KEY POINTS:
Labour Maori MP Shane Jones immodestly compared himself to Winston Peters in Michele Hewitson's interview in the Weekend Herald and he is wasting no time in attempting to live up to the comparison.
We are clearly not talking sartorial comparisons here with the immaculate one but the ability
to take a law and order hardline including against elements of Maori.
In Jones' case it has been two weeks running on gang issues.
Today it was a claim that the gangs were using Waitangi as a recruiting ground and last week it was that gangs were bastardising the wero or challenge, during powhiri.
The comparisons might be more valid with Phil Goff, than Peters.
Labour has not had a vocal hardliner since John Tamihere lost his seat in 2005 and since Goff handed over the Justice portfolio to Mark Burton in 2005.
[It is also worth noting that Jones twice referred to Annette King in a mother-hen type of capacity. Even if King won't admit it - and she doesn't - King plays a critical leadership role of the party's right which is where Jones put himself, no doubt to the annoyance of Helen Clark who prefers to pretend no such thing exists.]
I was at Waitangi and didn't see the tent that Jones was talking about. It was apparently set up on the grounds next to the lower marae where Tribesmen were dispensing food and drink.
But I spent some time at Waitangi and again today talking to Denis O'Reilly about some of the work that has been going on with gangs. I first met him in 1974 (we were arrested together back then in a protest but that is another story) when he first became involved in constructive work with gangs to get them to work and off the path of crime.
He didn't see the Tribesmen at Waitangi either but did say that some of the older "Blacks" and Mongrel Mob members brought up younger members of the Bloods and Crips to get them more in touch with their culture instead of emulating American gang and culture.
What he saw was older gang members - sans patches - telling them to take their scarves off their heads when, to look people in they eye when they were being powhiri-ed on to Te Tii, in short to show a little respect. Young members of the Mob and the Blacks were sent off on a horse trek together near Turangi last year after gang warfare in Wanganui last year ended in the appalling drive-by shooting of baby Jhia.
Denis is no apologist. He thinks belonging to a gang is a waste of time, just like being in prison but that it is worth making the effort to get membership moving on and into constructive work in society. He is really worried that gang activity is the highest he has seen it in more than 15 years and the dismantling of work projects a few years ago has been really counter-productive. So too, he thinks, are attacks like Jones'.
The police's iwi liaison office, Wally Haumaha, was at Waitangi and was apparently very supportive of what the older gang members were trying to do with the younger ones. He hasn't returned my call. I guess he doesn't want to get caught up in the politics of it.
He has to be careful treading that line between being seen to be "soft" on the gangs - against the hardline rhetoric of the politicians and the Police Association - and knowing that slogans don't actually address the problem.
