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Tuesday, July 16, 2024

Mike's Minute: Disappointing from Government on retail crime


The Governmental disappointment of the week for me was the announcement of a panel that will look into retail crime.

It will take two years.

It isn't necessary to gather people to take two years to come up with ideas on what to do with retail crime.

Retail crime isn't cancer. It is a form of societal cancer, but it's not a complex issue the answer to which is only to be found in a lab requiring deep and detailed investigation.

What this announcement is, dare I say it, is the Labour Government reheated.

When you have a problem you are not confident of being able to fix, you create a group to look into it. You give them a generous time frame and you head it, as they have, with one of your biggest critics. In this case it's Sunny Kaushal.

By doing this you take the heat out of the pressure you are under. All questions going forward about retail crime can be answered by saying "yes we share your concern, as do the panel we have set up to look into it, the results of which cannot be far away".

This Government has made it clear that crime has consequences. It's about police presence and charges and courts and sentences.

Sunny Kaushal has been vocal over his ideas, which involves dairy owners being able to make arrests and security guards having more power.

In other words, we already have the answers and, in some aspects, announcements have already been made in terms of sentencing and police on the beat.

Making it worse is when the panel come up with the ideas they already have and have expressed it will require law change. Law change that the Government will then announce will take time.

In that is the problem for Governments - this one doesn’t have time.

They have inherited a societal mess and time is of the essence.

Some of it can't be fixed quickly, but decisions can be made and actions taken.

Setting up a Labour-style committee to do the bleeding obvious isn't it.

If this is their approach to one of our most urgent issues, they will pay the price electorally when results don’t come and patience runs out.

Mike Hosking is a New Zealand television and radio broadcaster. He currently hosts The Mike Hosking Breakfast show on NewstalkZB on weekday mornings - where this article was sourced.

3 comments:

CXH said...

It is almost as if we don't have a leader that can actually lead. A leader willing to make the hard decisions. Almost as if we have an average leader that is more than happy to kick the can down the road. Pay out more of our money to consultants. Get it close enough to the next election they can nudge it down the road a bit more.

But that can't be. Mike continually tells us we have a strong leader willing to make the big decisions. I just wish this leader would hurry up and show himself.

Kay O'Lacey said...

It's only Tuesday Mike - plenty of the week left for the Government to deliver even more disappointment! What a pack of wet woke wombles.

Gaynor said...

Actually it is an enormous societal problem involving our rotten declining, child centered education system , promoting Marxist victim hood where nobody is responsible for their actions, social welfare encouraging solo parents, breakdown of traditional values, modern post truth with no absolutes about right and wring.

But all this is too much to investigate and the most sensible solution is a crack down on crime and insist on consequences for doing it.

As an educationalist.I would love to have the finger pointed firmly at our corrupt education system which produce low levels of literacy and numeracy and the longest tail of underachievement in the developed world, of which most likely most crims. are products. Our Min. of Ed. never makes an issue of the causal relationship between crime and academic achievement, particularly reading. This in my view is where the true criminality lies.