KEY POINTS:
The day Mrs Muliaga's death was reported in the Herald online I was far away from this compassionate country.
"Hell," I said to my travelling companions, "back home a woman has died because she depended on a breathing machine and her power was cut off for not paying
her bill."
"Why didn't she pay the bill?" one of them asked.
"Don't know," I said. "The story didn't say."
When I got back a week or so later the story was still running hot. The Prime Minister was on the case, demanding answers to every question but that one.
The power company was in full retreat and an unnamed agent who disconnected the power was the supposed villain of the piece.
But still that question bothered me. No matter how poor the household, if a family member's life depends on the power, wouldn't it be the first bill you paid?
The climate of outrage was such that even to ask the question seemed to be considered grossly improper. Sometimes this happens to questions that threaten to bring nuance to a simple news angle, but the dissonance on this one seemed deeper. Had I become completely out of sync with Helen Clark's society?
One or two things made me suspect not. Green MP Sue Bradford complained in Parliament that she had heard people pointing a finger at the family.
"To hear people turning all the blame for this tragedy on to Folole Muliaga and her family reminds me of the worst of the 1980s and 1990s," she said. "The racist, 'blame the victim' view seems to have gained a foothold, particularly in places like talkback radio."
A Herald-DigiPoll survey then found the greatest number of people, 40.6 per cent, placed primary responsibility with the family, nearly twice as many as those who blamed Mercury Energy.
The reason, I think, is not a lack of compassion, but rather an instinctive distrust of these social morality tales, especially when part of the story is not being told.
Real people seldom fit their political caricature. This poor woman's death was put to the public for the purpose of discrediting the supposedly heartless corporate culture that has taken over the country's essential services.
Brenden Sheehan, a Public Service Association organiser and nephew of Mrs Muliaga who was the family's media spokesman, later made it known he would like to stand for Labour at this election.
Finally, 16 months after her death, a coroner's report has provided a more complete account of the case, exonerating the unnamed agent who cut off her power.
The coroner has found that had Mrs Muliaga or her son told the agent she was dependent on a respiratory machine, he undoubtedly would have used the discretion he had, and had used in previous cases.
The coroner finds "some merit" in the contention that he should have told them he had the discretion, but the coroner prefers to put that responsibility on the company.
He thinks a call-centre telephonist should have suspected Mrs Muliaga's medical need a few weeks earlier, when her husband phoned to try to arrange time-payment and mentioned that she was in hospital.
Even the coroner has gone to unreasonable lengths to relieve her of personal responsibility, which denies Mrs Muliaga her humanity.
She may have been suffering all the organ damage of morbid obesity but I don't believe she was stupid and I know she wasn't mute. She had been a school teacher in Samoa, retrained after her migration and graduated from the Auckland Teachers College.
The family relied on her English and she organised the household finances.
She was on a benefit and her husband worked at a hotel. The coroner reports, "Their combined family income was not great."
Her husband had told the inquest, "We had enough for basic food ... there was not much left after the bills to buy any takeaways or fancy food ... also we gave donations to the church that we belonged to ... only what we could afford. There were several times we put nothing on the plate for the church collection ... "
A nurse had testified that Mrs Muliaga was not diligent in complying with medical advice. The coroner concludes she knew how ill she was, "but, for her own reasons, chose not to share that with her family".
The coroner's report provides a portrait of a proud, private woman whose husband stayed in the car when she saw the doctor.
The man who had to disconnect her power met her with tubes running from her nose but told the inquest he did not feel it was his business to ask about them. Either he was daft or she was too dignified. I suspect the latter.
She alone in the house knew how much she needed electricity but when it came to paying the bills, she didn't always put her needs first. She deserved a better story.
