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Thursday, June 9, 2022

Heather du Plessis-Allan: Is New Zealand a third world country?

 

Is New Zealand a third world country? A dairy owner in Huntly reckons we are. 

Jas Sandhu’s Four Square shop has been burgled three times in the last 90 days, he says. 

The last time was Saturday morning. 

He’s watched the CCTV footage and he reckons it’s the same people who burgled him once before. 

He says he’s living in constant fear and he’s about ready to give up the shop he’s run since 2004. 

He remembers when all you needed for security was glass doors. Now, he says, “it’s heavy metal, roller doors everywhere.” 

He says New Zealand is a “third world country”. 

He doesn’t say why he thinks that but perhaps it’s because of the police response. 

Even though police were called around 6am, they didn’t turn up until 9:30. 

He says he asked for one police officer to check out the shop with them in case someone was still inside but he says “The person on the phone said if I wait for the cop, I will be there all day”. 

Obviously, New Zealand isn’t third world – we’re a developed country – but I get what he means. 

This isn’t good enough for a developed country.  

Our police should be given enough resources and warm bodies to be able to treat crimes like burglaries with the urgency that they deserve. 

But instead, they’re stretching themselves trying to deal with the spate of drive-by shootings in Auckland, the P epidemic, the gang tensions all over the North Island and the crime wave caused by the homeless being piled into emergency accommodation in the central cities. 

As I say, it’s not good enough. 

Even beyond crime, things aren’t good enough at the moment. It’s not good enough to pack homeless people into city centres or to have to cancel surgeries because we’re short on nurses or to have a person with typhoid sleeping in her car because there are no hospital beds or to have our kids’ numeracy and literacy scores falling. 

We deserve better and we actually expect better. 

We're not third world, but this is not good enough for a first world country and if that's what he was getting at, I think many would agree with him. 

Heather du Plessis-Allan is a journalist and commentator who hosts Newstalk ZB's Drive show.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sadly he is correct. Try booking an appointmeny with a gp? Do we even have gp's? The decine is shocking. You used to be able to ring up and get an appointment the same day. Now you wait 2 weeks! We only have a tiny population. What has happened? The country of new zealand that i grew up in no longer exists. Ypu never hearr politicians or mms use that name. They say aotearoa all the time now and not new zealand. A 3rd world pacific island called aotearoa is the direction we are headed.

DeeM said...

"It’s not good enough to pack homeless people into city centres or to have to cancel surgeries because we’re short on nurses or to have a person with typhoid sleeping in her car because there are no hospital beds or to have our kids’ numeracy and literacy scores falling." And that is progressive socialism for you. Aotearoa style.

Also, remember the police are now riven with woke policies, senior officers and the Commissioner (say no more).
They probably have to complete a 10-page Job Safety Analysis sheet before they attend a callout which gives the burglar heaps of time to clean the shop out and get back home in time for Breakfast TV and the trip to the local Work & Income run to collect their new supplementary benefit for crims who are struggling with the cost-of-living crisis.

Anonymous said...

i don't agree with mr sandhi's statement, but totally agree with his sentiment.
in fact, the kind of crime he is dealing with is perhaps better handled in 3rd world countries:
- since police cannot be relied upon, shop owners are willing and encouraged to handle such criminals on their own
- if such criminals were caught by the victim and public, the trashing they would get is a strong deterrent (unless woke human rights activists step in, police is happy to took away)
- the lack of reliable insurance settlements implies that it is no longer a 'victimless crime', hence support for shop owners to look after themselves is considered acceptable
- ability to hire temporary security guards without having to deal with minimum wage, tax, payroll & dei rules

Glenys Henderson said...

Our hospitals and Dr's surgery are under staffed, our schools are under staffed, we have homeless people, We have high food and fuel prices, we have 18% of the population being favoured over the other 82%. We are having our local assets stripped away. we have new laws coming in to effect daily, we have more and more people homeless, we have more and more people living below the poverty line, we have urgent surgeries and procedures that are costing lives being delayed daily, what part of being a 3rd world country are we not showing.

Anonymous said...

The problem with NZ presenting as third world begins with language. NZ has only 2. They are Sign Language and Maori. English is not an official language in NZ and certainly not in Aotearoa either. We must be a third world country, why else would we consider Maori mythology equivalent to physics and chemistry?