As a hiker, I was lumped into a category of travellers called "backpackers," which created frequent distress. The street crime is very real. I was victim of an attempted robbery (luckily I got out on the better end of it, somehow), being charged different prices from locals, being given an enormous fine for sleeping in my car when I was sick and tired with a broken phone, and felt it was unsafe to drive any further. I also found erroneous over-charges on my credit card from two NZ businesses that I spent countless hours disputing until they were removed, and spent many nights in shabby, unprofessional hostels with undesirable staff.
The whole thing was a lot different than my experience backpacking around Europe when I was younger.
However, the nature is really incredible, and relatively unspoiled. There is so much to see in such short distances, and it's one of the best places in the world for hiking. The international culture is wonderful. I made friends from all around the world. Some NZ'ers are incredibly friendly: I was invited into people's homes, given meals and I hitch hiked around the South Island without any incident or problem (I somewhere read (cannot verify) a conspiracy theory that hitch hiking in the US was always relatively safe, but the CIA/FBI created a campaign against it).
That said, many of the most famous and attractive places to visit in NZ were overwhelmingly packed with tourists. Milford Sound in February felt like I was in Beijing. Tongariro was swarmed with too many tourists doing the crossing, all lining up in file one-behind-the-other. Wanaka and Queenstown were a disaster, just too many people.
The worst problems were not even in the Bloomberg article. All of them seemed to have stemmed from working class New Zealanders who had hard-working lives that saw backpackers as an easy target.