To quote Donald Trump recently, when he said, 'What the hell's going on?” and judging from her expression dressed in that feather cloak, Oprah Winfrey look as if she was thinking, 'Where am I? Can this be a modern country, or am I in the jungle in one
of the Pacific Islands?

As an immigrant myself, I too thought I was coming to a modern well-run country, but now I see it is going backwards, with Auckland property owners having to ask previous immigrants permission to alter their properties on the pretext of sacred sites, which were often only their rubbish dumps in an earlier period.

The thought that in this present day one must consult with a bunch of natives and sometimes even several bunches of them and pay of the privileges of their 'consultations”, beggars belief.

But with a Prime Minister more interested in himself, flags and pandas, this backward movement should not surprise us. After all, many of the inhabitants here have no idea of what it was like to see planes dropping bombs or landing craft on beaches.

W Lawrence, Tauranga