When the government can’t trust its citizenry to weather a cyclone without step-by-step guidance from the media and knows they won’t have enough savings to recover without assistance, this is at least an orange flag that decline and collapse are more advanced than people wish to admit.

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Nathan Smith is a former business journalist and columnist at the NBR. He also worked as the chief editor at the New Zealand Initiative policy think tank. He is now a freelance writer and copy editor.