Summarised by Centrist
Former ACT MP and Wellington lawyer Stephen Franks has delivered a stinging assessment of the capital’s decline, likening it to a national warning sign.
Echoing Donald Trump’s line that a dirty restaurant front door signals a filthy kitchen, Franks calls Wellington “New Zealand’s dirty front door” – a symbol of collapsing ambition, failing leadership and cultural rot.
Franks doesn’t hold back:
“Grimy windows of vacant shops, strangely unbustling streets, deserted or closed cafes, beggars, the debris of alcoholism and drug destitution in prime public space… grotesquely expansive bumps and curbs… random ‘traffic calming’ obstructions… all combine to degrade and deface once magnificent boulevards.”
Franks goes further, calling the city parasitic and overindulgent:
“Wellington’s ruling class just know that we’re so culturally vital the serfs elsewhere must be taxed to keep it all afloat… A failing city ruled by electors who want the racist hegemony of NZ’s Pol Pot Greens… demanding vacuous feels from a shop window display of representative diversity.”
The critique comes as public frustration mounts over Wellington’s emptiness and infrastructure dysfunction.
Franks argues the city is propped up by public money and moral smugness, while the rest of the country picks up the bill.
