Green MP Tamatha Paul criticised police beat patrols, saying they make people feel less safe.
Paul also called for the release of prisoner Dean Wickliffe, labelling him a kaumātua.
Chlöe Swarbrick and Marama Davidson have questioned profits from overseas investments, advocating for local funding of infrastructure.
It would be easy to do a Tamatha Paul on city cycleways and say they were more dangerous to use than the road.
The difference between what Paul said about police being on the beat, wandering around the city, moving on the homeless and throwing their belongings in rubbish bins, and the danger of cycleways, is that the latter could well be true, but back to that shortly.
Someone has clearly contaminated the Green Party’s drinking water supply because they’ve now shown their true colours, green with envy that they’ve rarely been in a position of power to make decisions – the exception to that is Wellington’s Green mayor Tory Whanau, and look where that’s got the capital city!
But it was the heart of the capital that gave us Tamatha Paul, with Wellington Central voters giving her a majority of more than 6000 at the last election.
She’s proved the point that was frequently made by former Labour Prime Minister Helen Clark: don’t let the Greens anywhere near power.
Former Prime Minister Helen Clark. Photo / Paul Taylor
Paul’s other recent rush of blood to the head, when she suggested most of the people in our prisons are poor unfortunates who steal a loaf of bread to feed the family, rather than the truth that violent and sexual offenders make up most of the prison population.
She’s recently visited Waikato’s Springhill Prison where one of the country’s most notorious prisoners, Dean Wickliffe, was incarcerated. Calling him a kaumātua, Paul urged the Corrections Minister to intervene and free him before he died from a hunger strike.
Decades before she was born, Wickliffe walked into a jewellery shop in her Wellington Central electorate and shot dead the owner with a pistol.
Dean Wickliffe claims he was assaulted in Springhill prison by guards. Photo / Dean Wickliffe
Clearly, the blood’s now clogging her brain with her suggesting beat cops should be abolished. Paul likes the idea of replacing them with Māori wardens and the like.
This woman is the Greens spokeswoman on the police and corrections, so as far as the party’s concerned, she’s the best person for the job.
Her political boss, Chlöe Swarbrick, was asked whether they had evidence the cops have become little more than rubbish collectors for the homeless and she said: “Can I come back to you on that?”
She’s now likely to be scouring the rubbish bins in downtown Wellington to prove her point that the Greens were focused on “evidence-based policy”.
Greens co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick in the party's offices on the second floor of Parliament House. Photo / Mark Mitchell
But seriously, Swarbrick and her co-leader Marama Davidson have been busy themselves in Parliament this week, railing against profit.
Time and time again, Swarbrick fired questions at the Prime Minister about overseas investors making a profit by injecting money into our economy.
She argued that we should be getting the money locally to build our roads, hospitals and schools.
Of course, we all know the country’s swimming in cash and the bombardment left the usually loquacious Christopher Luxon literally lost for words.
And then a short time later he was probably lamenting that he had no hair to pull out under questioning from Davidson about the same dirty profit word.
The disgrace of using private hospitals to reduce the public surgery waiting lists, what was the Government thinking, allowing the private sector to make a profit? Davidson argued.
Luxon wiped his brow, probably itching to say, “It’s the economy, stupid”, but thought better of it and simply said that lying in a bed, looking at the ceiling after an operation, it was irrelevant to the patient where the cut was made.
But back to cycleways, try riding on one as I do daily and see how safe you feel as cars suddenly decide to use them as parking spaces as you are hurtling along just behind them. That’s virtually a daily occurrence, as are cars pulling out of drives without checking for oncoming cycles.
Still, cycling is the Greens’ mantra, as evidenced by their volatile transport spokeswoman, Julie Anne Genter, as she’s made her way on one to the maternity suite in the past.
And as Wellington Mayor Whanau’s promise to spend $64 million extending the city’s 64km bike network over the next 10 years would testify: Helen Clark was right!
