MUST READ: Macho chest-beating won’t tame the gangs, but Poto Williams’ “softly, softly” approach just might

68
2365

THE GROWING CHORUS calling for Poto Williams to be sacked as Police Minister bespeaks a fundamental misreading of her performance. We are so used to bumptious males like Stuart Nash and Mark Mitchell holding (or seeking) this portfolio, that we read Williams’ “softly, softly” approach as a sure-fire indication of failure. But, since when did inflated male chests, bombastic claims and political humbug ever bring about anything more useful than inflated poll-ratings? Since we have seen this noisy “Laura Norder” pantomime repeated over and over again, we can say with some confidence that it makes next to no impact on crime.

My impression of Williams is that she has spent the last 18 months searching desperately through all the available research/data for something that just might help her make a real difference. But, seeking to base government policy on something more substantial than rabid right-wing reckons is the very last thing an ambitious Police Minister should be doing. The tried and true methodology is to get the voters’ blood up with rhetoric red in tooth and claw. Then, while you’re doing that, task your officials with finding out what rabid right-wing police ministers overseas have settled upon as their solution to rising crime – and steal it.

Chances are that the real-world effects of these “solutions” will be pretty close to zero. But, since the research/data only proves their ineffectuality after a two-to-five year time-lag, this is of no political consequence. The voters have already watched the launch of the Government’s getting tough on crime initiatives on the six o’clock news, dutifully bumped the ruling party’s poll-ratings up a couple of percentage points, and then forgotten all about it – until the next crime wave. In response to which the entire pantomime will be re-staged. Same script, different actors.

What most people simply don’t understand is how sophisticated criminal offending has become. They see the burly gang members, decked out in their patches, sitting astride their deafening motorcycles, cruising six abreast down the motorway as frightened civilians scramble to get out of their way, and they think these guys are the problem. Fact is, these guys represent little more than the misdirection of the criminal magicians no one ever gets to see. While rival gangs are shooting up each other’s neighbourhoods, draining-off Police resources and thoroughly terrifying the public, core criminal business continues to be conducted largely unmolested.

The Guardian of 7 June reports the existence, in Australia, of “thousands” of members of the Italian Mafia, or, more specifically, the ‘Ndrangheta of Calabria. (That’s the “toe” of the boot-shaped Italian peninsula.) Hiding in plain sight in ordinary suburban communities, looking like any other Aussie, upwards of 5,000 of these criminals have been quietly plying their illegal trade for decades. According to the Australian Associated Press: “The Calabrian mafia work with other organised crime groups including bikie gangs and Asian or Middle Eastern crime groups to cooperate on drug importation, money laundering and violence.”

“It’s entirely possible that people will be living next door to members of the ‘Ndrangheta without knowing,” the Assistant Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police, Nigel Ryan, informed the media. “They’ve been able to stay under the radar while living modest lives in modest homes. They funnelled the illegitimate wealth into their legitimate construction, agricultural and catering businesses. In many ways, I would say that the ‘Ndrangheta are actually the ones pulling the strings of other organised crime groups, particularly the more violent groups, such as outlaw motorcycle gangs.”

As The Daily Blog’s Editor, Martyn Bradbury, has been telling his readers for many years, Australia’s harsh immigration regime is sending hundreds of New Zealand-born members or associates of these same violent outlaw motorcycle gangs across the Tasman as deportees. These “501s” have fundamentally changed the way New Zealand gangs do business, introducing a level of violence that had not hitherto been a feature of indigenous gang culture. It would be naïve in the extreme to assume that at least some of the ‘Ndrangheta’s string-pullers had not crossed the Tasman with them.

The Aussies run our largest banks, so why not our largest criminal enterprises? (If you’ll pardon the tautology!)

TDB Recommends NewzEngine.com

The same Guardian article also makes reference to the extraordinary law enforcement coup that saw organised criminals around the world avail themselves of a supposedly unbreakable encryption app called “ANoM”. Little did the crooks know that their every text, every e-mail, every JPEG was being copied to the international law-enforcement inventors of ANoM.

“Officers gathered intelligence from the ANoM app to understand how transnational serious organised crime syndicates – including the ‘Ndrangheta – operate and communicate.”

Just how serious is the ‘Ndrangheta? According to Assistant Commissioner Ryan, Calabria’s organised criminals are “responsible for 70 to 80% of the world’s cocaine and they are flooding Australia with illicit drugs ….. They are pulling the strings of Australian outlaw motorcycle gangs who are behind some of the most significant violence in our communities.”

Ultimately, it is the sort of intelligence gathering exemplified by ANoM that will provide the Police with the information they need to push back against the criminal organisations already well-ensconced in New Zealand. If New Zealand’s Police Commissioner, Andrew Coster, is not working closely with Police Minister Poto Williams on this method of bringing not only the local gangs, but also, their Calabrian, Columbian, Mexican, Chinese and Australian string-pullers into New Zealand courtrooms, then he bloody well should be! Undercover operatives and state-of-the-art electronic surveillance have been critical to the apprehension of organised criminals since the 1980s. “Eyes of Mordor” they might have been, but they brought down the Five Families.

Christopher Luxon and Mark Mitchell would do well to ponder the possibility that the recent spate of drive-by shootings may actually be intended to divert Police resources away from the string-pullers. In calling for Poto Williams’ head, they may be doing the very thing that would most assist the real criminal masterminds. If this is the case, then a sudden reduction in drive-by shootings will not be a sign of Police success, but proof that the wise-guys are once again conducting their criminal enterprises in the preferred manner.

Quietly, without being noticed.

68 COMMENTS

  1. Since when did inflated male chests, bombastic claims and political humbug ever bring about anything more useful than inflated poll-ratings? Takes me right back to Muldoon and Rowling.

      • The violence you are talking about was at many levels lower and more reactive/personal than what is happening now.. Muldoons approach was to actually have an honest dialogue with the gang leaders, which was all they ever wanted.. When you have career criminals making huge amounts of money, an “honest ” dialogue would be a farce… Do you honestly believe any of the Gambino family would have given up their almost total control of the construction industry in New York after being “reached out to” via a few “heart to hearts” with the mayor, or even the President?

  2. Far from having “spent the last 18 months searching desperately through all the available research/data for something that just might help her make a real difference” Poto and co have, until very recently been in complete denial about the issue. Perhaps she says one thing and does another, I think she is clueless and cowardly and out of her depth. One initiative – the Bill from Nicol McKee that would have allowed Police to freeze and seize assets from gangs upon finding an illegally held firearm at a raid; was rejected by the government.

    No doubt the drug kingpins need to be taken down, there has been some recent success in that area. Probably the best that could be hoped for is a reduction in the supply of drugs hitting the streets – with the unintended increase in price and therefore motivation that would result and a probable rise in alternative sources of criminal revenue. Perhaps tobacco smuggling, theft and burglaries would rise.

    The inter-gang warfare issue is complicated. I heard one, so called, academic blaming it all on colonisation; clearly choosing to fail to mention the pre colonisation intertribal (gang?) warfare that left tens of thousands dead or enslaved. More killed than all the Kiwis that lost their lives in both world wars according to historians. As usual from our activist academics; plenty to say, none of it honest or of any use.

    • Bit loose with the truth or just not conversant with reality and existing legislation. Also noted that you have no time for academic research. Far better to follow the lead of prejudicial hard-line reactionaries with their half-baked assumptions eh?
      As an observation, historians are generally academics so do they fit in with your assessment, “plenty to say, none of it honest or of any use.”

      • Yes aom, when I hear activist academics I reach for my gun – metaphorically speaking.
        The genuine academic is engaged in a search for the truth, once an ideology is taken on board that search has ended. There’s plenty of that going on unfortunately.

        • So you are not an academic and sure as hell not engaged in seeking truth. You obviously hold to an ideology that arguably has been unsuccessful since there has never been a dramatic fall in crime statistics under hard line policies. Yeah – we could go down the US route. Oh – that is really rooted.

    • “Plenty to say, none of it honest or of any use”……yep sounds like the 1ZB crowd to me. Stupid chest beaters that don’t base their rhetoric on anything to do with facts or statistics. What on earth makes anyone think National will be better with crime? Nothing to do with evidence. It would be great if their reduced funding actually equated to better policing, but there is nothing to suggest that it did. That’s reduced funding while knowing that in all likelihood hoards of potential criminals were on their way from Australia. Yes somehow it will be much better with Alopecia Jesus at the helm.

  3. i guess you don’t live in South Auckland or West Auckland or anywhere else where bullets are flying at night time?

    • Reactionary Bratwurst. Does Mitchell the Big Mouth live in South or West Auckland then ? Do you really think that a pomegranate- faced policeman who quit his job as a dog handler in the NZ police – not exactly a high ranked job- to make himself a fortune as a private contractor in the wreckage of Iraq, is in any position to be telling the New Zealand Police force what THEY should be doing ? I don’t. I think he’s creepy.

      Why don’t you just say a little prayer for the guy who tragically got himself shot in Newlands and have a little think about how he came to be in the situation which he was. Nothing’s simple.

      • What about a prayer for the woman who had a knive held to her throat and the police person who was forced to kill someone to protect her.

        • Trevor Of course. That goes without saying. It is the whole back story, of a young boy, abandoned by his parents at age 8 or 9, being put into state care, and thence forth set on a downwards trajectory ultimately ending in his death, which is so terribly sad. Now his own children face a potentially blighted future themselves. And so it continues.

          • I see your point GA. The poverty cycle is what is supplying the gangs with new members. Those of us who had a proper loving and caring family upbringing have no clue how some people are treated by those that are meant to potent them

          • Yep watch Nathan Wallis on YouTube if you want a brilliant explanation of where it all goes wrong.

            Unfortunately I can’t see the point of Chris’s column, it just recycles a few tired old narratives. The softly softly Poto Williams and Jarrod Gilbert, the gangs sycophant combined with Costers policing by consent does not appear to work does it. The Aussie style “Taskforce Raptor” as old mate Ian Lees Galloway got so excited about, doesn’t seem to stop them over there either!

            I have no idea how you stop the current mob, other than making there choice of life style so unpleasant they look for other options.

            We have to play the long game and prevent these kids from following them down the path of destruction.

        • Trevor I get that we should be thinking about the woman and all involved. Empathy and sympathy are words that are not used enough. Prayer on the other hand is a word that gets thrown around a lot but in the real world there is no one listening at the other end.

  4. Tinky-Winky, Dipsy, Laa Laa and Trotter play around, laugh, dance and sing as they go about their days in a scenic Teletubbyland while a baby-faced sun interacts with them in a fun way.

    • I’ve known of Mr Trotter for a number of years and consider him to be rather grounded, and astute.

    • @ just k .
      If that’s what you see then I’d suggest you stop buying then eating those little squares of blotting paper off your gang banger neighbours.
      Your reaction is precisely what to expect when an intellectual throws enlightenment down at the feet of The Great Unwashed. Which is exactly the problem with AO/NZ generally. The abused defend their abusers against those offering enlightenment. That’s why our MSM is a linear, still birth thing to thinkers. To the hoi polloi, however, it’s ‘the shit’.

      • Well said. Krauts posts are droll CB, as are his many names, simple as that. An intellectual piece responded with an infintile children’s program jingle, enough said.

      • Kraut thinks he is edgy. His non de plume speaks volumes. Kraut is a name that can be associated with Nazism, and yet simultaneously denied. I bet Kraut spent many nights thinking of his handle along the lines of, “What can i call myself that will trigger the libs?”. And the rest is history.

  5. Obviously there are two things at play and always has been. Overt organised crime and covert. But Australia is a much more profitable country to do evil deeds in, especially with its corruptible police. Hence covert crime flourishes there.

    The overt one is dangerous and is concerning for the public who will buy a stray round or 10 one of these days. It’s the shop front for coverts intimidation.

    Yes, Nationals typical budget slashing during the Key government really put the dampers on law enforcement in this country but kind of balanced it with filling jails. Neither are a good idea but the rot set in there. But the Ardern governments well meaning, mushy left liberal kindnesses both in key appointments to law enforcement and deeds to crime approach is proving dangerous for ordinary people, and ironically it encourages more of it.

    Kindness and crime reduction are incompatible, especially when you ignore the festering sore of housing problems in this country. Like so many things this government do, they cancel one and other out.

    There needs to be a substantial lift in police numbers, not management, but actual cops doing the job as well as Customs, Courts, immigration and IRD to counter this scourge. And on the other side serious work to counter the negative effects of capitalism that none of those government departments can do.

    Poto is a hopeless police minister but its her PM who put her there and must take the blame. Poto’s softly softly approach has mothing to do with strategies because its evident she has no strategic grip on her portfolio. Its all about inventing responses on a daily basis that do nothing. And I think we all know Labour are hopelessly out of their depth on these issues.

    This governments report card on law and order is going to be a sizeable contributing factor to its demise!

    • Good article XRAY.
      Problem is no one seems to have the answer which obviously is very difficult.

  6. Thank you for bringing some common sense and sanity to this issue.

    Yes, Poto Williams isn’t the most persuasive performer at QT but the Mumbling Mark Mitchell, who seems to have a permanent slot down the list at around No 10 in QT (I wonder why?) to ask, yet again, ‘does the minister agree that gang tensions are rising?’, offers only hollow rhetoric in any of his speeches.
    Yesterday, for example, his straw men arguments ended with the slogan ‘soft on crime’, pointing the finger at the government. Pathetic.

    National, and to a much lesser degree, previous Labour, governments, gave numerous illegal ‘business’ opportunities for gangs with their very inadequate or non-existent social policy – especially child welfare policies – going back decades.

    Williams may just match Mumbling Mitchell in the verbal dexterity stakes, but she’s way ahead of him politically, as Chris’s article suggests.

    • Mumbling Mitchell is qualified to speak on the subject having been at the front line of policing. Mumbling Mitchell is watching as currently front line police put their lives on the line every day. Mumbling Mitchell knows something about his portfolio unlike most of the Ministers in this fucked up Government. What are your qualifications as to how policing works VV. Like me you have none.

      • Mumbling Mark Mitchell and Christopher Luxon are misogynistic bullies, they hate women in authority . Sadly we all know its a ploy, the National party are very good at it, remember Clare Cullen’s face on a toilet seat, the perpetrator of this is on their front bench exonerated without a trial by his own party. She was hounded out of parliment hardly able to speak. Christopher Luxon is conning New Zealanders into thinking he and the National party are better at everything political and unfortunately the gullible are being fed this garbage on a daily basis by Hoskins et.al. there is no balance. No one in the MSM is questioning any of their statements . The more people run down Poto Williams the more it will embolden the criminals . Look back in history at previous national government tenures , there were horrific crimes happening. No one is asking why in the light of these crimes they actually run down the police force numbers, they didn’t give them a pay rise for years, their answer was mega prisons also known as crime school for gang membership. If thats what you want vote in the bullies aka. Mumbling Mark Mitchell and Christopher Luxon with David Seymour on the side

        • Queeny You’re right, and in a decent society that slimey little Catholic jerk who put a woman’s face on a toilet seat, would be ostracised, not promoted. That more or less sums up the mindset of the grubby puerile bunch who constitute the current National Party.

          Nevertheless, the government needs to justify why they have selected a divisive female like Kidman to head a ridiculously-named group which they claim is aimed at producing an inclusive society. Shame on Victoria University for compromising itself like this.

    • “the slogan ‘soft on crime’, pointing the finger at the government. Pathetic.”
      Really Verity? Perhaps you’d like to enlighten us with a list of “tough on crime” moves.
      Here is a list of anti crime bills rejected by the government (compiled by David Farrar);

      Sep 2018 – voted down bill to allow Police to issue firearms prohibition orders against gang members with a history of firearms or violent offending
      Oct 2018 – voted down bill to allow for random testing of drivers for drug impairment
      May 2019 – voted down bill to increase maximum penalty for selling or supplying unapproved psychoactive substances from two to 14 years
      June 2020 – voted down bill allowing maximum penalty of 20 years for “coward punches” causing death
      Mar 2021 – voted down a bill requiring a school to be notified if a registered sex offender lives within 5 kms of the school
      Apr 2021 – voted not to proceed with a bill that increases the maximum penalty for assaults on first responders or prison officers to 10 years
      April 2021 – voted down a bill imposing a maximum penalty of five years for killing a police dog
      June 2021 – voted down a bill that clarified carjacking is robbery
      Oct 2021 – again voted down bill to allow Police to issue firearms prohibition orders against gang members with a history of firearms or violent offending
      Apr 2022 – voted down a bill to ban the Government funding gangs
      May 2022 – voted down a bill to increase the power of Police to seize assets gained through significant criminal activity

      • Is that where Mumbling Mark got his list from that he read out in Parliament on Wednesday – from zealot right-whinger David Farrar! No surprises there!
        Mumbling Mark cannot even compile the list on his own initiative.

        And Mumbling Mark on Thursday, was still at lowly No 10 (out of 12) at QT and still asked the same question about ‘gang tensions rising’. Nothing new there!

  7. So do nothing? 23 drive by shootings in 2 weeks and the minister doing nothing is OK?

    I think it’s fair to say that just kicking in doors won’t be enough by itself.
    But in the short term at least, that has to be part of the response –

    *Door kicking -concentrate resources on getting guns off the bad guys not the good guys but longer term:

    *make any offense with a firearm an “aggravating factor” with jail time.

    *disempower gangs by legalizing pot and consider some controlled legal sale of harder drugs including meth, legalize cigarettes.

    *stop legitimizing gangs by giving them government money, making them critical workers or letting them run check points. Treat them as Lepers, you know, the same way the government treats farmers or “the river of filth”.

    *tighten laws on assembly around use of intimidation

    *stop letting shit bags out of jail because they had a rough start – do the time but give them resources to get clean while inside.

  8. I guess what Chris is saying is that these hidden trans-national criminals are using the bikie gangs as distributors of their products, and the distributors are at war amongst themselves. So Chris reckons we should go after the trans-national criminals first. On the other hand, if the police get tough on the gangs to such an extent that they can not longer be reliable distributors for the trans-national criminals, then the trans- national criminals have no one to on move their product for them. Then, or at the same time, go after the trans-national criminals. The age old question – which came first, the chicken or the egg….

  9. To a certain extent Poto was left a complete cluster f**k thanks to Nash & the NZ Police pushing their own agendas, which was more about covering Police failings and attacking the law-abiding whilst ignoring criminals. Add to this the increasing poverty & inequality, a booming drug trade as people seek chemical escape from their nightmare realities, and over-stretched Police resources, then you have a real recipe for disaster. There are no easy solutions while we in a Neo-liberal society that values profits over people, ledgers over lives.

    Personally I like Poto, she is our local MP, I voted for her & she is certainly the only MP I have ever had knock on my door whilst campaigning. Is she up to this job? Probably not, but then I’m not sure who is, the Police are a very powerful organisation, and even when they fail, they succeed, as they can usually leverage failure for more resources & increased powers. It is also unlikely that we can “police” our way out of this crisis, no matter how we arm them or what civil rights we surrender. To solve this we need a society wide reformation and the past couple of years have shown us that no one is up to that task.

  10. The problem with such “analysis” is that it’s driven not from any desire to solve the problem but from the usual, crude partisanship and ideology one expects from the likes of Chris Trotter. Even staunch Labour voters I know think that Poto and Coster are utterly useless in their respective roles.

    Moreover, the silent part of this piece is the same idiotic ideology – don’t be mean to the street thugs for they’re not really the threat – that has just seen Chesa Boudin booted from his role as District Attorney in San Francisco and will likely soon be followed by his partner-in-crime, Gascon in LA.

    I also suggest you re-read/re-watch The Godfather, where you will discover that the Five Families made quite a big deal about not having gang wars because they were obviously bad for business in all ways, from taking focus away from making money from crime to drawing the attention of the cops.

    Occasionally such wars did break out, but they were short, sharp affairs.

    It has only been with the decline of such groups in the US and the rise of more widely distributed and localised “gangs” that gang warfare has spread and become a constant feature of US cities. Perhaps you can use that fact to argue the advantages of oligopoly or monopoly vs mass capitalist competition?

    • You clearly did not understand the post, Tom.

      My argument is that the gangs are simply the most visible parts of organised crime. As you rightly say, they are the distributors. What that means, of course, is that if you took all the gang members off the streets, and left both the supply and the demand for what they are selling unchanged, then new distributors would take their place in a week.

      What happened in the US was that the FBI broke the Five Families by means of undercover operations – Donnie Brasco – and round-the-clock physical and electronic surveillance. Disorganise crime, and the whole smooth-running operation of drug distribution, protection rackets, prostitution, etc falls apart. Unfortunately, in NZ the disorganisation has come not from the Police, but courtesy of the 501s.

      There is literally nothing Coster or Williams can do about the present turf-war between the Tribesmen and the Killer Beez – short of undertaking policing in a manner that would not only fail to solve the problem, but also create a whole set of new ones.

      When it comes to fighting organised crime, brain beats brawn every time. Not a message the Right will ever accept, but true nonetheless.

    • The tenor of your diatribe was obvious from the start with the ill-considered remark, “The problem with such “analysis” is that it’s driven not from any desire to solve the problem but from the usual, crude partisanship and ideology one expects from the likes of Chris Trotter.” There is not one part of that statement that is anything more substantial than a blind rant. You dismiss the fact that Chris Trotter was discussing sound academic research as ‘ideology’, the conclusions of that research as ‘crude partisanship’, despite the research presenting solutions. You then ended up with the perfunctory denigration of an informed commentator who has formulated a considered opinion, purely on the basis of your own ignorance and bias.

      To back that up, you have made references to a fiction novel and people who some US residents may know of, along with references to US gangs. You have also decided what views people support, based on a shallow left/right dichotomy. Reading your comment became an exercise in wondering what the hell you are on about, but don’t bother try to explain. Try something more constructive.

      • Yes I could say I know some staunch right wing supporters who support Poto and Coster whom have been dealt a difficult hand. Notable by his absence is what HE would do or the lack of insight into what the opposition would do. His comments are a beat up.

      • The tenor of your diatribe was obvious from the start with the ill-considered remark, ..

        I notice you had no problem with the tenor of Chris’s post with its references to “Macho chest-beating” in the headline and continuing with “inflated male chests, bombastic claims…rabid right wing rekons… rabid right-wing police ministers overseas….”. Presumably for you these are considered and well-chosen remarks rather than a “blind rant” since they perfectly fit your stereotypes and prejudices. I’m only surprised he didn’t use the word “boofhead”, which has been a recent favourite of his in describing the Right.

        you dismiss the fact that Chris Trotter was discussing sound academic research as ‘ideology’,

        I saw no academic research, sound or otherwise, in the form of links to academic papers on crime, merely an unlinked reference to The Guardian – although I recognise that for the Left that amounts to the same thing.

        I did see a reference to the Police Minister “desperately” searching “through all the available research/data for something that just might help her make a real difference” for 18 months, which again is not the same as presenting actual academic research and in fact implies there is none that contains an answer – which I don’t accept BTW, but that is the implication.

        What I also saw were assumptions about 501’s in New Zealand that seem reasonable to me, but for which no evidence was given, merely quotes from Australian Police (again via the sole Guardian reference) regarding their situation. I saw references to the need for police intelligence work to break up these purported controlling groups and a demand that if this hasn’t happened it “bloody well” needs to.

        Which raises the question of why the Police have not done so to date, or at least not in any apparent successful way. After all, the 501 phenomena started before this Labour government. As Bradbury has pointed out, we have rather a lot of intelligence acronym agencies that presumably could be doing this work.

        Or perhaps that’s not really the problem here with the gangs, despite Chris’s reasonable assumptions? Perhaps the problem lies with Left wing theories such as not pressing for arrest and other harassment of street gangs, less harsh sentencing and emptying the prisons. Which brings me to another of your statements…

        and people who some US residents may know of, …

        Anybody studying these problems should be aware of DA’s like Boudin, Gascon and others in the US like them since they have put into practice the same theories on dealing with crime that the Left has here, starting with the reduction of prison populations, the US Left call it “decarceration”. The results have been the same as well, with substantial increases in crimes of all types, followed by even the very liberal residents of SF, who voted Boudin and his ideas into power just two years ago, giving him the boot the other day.

        ….along with references to US gangs.

        Chris referred to the Mafia, a group of US “gangs” that have effectively gone the way of the dinosaurs. If one is going to refer to US gangs it seems far more relevant to refer to those of today and what is (and is not) working against them. And if you’re going to do so it pays to recognise that the Mafia’s place has simply been taken by these new gangs because – as Chris says in his reply above – is the natural result of leaving “… both the supply and the demand for what they are selling unchanged…

        Unfortunately while that last is true it’s not much of an answer and simply leads to the endless Left-wing paean about “root causes” having to be addressed – which somehow never are, even after five years of Labour – while ordinary people walk amid streets filled with homeless, abused, often violent people, at best hoping that their number won’t come up in catching one of the gang’s stray bullets, stray fists from recruits or home invasions.

    • tom, if YOU rewatch The Godfather (academic research that it is) you’d get, ‘going to the mattresses every 10 yrs or so clears the air.’

  11. Nice theory, Chris, but how about we go hard on the gangs AND plan for the possibility that bigger players are pulling their string from overseas? Maybe we could make a few of them talk once we arrest them and see what new information they can tell us

  12. Don’t blame Poto she is not the one that signed of the 501 policy it was John and his lot. And its the judges that give the soft sentences.

    • (Judges) At the direction of the current government because you know, colonisation and more importantly, the costs of commissioning and running new prisons. 25% less people in prison currently and as someone said (Martyn perhaps?) – Could there be any correlation between an uptick in crime of these types and the facts they are no longer being put away?

    • Much as it may suit you to blame the National government and John Key he had no say as the 501 deportation was Australian government policy which we had no say in .He complained to the Minister Julith Bishop but at the end of the day all countries have a right to deport a person who is not a citizen to the country they came from

  13. And therein lies the problem. Labour have too many plans in the mix that nobody knows anything about because they’re crap at ‘communicating’ their ideas and intention.

    The shittiest communicators of them all. Some much for been the most highly educated gene eva.

    Time for them to go back to kindergarten and learn some rudimentary fundamentals again.

    Stakeholder Capitalism isn’t the way to go.

  14. No warrant searches on parliament must accompany any “gang” legislation. What about the corporate gangs? Progressive and Food Stuffs? Flethcher Building?

  15. FFS – there’s only one way to de-power gangs. Break up their monopolies. This applies to parliamentary, corporate and criminal gangs.

Comments are closed.