Rena and the beach

It's been heartening to see the response of local people and officialdom to the disaster being strewn on the Bay of Plenty beaches.

I was disappointed to hear that, at first, volunteers were banned from the beaches, and then not called up after they registered their offers to help. So I'm really chuffed to hear that there's a big turnout of locals being actually used in the wretched task of scraping oil off their pristine coastline.

I think there's no end to the capacity of people to volunteer to meet a need. And, most of the time, I think we do pretty well in taking up their availability. Well done, everyone.