Mike's Minute: Government response to retail crime is soft

Author: Mike Hosking,
Publish Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2022, 9:08AM

Some fog cannons and a council initiative.

That’s your cabinet response to a death at a Sandringham dairy.

The suggestion from the Prime Minister was that Cabinet had been speaking for some weeks about the so-called business crime package.

It is an odd clam to make, given when Chris Hipkins, the architect of the package, was peppered about it in the house last week he never mentioned it was being discussed.

My suspicion is, because it wasn’t.

It was discussed yesterday because the Government, through their approach on crime and abject failure to roll out a package that was tiny to start with and barely executed in the ensuing months, has seen the rampant escalation reach the point of a needless death.

And that at least, in part, sits on their doorstep.

So the spin was on. They defended their approach to crime; they said they are not soft.

Sadly for them, we have reached the point where the carnage speaks otherwise. While they were in Cabinet drumming up ways to deflect and defend, dairy owners were outside the Prime Minister's electorate office and in front of their shops around the country with a general message that says "enough is enough".

My bet is, if I asked any one of them whether the Government is soft on crime, I could tell you their answer accurately 100% of the time.

We also got the line that fog cannons and people to install them is hard work and it will be the second quarter of next year before it's all done - thus, it won't be.

What does a council initiative even mean? When did a council initiate change anything?

So it's piecemeal, noise and nonsense, a bit of pocket change dragged out from behind the sofa and a faux defence of their complete abdication around business and community safety.

That's the problem when your credibility is shot.

To turn that tide you have to surprise, you have to change gear, you have to up the ant and you have to pull something major, if not spectacular, out of the bag.

Their bag clearly got nicked.