In the leafy suburbs a high-shine SUV lets out a clutch of children in the muted greys and elegant burgundies of the best private schools.
It's a dime-a-dozen scene with a brazen twist. You see, behind the bespoke eye-wear, the driver owes money - a lot - and in an elite school community, there's no getting away from your creditors.
While clever lawyers and watertight trusts keep these children at school, others - classmates even - have had to don the piled Polartech of public schools.
But it's water off a croc's back when your liquidator's official non-secured creditors list is four A4 sides of 10 point type. You get kind of used to keeping eyes front, while former colleagues, business associates and employees falter on the periphery.
It's the same kind of assumed nonchalance that gets you through all those meetings where you swear black and blue on the solvency of your business - right up until the answer phone kicks in for good.
It's the same kind of mettle that's behind your lawyer's letters to countless creditors telling them why you're with-holding payment for their crappy services/product.
It's beyond confidence.
New Zealanders like to think of themselves as an egalitarian lot. Playing fair is etched on the collective psyche. So it grates when people don't play the game. Bare-faced lies are hard to swallow.
The unceremonious bursting of New Zealand's housing bubble has provided many a good tale of fast property developers in even faster cars going belly up, only to leave everyone else paying the price.It's a dime-a-dozen scene with a brazen twist. You see, behind the bespoke eye-wear, the driver owes money - a lot - and in an elite school community, there's no getting away from your creditors.
While clever lawyers and watertight trusts keep these children at school, others - classmates even - have had to don the piled Polartech of public schools.
But it's water off a croc's back when your liquidator's official non-secured creditors list is four A4 sides of 10 point type. You get kind of used to keeping eyes front, while former colleagues, business associates and employees falter on the periphery.
It's the same kind of assumed nonchalance that gets you through all those meetings where you swear black and blue on the solvency of your business - right up until the answer phone kicks in for good.
It's the same kind of mettle that's behind your lawyer's letters to countless creditors telling them why you're with-holding payment for their crappy services/product.
It's beyond confidence.
New Zealanders like to think of themselves as an egalitarian lot. Playing fair is etched on the collective psyche. So it grates when people don't play the game. Bare-faced lies are hard to swallow.
Home-ownership is almost a rite of passage here, although economic and social commentators predict a shift away from the Kiwi quarter acre dream. It's increasingly unobtainable. Expressed as a percentage, home-ownership has 'slumped' to around 65%, down from the halcyon days of 85% plus, and is trending down.
Every builder had a "spec. house" on the go, and group housing companies smoothed concrete and rolled out pre-cut joinery like Subway sandwiches. Of course it had to give.
We need businessmen and women to take on the risk of pumping the economic turbines, don't get me wrong. And it doesn't always work out, granted. But commissioning work around town days before the liquidator's notice hits the papers whilst giving personal assurances about the business' ability to pay, well, that's something else.
No wonder people are aggrieved. No wonder out-of-pocket creditors took matters into their own hands with a neighbourhood letterbox drop - a look who's moved in type expose.
And no wonder the object of their derision ran straight to the lawyers to shut it down with threats of defamation fired into the offenders' inboxes. Such righteous indignation is all part of the show.
Laws need to change. Shame has no currency with this lot. Vigilante behaviour from families that have been immeasurably damaged, who believed in the old rules of the game where one's word was one's bond, has historically signaled that laws need to change. why is this any different? Our moral code has been irreparably broken as these people get away with it, are welcomed back into society with further lies, gaining sympathy with these lies. It was disturbing to see the media treat this desperate attempt to share the charade so flippantly. They missed the real story - shame on them!
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