KEY POINTS:
The untimely death of Folole Muliaga in Mangere Bridge last week continues to make headlines around the world as well as here at home.
Little wonder. In this sad story the economic "reforms" of the last quarter century assume a human face: a company charged with providing an
essential service acts according to its commercial remit even when it means someone dies.
Sadder still is the fact that, since the news broke of Mrs Muliaga's death, most of the players in the drama have behaved with complete predictability. In tune with the ruthless ethos of the society that we live in, their instinctive response was not to extend the hand of compassion but rather to ensure political advantage, to act with self-protective commercial prudence or to avoid damage to corporate image. Only when treating the matter as a human tragedy - the needless death under distressing circumstances of a wife and mother - was consistent with one or more of those aims did anyone display remorse or thoughtfulness. Willingness to accept even part of the responsibility has been conspicuous by its absence.
The United Future leader, Peter Dunne, attempted to stem the flow of political cant by warning politicians against "milking an awful situation for their own opportunity", though his supplementary comments suggested that he might not be above doing so himself. The result has been, not a moment too soon, a reduction in the rhetorical bile pouring from the ninth floor of the Beehive. It is all well and good for the Prime Minister to heap scorn on the "hard-nosed" attitude of Mercury Energy. But the retail electricity business is one of the nation's most intensely competitive. The contractor who pulled the plug in Mangere Bridge was the last link in a very long chain of policy-setting and decision-making that stretches back to Wellington and, through both Labour and National administrations, to 1984.
Even if we do not take this wider view, it is unfair that all blame be laid at the door of Mercury, much less on the poor contractor who was a small cog in a large machine. The Government wants to toughen the requirement for electricity providers to refer customers to social agencies if there is evidence that they are having difficulty paying the power bill. But this idea sounds a good deal better than it is. It requires electricity retailers to adopt a role for which they are neither equipped nor responsible. It is no great stretch to wonder whether a supermarket checkout operator, noticing a shopper with a meagre trolleyful and an empty purse, should unilaterally get WINZ involved for fear that she will be blamed for letting others' kids go hungry. Will a service station attendant who notices that a car's tyres are bald and does not immediately alert state agencies that the driver may be unable to afford retreads be adjudged culpable when the car later skids in the wet and kills a pedestrian?
Despite our natural human inclination to seek simple answers to complicated questions, it is plain that this matter will not be laid to rest when the electricity retailers accede to the baying from the Beehive and change their disconnection procedures. That is something that they most certainly need to do, at least in the case of customers who are plainly making an attempt to clear arrears. But if Mrs Muliaga's breathing machine was keeping her alive - and it is far from clear that it was - why was she not protected by the doctors who put her on it from death by power cut? As the power bill arrears increased, what proportion of family income was going to the family's church? What was the church doing in return?
It is not surprising that New Zealand Herald readers overwhelmingly opposed the Muliaga family's request that the matter not be further investigated. The extended family deserves our condolence and compassion in this time of loss and grief. But that does not mean that we should simply slap the nearest wrist and carry on as though nothing had happened. We also owe them a comprehensive investigation to ensure such an unholy concatenation of circumstance does not happen again.
