The Breaking Views blog is administered by the New Zealand Centre for Political Research at NZCPR.com. The views expressed are those of the author alone.
‘Fiji police to increase presence after reports of violent attacks on tourists’ read the headline.
These attacks apparently include assaults, robberies and sexual assaults, mainly in Suva’s downtown nightspots.
Several surgeons say they are upset by the policy, which was introduced in Auckland in February and gave priority to Māori and Pacific Island patients - on the grounds that they have historically had unequal access to healthcare.
It will be this, among other things, that will see them lose the election come October. Despite telling us over and over again that crime is down and that we all feel safer, you can only lie and feed us so much BS before your cover gets blown.
And as it turns out, that turned up in the form of actual data over the weekend where a new survey polling New Zealanders showed in fact we feel less safe today than we did five years ago.
So to recap the past couple of days - a 15 year old gets shot at on the motorway while innocently sitting in the back of the family car because some losers with guns decide they don’t like how her family's driving, so they just fire shots into the car.
One - the lack of arrests being made and two - the top-down obsession from the police hierarchy with supporting offenders, not victims.
David Fononga, if you don’t know the name, is the Auckland man who went on a shooting rampage in West Auckland firing at Police. They fired back and he was shot dead. But here’s the thing about him – he’d breached bail a month before this happened, and never been arrested for it.
His words, not mine.
The hospitality owner was furious that an attempted break in at his Auckland viaduct restaurant – which caused more than $50,000 in damage - had elicited a ‘chat’ from the Police, but no arrests.
He had CCTV footage of the offenders, police had shown up and spoken with them, but did nothing more. They were free to go.
It looks like Auckland’s going to be commuter hell for the next few years.
Yesterday, Kiwirail and Auckland transport announced they need to do huge maintenance work to the rail network. They’re shutting down big chunks of the train network on all three lines for the next three years.
The Eastern line, for example, is going to be down for nearly a year next year.
There is no one to blame here, from what I can see at the moment at least. This work needs to be done. It’s as fundamental as piling your house. They’ve got to do it.
Do you know we can start voting for our mayors and local councillors in about a month's time? Are you going to?
Apathy is the problem with local body elections. Always has been.
We don’t know who anyone is, we can’t be bothered, we don’t care.
But actually, we do care about our communities don't we? Don’t we care about what's happening to our local shops and our streets at the moment?
For those of you who don’t live in Auckland, I’ll just paint a picture of my weekend so you get the gist.
Saturday we go to lunch at a suburban café, sitting outside, minding our own business, eating lunch, and this extremely large woman – I’m telling you about her size because it’s significant in terms of what she said. She’s extremely large, and she walks slowly and unevenly - seemingly struggling to carry her own weight. And she comes right up to our table, leans in close to us, interrupts and says: “Can you help me?”
Welcome to the new week, New Zealand styles. Do you think Poto Williams might have been over the crime news for the first day of the week yesterday?
One gang shot up another gang's headquarters because one of the gang's mates got shot up at a strip club. So, a lot of gangs and a lot of shootings.
Downtown Auckland, the bit they want the tourists to wander up when the cruise ships return, if they return, got a couple of ram raids. One at Gucci and one at Louis Vuitton. That, by the way, was the second ram raid on at least one of those outlets. As the police will often tell you, once they've done it, they will do it again.
The best protest was, of course, Groundswell. Another is coming this month.
There is a lot of built-up anger and frustration in this country over the way Covid has been handled. Today, the Prime Minister may well see a bit of it in Auckland. I do hope she gets a proper feel for what's gone on in Auckland over these past three months.
The fact she has timed her arrival back on opening day of some shops, is a good indication of how manipulative this government is over their movements, public pronouncements, and decisions. The fact they kept today's schedule under wraps tells of their concern.
