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Mike's Minute: Finally an admittance from the Government on crime

Author
Mike Hosking,
Publish Date
Wed, 24 May 2023, 9:48AM

Mike's Minute: Finally an admittance from the Government on crime

Author
Mike Hosking,
Publish Date
Wed, 24 May 2023, 9:48AM

Did we have a breakthrough of sorts on the programme with the Prime Minister, or was it more gaslighting?

Ginny Andersen, who is so out of her depth it's embarrassing, has insisted for weeks now that crime isn't up and it's just being reported more. We all feel safer because of the 1800 police they have delivered.

Chris Hipkins, who is clearly at the more retail end of the political spectrum, knows that that level of BS could not continue and so he acquiesced and said what we are seeing is unacceptable.

No kidding, Chris.

His problem is what to do about it.

The magic bullet of 1800 more cops isn't magic, or a bullet. It's clearly not enough.

Where it has all come unstuck for them is in their ideology that has driven six years of soft-on-crime theory

By emptying the prisons, by appointing Poto Williams, by appointing Andrew Coster, by not arresting kids, by not getting people in court, by the courts not throwing books at them, you have emboldened the thugs.

And the thugs are running rampant.

For the first few years they could debate all of this. They could run that Ardern programme of kumbaya and keep telling us that being nice would lead to better people taking new pathways in life.

It was, of course, all idealistic crap as Police Minister after Police Minister came and went. The only one left to stick their hand up was Ginny Andersen as no one else would touch the portfolio, because they knew they had blown it and the reputational damage was too great.

By being soft on crime and by treating the police portfolio the way they have they have sown their own crisis. By believing that thugs are decent people who just need a hug, they have blown it.

Crime now is the number two concern, only because the cost-of-living crisis is so astonishingly bad.

If we weren't all so broke, crime would be the election issue.

What Hipkins might just be starting to understand, is that when people close businesses because the thugs have won, that's not the New Zealand we want. When the beatings and the violence and the wanton criminality is affecting every single one of us, either through theft or aggression or fear, that is not the New Zealand we want.

And to make it worse by gaslighting us the way Andersen does, treating us like idiots with falsity and lies, is the reason you lose elections.

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