The First Commandment

Jesus arrives in late spring and walks the places that rarely feature in ministerial talking points. He steadies a pushchair on mouldy stairs and steps into a flat where the power has been cut again by a prepay meter. He sits in an emergency-housing motel with a kuia who is skipping blood-pressure pills because every $5 charge competes with food for the kids. He waits in a hospital corridor with a man whose “rationalised” care has turned treatable illness into permanent damage.

By nightfall he sees the country’s modern altars everywhere: the glowing TV promising salvation, the stock-market ticker treated like truth, and the spreadsheet that reduces human lives to unit costs. The next morning he visits the Prime Minister and delivers the First Commandment for our age: no other gods before people - certainly not GDP, bond markets, or wealthy comfort.