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This Week’s Issue

Letters – 15 July

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July 15, 2025

The purpose of the Letters to the Editor column is to enable members of the public to express an opinion, about an article or a topic of interest/concern. Please keep them to 200 words or less. These letters do not reflect the editor’s view. The editor reserves the right to edit and decide what is…

HIDDEN GEM SHOULD BE SOLD (part 1)

When Hopper Bros were consented to develop a Waterway system ibn 2000, the community of Whitianga were excited. Even though the land acquired was a flood zone, Hoppers had successfully completed a similar project in Pauanui.

Wow, what a challenge, but this year of 2025 a large percentage of the programme has been achieved. I was fortunate that as a Mercury Bay Councillor for the Thames Coromandel District Council, I was put on the committee from the start of the concept

The plan to develop was clear – on the land purchased to put in canals, roading, bridges etc. and have designated areas for medical and sporting needs. Three significant projects were part of the initial concept, namely:

1. Retirement Village including a Medical Centre

2. Sportsground to encompass many outdoor activities

3. A hotel/resort complex including a large conference centre.

The first two projects were to be developed by Hoppers with zoning and infrastructure put in to secure the sites. Once the sites were developed as part of the concept plan, T.C.D.C and Regional Council would take over and complete the building and services of the two projects. In hindsight, this has not worked and Council has struggled implementing these plans. Let’s face it – with local government elections held every three years with a possible change of council in their term of office, it is difficult to plan ahead.

To date the Medical Centre has been built with private finance as the Council had to withdraw from the process. With regard to Item 2 and the sportsground development, this is not progressing well and is in limbo at present. It is not finished. I believe that this hidden gem should be marketed and sold to buyers who would be capable of making this venture successful.

Finally, Item 3 – the hotel complex – this has been canned because of market downturn.

Noel S. Hewlett, Whitianga

JOINING THE CLIMATE CHANGE “TIRADE”

At the risk of adding to what Mr Ellis contends is the “climate change tirade”, it is worth drawing attention to the recent climate change reports of the Ministry for the Environment (8 April) and the Waikato Regional Council (23 May). This is in context of recent correspondence from Messrs Brickell and Ellis (The Informer, 3 June) and Mr Kenny (The Informer, 1 July).

Mr Kenny is right in saying that the measurement and interpretation of sea levels is an extremely complex matter. Many factors come into play, some of which are cyclical (eg El Niño weather patterns). The complexity is confirmed by each of those reports.

However, what emerges clearly is that climate change presents real hazards, both actual and potential, for our coastlines and coastal communities. Even on the best case scenario of countries adopting and keeping to “sustainable” policies, the Regional Council report predicts that sea levels will rise by up to 0.3m by mid-century. Within the same timeline, extreme sea levels that now occur on average each 100 years will occur on average
annually.

Mr Ellis’s argument is that the man made contribution is greatly exaggerated for politically correct reasons. However, the Ministry’s report (section 4) makes a number of telling points against that, including:

• Global oceans have captured nearly 25% of acidic human carbon emissions since industrialisation.

• Oceans have captured 90% of the excess heat from greenhouse gas emissions, which increases the ocean’s temperature.

• Between 1982 and 2023, sea surface temperatures around the New Zealand coast rose by an average 0.19 to 0.34 degrees per decade,

• In 2022 New Zealand experienced a record number of marine heatwaves, a trend which the report expects to continue,

• Warmer seas are accelerating sea-level rise,

• In areas where there is already some downward land movement, sea levels will rise 20 to 30cm by 2050, compared to 2005 (noting that the threshold for extreme flooding is a 30cm rise).

It is also counterintuitive that such predictions are intended to be “politically correct.” A government department won’t be striving for political correctness against the interests of the government it is serving.

One of Mr Kenny’s points is that the anti-climate change narrative has its origins in American right wing think tanks to support vested interests. We can see echoes of this in New Zealand today.

The ACT party’s climate change manifesto included repeal of the Zero Carbon Act, abolition of the Climate Change Commission, and discontinuance of policies such as the clean car discount. Also, the controversial Regulatory Standards Bill, which was recently introduced as a government Bill by the Hon David Seymour has been strongly criticised by a number of organisations for excluding any reference to protecting the environment (eg by the Public Health Communication Centre – see phcc. org.nz).

I have no doubt that Mr Brickell, Mr Ellis and others who minimalise climate change risk or who take a cynical view of the research into it, sincerely believe they are right. There will be a sad twist if we follow that thinking, and treat the prospect of climate change with complacency or dismiss studies into it as incentivised by research dollars (as Mr Brickell seems to think). The sad twist is that it won’t be the current generations who will be impacted by any irreversible consequences of climate change, but rather it will be our grandchildren and their descendants. Are we prepared to take that risk?

Phil Bartlett

MIX UPS WITH OPERATIONS AT HOSPITALS

I have a friend in Auckland who was contacted by Middlemore Hospital, by phone, and told his operation in two days had been cancelled. He happened to be at dinner with the surgeon and this was fixed quickly. This was important, as if he had failed to attend, he would have been probably removed from the system altogether.

Last year, I drove my wife to Thames Hospital and when she went for her appointment, she was told that SHE had cancelled it, which was totally wrong and caused a lot of stress and extra travel from Coromandel.

In today’s world, we mostly all have cell phones, and are able to receive a text message. Text messages should be totally unambiguous and avoid any bureaucratic mistakes. It would be much better for Thames Hospital to use messaging where possible. My dentist and the Coromandel Family health practice do this!

Neville Cameron, Coromandel

IT WAS ONCE WARMER

Correspondent Gavin Kenny (Informer, July 1) has not bothered to address even one of the issues I raised with his NASA publications. Nevertheless, he is entitled to his view on the matter as I am with mine. We will have to agree to disagree. However, if he has an enquiring and open mind he might be interested in the accompanying photo.

It is one of many showing large tree trunks from a forest in Alaska that grew happily for hundreds of years in what was obviously a much warmer climate than today. However, at the beginning of the Little Ice Age around AD 800 the climate cooled and it was overrun by a glacier. This cool period ended about 150 years ago and now the trees are being exposed to sunlight once again as the ice retreats and the area can start to revert to its past warmer climate. The forest will regrow again until it succumbs to the next wave of ice. That glacier was just the latest temporary blip in the usually much warmer climate in that area. Similar forests are being exposed around the world showing that waves of ice covered them repeatedly 1000, 1700, 3000 and 5000 years ago.

Many will remember the discovery of 5300 year old Otzi the Iceman who was rescued from his Italian mountain pass in 1991 when his glacial tomb retreated. He did not walk through the ice and the giant trees did not grow under the glacier…clearly Otzi’s mountain pass was clear of ice, as were the forests, since the climate for both was warmer in the recent past than it is today.

As a geologist I do not “parrot narratives”, nor am I “blind”, but rather for almost 60 years have actually scientifically studied natural cycles of the past and how they relate to the present and future. Clearly these tree and human remains indicate that we are in one of many totally natural climate cycles and there will be many more. We need to understand and adapt to them; not panic about them. There is nothing unusual about the present and there is no global warming crisis nor existential threat.

Alastair Brickell, Kuaotunu

BOTTOM TRAWLING NOT THE ONLY PLAYER

I would like to thank Gail Morgan for her letter (1 July 2025) where she suggested my article on ocean protection (24 June) blamed bottom trawling for the destruction of the oceans. The article about David Attenborough’s film “Ocean” actually pointed out that bottom trawling in sensitive areas is only one contributor to the dire state of our oceans. Others are climate change, pollution from land-based activities, fish dumping, over fishing (including by recreational fishers.), shark finning and culling and a shortage of protected areas. I would not put the blame on any one sector but would urge us all to discuss the problems with a view to finding solutions by modifying some of our ocean destroying practices, and putting sustainability on an equal footing with or above that of economics.

As far as her question as to why scallops wash up on our beaches during storms, I am not a marine scientist and couldn’t say what scallops do or don’t do in the ocean. However, as a life-long surfer and sailor, I know that 30 years ago, many hundreds of scallops used to wash up in northerly storms, whereas in subsequent years those numbers reduced drastically, whether from commercial and recreational fishing, or perhaps the scallops just moved themselves. I don’t know. I also don’t know what damage scallop dredging does to the sea grass beds and other bethnic zone areas. Let’s hope that it is not as much as the huge bottom trawlers targeting fish. Perhaps the scallops are starting to come back. I hope so. Could it be because of the recent rahui, or have they just moved back by themselves?

I also have a couple of questions for Gail. Why is it, that several times over the 40 years I have been sailing all over the Hauraki Gulf, I have come across thousands of small snapper floating dead on the surface? And why is it that some areas of ocean near development sites or saw milling operations or areas with intensive agricultural runoff have turned mud brown? And why is it that huge areas of coral reef have been destroyed by ocean warming and sometimes destructive fishing methods? These are questions we all need to talk about; problems we all need to solve.

Ross Liggins, Wharekaho

WELL DONE TCDC!

When the Whitianga sports fields were being developed out at Moewai Park, I was a major critic of how the money was spent by the project managers who cut costs on the development of the fields, sports facilities and changing rooms.

It was a Taj Mahal in a desert. The fields were in such bad shape that three years ago the provincial rugby match between North Otago and Thames Valley had to be transferred to Lyon Park.

On Saturday (12 July) I went up to the sports fields to watch the men’s and women’s club finals. There were eight teams playing over three fields. Now remember on Friday night we had a major storm. The fields were in perfect condition and at the end of the day it was hard to tell if a game had been played on them.

Those that know me, know that over the past 40 years I have been involved with most sports clubs in Whitianga. In the 1980s I raked, mowed and looked after all the sports fields in Whitianga (at the Area School and Lyon Park). I was impressed with what the council and their ground staff have done over the past three years. You eventually got it right. Well done!

Peter Grant, Whitianga