Something Rotten in the State of New Zealand

Lindsay Mitchell has been researching and commenting on welfare since 2001. Many of her articles have been published in mainstream media and she has appeared on radio, tv and before select committees discussing issues relating to welfare. Lindsay is also an artist who works under commission and exhibits at Wellington, New Zealand, galleries.

There’s a feeling afoot, backed with evidence, that the state is increasingly on the side of wrong-doers. 

Take the issue of forcing blameless people to live next to anti-social, criminal neighbours.

In 2018 the HNZ chief operating officer said:

“We measure our success by not having any evictions. Every eviction is a failure [so] the lower the number, the better.”

Evictions fell from over a hundred during the last National government’s term to zero in the last 3 years.

Yet HNZ ‘success’ is leading to social cohesion failure highlighted by a number of recent nightmare cases which we read about and quietly murmur to ourselves, “There but for the grace…”

When challenged about gangs Stuart Nash says there is nothing to fear. In May:

“In terms of feeling unsafe, unless you’re a gang member, you have no reason to feel unsafe.”

Tell that to the poor pensioner in Northland who was told by a gang member neighbour he would cut the old man’s throat. Stop and think for a moment how you would feel if that was your father.

I grew up in a time when we took for granted that actually the police – or other authorities – would act to safeguard innocent people. I now think that trust is a faded memory.

If it was merely a matter of inadequate resourcing it would be fixable.

But the application of inverted thinking is far more difficult to confront.

It wouldn’t surprise if some on the left, some of academia, some of the brain-washed graduates secretly think the ‘privileged‘ are on their own. Suck it up as punishment for what your colonial ancestors did.

That is a very dangerous rejection of a system of laws, and consequences for breaking those laws, that must treat all citizens equally. Yes, there are systemic failures but the principle must still hold fast. The alternative is unthinkable.

This soft-on-crime attitude must have preceded the current government because I well recall then ACT MP Stephen Franks’ observation about the naivety which expressed as “If we just keep being kind to crims for long enough they’ll start being kind back.”

Unfortunately, I now think the proliferating philosophy is underpinned, at least in part, by more sinister motivations.

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