And people tell me that New Zealand is broken.
Torrential rains have turned the shattered enclave of Gaza into a morass of mud and polluted water. With hardly a building left standing, its two million inhabitants shelter beneath canvas, plastic, plywood, anything capable of keeping out the rain. Few are successful. Mothers attempt to rescue what remains of their families’ sodden food supplies. Their children observe it all with the preternatural stillness of the traumatised. Fathers and sons stare in unblinking hatred towards the Israeli lines, fists clenched.
And people tell me that New Zealand is broken.
An elderly Argentinian couple huddle around a small wood-burning stove, the only source of heat in their freezing home. The power was cut off weeks ago for non-payment of the impossibly high electricity bill. What’s left of their pension barely covers the constantly rising cost of living. Inflation may have fallen from 300% to ‘‘just’’ 36%, but it’s still impossible to make ends meet. Emergency welfare payments were suspended months ago by the chainsaw government of President Javier Milei. More cuts are promised. The shivering couple’s sole consolation is that they are not alone. One third of Argentina’s population is struggling against poverty as bad, if not worse, than their own.
And people tell me that New Zealand is broken.
Yes, it has been a hard year for many New Zealanders. This nation has definitely seen better times, but it remains in possession of many blessings that are still worth counting.
This is a country at peace. The nightly wailing of sirens does not send us scuttling like frightened mice for the nearest bomb shelter. We are not required to stare in mute horror at our cellphones as we learn by text that a family member, friend, or lover, struggling to hold the line against the invader, has been caught in the open beneath a drone swarm and blown apart.
Our cities have not been razed to the ground by years of unceasing arial and artillery bombardments. Tank-turrets do not swivel menacingly in our direction whenever we attempt to obtain food and water for our families. Caught between two implacable hatreds, we are not required to devise some way of raising our children to become decent human-beings.
Nor do we live under a government that is willing to drive the elderly, the young, the disabled, the unemployed, and all the other victims of its neoliberal savagery into abject and unrelenting poverty. No more than her predecessor, Grant Robertson, is Finance Minister Nicola Willis willing to brutalise and immiserate her fellow New Zealanders. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon remains a lot closer to Mickey Savage than he does to the perpetrator of Argentina’s chainsaw massacres.
The muscle-memory of New Zealand’s social-democratic traditions remains strong, but we cannot rely upon it forever. If we wish to avoid the horrors that nightly deface our screens, then two groups of Kiwis have to change.
Our politicians, judges, bureaucrats, academics, and journalists must learn to respect their fellow citizens. Yes, they may subscribe to ideas and doctrines which you consider deplorable, but that is their right. The one-size-fits-all Bed of Procrustes is supposed to be an ancient cautionary tale — not a contemporary policy option.
Which leaves the rest of us. We, too, have a lesson to learn — and it is this. If we want our nation to enjoy the security, prosperity and social cohesion of Norway and Denmark, then we are going to have to stop punishing electorally every party which even so much as hints at Norwegian and Danish tax rates. Our current difficulties are born of our infantile desire to have our cake and eat it too.
New Zealand isn’t broken — not yet. Let’s use 2026 to keep it working.
■ Chris Trotter is an Auckland writer and commentator.
