Confused by Ruta Mave’s definition of hypocrisy in her latest opinion piece? I was. She says if God meant us to fly, He would have given us wings. So how did she get to Rarotonga? Did she swim? What she is really saying is that humans should deny themselves the right to access knowledge to improve themselves.

We didn’t get where we are today in the civilised world by denying our abilities. Humans have achieved much because God gave them the wit to do it. Man went to the Moon in 1969; Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier earlier in 1947, which led to the development of super-sonic planes. Dr Christiaan Barnard carried out the first heart transplant in 1967. All of these things were not thought possible once.

God didn’t hide manganese nodules at the bottom of the sea. He was challenging us to find ways to bring them up and utilise them for the benefit of our people. He did the same with coal, gold, silver, copper, emeralds, diamonds, etc, etc, any mineral in fact. Humans have had to mine them.

Mave’s article goes on to suggest a moratorium for another 10 years on seabed mining. God no! That is the one thing the government is doing right.

There are elderly people in the outer islands who hope and pray that mining goes ahead so they can have some benefit from it before they die. After all, they have been hearing about it for 50 years. The islands they live on have shallow, difficult to use ports, poor infrastructure generally, and high freight rates, substandard medical facilities and not many jobs because their economies are stagnant (except for Aitutaki’s).

So to all the rich nay-sayers on Rarotonga with your New Zealand pensions, please don’t deign to speak for outer islanders. We’re not as lucky as you. The way we see it, there’s nothing to disturb 3 miles down in the sea so let’s go ahead and take the nodules that God kindly left there for us. God knows there’s no other wealth trickling down to the outer islands right now.

Utu panu

(Name and address supplied)