Kate Hawkesby: Three things have stood out to me as a bit of a let-down this week

So as we end the week three things have stood out to me as a bit of a let-down this week.

One; the gangs and their cosy relationship with Police. Two; the media. Three; the teachers.

I'll start with the Mob and the coppers.

'Working together collaboratively' as one of the Police put it, is not something that endears us to the force.

This is not a collab, it's law enforcement and thugs. They're supposed to work at opposing ends - not together.

Yes the motivation was clear - keep communities safe - but the execution involved inconveniencing and penalising those communities by allowing the gangs to run riot.

And then telling us they did a good job because no one got hurt, and it was 'under control'. A gang intimidating a whole town and closing it down is not under control. It's being under the thumb of the gang.

It's sending a message that gangs can close state highways and railroad through towns as they please, and the cops will stand by and wave them through. The odd vehicle will be searched but on the whole, we can do better. We should demand better.

Two; the media.

In a week where the aforementioned Mongrel Mob shut a town down and the country was plunged into a recession, and teachers stayed on strike and our kids spent two days rostered at home with no learning, some in the media chose to focus on what Luxon said that was stupid this week.

Apparently a throwaway line about us having more babies, him calling the country inward looking and negative, and him cancelling a Tesla work car order last year, were the key messages of the week politically.

So Luxon's likely to lose the election, according to some media, because he says dumb stuff. That was how we were dished up political news this week.

In a week where as I said, teachers continued to strike, we went into recession, and we had gangs close down a whole town. Is it just me or is there not some politics in there that could have been covered?

With a rather large spotlight on the government and what it's doing, versus what the leader of the opposition was saying. And that's before we get to the appalling way TV news media covered the gang funeral like they were eulogising some kind of lovely local man, instead of a gang boss.

Again, we can do better.

And then we get to the teachers.

Twice my daughter was home this week, as they continued their strike.

She'll be off for some days next week and the week after if they don't call the strikes off or accept a deal.

It's a massive inconvenience and backwards step for our kids’ learning and education, at a time when NCEA internals are due, and work is being missed because of reduced classroom time.

The non-Unionised teachers themselves are stressed at the backlog of work needing to be cleared here, they're worried about reputational damage what this is doing in terms of losing community support, and they too worry about the impact on these students.

It’s not fair on the kids and they're the victims in all this.

Their private school contemporaries are all in class getting ahead with the work because they don't have striking teachers.

These public school kids will be measured up against them - it's not a level playing field where they're all competing for the same marks, yet some have all their days in school as per, with all their teachers, others don't. It's not fair on them.

Again, we can do better here too.

Let's hope next week looks a bit better than this one.

Kate Hawkesby is a political broadcaster on Newstalk ZB - her articles can be seen HERE.