JOHN ELLIOTT: LOCAL NEWS

LOCAL NEWS JOHN ELLIOTT: Selfish anti-vaxxers are endangering lives

Unfortunately, the internet produces as much rubbish as it does useful information.

Which person would you rather believe, someone who had recently read two or three blogs about the dangers of getting a vaccination jab, or an epidemiologist with 30 years experience, including 10 years as a University Professor?

Vaccination levels against Covid-19 are still too low in New Zealand. There are reportedly 20-25000 over 65s in Auckland still not jabbed at all.

Rates among Maori and Pacifica peoples are much lower. Many of these people are vulnerable if they catch the virus. Too many people, through poverty and poor housing, have underlying health issues that make them targets for Delta. Many of those Maori and Pacifica are also sometimes over influenced by fundamentalist Christian sects.

I understand that three National Party MPs remain unvaccinated - Maureen Pugh (Westland), Simeon Brown from Pakuranga, and Simon O’Connor from Tamaki. O’Connor is Bridges brother-in-law and religious. Brown is by report religious too. They are certainly setting a poor example for their constituents. I understand they will get vaccinated.

I expect there are Labour MPs unvaccinated, maybe Act too - the libertarians.

I hope these all set an example for their own good as well as the team of five million, because as of today just 56 of every 1000 people in the 12-19 age group and 93 per 1000 of the 20 to 45 age group are fully vaccinated. That’s about 5% and 10% only.

Vaccinations against more than 20 life threatening diseases worldwide saves millions of lives. The World Health Organisation says vaccination prevents two to three million deaths every year from diseases like diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, influenza, and measles/rubella.

Remember what happened when measles hit Samoa last year. Tragically a number of children died. Vaccines do protect against measles. WHO has a global strategy to leave no one behind. Antivaxxers should note their three aims:

1. Save lives and protect the health of populations. 2. Improve productivity and resiliency. 3. Enable a safer, healthier, more prosperous world.

WHO says between 2010 and 2018, 23 million deaths were averted with the measles vaccine alone. Typhoid, cholera,and meningitis have now got reliable vaccines. The WHO stresses that vaccination is the key to global health security.

If you know an anti-vaxxer please talk to them. Ask them to follow the science, not some self appointed guru online. It is endangering us all.

Compulsion is becoming a big part of the argument. Can people be banned, or should they be, from bars, nightclubs, or work places if they are not vaccinated? Human rights lawyers are looking at these Bill of Rights questions.

I think of it a bit like driving. We’ve seen these ads on TV “my car, I do what I like with it”, but only until the police stop him. Then for his own safety, and that of others he is prosecuted.

I will be asking people, known or unknown, on certain occasions, “are you fully vaccinated?”, those who are not I will keep at a distance, and probably not allow in my home. I believe there is a law which prohibits a person with HIV from having sex with somebody without revealing they are HIV positive. The same should go for Covid-19 vaccinations.

So, I’m for no jab, no job, no jab, no night club, no jab, no work at the border ...etc etc etc.

With 90% plus of all New Zealanders vaccinated we can keep Delta at bay, but just like no one wants cholera, polio, or other now controllable diseases, we shouldn’t have to plead with anti-vaxxers. Isolate them for their own good and also for the good of the team of five million. (JOHN ELLIOTT)  PN

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LOCAL NEWS JOHN ELLIOTT: Voices of Aotearoa: 25 years of Going West Oratory from our best writers

Going West was Auckland’s first major literary festival, and it’s now the country’s longest running. It began in 1996.

In the introduction to the book which celebrates the 25 years of its existence, it writes,“ Going West continues its kaupapa of holding our writing and reading whanau close, of honouring tangata and whenua, and hosting the festival at our place - West Auckland, the Waitakere Ranges, home to the creative spirit-to writers, musicians, architects, poets and potters.

Each year there is a festival theme that is addressed-directly, obliquely or contrarily-by the keynote speakers and each appears in this book along with the year and orator's name. All the orators are entertaining, witty and interesting.

There are a handful of themes running through the presentations. One of them is about whakapapa, place, identity, and home. Peter Wells, the 2012 speaker, talked about 'the fracture line which is migration' and a ‘motherland that is now a foreign country'. Peter lived in a lovely old villa in Curran Street, Ponsonby, before he returned in about 2011 to his mother’s home town of Napier.

Researching in the library in Napier some time later, Peter was aware of people coming in to ask librarians about their genealogy. He quotes one visitor he overheard, who was looking for a great-grandfather. “What’s his surname?” asked the librarian. “Smith, he lived in London.”

Wells goes on to explain how hard it was for most immigrants - no social security - if you lost your job the family went hungry - if the breadwinner died the family might face poverty.

Dame Marilyn Waring, the 2002 speaker, talked about identity, and discussed the word ‘pakeha’. She grew up in the little Waikato town of Taupiri, and says she could not conceive of calling herself European. “We all went home for kai,” she writes, wore a potae, took a mimi behind the trees. This would have been a foreign language for any European child.

I agree with Marilyn, and for years have written ‘other’, if pakeha was not an ethnic option when I filled in forms.

I couldn’t end this report without including Stephanie Johnson and Vincent O’Sullivan. I do know the former personally, but knew nothing of the latter.

Johnson is best known for her book 'The Shag Incident', about the women who enticed an academic, supposed woman abuser, to Western Springs Park, where they tied him up and beat him. It’s been described as darkly satirical and wickedly funny. I was not surprised by Stephanie Johnson’s thoughtful contribution to the Go West collection.

And finally, the 1999 oration by Vincent O’Sullivan. At the beginning of his address he said, “When I was a child the civilisation of the West began at the silver-painted dome of Ponsonby Post Office at the Three Lamps.

Peter Wells Photography: Gil Hanly

“It was only when I was kindly asked to speak at this festival that it came home to me quite how much I had written - often when I thought I was doing something else - about the Ponsonby where I was born, the Westmere where I grew up, the Grey Lynn where I went to school. Even about Point Chevalier, that tree-flecked promontory beyond the reef that spilled like an enormous ink stain as you stood on the shallow banks at Sunnybrae.”

“I knew,” O’Sullivan mused,” that Kerry and Cork were further than Freeman’s Bay, and I knew I lived on the other side of the world.”

O’Sullivan speaks knowingly about old identities in Ponsonby, some good, some who disappear for a few months at a time.

There were other famous writers with excellent contributions: 1997 Maurice Shadbolt 2001 Michael King 2010 Dame Anne Salmond

They all stand out, and fit like a glove into the interwoven fabric of the West and Aotearoa. (JOHN ELLIOTT)  PN

LOCAL NEWS: REPAIR CAFÉ AOTEAROA NZ TO BE LAUNCHED ON INTERNATIONAL REPAIR DAY

This worldwide Repair Day celebrates the strength of community coming together and helping each other fixing small household items, preventing stuff going to landfill. It campaigns for the Right to Repair and the shift to a circular economy.

WHEN: Saturday, 16 October from 1.30pm – 3pm RSVP to attend

While recent months have made it difficult to come together and repair in person as a community, we have also realised more than ever just how essential repair is.

· Join Repair Café Aotearoa NZ and our partners to learn how you can be part of this growing movement.

· Listen to key people in the Zero Waste movement in

Aotearoa, what they have to say about repairability, product stewardship, circular economy and more.

· Watch and learn repair skills from our volunteer repairers, listen to success stories and what makes some repairs difficult.

· You can also join us at the Auckland Climate Festival www.acf21.co.nz · In person Repair Café events will be running in different parts of New Zealand depending on Covid-19 Alert Levels.

We will keep you updated.

This event is brought to you by Repair Café Aotearoa NZ and our partners, Zero Waste Network NZ, Consumer NZ, Para Kore, Environment Hubs Aotearoa and Repair Café International Foundation.

Sign up for our newsletter by emailing info@repaircafe.org.nz

Share this event on www.facebook.com/RepairCafeNZ/

Repair Café Aotearoa NZ Launch on International Repair Day event.

Tickets via Eventbrite www.eventbrite.com/e/international-repair-day-launchrepair-cafe-aotearoa-nz-tickets-170517466332

JOHN ELLIOTT: How does the Western Springs Forest look now?

In late September, I went for a walk through the forest. I entered via the rebuilt track from West View Road. This track has been significantly improved since the pine removal.

As I’d previously noted and commented on, there is a lot of the native under storey still present, some of it 20 or 25 feet tall.

The road in, built to remove the pines, has been planted with small natives, but it is still covered by metres and metres of pine chip and mulch.

The newly planted natives, have mostly survived the planting, but a few look pretty sick. Many of the ti, or cabbage trees, are yellowed and fragile looking. I’m not sure there are enough future canopy trees planted-Totara, Rimu, Karaka, Puriri. I saw no Kowhai either—lovely natives for the edge of a forest to attract the honey eaters like tui and bellbird.

There are wet patches along the road, where water courses normally run down the hill. I’m advised that these water courses have not been restored as required under the resource consent. Those mountains of chip and mulch should have been removed too. I remain concerned at the range of natives being used in the restoration. Also, no planting has yet been undertaken amongst existing under storey growth.

I was unable to pin point where the loop track proposed is to be created. I think the forest is big enough to warrant a loop track, as an alternative for visitors, who currently have only the up and down track from West View Road to use.

It will be a long while before we hear the dawn chorus in the forest, but it can be done with assiduous weeding (without glyphosate), and careful overall management. A voluntary local group to help the professionals would be a good idea, both in an ongoing way, and for special weeding days.

The huge gash caused by an excessively wide road has done permanent damage to the whole forest, but renovation and renewal can now take place. It will, however, require continuous careful maintenance. (JOHN ELLIOTT)  PN

JOHN ELLIOTT: How is Level 3 working in Auckland?

I thought we went down to Level 3 a week too soon, but I recognise the tremendous pressure the government is under.

Now seven days in, we are not out of the woods. Twelve cases today, better than eighteen yesterday and sixteen the day before. We’ve still only had one day of single figures.

Delta has a long tail, the experts keep telling us. But there are other worrying signs. Criminals, including gang members, are now cases. Police are having to PPE up carefully.

There are too many cases still occurring randomly in the community. Why is this happening when everyone has been locked down, and most still should be?

People are sick of lockdown, although it was salutary to see the poll which cited two thirds of New Zealanders wanted border protection until 90% vaccination had been achieved.

A smack in the face for ex prime minister, Sir John Key, who in a most unstatesmanlike statement said New Zealand was stuck in a ‘smug hermit kingdom model’, and referenced the ‘North Korea’ option. Sorry John, the majority of New Zealanders disagree with you; a shame if it curtails your golfing exploits in Hawaii.

I want to disabuse people too of the belief that New Zealand was too slow to order vaccine. What Prime Minister Ardern did was to join with six other countries who agreed with the World Health Organisation that the vaccine roll out should include poor African and other third world countries. New Zealand signed up to that, meaning we got vaccine a little later than those who jumped the queue, paid a premium, like Israel, and hogged the vaccines.

Still, when we can get to 90% plus fully vaccinated, we can afford to breathe a bit again and ease up on border and other controls. By many overseas standards New Zealand has done an excellent job in keeping Covid-19 at bay, but it is clearly very difficult to eliminate completely. A little bit more discipline now will pay off down the track. Look how some countries have yoyoed in and out of lockdown, confusing everybody including businesses.

I’d rather be here than Sydney or Melbourne, where hundreds of cases a day are still the norm.

Today we had 12 cases. Can we dream of zero? Probably not, Delta is such a beast. But Jacinda and her team are doing a great job keeping the worst at bay.

A little more short term pain, before hopefully some long term gain. (JOHN ELLIOTT)  PN

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