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Monday, November 28, 2022

Mike Hosking: Will government ineptitude over crime change today?


So the cabinet will today discuss the criteria for the business support package and by this afternoon the list of excuses will be well honed and some adjustments to the abject failure of a policy will be rolled out.

The simple question is this - why are they discussing and changing it?

The answer is because a person is dead.

Making it catastrophically worse is that any number of people have been warning the Government this is where the lawlessness we are seeing was heading.

This wasn’t regular crime, such as the bashings and killings you see between gangs and general lowlifes where carnage is inevitable.

This crime involves innocent people trying to go about their business.

But because of the overarching approach to criminal behaviour i.e fewer going to prison, more get home detention, more on home detention cut their bracelets off, there's a sense that because the consequences aren't all that great the criminal operates with a level of impunity.

This has been the year of crime, of lawlessness, of wanton destruction, of businesses who have been raided and robbed over and over and over again.

And the policy to try address some of it, the bollards and fog cannons and cages, turned out to be a classic example of all this Government is famous for - ineptitude.

The police minister has been asked numerous times why the policy has the grand total of seven shops fitted out.

People like Sunny Kaushal have written to any number of ministers asking for meetings and help and mainly these letters go unanswered.

The Government doesn’t care until they have to, until it gets so embarrassing they have no other choice.

And a death is such a turning point.

Whether a fog cannon or the like would have saved any of this, we can't know. What we do know is not everything that should have been done, was.

And as a result of that, yet again, the Government traipses into a meeting room to try and formulate a plan as to how they talk themselves out of the political trouble that has, yet again, arrived at their door step.

Because 1) their policy on crime is dangerously wrong and, 2) their arrogance when things are obviously not working prevents them from addressing it.

Until of course, it's too late.

Mike Hosking is a New Zealand television and radio broadcaster. He currently hosts The Mike Hosking Breakfast show on NewstalkZB on weekday mornings.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I know a chap, a neighbour of my sister, who is on 9 months home detention for assault. He is spending the time going around painting houses and roofs. He wears his ankle bracelet while so usefully employed.
MC

Kiwialan said...

Mike, inept , incompetent, out of their depth or just plain bloody useless , however it is phrased this bunch of real life rejects have no idea full stop. The Health Minister off cycling around the hills of Dunedin during lock down, the Police Minister worried about " her people " and stuff the poor old police, heaps of PPE and vaccines until there wasn't, millions of the Covid Fund dollars dished out to spruce up Maraes and piss ups for the chosen people.... Why are any sound minded folks surprised at another policy failure, or any failure whatsoever? Kiwialan.