Kate Hawkesby: Is Marc Ellis right about New Zealand?

After yesterday’s shooting in Auckland, those words are still hard to believe - 'shooting in Auckland', a lot of debate’s been thrown up around law and order, crime, people on home detention, discounts given to offenders and so on. There are those saying this was only a matter of time given the state of law and order in this country these days. I know the state of our country right now is enough to drive people out, I know many who are doing just that - upping sticks and leaving. I don't know him personally, but Marc Ellis is another of them. The former All Black, and iconic Kiwi personality, is leaving for Italy. And who can blame him? His reason is, we’ve lost our mojo. As in the country - and he’s not wrong. He’s trading us in for Mediterranean coastal paradise, pasta, property ‘as cheap as chips’ as he put it, happy people, and ‘gorgeous food at reasonable prices’ he said. Sounds alluring. What’s wrong with NZ? He said our finest days are behind us. “We’re not at our peak, you don’t feel the same vibe or energy anymore,” he says. As hard as it is to hear those brutally honest words, it’s also confronting because it’s true. It’s horrible to admit, but he's right. There isn’t the same vibe or energy anymore. There’s angst and friction and division, there’s fear and there’s a malaise we can’t seem to shake. There’s low productivity and high expectation that everyone else will solve your problems. There’s less personal responsibility, less ambition. Stats are all going backwards, education, health, crime, it’s a shambles. And that’s before we even get to Auckland’s CBD witnessing a traumatic shooting yesterday. And so we surely can’t blame those who are seeking refuge elsewhere. Ellis says, “New Zealand is being pulled apart at the seams. I thought we were egalitarian and unified,” he says, “but some people who feel slightly disenfranchised use that to exacerbate rifts for political reasons. There is a cost of living problem and it has become a heavy place – it’s not the New Zealand of five years ago.” It’s awful to hear it isn’t it, because we know there’s truth in it. We wish it wasn’t so. I’m always amazed at how little time it took to wreck a country but I feel like that’s what’s happened here. And the worry I guess for many of us, is how do we turn it around? Can we? Or is it too late? How do you turn around all our woeful stats? How do you encourage productivity again? How do you get that vibe back?  It’s almost an overwhelming concept for the next government, I’m not sure how they take on all this debt, all these issues, all these attitudes, and actually do anything tangible about it, it seems like an uphill battle. Aside from better weather and warmer seas, Ellis says the people are happier in Europe too. He says there’s ‘twice the product at half the price.’ That could be why people are happier. I mean when you look at what we pay for stuff here it really feels like an island nation at the bottom of the world doesn’t it.  Limited supply, inflated prices, increasing crime and violence. Yesterday's shooting doesn't help. So is Ellis right when he says our glory days are behind us? Sadly, I think he is.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.