It was a death that was always coming.
It's not the first crime that has led to a death by any stretch of the imagination of course, but it is the first death in a specific crime pattern that has been building in this country all year.
It's the death in the crime wave for small businesses; it is part of the ram raid epidemic.
It's part of the larger story where mindless crime has gone unanswered to the point it was always going to escalate into tragedy.
Not that all of the ram raids and violent attacks aren't tragedies, but they have to this point not been tragedies that have led to death, just a lot of anger and despair and frustration.
Parliament was worth watching yesterday as yet again Mark Mitchell and Melissa Lee of National and Chris Baillie of ACT peppered a hapless Chris Hipkins with questions he couldn’t answer.
And more importantly, and revealingly - chose not to answer.
There were questions around the Prime Minister and her role as a local MP and questions around accessibility to this farcical crime fund set up all those months ago to protect these sort of shops with next to no rollout.
I know no one watches Question Time but I can assure you this Government is as useless there as they are out here in the real world.
The ultimate insult was when they, as the NZ Herald headline put it, asked for a "please explain" as to why the business with the death hadn't got the security protection it deserved.
If they were honest, which of course they are not, the answer is easily collected because they would be asking themselves.
The "please explain" is because the criteria they set is hopeless, the delivery is virtually non-existent and the overarching aspect is because they are soft on crime and apologists for criminals.
Because none of them have ever run a small business, they don’t have a clue about the role they play in the community, about the graft and risk involved and therefore the unconscionable position they have been placed in by a Government.
We have a Government that still inexplicably defends all of this as either a complex issue or something that isn't their fault, and refuses to defend their citizens from the ever-growing tide of lawlessness that they have directly created.
Mike Hosking is a New Zealand television and radio broadcaster. He currently hosts The Mike Hosking Breakfast show on NewstalkZB on weekday mornings.
It's part of the larger story where mindless crime has gone unanswered to the point it was always going to escalate into tragedy.
Not that all of the ram raids and violent attacks aren't tragedies, but they have to this point not been tragedies that have led to death, just a lot of anger and despair and frustration.
Parliament was worth watching yesterday as yet again Mark Mitchell and Melissa Lee of National and Chris Baillie of ACT peppered a hapless Chris Hipkins with questions he couldn’t answer.
And more importantly, and revealingly - chose not to answer.
There were questions around the Prime Minister and her role as a local MP and questions around accessibility to this farcical crime fund set up all those months ago to protect these sort of shops with next to no rollout.
I know no one watches Question Time but I can assure you this Government is as useless there as they are out here in the real world.
The ultimate insult was when they, as the NZ Herald headline put it, asked for a "please explain" as to why the business with the death hadn't got the security protection it deserved.
If they were honest, which of course they are not, the answer is easily collected because they would be asking themselves.
The "please explain" is because the criteria they set is hopeless, the delivery is virtually non-existent and the overarching aspect is because they are soft on crime and apologists for criminals.
Because none of them have ever run a small business, they don’t have a clue about the role they play in the community, about the graft and risk involved and therefore the unconscionable position they have been placed in by a Government.
We have a Government that still inexplicably defends all of this as either a complex issue or something that isn't their fault, and refuses to defend their citizens from the ever-growing tide of lawlessness that they have directly created.
Mike Hosking is a New Zealand television and radio broadcaster. He currently hosts The Mike Hosking Breakfast show on NewstalkZB on weekday mornings.
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