Prime Minister Chris Hipkins told Newstalk ZB’s Mike Hosking that changes to police fleeing driver pursuits were “probably overdue”. Video / Newstalk ZB
Opinion by Mike Hosking
Mike Hosking has hosted his number one Breakfast show on Newstalk ZB since 2008.
Listen live each weekday from 6am on Newstalk ZB.
The trouble for a two-term (far less three-term) government is that the record has caught up with you.
Term one is full of promise and hope and, in this Government’s case, massive amounts of ideology.
By the time you have been at it for six years, pretty much allyou set out to do is now playing out for the voter to judge, and that, sadly for Labour in the election year of 2023, is the problem.
In terms of crime and justice, they could not have made a bigger hash of it if they tried.
We have answers: we want more police and we want tougher sentences.
That is the exact opposite to what the Government has been delivering.
Yes, we have more police, but the problem is that it isn’t enough or even close to it.
It takes a special kind of incompetence to celebrate the 1800, as they did last week.
The 1800 extra officers has been their party piece. The previous Prime Minister managed to mark the fact they had got 1800 extra officers, and the current Prime Minister celebrated the fact they had managed an 1800 net gain.
What hasn’t been pointed out widely enough is: 1, it was a New Zealand First idea, 2, it was supposed to be over three years not six, and 3, it’s not enough anyway as has been seen by the exploding crimes statistics and the fact crime is the number two issue this election behind the cost of living crisis.
But back to the Herald poll.
So, we are more concerned, we want longer sentences and more police. That view is held up against the reality of the increase of reported victims of crime (11.9 per cent) the number of offenders arrested (down more than 25 per cent) the number of people convicted (down more than 26 per cent) and the number of people sent to prison each year (down more than 44 per cent).
These statistics are in fact an outworking of Government policy.
The irony is this is one of the few things they have actually been successful at.
They wanted fewer prisoners, they’ve got them.
The aftermath of a recent ram raid in Auckland. The Government is failing the public when it comes to crime and justice, Mike Hosking says. Photo / Hayden Woodward
They believed that letting you out and sticking an ankle bracelet on you would somehow lead you to being a more productive member of the community.
Those absconding from bracelets, by the way, is up more than 90 per cent.
They want the young especially to escape any real censure because if you made them criminals (even though they were criminals given they had just rammed a stolen Suzuki Swift through another shop window) they would have a life of crime that could be avoided by simply showing them some kindness and turning their lives around.
The vast majority of young thugs aren’t even arrested and charged, far less convicted, and the medicine de jour appears to be a meeting and an Oranga Tamariki finger-wagging.
While all this has been unfolding in front of our eyes, the various police ministers, along with the Police Commissioner and the Prime Minister have continued to insist they are right and we don’t know what we are talking about.
Ginny Andersen even had the temerity to insist we all felt safer now the 1800 police had arrived.
So the abject failure of their mad experiment is coming home to roost, and that is the trouble with a track record as opposed to the promises of the early days.
The project hasn’t worked and the stats prove it.
The public buy-in hasn’t worked either and the survey proves it.
The greatest value of democracy and election years is ultimately the public is always right.
Even if you ever gave them the benefit of the doubt, that what they were trying to do had any merit or maybe even had a chance of working, that’s all up in smoke.
This is a country full of people who are afraid, afraid of crime, of violence, of being a victim.
