Kate Hawkesby: The question that is hard to answer without being embarrassed to be a Kiwi

Early Edition with Ryan Bridge · Jun 20, 2023 · 3m

I was at my physio yesterday, she’s South African. She moved here to an allegedly ‘safe’ country with her children, they live on Auckland’s North Shore, they’ve eaten at the Albany restaurants where the axe attack took place.

She said it could have been them, her, or her children. She asked me what’s happened to this country and why it’s so violent now.

It’s hard to answer that question without feeing embarrassed as a New Zealander that our little slice of paradise has come to this.

“It’s complex”, I told her, sounding like a Labour politician trying to explain away our many and varied…