KEY POINTS:
What a brutish society we live in. Despite more than a century of ground-breaking social reform, 21st century New Zealand remains for the poor at least, perilously like the 19th century Katherine Mansfield and Charles Dickens - to say nothing of Karl Marx - wrote about so long ago.
On Tuesday, a sick South Auckland mother died because she was $168.40 behind in paying the family electricity bill. Most horrible of all, it was an agent of the state that pulled the plug on Mrs Muliaga's home oxygen machine, not some rapacious private capitalist. Her 20-year-old son Ietitaia, says he and his mum despairingly showed the contractor the life-supporting machine, but he went ahead anyway saying he was "just doing his job".
At the risk of sounding flippant, the "I was only obeying orders" defence rather went out of fashion a long time ago. Mercury Energy, and its state-owned enterprise owner, Mighty River Power, now dispute the family version of events, saying the contractor was unaware of any health factors. Given the possibility of criminal charges to follow, this is understandable.
Mercury says if it knows "a serious health issue could arise from disconnection, we will not disconnect". The catch is, it's up to the often ill-equipped customer to negotiate the power company bureaucracy and convince them he or she is not a malingerer.
This family tried, but failed, and their mum is dead as a result.
When a Mighty River spokesman began arguing on television on Wednesday night that it disconnected defaulting customers to save them from going deeper into debt, I wanted to start throwing rocks at it.
What sort of society is it that goes round cutting off people's electricity without checking why they're falling behind in their payments?
In this case, two instalments had been paid, $61.90 on May 2 and $45 on May 18, but Mercury's system is so heartless and uncaring that no one thought to investigate what was happening.
Mercury says this disconnection "was one of a number carried out that day by a contractor".
What sort of boast is that? Obviously it's part of the "industry-leading levels of service, and customer-friendly initiatives" the company brags about on its website.
A more customer-friendly initiative would have been to send someone around to the home to see whether there was a problem. There they would have found a family of six in distress, the mother off work through illness, all trying to survive on $400 a week. In a civilised country, a payment plan would have been organised, and social welfare assistance organised.
There was a time, under the old community-owned Auckland Electric Power Board, when the provision of electricity was a public service, electricity was seen as a necessity of life, and people mattered. It's been sickening to see National Party SOE spokesman Gerry Brownlee leaping into the fray, trying to make political capital out of this tragedy. It was his party that in the so-called reforms of 1992 and 1998, changed the focus of retail electricity from public service to profit first. He should be apologising too. That said, it is disheartening that eight years of Labour Government has failed to remedy the situation.
And while we're pointing the finger, it's time Mighty River Power directors came out of hiding. What has lawyer and professional director, chairwoman Carole Durbin got to say? Or Sir Paul Reeves, one-time Anglican Archbishop of New Zealand and Governor-General? I wonder what his take is on the ethics of switching off power to the sick and needy?
The power company now says it wouldn't have pulled the plug if it had known the true situation. But it should not have pulled the plug full stop.
It should have had one or more social workers who investigate the background of those struggling to pay their bills. And I don't mean just sending out an official letter which either scares, or cannot be read by, an immigrant family such as this.
This is a family that desperately needed help, not just from their power supplier, but from the health system and the community in general. We all failed them.
Mrs Muliaga was ill and proud and didn't want to be a burden. She's not the first mum to be like that. But she must be one of the few to have to die for it.
