Mike Hosking: Gun buyback goes from bad to worse

COMMENT

I think we can fairly, safely say that whatever goodwill was left between the gun owners, the gun clubs, the gun lobby and the Government is now well and truly gone.

The leak looks bad.

Like all leaks, there, at this stage are more questions than answers. It may turn out to be not as bad as it seems, it may turn out to be worse. What it is, and what it will remain, is yet another cock-up from a government that reeks of amateurism, a government that makes a lot of noise but struggles to really deliver in an efficient, professional, and organised way.

READ MORE:
• Police confirm privacy breach on gun buy-back site
• Halfway through gun buyback and only 10 per cent of banned firearms collected
• Premium - 'Almost in tears': Behind the scenes at a gun buyback event in Hawke's Bay
• Treasury advice on gun buyback: Little evidence it will avoid gun-related deaths

The gun buyback was troubled from day one. Adjustments had to be made to things like pistols because homework wasn't done properly in the first place. There have been anomalies pointed out over guns that could or should have been included.

Against its backdrop was the underwhelming objective of not having an objective, because no one knows how many guns there are, so therefore you can't say whether you've got them all, or some, or a few, or hardly any.

Therefore, you can't argue it's been a success in its primary mission, which was to make this country safe from people who want to attack large groups in a terrorist kind of way.

There has been the irony of permanently armed police units launched in neighbourhoods because of increasing gun activity at the same time as a gun buyback designed to save us from guns.

The number as it stands looks anaemic, and now we have the leak.

Part of a gun register, it goes without saying, is the information contained on that register needs to be locked tight and secure. This leak would indicate the government has trouble with computers. This is not the first leak, not the first failure of tech, and not the first time they look like its all a bit complicated.

Good policy is about bringing people along for the ride, if they don't start out supporting you, the test is how many come around in the end, and how concede for the wider good it was a decent idea.

But in this case, it's been a battle all the way. Gun owners feel victimised, the people who sold the weapons weren't killers, weren't trouble, had never bothered anyone, and yet they were the targets. They participated in a programme that can't be claimed by anyone to be a success, because they don't know.

And now for their efforts, their details may have ended up God knows where.

I'm a buck-stops-at-the-top kind of person, and David Seymour is calling for Stuart Nash's resignation. This, remember though, is the Labour Party, Clare Curran had to sack herself, she was so embarrassed after Jacinda Ardern failed to.

Iain Lees Galloway is still alive, inexplicably. And Phil Twyford, who set new records in ineptitude, got a new portfolio and retains power.

So Stuart Nash, based on the Ardern record of being a leader, is as safe as houses. But the rest of us in the real world sadly can see what a cluster this is.