I have been home now for two years after traveling extensively around the world for the previous seven years. I am amazed that my beautiful country has changed so much.
I have seen better systems in education, health and the environment operating in third world countries with much lower status than ours. We want to open up questionable oil exploration and yet the Rena showed what a disaster one container ship can cause not to mention BP's debacle off the coast of America. We want and claim to have the best education, health and welfare systems and yet we don't, despite the solutions being painfully obvious.
We have the most beautiful country in the whole world and yet we cover it in mono-culture pines which underneath their canopies are the closest thing to eco-hell one can imagine. We send our troops half way around the world to kill and be killed senselessly in a culture we do not understand when we really should know better.
We have the best rugby team in the world and still our players resort to pointless thuggery. We have a whole culture of young people growing up with confusing and conflicting social norms and no leadership to follow as our leaders sway to whatever is fashionable. When will we finally get it that looking after our environment and each other are the only things that really matter?

Paul Knights, Tauranga.