PEOPLE WATCHING
SOBERING VIEW
It is a truly sobering photograph of George and Alexander Hillary practising for their Mt Everest climb (Four Hillarys and a Mountain, March). The mountains in the background display the location and pathways of many former glaciers now totally melted away. The rock where the glaciers were is still fresh and unweathered – so fresh that I expect that in 1953, when Sir Ed and Tenzing Norway reached the summit of Everest, these glaciers would still have existed. Powerful photograph.
DONALD MURRAY, NEW PLYMOUTH
NORDIC PARADIGMS
Virginia Larson’s editorial and Graham Adam’s essay on immigration (Immigration: The Winners and the Losers, March) highlight New Zealand’s dire housing crisis. Larson correctly condemns our politicians for failing to resolve this issue: “For doing very little to avert this crisis over the past 20-30 years, a pox on all our political houses, I say.”
Our fiscal system markedly favours property and land investments in the belief of many that selling housing to one another is our salvation. Consequently, the productive sector of our economy is starved of capital.
Phil Goff, the mayor of Auckland, where one-third of New Zealand’s population lives, dismisses the findings of German relocation company Movinga’s ranking of Auckland in the bottom 40% of 150 cities “that have a reputation as attractive locations for raising a family”. Auckland came 94th in the composite of the index
