“If you want to get tough on crime – get tough on poverty”

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The heading of this piece is a quote from AUT Criminal Law lecturer Khylee Quince on Tim McKinnel’s excellent documentary “Crime: Need Vs Greed” on TVNZ last night.

If you didn’t see the programme then make sure you see it on demand – or listen in to the RNZ podcast interview with Tim McKinnel about the programme here.

The Khylee Quince quote is a neat summary of one aspect of the programme and will be enough for National, Labour and ACT party politicians to condemn the documentary outright but hopefully it will get the rest of us thinking and talking.

Tax fraud is several times bigger than benefit fraud but much more resources are put into chasing benefit fraud than tax fraud. Both steal from the community but how they are treated varies dramatically. There are many more prosecutions for benefit fraud (the “low-hanging fruit”) than tax fraud and when people are found guilty, beneficiaries are much more likely to go to jail, for smaller amounts of fraud, than tax evaders.

The messages from this programme should resonate hard within Labour but there is no prospect of the transformative change needed from the current government.

Labour is limping to the election next year by which time we will have endured six years of hand-wringing and with all the key social indicators, which drive the petty crime politicians and police fixate on, either static or worse than when they were first elected.

Thank you Tim McKinnel – I hope you have started a discussion outside the political establishment which will bring demands on our politicians for change.

TDB Recommends NewzEngine.com

37 COMMENTS

    • “all the key social indicators, which drive the petty crime politicians and police fixate on, either static or worse than when they were first elected.”

      ACT and National have a better plan that will fix all the languishing social indicators and it will involve 20% flat personal tax, 20% business tax and GST to 20% with exemptions for food and essentials like petrol.

      Social indicators sorted under ACT and National

      • Great idea with the 20% across the board tax rationalizations for ACT and National… they will certainly get my vote with fairer tax policies like this
        Also get rid of Fair Pay Agreements. New Zealand needs to be competitive on the world stage.

  1. There’s many perpetrators of tax fraud who ought to be put into prison. I’m not talking about a mere one or two years, either. Five years minimum is more like it. That would be a suitable sentence for scores of so-called businessmen who’ve so far escaped punishment.

    I watched the doco, and found it very interesting. In particular my summary is that there is undoubtedly a lot of loose ends within South Canterbury Finance which ought to be tied up. This company took the most money from investors’ out of all the finance companies we’ve ever had operating in this country.

  2. Yes, an excellent documentary highlighting the need for change.

    Whether left or right, one can see the current system is not fit for purpose.

    The question is, how long will it take for our politicians to figure it out, let alone, sort it out?

    • Some of you guys really need to read this. Seriously, you do.
      Finn Flynn.
      https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2022/10/25/guest-blog-finn-flynn-the-road-to-serfdom-acts-map-to-backwards/
      ” Douglas’s frenzied slashing of regulations, the garage sale of public assets and destruction of public services no doubt saved the country from short term financial hazard, but it also profoundly damaged whole sectors of the economy for years to come. Opportunists, local and international, gorged themselves on the massively undervalued assets, launching the likes of Michael Fay, David Richwhite, Graeme Hart and Eric Watson to stratospheric wealth while hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders lost their jobs, homes, businesses and marriages.”
      “…no doubt saved the country from short term financial hazard.”
      Who do you think it was who placed ‘the country’ into ‘financial hazard’ in the first place? Working people? Our primary industry? Or was it ” the likes of Michael Fay, David Richwhite, Graeme Hart and Eric Watson ” who saw an opportunity to literally steal what was once our taxes paid for resources and our money and our assets. But perhaps worst of all, you took our kids and our precious time alive on our beautiful country on our beautiful planet. Aye boys? Getting worried yet? Fuck, I hope so. Do you know how large in floor area in prison is Boys? Think one of your tennis courts. Or your swimming pool or your palatial kitchen? Now, think again. 9 sq m Boys. That’s where you sent our people in their thousands after you ruined their lives then took their stuff and things. 9 sq m.

    • Please explain the connection between poverty and rich people evading tax obligations. Eagerly awaiting your retarded reply.

    • Yes, look at Finland but also look at how the death penalty and very high incarceration rates hasn’t worked in America.

      • the finns care about their society so want to protect it from further harm by rehabilitatation, revenge and torture causes tingly feelings in the trouser department of most yanks no matter what the cost when the animals created get out of the zoo.

        also in yankland there is the very lucrative prison industrial complex which requires a steady stream of (preferably young black male) slaves

  3. Yeah, but John — the VICTIMS of crime tend to live in poor areas, while the CRIMINALS tend to live in poor areas as well…poverty is not the only reason for Crime…a lot has to do with wankers being wankers

  4. Can we also do something about the huge blue segment, that represents other crime. Maybe stop worrying about revenue gathering with undercover cops staking out phone use and speeding, but more resources into stopping criminals disabling victims, by being beating them up on the streets for no reason, constant theft, burglary, car theft, now it’s ram raids, meth smuggling creating massive poverty, family and other violence.

  5. Yes, it was a great line–impactful–similar to “For the many not the few”.

    “Get Tough on Poverty” succinctly covers a lot.

  6. It’s about scapegoating. Easy scapegoats who have no social, economic or political power, no status and cannot bite back. Let’s face it- New Zealand’s own ’empty eaters’ – the worthlesss who prove the worthiness of everyone else. Who serve the function of wiping everyone else clean and as the warning to the others.

  7. Agree z John. Benefit fraud people trying to survive. Tax fraud self entitlement.

    Sounds like a good programme. I like that TOP would wipe out beneficiaries debt.

  8. Phone use and speed can often lead to death of other innocent road users so road policing needs to be stepped up as does the fines for both . This policing should be done by a dedicated road force .The biggest mistake John Banks was to do away with traffic police just to bolster his police numbers at no cost .
    This would improve the relationship between the driving public and the regular police force .. Freed from traffic control they could concentrate on solving the growing crime figures in all fields . Once caught the judges need to be on notice that the public have a right to be kept safe and sentences need to send a strong message . With tough sentences the prisons need to have good rebilitation services

  9. the thing is benefit fraud allows you to shit on the underclass, tax fraudsters are the nice middle class people next door.

    one thing that seems rife in NZ but that I’ve never seen quantified is fraud/embezzlement…it seems to always be in the paper(well on their webpages) and often connnected to one armed bandits.

  10. The thing is John, this imbalance has been reported on and off in the media for at least the last ten years.

    National knew it and the rest of us who knew also assumed that it was exactly the way National liked it. I expected Labour to start to change it but so far not a peep. Now that I understand that they are at least as Neo Lib as National and only really look for the middle class vote (assuming the poor will always vote for them) then I dont expect anything will change at all.

  11. Rely on you for the direct North of our right cause, in NZ. In the world, Chomsky.

    Twenty-five million of benefit fraud and one billion of tax fraud.

  12. Rely on you for the direct North of our right cause, in NZ. In the world, Chomsky.

    Twenty-five million of benefit fraud and one billion of tax fraud.

  13. Rely on you for the direct North of our right cause, in NZ. In the world, Chomsky.

    Twenty-five million of benefit fraud and one billion of tax fraud.

  14. ” The messages from this programme should resonate hard within Labour but there is no prospect of the transformative change needed from the current government ”

    Transformation was a lie the first time it mentioned by Adern and the others some years back.

    An historic unprecedented MMP majority has been squandered and LINO will protect the status quo because they don’t want to be transformative , its to hard and to politically costly. They are just about being in government and breast feeding the barons and vested interests.

    We don’t do transformation when it coms to structural reforms like this unless its making money and returning a profit otherwise # It don’t get done.

  15. Minto-ji said it already. The full harvest of leaving the neediest behind in nineteen eight-four. By which the rich will win this election. Ha, ha, ha.

    I wish there was a talker in this Labour Party, but it would require a working class member.

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