GORDON LIGHTFOOT | Politics
SOLUTION WITHOUT A PROBLEM
Judith Collins has announced the government’s big new plan to “make life easier” for New Zealanders, by replacing everyone’s perfectly fine plastic driver’s licence with a digital one on your phone.
This was despite no one in this country at all asking for it. Not a single person.
Most Kiwis, currently just trying to pay the mortgage or afford groceries, didn’t wake up thinking, “Gee, this plastic rectangle is really holding me back.”
Collins fronted the cameras this week to sell the new scheme, calling it “the future of convenience.” But she seemed completely unable to explain what’s actually inconvenient about having a card that lives quietly in your wallet, causing no problems for anyone.
When pressed by reporters, she simply smiled and said, “It’s about modernisation.” Which, for many New Zealanders, translated roughly to: “It’s about fixing something that isn’t broken while everything else is on fire.”
Public trust in government tech projects is already critically low, and many suspect this could be a sneaky step toward a bigger “digital identity” system, much like what they do over in China. But Collins dismissed those fears, insisting it’s just about making life “simpler” somehow.
Meanwhile, everyday New Zealanders remain focused on slightly more pressing issues, like rent, fuel prices, and whether they can still afford butter.
“It’s funny,” said one Auckland man. “They say this is about convenience, but I’d find it a lot more convenient if my grocery bill was fifty bucks cheaper.”
So while Judith Collins dreams of a sleek, paperless utopia (with absolutely no social credit score controlling every aspect of our lives, of course), most Kiwis are just dreaming of being able to fill up their tanks.
More to come.
