Post by Kiwi Frontline on Jul 11, 2019 6:29:46 GMT 12
Southland Times 11/7/19
RESTORE MORIORI MANA
Martin van Beynen, near the end of his opinion article (‘‘Don’t look back in anger – or pride’’, July 6), asks the question, ‘‘But what would Maori have done if they found the most fertile and pleasant lands of New Zealand were already occupied by a peaceful people?’’
We have an example of what they would have done by looking at what Maori did to the Moriori of Rekohu, otherwise known as the Chatham Islands. When Maori invaded those islands they killed, ate, enslaved.
The Chatham Islands were also forbidden to marry members of their own group and were belittled and humiliated for being Moriori.
If Maori want the Government to make amends for New Zealand’s colonial past then Maori should make amends for their own behaviour towards the Moriori (with the same high-profile exposure and financial compensation). Even better: Maori should ask Moriori for forgiveness. That would go a long way towards restoring Moriori mana.
PAUL COTTER
NZ Herald 11/7/19
MAORI HEALTH
The Waitangi Tribunal recently concluded the poor health outcomes of Maori versus Europeans is a manifestation of inadequate Maori-health related spending and the need for a Maori primary health authority (Herald, July 5). However, it is doubtful if these will appreciably address the problem.
Over the past 50 years, there have been numerous developments in health care, but one of the most important and least heralded is the importance of lifestyle in determining our health. Where approximately 20 per cent of premature deaths are due to bad luck and or bad genes, 80 per cent are lifestyle related, eg. smoking, diet and exercise. Lifestyle related health problems absorb an enormous proportion of the health care budget, but our ability to reverse or even ameliorate the ravages of an unhealthy lifestyle are limited.
For a number of educational, social, economic and cultural reasons different subgroups in New Zealand have markedly different rates of unhealthy lifestyles, and there is also a direct correlation between these rates of unhealthy lifestyle and poor health outcomes. The key to improving health outcomes for Maori is to address their high frequency of unhealthy lifestyle factors and not putting more money into Maori directed primary health care.
DON GUADAGNI, Auckland.
Northland Age 11/7/19
ON A ROLL
Apparently, when you are on a roll, just go for the quaddie, particularly if you are encouraged to do so by the dysfunctional biased Waitangi Tribunal and other associated whackos operating for 40-plus years while wasting billions of dollars.
So far we have had Justice Minister Little’s Criminal Justice/Imprisonment (offenders only) Summit, mental health reports ad nauseam , the three tiers of planned enquiries on child protection/ wellbeing/taking, and now, to top it off, a proposed unhealthiness symposium regarding part-Maori/Pasifika. Meanwhile the upcoming Christchurch Royal Commission will duplicate everything at huge cost, while the Pike River re-entry lunacy has gone deathly quiet, steadily chewing its way through its $35 million budget.
Please keep reminding us how does all this hogwash get a life of its own? Squillions plucked from taxpayers and community resources, when spending money on these ideological aberrations is not the answer — they are social issues about people taking personal responsibility for their own actions, behaviour and lifestyle choices, and no amount of money will assist or fix the ills.
Therefore pillaging taxpayers and troughing out at their expense is not only unacceptable but quite useless.
Pre -1840, the Maori lifespan (excluding tribal slaughtering and cannibalism) was, it seems, at least as good, if not better than, their fellow time travellers’. As I recall, recent Otago University and Gluckman assessments indicate that present day part-Maori who adopt the same lifestyles as their fellow Kiwis will have the same good health and life expectations as them, and I agree with that conclusion.
Let’s kick this race-based garbage to touch, and stop people coming up with individual separatist skewed calculations on cherry-picked numbers without facing reality — which are bad personal choices and failure to take responsibility for one’s own actions being the real causes. There are no so-called breaches of the Treaty, certainly nothing in the Treaty at all on these subject matters, and in fact nothing at all anywhere else either.
Also, please stop only using fabricated, inappropriate reo appellations for everything when common English usage names should be paramount, so that 85 per cent of the population know exactly what the topics/issues under discussion are — which, after all, concerns every Kiwi one way or another, not just Maori.
ROB PATERSON, Mount Maunganui
CURE THYSELF
Most of us must be wondering at a great many preposterous statements by the Waitangi Tribunal and Maori politicians, in never-ending claims for yet more public money to be entrusted to Maori leaders to correct alleged injustices to their whole race.
As with all social problems, throwing money at them is rarely going to reduce them, and is very likely to have no effect, or more likely make them worse.
We naturally feel sceptical about the idea of a separate Maori health system, after seeing a good deal about what has happened to such money granted to Maori health trusts in recent years.
Perhaps the Tribunal would like its proposed system to be exempt from auditing, or to have only Maori auditors. At any rate, those never-defined principles of the Treaty seem to be just anything the Tribunal says they are.
Insufficient government funding is not the reason that Maori health and lifespans are not as good as non-Maori. For the last 65 years we have been made aware of the things that cause cardiovascular disease, respiratory complaints and cancer, plus obesity.
Generally, the non-Maori population has heeded the warnings, so that its rate of heart and lung complaints has fallen noticeably, but the Maori population and Pasifika have ignored the warnings against tobacco, alcohol, sugar, fat and so forth. However, they are always ready to blame the rest of us for their bad health: we shouldn’t have introduced those things to the country.
Well, those people were very willing to consume them, and still are.
About blaming others, I recall that one woman had actually had legal aid approved so she could sue a tobacco company for damages after smoking its cigarettes for many years, and getting a terminal illness. Fortunately she died before the case could go ahead, but most people thought the approval of legal aid had been ludicrous.
No matter how much money goes toward health, people are going to be unhealthy if they refuse to look after their own individual health. Certainly some illnesses are not the fault of their sufferers, but many others are.
I myself have Type 2 diabetes. I have been told what the causes are, and there was no history of it in my extended family. I have nobody but myself to blame for doing what caused it.
“It won’t happen to me” is what so many people think when they are warned.
H WESTFOLD, Wellington
PROMISES PROMISES
At the last election NZ First was voted into office on the promise of removing racist legislation and government special treatment of Maori, and honouring democratic principles of equality. Winston Peters’ “bottom line” was to see the Maori Party dissolved.
If it had not been for those promises the party would not have received enough support to be returned to power.
Not only did Winston Peters renege on those promises, but he subsequently signed up with the UN Accord on Immigration, which had been rejected by most Western countries, which threatens our national identity and puts our autonomy at risk.
It is high time that the party honoured its promises, starting with the dissolution of the racially divisive Waitangi Tribunal, an exclusive appeal court available only to one of the country’s 231 ethnic groups.
This current opposition to the Canterbury Regional Council’s Bill is a beginning. Let it not be the end.
BRYAN JOHNSON, Omokoroa
Gisborne Herald 10/7/ 19
IMPACT SPOILT BY SILLINESS
I watched the TV1 programme “That’s A Bit Racist” on Sunday night, with the hope that I might learn something.
One segment asked the public, at random in the street, if they knew who was on the $5 note and then asked who was on the $50 note. Predictably, more people knew who Sir Edmund Hillary was.
But wait there’s more — not many even knew who Sir Apirana Ngata was, let alone what his claims to fame were. Quod Erat Demonstrandum — racism at work! They could have asked about Sir Ernest Rutherford, or Kate Shepherd to even things out a little.
Another segment compared the total sum spent on Treaty settlements with two other areas of spending. The settlement figure was the least of the three and we could all draw our own conclusions from that — really? Selective use of statistics can tell you what you want to hear, ask any politician.
We were also treated to infantile clips from a supposed children’s TV programme, where the male presenter used simplistic overtly racist stereotypes, in a hammy, overdone way. Real “pat you on the head”, patronising stuff, I thought.
Historical clips of Bastion Point, 1978 and the ’70s overstayers raids were included. I think it fair to say we have moved on a bit from then.
A lot of good, relevant points were made, which were food for thought and highlighted the real need for improvement.
I thought the programme spoilt its impact by silliness. I was left with the feeling that racism is exclusive, to those of a paler hue, rather than a less attractive characteristic of homo sapiens as a species.
Another episode shows this coming Sunday, so see what you think.
RON TAYLOR
sites.google.com/site/kiwifrontline/letters-submitted-to-newspapers
RESTORE MORIORI MANA
Martin van Beynen, near the end of his opinion article (‘‘Don’t look back in anger – or pride’’, July 6), asks the question, ‘‘But what would Maori have done if they found the most fertile and pleasant lands of New Zealand were already occupied by a peaceful people?’’
We have an example of what they would have done by looking at what Maori did to the Moriori of Rekohu, otherwise known as the Chatham Islands. When Maori invaded those islands they killed, ate, enslaved.
The Chatham Islands were also forbidden to marry members of their own group and were belittled and humiliated for being Moriori.
If Maori want the Government to make amends for New Zealand’s colonial past then Maori should make amends for their own behaviour towards the Moriori (with the same high-profile exposure and financial compensation). Even better: Maori should ask Moriori for forgiveness. That would go a long way towards restoring Moriori mana.
PAUL COTTER
NZ Herald 11/7/19
MAORI HEALTH
The Waitangi Tribunal recently concluded the poor health outcomes of Maori versus Europeans is a manifestation of inadequate Maori-health related spending and the need for a Maori primary health authority (Herald, July 5). However, it is doubtful if these will appreciably address the problem.
Over the past 50 years, there have been numerous developments in health care, but one of the most important and least heralded is the importance of lifestyle in determining our health. Where approximately 20 per cent of premature deaths are due to bad luck and or bad genes, 80 per cent are lifestyle related, eg. smoking, diet and exercise. Lifestyle related health problems absorb an enormous proportion of the health care budget, but our ability to reverse or even ameliorate the ravages of an unhealthy lifestyle are limited.
For a number of educational, social, economic and cultural reasons different subgroups in New Zealand have markedly different rates of unhealthy lifestyles, and there is also a direct correlation between these rates of unhealthy lifestyle and poor health outcomes. The key to improving health outcomes for Maori is to address their high frequency of unhealthy lifestyle factors and not putting more money into Maori directed primary health care.
DON GUADAGNI, Auckland.
Northland Age 11/7/19
ON A ROLL
Apparently, when you are on a roll, just go for the quaddie, particularly if you are encouraged to do so by the dysfunctional biased Waitangi Tribunal and other associated whackos operating for 40-plus years while wasting billions of dollars.
So far we have had Justice Minister Little’s Criminal Justice/Imprisonment (offenders only) Summit, mental health reports ad nauseam , the three tiers of planned enquiries on child protection/ wellbeing/taking, and now, to top it off, a proposed unhealthiness symposium regarding part-Maori/Pasifika. Meanwhile the upcoming Christchurch Royal Commission will duplicate everything at huge cost, while the Pike River re-entry lunacy has gone deathly quiet, steadily chewing its way through its $35 million budget.
Please keep reminding us how does all this hogwash get a life of its own? Squillions plucked from taxpayers and community resources, when spending money on these ideological aberrations is not the answer — they are social issues about people taking personal responsibility for their own actions, behaviour and lifestyle choices, and no amount of money will assist or fix the ills.
Therefore pillaging taxpayers and troughing out at their expense is not only unacceptable but quite useless.
Pre -1840, the Maori lifespan (excluding tribal slaughtering and cannibalism) was, it seems, at least as good, if not better than, their fellow time travellers’. As I recall, recent Otago University and Gluckman assessments indicate that present day part-Maori who adopt the same lifestyles as their fellow Kiwis will have the same good health and life expectations as them, and I agree with that conclusion.
Let’s kick this race-based garbage to touch, and stop people coming up with individual separatist skewed calculations on cherry-picked numbers without facing reality — which are bad personal choices and failure to take responsibility for one’s own actions being the real causes. There are no so-called breaches of the Treaty, certainly nothing in the Treaty at all on these subject matters, and in fact nothing at all anywhere else either.
Also, please stop only using fabricated, inappropriate reo appellations for everything when common English usage names should be paramount, so that 85 per cent of the population know exactly what the topics/issues under discussion are — which, after all, concerns every Kiwi one way or another, not just Maori.
ROB PATERSON, Mount Maunganui
CURE THYSELF
Most of us must be wondering at a great many preposterous statements by the Waitangi Tribunal and Maori politicians, in never-ending claims for yet more public money to be entrusted to Maori leaders to correct alleged injustices to their whole race.
As with all social problems, throwing money at them is rarely going to reduce them, and is very likely to have no effect, or more likely make them worse.
We naturally feel sceptical about the idea of a separate Maori health system, after seeing a good deal about what has happened to such money granted to Maori health trusts in recent years.
Perhaps the Tribunal would like its proposed system to be exempt from auditing, or to have only Maori auditors. At any rate, those never-defined principles of the Treaty seem to be just anything the Tribunal says they are.
Insufficient government funding is not the reason that Maori health and lifespans are not as good as non-Maori. For the last 65 years we have been made aware of the things that cause cardiovascular disease, respiratory complaints and cancer, plus obesity.
Generally, the non-Maori population has heeded the warnings, so that its rate of heart and lung complaints has fallen noticeably, but the Maori population and Pasifika have ignored the warnings against tobacco, alcohol, sugar, fat and so forth. However, they are always ready to blame the rest of us for their bad health: we shouldn’t have introduced those things to the country.
Well, those people were very willing to consume them, and still are.
About blaming others, I recall that one woman had actually had legal aid approved so she could sue a tobacco company for damages after smoking its cigarettes for many years, and getting a terminal illness. Fortunately she died before the case could go ahead, but most people thought the approval of legal aid had been ludicrous.
No matter how much money goes toward health, people are going to be unhealthy if they refuse to look after their own individual health. Certainly some illnesses are not the fault of their sufferers, but many others are.
I myself have Type 2 diabetes. I have been told what the causes are, and there was no history of it in my extended family. I have nobody but myself to blame for doing what caused it.
“It won’t happen to me” is what so many people think when they are warned.
H WESTFOLD, Wellington
PROMISES PROMISES
At the last election NZ First was voted into office on the promise of removing racist legislation and government special treatment of Maori, and honouring democratic principles of equality. Winston Peters’ “bottom line” was to see the Maori Party dissolved.
If it had not been for those promises the party would not have received enough support to be returned to power.
Not only did Winston Peters renege on those promises, but he subsequently signed up with the UN Accord on Immigration, which had been rejected by most Western countries, which threatens our national identity and puts our autonomy at risk.
It is high time that the party honoured its promises, starting with the dissolution of the racially divisive Waitangi Tribunal, an exclusive appeal court available only to one of the country’s 231 ethnic groups.
This current opposition to the Canterbury Regional Council’s Bill is a beginning. Let it not be the end.
BRYAN JOHNSON, Omokoroa
Gisborne Herald 10/7/ 19
IMPACT SPOILT BY SILLINESS
I watched the TV1 programme “That’s A Bit Racist” on Sunday night, with the hope that I might learn something.
One segment asked the public, at random in the street, if they knew who was on the $5 note and then asked who was on the $50 note. Predictably, more people knew who Sir Edmund Hillary was.
But wait there’s more — not many even knew who Sir Apirana Ngata was, let alone what his claims to fame were. Quod Erat Demonstrandum — racism at work! They could have asked about Sir Ernest Rutherford, or Kate Shepherd to even things out a little.
Another segment compared the total sum spent on Treaty settlements with two other areas of spending. The settlement figure was the least of the three and we could all draw our own conclusions from that — really? Selective use of statistics can tell you what you want to hear, ask any politician.
We were also treated to infantile clips from a supposed children’s TV programme, where the male presenter used simplistic overtly racist stereotypes, in a hammy, overdone way. Real “pat you on the head”, patronising stuff, I thought.
Historical clips of Bastion Point, 1978 and the ’70s overstayers raids were included. I think it fair to say we have moved on a bit from then.
A lot of good, relevant points were made, which were food for thought and highlighted the real need for improvement.
I thought the programme spoilt its impact by silliness. I was left with the feeling that racism is exclusive, to those of a paler hue, rather than a less attractive characteristic of homo sapiens as a species.
Another episode shows this coming Sunday, so see what you think.
RON TAYLOR
sites.google.com/site/kiwifrontline/letters-submitted-to-newspapers