OPINION
It’s a depressing feature of election season that complex issues are so often met with simplistic and cynical policy responses.
This week it was road safety and those on the Jobseeker benefit who fell prey to vote-chasing politicians.
National promised motorists it will abandon “Labour’s blanket speed limit reductions”, which it says “slow down New Zealanders going about their daily lives”. Aucklanders, well used to crawling along clogged roads, would have had a wry grin on hearing that.
There’s ample evidence that speed endangers everyone on our roads.
World Health Organisation research confirms that as average speeds creep up, so too does the chance of crashes and fatalities. An Ernst & Young study showed that on one of our roads, slower speeds prevented 34 crashes in 12 months while making journeys just 3.6 minutes longer.
National shrugs off such pesky statistics. They reckon we bogans are being denied too many freedoms and pleasures.
While the Labour Government has decreed that the lowering of speed limits should apply to only the most at-risk roads, the Nats don’t want any limits reduced, for they frustrate long-suffering drivers.
As far as they’re concerned, we should disregard what transport researchers say. It only complicates matters to start talking about deaths, injuries and wrecked vehicles.
Then National gave beneficiary-bashing a run. That was hardly a surprise, as it has been one of their election staples for a while.
They want sanctions for those on Jobseeker support who don’t meet their obligations to try to find a job. Such an approach flies in the face of all the evidence and will probably result in more children living in poverty. It also ignores the fact that many on Jobseeker cannot work because of a health condition or disability.
National knows, of course, that the voter it’s trying to appeal to isn’t bothered with the finer points.
But it’s crime and the punishment of offenders that’s the standout when it comes to shameless opportunism at election time, and this election hasn’t disappointed. It’s a domain from which some of the dumbest policy ideas have emerged.
With the mounting likelihood of a centre-right government, it’s worth reflecting on where we might be headed on the law and order front if a National-Act coalition, possibly aided and abetted by NZ First, is at the helm.
The purpose of what these parties promise to do is unapologetically punitive. They want to take a blatantly populist path and toss a slab of red meat to the we’ve-had-enough, lock-em-up crowd.
And neither is Labour, scrambling to avoid being tagged as soft on crime, immune from such kneejerkery. Its late-in-the-piece move against ram-raiders, allowing police to charge 12- and 13-year-olds and put them through the Youth Court, has already fallen foul of the Bill of Rights.
But National and its would-be partners are the leaders of the get-tough pack.
There is the promise of a return to boot camps for juvenile offenders, apparently to make them rethink the perils of a life of crime. It is nigh-on impossible to find a criminologist who believes that. In fact, they say it will make matters worse. Even the Americans are closing or scaling back boot camp regimes as reoffending rates don’t budge.
The Three Strikes law, under which someone convicted of a third qualifying offence automatically goes to jail, would also return – yet again. It’s a blunt instrument that restricts judges’ ability to take into account the circumstances of the offender, and it loads more pressure on overcrowded prisons.
There is plenty more on the centre-right’s law and order to-do list: longer sentences for abhorrent criminals by limiting judges’ ability to reduce sentences, making gang membership an aggravating factor in sentencing, ending taxpayer support for offenders’ cultural reports and, from Act’s playbook, resourcing Corrections to lock up an extra 520 offenders each year.
Bill English’s contention that prisons are a fiscal and moral failure isn’t registering with this intake of National politicians. They clasp their hands over their ears and shout “blah, blah, blah”.
The target of reducing the prison population by 30 per cent will be ditched, which is something National and Act agree on.
Labour has already decided against another target for reducing the prisoner headcount, believing its goal of cutting the incarceration rate has largely been achieved.
On Labour’s watch, the prison population has been reduced from more than 10,000 to about 8500. Factors that influence the prison population are highly complex, but the cut appears to have been achieved mainly by manipulating sentencing rules and introducing better rehabilitation, mental health and addiction services.
What is clear is that a change of government will see numbers rise again. Under the policies being advocated, that’s inevitable.
And with National promising to respond to public unease about gangs by introducing a raft of measures that carry maximum penalties of imprisonment – measures such as banning gangs from wearing their patches in the streets or even gathering in public – it follows that more gang members will end up in jail.
At present, about one-third of male prisoners are affiliated with gangs.
What’s more, if NZ First is part of governing arrangements, it will push for a dedicated gang prison to minimise prison recruitment of non-gang members.
The mind boggles. What would the logistics of that look like, and how would Corrections ever get anyone to work inside such an institution?
CANZ, the Corrections union, suggests the proposal needs to be turned on its head, with a dedicated prison instead for those without any gang affiliations. At least the inmates would be removed from the pernicious influence of gang recruiters who operate in prisons.
The thing with law and order at election time is that there are plenty of chest-beating ideas that pander to base instincts.
But will those who are promoting them get close to delivering on the expectations they have allowed to develop?
Experience tells us what the answer to that question is.
Mike Munro is a former chief of staff for Jacinda Ardern and was chief press secretary for Helen Clark.
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