The Fair Go We Owe

My parents were refugees in this country and, despite both having qualifications where they came from, they both had to retrain here and take on different low-level jobs to keep their heads above water while they had to. My late father once told me of his days working in a wool scouring plant and coming home stinking of sheep, only to have my mother tell him she loved him no matter how bad he smelled. An early introduction, perhaps, to what true love is like.

But I digress. This country, like any country with migratory inflows, has countless examples of people putting in the hard yards to make their way and build a better life for themselves and their families. Often we, the subsequent generations, take what they did for granted and forget just how hard they worked. We see where they ended up, but not necessarily the years of sacrifice and uncertainty that got them there.

So I was saddened, and frankly pretty pissed off, to chat to a chap this week in a similar situation. Sanjay, not his real name, comes from Southeast Asia and, after coming to New Zealand a few years ago, saved enough money to buy himself a small franchise. Nothing flash or glamorous, just a chance to build a business, earn a decent living and create a life for himself and his family here.

Long story short, Sanjay was chatting to me because I had a third-hand connection to him and he was at his wits’ end about what to do. The company he had bought the franchise from had subsequently sold itself and apparently decided it wasn’t going to pay its franchisees what they were owed. Sanjay had sunk his life savings into buying the business and had now lost that investment, as well as tens of thousands of dollars that the franchisor owed him.

Think about that for a minute. This isn’t some sophisticated investor who can absorb a bad deal and move on to the next one. It’s a guy who came to New Zealand, worked hard, saved his money, took a risk and put pretty much everything he had into building something for himself and his family. He did exactly what we tell migrants to do. Work hard, contribute, take responsibility and build something.

And then someone else decided that their own financial interests mattered more than his. Now, I don’t know all the details of the transaction, and I’m deliberately not naming the people or company involved. There may be legal arguments and technicalities that I don’t know about. Businesses fail, deals go bad, and companies get sold. That’s business, and none of us should expect every investment to work out.

But there is a pretty fundamental difference between business failure and taking advantage of people. If you’ve genuinely tried to make something work and it doesn’t, that’s life. It sucks, but that’s how markets work. You pick yourself up and move on. But if you’ve structured things so that you walk away with your money while someone else, particularly someone who has put their life savings into your business, carries the loss, that’s something else entirely.

Perhaps I’m particularly sensitive to this because of my own family history. My parents arrived here with very little. They had qualifications, experience and skills, but none of that magically translated into a comfortable life. They started again, took jobs they were overqualified for and worked bloody hard. They made sacrifices that, as their children, we probably don’t properly appreciate.

That’s the immigrant story for millions of people. You leave behind what you know and arrive somewhere where you don’t necessarily understand the systems, the culture or even the unwritten rules. You work because you have to, but also because you believe that if you put in the effort, this country will give you a fair crack. That, to me, is the deal. You do your bit and you expect that the system will at least give you a reasonable chance to succeed.

When someone exploits that trust, it feels like more than just a bad commercial transaction. It feels like a betrayal of the basic promise that brought many people here in the first place. I don’t know what will happen to Sanjay. I hope he gets some of his money back and that there is a legal avenue available to him. Most of all, I hope he doesn’t walk away from this experience believing that New Zealand is a place where you can’t trust people.

Because that would be the real tragedy. There are plenty of good people in this country. Most people are decent, and most businesses are run by people who understand that reputation, relationships and doing the right thing matter. But to those who deliberately take advantage of people like Sanjay because they see an opportunity to make an easy buck, I have a simple question: how do you sleep at night?

Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I still believe that how you make your money matters. I believe your reputation matters. I believe the way you treat people who are less powerful than you tells you a hell of a lot about who you really are. And I believe in karma. Perhaps not the mystical kind, but the simple idea that the world has a way of eventually balancing the books.

My parents did the hard yards. Sanjay is doing the hard yards. Millions of other migrants have done, and continue to do, exactly the same. They come here believing that hard work will give them a chance to build something better for themselves and their families. The least we owe them is a fair go.

And if you’ve made your money by taking that fair go away from someone else, I hope you can sleep well tonight. I hope you enjoy whatever you’ve gained from it. And I hope that, sooner or later, karma catches up with you. Because some debts aren’t financial, and some bills have a funny way of finding their way home.