KEY POINTS:
Accidents rarely happen as a result of a single circumstance. Usually they are caused by a series of circumstances, often seemingly unrelated, happening over time.
But it always seems that the person or people at the front end of any accident get all the blame and are immediately dumped on by the media, politicians and other self-interested parties (think Captain Jim Collins and the Erebus disaster).
So it has been with the untimely death of Mangere mother of four Folole Muliaga - for an accident her death surely was.
Hence the myopic kneejerk reaction which has seen the media, politicians and other self-interested parties (think family mouthpiece Brendan Sheehan, a union organiser) rush to place all the blame on Mercury Energy, its parent Mighty River Power, and the contractor it uses to make electricity disconnections.
The result, unless a lot of people open their eyes a bit wider, will be the same as it is in most cases of avoidable tragedy - someone or some group will get their hand smacked and the background circumstances that led to the tragedy will be left as they are.
So let's look at some of the circumstances which led to this sad and shocking event.
The first and longest-standing is the corporatisation of the electricity supply and its transition from an essential service industry into a series of profit-making business enterprises.
With that has come a whole change in attitude on the part of those who work in the industry, at least at the business end of it, and that is the culture of putting profits before people.
Instead of the focus being on the needs of the customer, the accent is placed on the need to make money, not the least because the Government demands its pound and a half of flesh from all its corporate entities.
Which raises to new heights the degree of hypocrisy reached by Prime Minister Helen Clark, who has been trenchant in her criticism of the behaviour or Mercury Energy, a state-owned enterprise. Her copious crocodile tears should fool no one.
There is no question that the contractor who turned the power off made an error of judgment, but who among us has never done that?
He was doing what must be an onerous job and, while that's no excuse, he had probably heard every conceivable excuse imagination can conjure for not doing what he is paid to do.
It is specious, too, for Clark to rabbit on about the assistance that might have been available to the Muliaga family from the welfare system, for it is an unfortunate fact of life that the mercenary attitude typical of business - state or private - has seeped into the delivery of social welfare services.
Having heard tales of woe from many a beneficiary of being humiliated by having to battle and even beg for help to which they are entitled, I don't blame Mr Muliaga for not seeking financial aid from that source, even if he knew about it.
But overshadowing all that is that a family of six was required to live on a wage of $470 a week, of which some $300 went in rent. Even with full family support, of which there has been no mention, that seems an impossible task and one that should be imposed on no one in New Zealand in the 21st century.
That the dying Mrs Muliaga was disinclined to call an ambulance because she couldn't afford the cost is an obscenity which makes me want to vomit.
Mrs Muliaga died some three hours after the power was switched off to her oxygen bottle. Why, it has to be asked, was the equipment not fitted with an emergency battery? What if there had been a run-of-the-mill power failure, which isn't all that rare even today?
And why, if Mrs Muliaga was suffering from serious heart trouble, were her children not given training in CPR?
Did these things not occur to the health professionals who dealt with her, or is it simply that the penny-pinching mercenary culture has infested the health services, too?
I am not competent to discuss the cultural influences at work here, but having read what Tapu Misa had to say in the Weekend Herald, the comments of a Samoan barrister in another newspaper and the remarks, albeit seriously slanted, of Mr Sheehan, it would seem that these influences added considerably to the circumstances causing this ghastly accident.
All these circumstances - and I have not covered them all, for space does not permit - need to be considered before we go off at half-cock with the blame game and with superficial solutions that will, in fact, solve nothing.
Meanwhile, I wonder how long it will be before someone in Auckland dies of thirst because their water has been cut off.
