From the rejects file

In late December the Herald ran an opinion column by artist and former ACT Party candidate Lindsay Mitchell about a recent, high profile incident of child abuse. Mitchell argued that many victims of child abuse take place in families dependent on welfare, so the solution to preventing further abuse is to abolish the welfare system.

I made a comment about this article on Twitter and the Herald responded, advising me that if I wanted to submit a column of my own I was more than welcome to. So I sent them the following essay on fire safety confident that I was just as qualified to speak on this issue as Mitchell is to talk about welfare. The Herald has not acknowledged my submission so I reproduce the piece here:

A beloved child’s toy burned to a cinder. Photos of loved ones burned to ash. A beloved home, filled with beloved children’s toys and photos of loved ones, burned to cinder and ash. In the holiday season this is an all too common sight, and during this difficult time Kiwis rely on the New Zealand Fire Service to protect them in the event of a house fire. But is the Fire Service making the problem worse?

Although we like to think we’re fire safe as a nation, New Zealand might have the highest rate of house fires per capita in the OECD. Recent scientific studies from some of the world’s universities point to an overwhelming link between house fires and the presence of fire trucks and fire fighters. While political correctness trains us to think the Fire Service extinguishes fires, ground-breaking new research probably shows that the opposite happens.

That’s the view of Conor Welsh, a timber industry lobbyist. ‘There is no doubt the Fire Service incentivises people to set fire to their homes,’ Welsh explains. ‘Once people know they can drench themselves and their belongings with petrol and light a match, and that the state will come and put out the fire at no cost to the person who started it you have a situation where New Zealanders are encouraged to incinerate everything they own.’

The statistics bear out Welsh’s argument. Beneficiaries and low-income earners are four times more likely to burn down their homes than are high income, real New Zealanders – and the actual number might be even higher. Common sense teaches us that getting rid of the Fire Service will remove the incentive to start fires and thus reduce our shocking house fire statistics. But the Fire Service is protected by powerful political forces.

‘The New Zealand Fire-fighters Union is the barrier to reform in New Zealand.’ So says Roger Gibbs, spokesman for Fires First, a pyromaniac support group. ‘The NZFU is a radical and sinister trade union that puts the interests of its own members ahead of those of ordinary compulsive fire-starting Kiwis,’ Gibbs alleges.

By their own admission the New Zealand Fire Service has operated in this country since 1975 and the pattern of state controlled fire goes back even further – yet I assume the number of fires each year continues to rise and more than number to be sourced New Zealanders dies from fire every year. Surely this cannot be a coincidence.

So the path to reducing our disgraceful record of house fires is clear – the government must have the courage to stand up to the unionists and bureaucrats that want to maintain the status quo in which Kiwi families perish needlessly due to the monopolistic activities of the Fire Service. The National Government has committed to reducing deaths by fire – but do they have the courage to take the steps necessary to achieve this?

Danyl Mclauchlan is a junior researcher at the Mclauchlan Institute, a non-real Wellington based think tank.