They closed the schools for several days recently in the small New Zealand town of Opotiki. A gang leader had been killed and the police expected trouble as his associates massed in their hundreds for the funeral. Principals were worried about their pupils’ safety and many of the town’s older residents similarly decided it was wiser to stay at home.

Media coverage evoked images of scenes from Hollywood Westerns where townsfolk scuttle in fear when the bad guys ride down the main street. But the school closures didn’t cause much of a public stir, and why would they? Children being denied an education because a criminal gang has invaded their town is no longer regarded as out of the ordinary, still less outrageous. This is New Zealand in 2023, where the dysfunctional and dystopian are now routine.

The local Mongrel Mob leader’s death came only days after another gang member’s body was found down a bank just outside the town. As the inevitable retribution kicked in, houses were torched and residents’ sleep was disrupted by gunshots through the night. Prime Minister Chris Hipkins lamely declared it was ‘not okay’ that the town of five thousand – a known flashpoint where the territories of rival, predominantly Maori gangs overlap – had been taken over. Surprisingly, his disapproval failed to strike fear into the hearts of the gang members swaggering around the streets.

Schoolkids weren’t the only ones penalised. The highway to the larger town of Whakatane, where the gang leader was cremated, was blocked by a rowdy funeral procession consisting of hundreds of cars, utes and motorbikes weaving over the full width of the road. Mad Max would have felt right at home. Gang members hung out of car windows and doors, giving gang salutes and barking like dogs (a ritual Mongrel Mob gesture of solidarity). It was a brazen show of strength that the police not only allowed but obligingly facilitated by ordering legitimate traffic to stop, reportedly for up to two hours.

At least no one can accuse the New Zealand police of being inconsistent, since they also stood back and watched when a mob of pro-trans thugs attacked British feminist Posie Parker in Auckland three months ago. An outsider observing either of these events would have drawn the quite reasonable conclusion that New Zealand is a country where the rule of law has collapsed, or at best is exercised very selectively.

Media coverage of the Opotiki event was later criticised by the local mayor and some business owners as a beat-up. Gang members were an accepted part of the community, they insisted; no one felt endangered. But they would say that, wouldn’t they? After all, they have to live there. The fact remains that principals were worried enough to close their schools, and thousands of lives were disrupted so that gang members could engage in a gratuitous and deliberately provocative display of their power.

David Seymour, leader of the ACT party, compared Opotiki with the godforsaken Somalian capital of Mogadishu, but it’s not as if the town is an outlier. Throughout New Zealand, but especially in the North Island, crime is rampant. The Economist reported in 2018 that New Zealand had one of the world’s highest gang membership rates. The total number then was 6,000 and by last year, inflated by criminal deportees from Australia, gang membership had climbed to nearly 8,000 – only 2,000 fewer than the police.

Drive-by shootings, usually related to drugs and gang feuds, are commonplace. Ditto ram raids, which are typically the work of feral juveniles as young as 10. Violent and apparently fearless teenage girl gangs roam shopping malls and transport hubs, assaulting anyone who unwittingly antagonises them. Supermarkets struggle in vain to counter an epidemic of theft carried out in plain sight by offenders targeting high-value goods and unafraid to attack staff who try to stop them.

In a recent speech, veteran populist politician Winston Peters used the example of the Michael Hill jewellery chain to illustrate the scale of the problem. According to Peters, Michael Hill has 165 stores in Australia, of which only one has been broken into. And in New Zealand? Thirty-six stores, 44 break-ins.  Many of those so-called break-ins were actually full-frontal raids, carried out in broad daylight by criminals who were apparently untroubled by the prospect of arrest. One such raid happened in the relatively quiet provincial town where I live, illustrating that crime isn’t just a big-city issue. The supermarkets I shop in are also targeted by thieves stealing not for the table – which might be understandable, given the cost of food – but for profit. Meanwhile in Wellington, which once rejoiced in the title of the world’s ‘coolest little capital’, shop owners are abandoning an increasingly desolate CBD because of what is euphemistically described as anti-social behaviour.

Small wonder that crime now features prominently in issues polls. In the latest Ipsos Monitor, which tracks issues of public concern, crime has risen from seventh two years ago to second. Forty per cent of Kiwis identify it as a key concern – more than any other issue except the cost of living.

The Labour government might argue that it can’t be directly held responsible for the lawlessness in Opotiki, but crime is just one symptom of a much wider breakdown that has left many New Zealanders feeling helpless and demoralised. Other contributing factors include serial infrastructure failures (most dramatically, engine failure on a passenger ferry in Cook Strait which endangered hundreds of lives), the cost of living crisis, shambolic management in education and health, intractable homelessness and a series of ministerial scandals. Add to this the continuing culture wars – and most chillingly a determined assault on free speech, as highlighted by the Posie Parker affair – and New Zealand presents a picture of a society that is broken.

Most damagingly of all, democracy is being methodically dismantled in favour of an opaque model of racially driven co-governance based on the spurious, undefined ‘principles’ of the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi. By the time voters get a chance to reject this unmandated transformation in the October elections, the damage may be so deep and all-pervasive as to be irreversible – which may be Labour’s objective.