KEY POINTS:
This is not a good way to start the new year. By rights, if the world was as it should be, we would still be chuckling about the faster than a speeding pullet, biff-busting exploits of Brawla Bennett, a.k.a. Super Min, the Wonder Westie who sorted the hissy missies out.
That was a good story, a sunny story. It was a January story.
No. Not any more. Things aren't that sunny in New Zealand in January today.
In New Zealand today, January is murder month. What was it last year, nine killings in one weekend? Now, 12 months and one election later, it's happened again.
Last Friday, there was a massive alert in Auckland. A car is chased. The Armed Offenders Squad pursue a man said to be repeatedly firing a .22 rifle.
Eventually, he is captured, wounded (his lawyer later says he can't remember anything that happened in the four days before the chase). He is taken to hospital.
And a 17-year-old boy with a 2-year-old daughter, is taken home to be buried. He has been killed by one of the officers sent to rescue him.
A few nights later, the AOS are busy again, pointing their weapons at the windows of a burger bar where the staff have been locked in the freezer by armed robbers.
A Taranaki taxi driver is taken hostage, beaten and left to die in the boot of his own car. Fortunately, he's found the next day and doesn't die, no thanks to whoever attacked and abandoned him.
But Mark McCutcheon did die after being stabbed during "a confrontation" in Onga Onga.
In Murupara, a 16-year-old boy is killed by someone who drove over him, perhaps more than once.
Witnesses speak of an argument with Mongrel Mob members at the boy's home. They describe the indifferent brutality that ended his life.
In Dunedin, a 21-year-old woman is allegedly stabbed by the 50-year-old partner she's just left. No one is blaming the full moon this year. Some people are blaming the AOS for the death of Halatau Naitoko. These people ring talkback shows and say it's essential to identify your target before you pull the trigger.
It is very easy to be wise on the phone.
The Police Commissioner, Howard Broad, says he will look at AOS training to see if changes are needed.
Perhaps he should. Perhaps we should make sure he does. But we should look at other things too.
Like the nature of the violence of our times. The way what happens on the street so often mirrors what we see on the screen. We should look at the way television has come out of the lounge and into our lives.
And we should look at the channels our Government owns and the gunfight, car chase, hijack shows they play. Shows where people are brutally killed or bundled in to boots and cars are used as weapons - though, of course, Arnie or Bruce never die.
We should ask if the state we fund must, like Caesar's wife, be above suspicion and therefore stop feeding the fantasies a deranged few make real.
We should have an honest, open debate about the effects of the welfare system we've created. It began as a helping hand. It's become, for some, a lifestyle.
We don't know yet how many of this January's criminals were being paid by the rest of us.
We do know too many sickness beneficiaries have been charged with savage offences in recent years.
We should look at our schools and what is taught in them. We should ask if those who learn of rights should also learn of duties. We should ask if the billions spent on education are producing what we want.
We should look at all these things. But, first and foremost, we should ask if the time has come to start again.
For most of the 20th century, the ideas of two men, Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud, have dominated political and academic thought.
Their nostrums have becomes policies and those policies were supposed to make things better.
Well, they have. And they haven't. The good intentions of our age have produced as many unintended consequences as the good intentions they supplanted.
William Blake knew where good intentions can lead. Now we do too. We've had 60 years of good intentions in New Zealand, but not 60 years of good outcomes.
We've become what Samuel Butler said we would become - a society where crime is a sickness and sickness is a crime. And we've become a country where murderous life imitates murderous art.
We should ask if it's time to lead our leaders, not meekly wait for them to lead us.
Changing our government is a gesture. Changing our attitude is a necessity.
