Letters: If the Govt is serious about helping Kiwibank then it should bank with them
Glen Stanton, Mairangi Bay.
We need to come together not drift apart
I am sure I am not alone in expressing my dismay that multiple Islamic groups and Imams have complained that they were 'not consulted' before Minister Mitchell's quite outstanding achievement in launching the religious accord recently announced.
How extraordinary that any religious leaders would refuse to participate in an accord designed to establish and ensure nationwide religious tolerance for all who wish to adhere to the common goals, values and understanding within the community.
Worse than that - their only reaction was to complain. How tiresome. Did any of those complaining ever say, 'What a great idea - that sounds interesting - we would like to learn more!' Or even, 'Thank you for the initiative, Minister?
Once again, a tiny segment of our multi-ethnic society has chosen to distance itself from the significant majority, from reality and from common decency - and to what gain?
They merely earned a tired sigh from the rest of the country and a 'Well we should have expected that', rather than the option of a gentle nod of approval and appreciation from the other 98% of the population. Which was what could have happened had they not immediately defaulted to victim status as so many other segments of our multicultural and multi-ethnic community used to do.
Fortunately, most of these segments have chosen to grow and move on as New Zealand continues to lead the world in tolerance, dedication to peace, and cultural development.
I will say it on everyone else's behalf: Thank you Minister Mark Mitchell, and your officials, and those religious leaders who put peace and tolerance first, for making such an appropriate and meaningful contribution across our society.
This initiative will benefit all thinking and considerate New Zealanders throughout our country.
Roger Hawkins, Herne Bay.
Standard electricity plans
A big thank you to Raphael Franks for the Herald series on electric power. Everyone, including the Electricity Retailers and Generators Association, agrees that choosing the best electricity plan is difficult even for electricity retailers.
With each individual retailer inventing their own confusing set of plans, choosing the best plan is impossible. The Electricity Authority (EA) must create a set of 3 standard retail plans that all gentailers must use in place of a multitude of plans that nobody can understand. It is time for actual competition in the electricity market.
John Caldwell, Howick.
Auckland's housing
Thank you Christine Fletcher and Troy Churton for warning us of the tactics of the Minister for Housing, Chris Bishop, to turn our beautiful Auckland into a future slum city.
As a minister, he should be more concerned as to why there are countless blocks of already built, empty, bankrupt apartments
Our well-experienced local government representatives are not speaking 'hyperbole'.
They know the Auckland Unitary Plan. Although unpopular, it was years in the making and it allows more than enough intensification.
In the last 12 months 40,000 people have moved out to live in Christchurch. Minister Bishop should be questioning why.
Yet he is hell bent on riding roughshod over the unitary plan, ignoring the community, to have more high-rise blocks of housing built with no off-street parking.
He returns to the Hutt and leaves Auckland in chaos.
Jsn O'Connor, Hauraki
Passports
Hobson's Pledge and their ilk will be delighted at Brooke van Velden's announcement demoting te reo on New Zealand passport covers — typical as it is of this coalition's peevish, vindictive and, at times seemingly childish, racism.
They would be less pleased at the reasoned and pointed Herald editorial on the subject, in defense of the cultural value of te reo in Aotearoa.
You have to wonder where van Velden and her colleagues have been while a years-long renaissance in tikanga Māori and te reo has been blooming to the benefit and enrichment of our society, culture and environment.
Peter Beyer, Sandringham.
FBI office
We should be absolutely horrified that this Government has allowed the FBI to set up an office in Wellington particularly as there seems to have been considerable secrecy about it.
Kash Patel, the Director of the FBI, was reported to be in New Zealand but the Government was not prepared to inform us till the office had been set up.
Patel also seemed to be immediately at odds with the Government about why this office is here, claiming that one of the reasons is to keep an eye on the Chinese Communist Party. As the latter is one of our major trading partners, the Government had to try to hastily bluff its way out of a very embarrassing situation.
Sadly, this is probably only the first of many future occasions where the USA will try to interfere in our democracy.
Sue Rawson, Papamoa Beach
Palestine state
Sir Keir Starmer has told UK parliamentarians that 'statehood is the inalienable right of the Palestinian people'.
Palestinians have been waiting 100 years for this.
Historians know that Britain was the governing power of what was then Palestine in 1917, and author of the 1917 Balfour Declaration which backed the establishment of a Jewish homeland on Palestinian territory.
Good to know that MPs in Britain are catching up with history.
Pauline Doyle, Napier
A quick word
I get it, better to be safe than soggy, but if these emergency alerts keep interrupting people's sleep, the only real tsunami will be the tidal wave of New Zealanders disabling emergency notifications entirely.
Huw Dann, Mt Eden.
How do you stay current on the electoral role when you are homeless and don't even have a letterbox?
Bill Irwin, Nelson.
There has obviously been an ongoing culture of alcohol abuse within our Navy for a lengthy period of time if it requires a stern mandate from no less than the admiral in command to rein it in. But why has it got to this level? Like naughty children, if steps are not taken to curb bad behaviour, then it can get quickly out of hand and, in the Navy's case, it obviously has. Take a leaf from the US Navy, which almost overnight made its ships alcohol free. Problem, at least whilst on board, solved.
Paul Beck, West Harbour.
The comment that most urban dwellers have spent time on a farm may have been true many years ago but it is not now. I live in an urban area surrounded by farming on the Coromandel Peninsula and the interaction between farmers and local urban dwellers on their farms is nearly non-existent for the majority of town people. To suggest that large-city people have access to farms is extremely unlikely. The disconnect between farming and the majority of New Zealanders being city folk is a major issue. City folk generally will not understand farming and that is a problem when a large portion of our national income is derived from farming.
Paul Graves, Whitianga.
Congratulations to Christine Fletcher for calling out Chris Bishop. Finally, a councillor standing up for Auckland. Bishop is right when he says the simple answer to housing availability is to build more houses. But what makes him think that his 'planning reforms' will achieve that? Auckland already has an over-supply of residential zoned land available for development. Adding to that will not achieve anything. If Chris Bishop wants more houses, as Minister for Housing why doesn't he just get Kainga Ora to build them?
John Burns, Balmoral.
While the cellphone alert of the tsunami risk worked well, further 'peace of mind', in-depth, informative, official and real-time information updates were hard to find or they were patchy and, in some cases, useless and unreliable. For example an inoperative link to a NZ regional map of tsunami escape routes. The relevant site continued to display 'Not operative' messages. Missing currently is a useful reliable and accessible one-stop website with a real-time update of all 'developing risks to public safety' ... and now!
Larry Mitchell, Rothesay Bay.
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The decision has fuelled an intense debate over the Starmer Government's attitude towards protest and free speech. The Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, who is responsible for law enforcement and national security, said that Palestine Action had put national security at risk. She added that it met the Government's legal definition of terrorism because its terms included 'serious damage to property'. The group has repeatedly damaged facilities linked to military companies, including Elbit Systems, an Israeli weapons manufacturer, and also vandalised United States President Donald Trump's Turnberry golf resort in Scotland in March. But the United Nations' human rights chief, Volker Turk, publicly called for the British Government to drop the ban, which he called a 'disproportionate and unnecessary' move that stretched counterterrorism powers beyond 'clear boundaries'. The origins of this moment can be traced back a quarter of a century, when the legislation used to ban Palestine Action was introduced. The Terrorism Act of 2000 was drawn up to replace years of piecemeal security laws that had largely targeted dissident Irish republican groups like the Irish Republican Army. In a 1998 document outlining its proposals, the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair said it wanted a future-proof definition that could apply to 'all forms of terrorism', voicing concerns about potential violence from Islamist extremists, nationalists, and animal rights groups. The resulting law is conspicuously broad. It defines terrorism as 'the use or threat of action' that involves serious violence against a person or endangers someone's life, or serious damage to property; creates a serious risk to the health or safety of the public; or is designed to seriously disrupt or interfere with an electronic system. To meet the definition, these threats or actions must be designed to influence the government or intimidate the public and be 'for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause'. The inclusion of the 'damage to property' clause was criticised from the start, with several lawmakers trying to remove it from the legislation as it made its way through Parliament. One MP, Mark Fisher, called it 'baffling and disturbing', while another, Simon Hughes, said the proposed definition of terrorism 'stretches the English language too far', and added, 'If someone attacks a field of corn, there is perfectly good legislation dealing with criminal damage and damage to property'. At the time, Britain was dealing with direct action protests against genetically modified food. But the Government, which had a large majority, over-ruled them. Charles Clarke, Home Office minister at the time, told Parliament the clause was needed because of IRA bombings that destroyed buildings but did not injure people as a result of advance warnings. Another government minister at the time, Mike Gapes, rejected the idea that people protesting against genetically modified food would be prosecuted as terrorists, calling those warnings 'scare-story scenarios that are designed to frighten people off from introducing effective legislation to combat terrorism'. A member of terrorist group Isis (Islamic State) in 2015. Photo / Getty Images For a time, it seemed the concerns were indeed overblown. Until this year, no government had invoked the 'damage to property' clause alone to ban a group, and its existence had largely disappeared from public debate. Labour says it is using it now because of Palestine Action's escalating campaign of 'direct criminal action' since it was created in 2020. Home Office minister David Hanson told Parliament last month the group targeted 'key national infrastructure and defence firms that provide services and supplies to support our efforts in Ukraine, Nato, our Five Eyes allies and the UK defence enterprise'. He accused some members of responding violently to the police or security guards who tried to stop them. 'We would not tolerate this activity from organisations if they were motivated by Islamist or extreme right-wing ideologies, and therefore I cannot tolerate it from Palestine Action.' But for several lawmakers, the ban distorts the definition of terrorism and has far-reaching and disturbing implications. Peter Hain, a Labour former government minister who now sits in the House of Lords, argued in response to Hanson that his own direct action against apartheid in South Africa would have led to his being 'stigmatised as a terrorist today' and noted that Britain's suffragettes 'used violence against property in a strategic manner to demand voting rights for women'. Raza Husain, a barrister representing Palestine Action, argued in the High Court in London last month that the Government had not presented evidence of any risk to national security, calling its decision an 'authoritarian abuse of statutory power' that 'demeans the notion of terrorism'. Now that Palestine Action is banned, any show of support for it — including wearing a T-shirt displaying its logo — can result in arrest, as can donating to the group, being a member, or arranging meetings. 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On July 14, Laura Murton was demonstrating in Canterbury, southeast of London, with a Palestinian flag and signs reading 'Free Gaza' and 'Israel is committing genocide' when she was approached by two armed police officers. A video filmed by Murton shows an officer telling her she could be arrested for 'expressing an opinion or belief that is supportive' of Palestine Action, while Murton repeatedly says she had not expressed support for the group. One officer says they are 'trying to be fair', adding, 'We could have jumped out, arrested you, dragged you off in a van'. Murton told the New York Times she felt 'intimidated' into giving her details to the officers and only found out she was not being investigated for any offence when she read news media coverage of the episode. 'When you give these additional sweeping powers,' she said, 'we end up in a situation where we have people in the police who make broad interpretations of the law.' On July 30, Palestine Action won permission from the High Court to bring a legal challenge against the ban, but the case will not be heard until November at the earliest. The judge, Martin Chamberlain, said in his ruling that the 'police and others appear to have misunderstood the law on some occasions' and that their actions were 'liable to have a chilling effect on those wishing to express legitimate political views'. Milo Comerford, who has been researching the evolution of counterterrorism in Britain at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a research institute in London, told the New York Times that it was 'very clear how the Terrorism Act related to the threat landscape' in the era dominated by al-Qaeda after the September 11, 2001, attacks. But he said the law was 'designed to deal with very different' types of organisations from Palestine Action. Comerford questioned whether the Government had 'effectively made the case' for using 'extraordinary' powers against the group. Numerous Palestine Action activists had previously been prosecuted under criminal damage laws. In an earlier ruling on the case, Chamberlain acknowledged that designating Palestine Action as a terrorist group 'may have wider consequences for the way the public understands the concept of 'terrorism' and for public confidence' in Britain's counterterrorism laws. He added: 'If it is problematic that those who use or threaten action which involves serious damage to property but do not target or aim to endanger people are 'terrorists', the problem lies with the statute and has existed for 25 years'. This article originally appeared in The New York Times. Written by: Lizzie Dearden Photographs by: XXX ©2025 THE NEW YORK TIMES
