Kate Hawkesby: You can’t bluff your way out of this and keep telling us we feel safe

Well we learned yesterday that state housing tenants call the shots at Kāinga Ora, in that they know they won’t be evicted so they do whatever they want.

Figures showed despite 10,000 complaints, only three had been evicted in 18 months. So, bad behaviour rules the roost there.

Then we learn also this week that gangs clearly run Ōpōtiki. Again, they know they can do whatever they want, and an entire community will just shut down around them. The fact this is happening in our country, in 2023, beggars belief.

And yet still the PM tells us NZ is safe. Tell that to the Filipino family with the 12-year-old daughter who got viciously beaten outside an Auckland North Shore McDonalds at 1.30pm on a Saturday afternoon.  

She’s been left traumatized, can’t go outside, doesn’t want to return to school, required hospital treatment and is suffering distress form the impact of her assault. The family ‘moved to New Zealand in August last year, and had “never” experienced incidents like this in the Philippines,’ they said.

Try telling them New Zealand is a safe country.

And for all those families told to keep their kids at home from school for a whole week this week because of gang tensions in Ōpōtiki, are you telling me that feels safe?

This comes after an increase of gang members in the town following the death of a Mongrel Mob president and two suspicious house fires.

Police said they’d be maintaining an increased presence in the area. So if you’re wondering where the Police are and why they’re not at other crimes, they’re busy babysitting gang members all over Ōpōtiki. An entire week that town is shutting down for. Let that sink in.

A gang can close a town up in this country, for a whole week, just by being intimidating.

Schools shut, parks shut, businesses shut because working parents have to stay home to look after their – most likely scared - kids, how’s that a country you want to live in? This is not the NZ we know and love.

It’s the same problem we talked about yesterday with Kāinga Ora housing. The way unruly Kāinga Ora tenants can dominate a whole neighbourhood and traumatise their neighbours, without eviction.

The balance here has tipped so far to the lowest common denominator now, that we have lost all rational ability or foresight to run our society properly. How do we get that back?

When Luxon told farmers the other day that this country’s lost its mojo, he’s not wrong. We’ve lost our way, and I don’t know what’s wrong with admitting that. As individuals we can lose our mojo and lose our way at times, admitting it helps us get back on track to fixing it.

So why the government refuses to accept it's true is beyond me. You can’t bluff your way out of this and keep telling us we feel safe. We don’t.

Systemic gang crime and activity is a major problem in many regions in this country. It’s unsettling and it doesn’t make us feel safe.

Children getting viciously attacked while eating McDonalds doesn’t make us feel safe. Tenants who disrupt other people’s lives don’t make us feel safe.

We need to restore some law and order to our communities, and stop just pretending that everything’s fine.

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