It saddens me that some poor truck driver working in New Zealand today will happen upon a commercial vehicle ‘safety’ check. When they’re instructed to pull in, they’ll likely be well into their week’s work, maybe nearing the end. Another week worked to pay the mortgage or rent, put food on the table, even pay their share of the parasitic levels of tax.

Just before being stopped, they might have been thinking about that tax payment and why the pothole they’d just slammed into, the one that’s been there for a month, hadn’t been repaired.

As they stop at the check, they’ll be greeted by someone dressed like they’re ready to attend the Ukrainian front lines. In some cases, they and their machine will be interrogated in an air akin to one surrounding someone soon to be charged. There’ll be little chance of leaving without contributing to the government coffers.

As they drive off, their thoughts might well turn to what they saw on Wednesday night’s news. Scenes of New Zealand gone mad – the Mongrel Mob demonstrating their absolute and insidious dominion in the Bay of Plenty. Their contempt for the rule of law in a society so willing, apparently, to provide them with a stage on which to flaunt. Their message to the weak and impressionable? Just how easy casting aside any authority that’s not their own actually is.

Our truck driver might well think back and realise the government department that just issued the infringement notice is the same one who used their authority to constrain law-abiding folk from going about their lives and work, in order to let the mob run riot. They might wonder where their infringement money will end up. Then they’ll think back and be reminded where $2.5 million in tax take went recently.

New Zealand is in the grip of the paralysis and confusion that occurs when weakness is confused for compassion and leadership. Earlier in the week, there were reports on the news about places drug users could go to ensure their drugs were of an acceptable quality. Today, the media reports that as a nation, we’re one of the highest users of methamphetamine per capita, with a willingness to pay the most for it. If you think hard enough it’s not hard to work out why that is, and it should make you increasingly ropeable every time you hit a tyre-destroying fracture in an entirely inadequate road.

Back to Wednesday. A shameful display by us as tax-paying, law-abiding citizens in allowing the day-to-day mechanics of our society to degrade to a point where that represented who we are on the news stages of the world in 2023.

It should also be a wake-up call to the stewards of Maoridom. I was deeply offended for the people I know, people who have been fundamental mentors in my journey, having words they use to define and form the foundations of their proud cultural pillars, defamed and associated with anarchists in German World War II helmets screaming sieg heils with their right arm aloft.

When will we, the people of New Zealand, send a clear signal, and see the return of leadership based on compassion, diversity, inclusiveness, responsibility, expectation, and accountability?

If Wednesday’s appalling display does not trigger law and order as the key election issue, it’s a sad indictment on us, not them. They are merely making the most of an environment that’s been allowed to proliferate.

All the best

Dave McCoid
Editorial Director