Your paper recently published Don Brash's comments about the erosion of private property rights and the problem of over regulation. Soon afterwards Close Up highlighted Palmerston North City Council's proposal to ban the residents of the small and semi-rural settlement of Ashhurst from owning more than three animals.
It occurred to me that we need a sponsor for the 'Don Brash Little Hitler Awards”. While PNCC's effort would be hard to beat, I would nominate Tauranga City Council and its Planners for their recent decision that freeholders living within 15 metres of water should no longer have the right to enjoy the privacy of their own property, unlike the rest of Tauranga's population.
They have decreed that a 1.8 metre fence or the upper 0.6 metres of it, must be 'constructed entirely of visually permeable materials”. They then give the following definition of visually permeable materials: 'Means a [sic] continuous vertical or horizontal gaps of at least 50mm width occupying not less than one third of its face in aggregate of the entire surface or where narrower than 50mm, occupying at least one half of the face in aggregate, as viewed directly from the coastal marine area.” Perhaps the hilarity that an annual 'Don Brash Little Hitler Awards” ceremony would inevitably provoke would help restore the common sense and the sense of fair play that used to characterise New Zealand society and whose loss Don Brash and so many New Zealanders lament.

Robin Rimmer, Welcome Bay.