Letters to the Editor: pay equity, student housing, cycling trail

Otago Daily Times

12-05-2025

Today's Letters to the Editor from readers cover topics including pay equity, student housing and not everyone embracing cycling trail. The percentages of the pay equity discussion
Of a total of 123 MPs in the New Zealand Parliament 54 are women. This makes women 43.9% of the population of MPs.
As 43.9% is nowhere near the 70% female content of a workforce required to obtain pay equity under the modified pay parity law, I expect that female MP salaries will not be adjusted upwards along with male salaries when future routine salary adjustments take place.
This government has thoughtfully instituted a law change to enable them to share the pain that their whole ''savings'' programme, including rescinding pay equity, is inflicting on ordinary citizens. The selfless support of this law change by prominent female MPs in the current government is heartening. What a noble gesture.
Jenny McNamara
Southland Saving billions
I have an idea. If the government, and especially Act New Zealand, are so keen on pay equity, let them bring the incomes of all male workers - including MPs - down to equal those of the lowest-paid women. They will save even more billions of dollars.
Ann Charlotte
Waikouaiti Heed the librarians
Equal pay for work of equal value, the cornerstone of pay equity legislation, is to be undermined again. Labour's 1990 Employment Equity Act went under incoming National government Finance Minister Ruth Richardson's knife later that year. Now, with the same cost-cutting zeal, Brook Van Velden (ODT 7.5.25), will ''discontinue current pay equity claims'', and raise thresholds to show ''genuine'' gender discrimination, saying ''You have librarians who've been comparing themselves to transport engineers''.
Presumably these are the same transport engineers her government's former transport minister, Simeon Brown, consulted about raising speed limits, before ignoring their advice and fast-tracking New Zealand's nine cars on the road to every 10 people. By the same token, if money is the concern, Mr Brown might've consulted the librarians. It would have been cheaper.
Susan Hall
Oamaru Hairy issue
Pay equity changes by stealth because National are too scared of the backlash to their proposal to take money from the underpaid to fill the hole in their Budget. The only difference between Trump and Luxon is that one has hair.
Barry Salter
Invercargill Governing the govt
With he government's urgent legislation, and the coming referendum for a four-year term, I find myself thinking: We know that if the government wants to go from start to finish with laws in few hours, they can because they did. We know that if the government wants to ignore decades of court decisions, they can because they did.
We know that if the government wants to fully pass laws with no advice on who they will hurt, they can because they did. We know the government isn't interested in implementing report recommendations on making legislation more carefully, because they haven't.
As we watch the government make up laws overnight, faster even than the current United States government, we know that an extra fourth year in a term would just be an extra year to ignore the electorate.
David Hood
Dunedin Student housing comments a tired stereotype
George Livingstone's comments on the student area (ODT 10.5.25) reflect a tired stereotype I've grown used to over my five years in Dunedin, from a vocal minority of landlords who remain indifferent to the reality of student housing.
When students call for warm, safe, and affordable homes, some landlords respond not with concern, but with contempt, dismissing us as ''beer-swilling immature adolescents''. That might have passed for humour in the 1980s, but today's students are juggling rising rents, part-time jobs, mounting debt, and a cost-of-living crisis. We're don't want Victorian cottages, just flats that are warmer than fridges.
North Dunedin is filled with cold, damp, and overpriced flats. Aesthetic charm doesn't make up for black mould, cold draughts and broken heaters. These conditions have real consequences: respiratory illness, poor mental health, and compromised academic performance. If Mr Livingstone truly cares about the student area, I invite him to step inside not just admire from the kerb.
His scorn for a rental warrant of fitness as an ''endless stream of regulations'' overlooks the fact that the Healthy Homes Standards were the first update to rental requirements in nearly two decades. Clear, enforceable standards aren't red tape - they're a basic protection. They ensure decent landlords aren't undercut by slumlords.
And as for the claim that landlords are being squeezed out of the market - rents have risen by over $100 per room (inflation-adjusted) since 1991 with the majority of flats remaining largely the same. The data speaks for itself.
Every generation of students has had its fun. But fun doesn't mean forfeiting the right to a safe place to live.
With all due respect, the real crisis isn't landlord discomfort. It's that students have been forced to live like this for far too long.
Liam White
President, Otago University Students' Association Pros and cons of cycling vs river access
It was announced in early April that agreement with the last stakeholders had finally been reached to allow the completion of the Roxburgh Gorge Trail. Mention of the rugged landscape and the magnificent views of the Clutha River brought a wry smile.
As a keen fisherman, the mention of the trail maintenance aspect simply made my eyes roll. Yes, the trail may well be maintained but the borders of the river are most surely not. Broom, gorse, manuka and unwanted pest plants line the river's edge. The Millennium Trail between Millers Flat and Beaumont is a prime example; where once stock roamed to control this overgrowth, the cycle trail saw the land fenced off and the end result was two-fold - loss of river access, loss of river views. Over 60% of the river where locals and visitors alike could fish or camp is now inaccessible.
Dave Butler
Invercargill Ferry bad
I was shocked to read that the Aratere ferry will be out of service soon and there will be no rail-enabled ferries until the new ones arrive in 2029 (if there are no delays). This is the first time since 1962 that we've had no rail-enabled ferry. What does this mean for the future of rail, particularly in the South Island? It can't be good. The government surely saw this coming. It beggars belief that they have allowed this to happen.
Philippa Jamieson
Opoho Super unrelaxed
Our CEO, oops, I mean Prime Minister, is ''super relaxed'' over Erica Stanford's use of her private gmail account for ministerial duties, and the consequent exclusion of its contents from official government records subject to the OIA, and parliamentary scrutiny. This highlights Mr Luxon's disregard, or worse, wilful contempt for the inconveniences and truths of democratic and open governance.
Paul Elwell-Sutton
Haast
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