property owner next excavates his land he will hit a live cable causing electrocution risk to the operator.
 
Graham Mackenzie
Mangawhai

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