None of the tough on crime announcements the Government has desperately scrambled together so you don’t notice this…
758 construction businesses have gone into liquidation in the last 12 months, thanks in part to the Government’s freeze on transport, housing and hospital investment spending at the beginning of 2024, Centrix reported this morning. Construction jobs have fallen by 12,723 in the last year!
Worker and employer expectations of real wage deflation are worsening as the economy slides back into a mid-year stagnation, and as administered prices such as Government and council fees and rates rise faster than inflation, as do prices in the monopoly-bound food, insurance and electricity sectors.
…will work!
National want you focused on tough on crime bullshit to distract from the cost of living crisis and believe they can do that with a range of crime virtue signals to an angry and reactionary electorate without explaining how these new crime laws will actually work because:
1 – We already have laws against assaulting First Responders.
2 – They can’t tell us how many Coward Punches occur each year.
3 – The Vigilante Shoplifting Law by Paul ‘Mad Max’ Goldsmith will lead to a Vigilante wonderland where you can GET YOUR BASH ON!
The problem is that we have a mainstream media who drench crime porn clickbait which emotionally fires us up and we have this perpetual anger that turns poisonous inside us and turns us into a Lynch mob on law and order.
My fear is that angry cracker rednecks are salivating at the chance to use the new Vigilante Shoplifting Law so they can go full turkey on some poor brown kids in the supermarket.
We are beyond being rational thanks to social media hate algorithms that are driving All Tribe No Village polarised politics now.
Kiwis don’t want to hear tough on crime doesn’t work, they just want people they hate and are fearful of to suffer and pretend that is justice.
This is who we is now, this is what we have become.
Increasingly having independent opinion in a mainstream media environment which mostly echo one another has become more important than ever, so if you value having an independent voice – please donate here.
There were many who made dire comments about the gang patch ban with predictions of fights tomtye death if police removed gang patches .Nothing has happened and gang members no longer swagger around intimidating people .
Soft on crime was tried by Labour and it got us nowhere tough on crime may or may not work but it is the approach most law abiding voters want to see.
Maybe the gang members are just a bit smarter than you and can adjust to the lack of a patch as their meth business appears to be booming going on the waste water test results. I have seen no evidence that burglary and assault crimes have decreased, either. So, you must have a fairly limited imagination if you think patch bans have fixed anything.
I did not say they had fixed anything I was pointing out the hysterical claims about the patch ban with some saying there would be blood in the street. It was the same claim of students revolution about the cell phone ban .Both have been a great success.
There used to be patched gang members everywhere you went in Whangarei. Including the hospital where they took no notice of a sign forbidding them to enter if they were wearing their patch.
They seem to have completely disappeared from town now.
Also the ram raids seem to have stopped. There used to be one or more every night for a while.
The media no longer report ram raids and those gang members have not disappeared they are just harder to see.Gang membership has risen by another 1000 since the introduction of the patch laws but you dont see them do you .
Trevor, hate to tell you this, but the cops just turn a blind eye to patches, they only enforce it if carrying out a warranted search. So there has been ZERO changes to gang members “swaggering” around intimidating people.
Well in Christchurch I have not seen a patched gang member in the CBD for some time
You’ve taken yours off then Trev. Good man. Let the police have time to show theirs.
You don’t get out much, do ya?
Soft on crime doesn’t work either though. I suppose the tough talk feeds the group vengeance at least. I say talk because the law changes won’t alter anything.
It should not be about soft on crime or hard on crime. It should be about an evidence-based approach to the problem. In some cases, cracking down hard in particular areas of crime will work, in others it will not work.
Goldsmith’s approach is, I agree, more about virtue signalling.
Unless you are a fraudster in the financial industry Ennius. Soft on crime seems to mandatory for those wankers
Anybody read Charles Dickens anymore? If they do they can see how inflicting more penalties on desperately poor people does not make society safer.
In eighteenth, early nineteenth centuries Europeans used the death penalty and transportation to punish minor crimes.
At the same time there was widespread poverty with minimal assistance for unemployed and sick. Wars and Revolution created widespread societal change. Alcoholism and gambling was common and encouraged by the state for the taxation revenue it supplied.
Governments also had small, underfunded police forces so private citizens went about armed for self-protection and private companies provided security for those who could afford it.
Did it truly make society safer?
Read the accounts. Highwaymen, smugglers, cattle thieves, burglars knew they would die on the scaffold if taken alive so they formed gangs and armed themselves, both enticed and intimidated communities into protecting them(‘Watch the wall my darling while the gentlemen ride by’). Law enforcement was quickly corrupted or threatened into co-operation with criminals.
Violent crime increased. What eventually led to a reduction in criminal offending?
Better living conditions, employment income, social welfare and fairer taxation – the introduction of income taxes for example.
ALL THIS IS AS TRUE NOW AS IT WAS THEN.
‘Tough on Crime’ is just propaganda for further attacks on the poor. Paul Goldsmith is a historian who knows this so this makes his rightwing whoredom even more shameful. Like Don Brash – who for years voted Labour and supported Keynesian Economics – he is shameless.
RESTORE STATE SOCIALISM IN AOTEAROA! DEATH TO CAPITALISM!
yes look at how many were deported to AUS and NZ for minor crime .Many of those were the forebears of our current PM and his band of non patched gang members hell bent on promoting violence and not interested in the causes of crime in the first place .
Getting tough on poverty, returning our natural resources back to us, mandating voting and releasing a public, royal commission of inquiry up, over and into our rich lister’s every orifices might work though.
Societal poverty leads to crime. It’s literally that simple. So, why are we broke then? Why are there people living in shop doorways? Why do I have to wait a month to see a GP? Why must we acquiesce to a grim and grimy threesome in the form of a self confessed faker it ’till he makes ‘er PM and bald bullshit artist, a dirty little rat faced roger-clone and an old pinstriped con artist doing his slithery best to hide past crimes committed by over paid politicians at the behest of privateer scum who’ve been exploiting our agrarian primary industry for 89 years now. Crime sure seems to work for those traitorous fuckers.
When is at least one other person here going to support my request for a public, royal commission of inquiry up our politics and our economy spanning those 89 years since the formation of the Natzo Party? I mean c’mon! A little fucking help and support here. One word of encouragement?
Nothing. And therein lies the rub. A lack of action by you and you is seen by me as complicit planning by careless laziness. Look. She will NOT be right mates. We need outside help. We still have the crown. Let’s do this!
Oh. Wait.
Let’s do this: Jacinda Ardern unveils new Labour slogan
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/lets-do-this-jacinda-ardern-unveils-new-labour-slogan/7A6OZTEV566JF2SRAMQLRUSMOY/
That was back in 2017. That was 8 years ago! I never thought she meant We’ll fuck off and leave you to it. ” All I said? All I hugged? All I sniffled? Yeah/nah. Fuck that. I’m outa here. ”
See? There you go. We need a public, royal commission of inquiry because we can’t rely on the locals.
Adern? You do know that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions?
You have obviously never visited Singapore, Martyn.
Tough in crime does indeed wor, as long as it is done in a discussed and highly evidence based way, as they do in Singapore.
So Singapore has no jails or murders or any crime at all .Singapore is a dictatorship which rules with an Iron fist .There is poverty there as in every country in the world but you are not allowed to here about that because the media are not allowed to report on that .Also most of the manual labour is done by people from other countries whom are exploited and live in shitty crowded poor quality accomdation much like the RSE workers in the orchards here in NZ .
A quick google just now shows crime is on the rise in Singapore with shop lifting being a major problem along with fraud and cyber crime .So much the same as here .
Singapore brings in thousands of immigrants as cheap labour to build their roads, tunnels and sky scrapper buildings. We have to be careful when we compare ourselves with other countries, we like to compare ourselves when it suits our agenda. For example, if we look at the UK and USA prison rates, harsher penalties haven’t worked in these two countries.
‘Gang members no longer swagger around intimidating people.’
Trevor I live in a neighbourhood with many gang members and I have never seen them ‘swaggering around’
(whatever that means) or intimidating people.
Now to the rest of your …………whatever it is.
‘Soft on crime was tried by Labour and it got us nowhere tough on crime may or may not work but it is the approach most law abiding voters want to see.’
‘Tough on crime may or may not work’.
Right – two surgeons have our Trevor on the slab – operating away.
SURGEON ONE. How about if I cut this bit out?
SURGEON TWO. Might work – might not. Let’s give it a go and find out.’
IS THIS REALLY THE APPROACH YOU WANT TO A SERIOUS SITUATION?
‘it is the approach most law abiding voters want to see.’
Well obviously you did some serious research here Trevie.
You know which voters are ‘law-abiding’. Does that mean they have never broken the law? Does that mean they have never been caught breaking the law?’ How many of them are there?
You also know what they want. Is this based on conversations at the Remuera RSA, Golf Club, chats at the supermarket, nattering with neighbours, eavesdropping on public transport?
(Admittedly with the way people rave on into their mobile devices it is difficult to NOT know what their opinions are.)
Also how was the Labour Party, ‘soft on crime’ ? I mean I know they are responsible for all the evils under the sun( because you keep telling me) but I want you to elaborate on how people are ‘soft’ or ‘hard’ .
As a law abiding voter I don’t think Trevor really understands how tough on crime works and how easily one becomes a criminal when the gummint and lawanorder authorities decide to surveil you to find some misdemeanour to harass you with.
I hope Trevor some aspect of yourself doesn’t become the latest misdeed to crack down on. Maori and police are interwoven in our culture, because it suits pakeha.*
I was reading something yesterday re WW2 and the writer referred to seeing an elderly black-capped Jew crawling on hands and knees in a gutter somewhere in Germany being kicked by the forces of authority or the spectators with malicious viciousness. There is something inside us that is like an evil genie, and if authority touches it and gives it the ‘office’, it will come out in action or support. So keep it down Trevor, or you might mar your good-moral accreditation.
* Like this one? ‘There were 4 maori’s in da car who was driving? #Da Police Officer ‘
Great picture of Bob the first, Im right and Zelda by the way.
Yep
Why can’t some of you people see that most of those who steal food do it because they are HUNGRY, DESPERATE. – there is nothing left in their wallets/purses to cover the coming days? And no, they are not all smokers, drug users and alcohol is a luxury, they simply wish to alleviate the hunger pangs in their stomachs. NZ is now becoming lke the late 1700’s where the poorer lived on one meal a day of bread soaked in milk – if they were lucky! Sad that so many of you have no damned idea of what many are going through – again – it’s all about being “sorted” and without a smidgeon of empathy or compassion. Yes, as one blogger has suggested, read Charles Dickens, also Somerset Maughan. We need to do much better – time for ALL to step up. First job, get rid of our extravagant, vain, ‘puffed up’ PM and his apathetic allies.
Looking at crime and its treatment in the past is a shock, Seeing how we treat it now is another shock. What can we do as we slide down the far side of the Bell curve of our civilisation it seems?
The approach to crime and intending to deter it led in the 1700s to a person’s body, usually dead, being locked in a cage and left to rot, hanging high up on posts at crossroads where they would be seen. Apparently they could be left there for decades. I hesitate to put up these links for fear of awakening the idea in some pollies’ or disciplinarian’s’ brains.
https://allthatsinteresting.com/gibbet
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK481738/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibbeting
Really we have to constantly rein our brutal selves and take deep breaths, think and adopt whatever measures seemed likely to prevent a continuation of our behaviour. Some people might have to be either judicially killed or have a lobotomy if they are
unstoppable, degenerate. Or perhaps return to something like the Halifax Gibbet that would be quick and more humane than other means of extinction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax_Gibbet
But with an actual decent society showing respect and compassion for each other. this would be rare. Sound hard and cruel? Just look at what we do now, as well as the past. Let’s get real, and people bringing up young children would be important and enabled, assisted in their important role and tasks,. Allow people to have a life with a job they pursue or if not able at some time, then to pursue some skill even playing a guitar at lunchtime during the week in town. Parenthood would be a job, and their would be workshops to advise and assist, and have its own Guild as being a skill with training and achievement attained, not despised as at present.
How can we expect to have a good society with neglected parental roles, either at the low income end or the high with children being sent to boarding schools. Parents caring for children should get a small benefit along with some paid community task which was not home based so they and the children were with and in the community -included, socialised and respected. Fewer criminals more fulfilled, noble humans.
This is not new – but I suggest that those who want their children and the human race, to continue along good paths it has cut for itself, but which have been despoiled or destroyed, to finally take strength and achieve despite the harsh climatic future we have brought on ourselves. We have to accept, and work on ourselves, and the climate together, with the huge shadow of monetarism that is as extreme as the climate. Get off your devices and the net regularly every day and do, say something practical, kind and thoughtful; look for a happy moment with some other human you meet in person! That will be one positive – won’t be too hard will it! Be a human and proud of it!!
I feel the need to honour some of those who have worked so hard so long, to give those who are outright criminals and those who fall foul of the law,, better outcomes.
This is recent.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/life/people/identity/how-do-you-fix-a-human-being-that-s-been-damaged-over-years-and-years
…New Zealanders who’ve served jail time share their stories in Harry Walker’s new book A Voice for the Silenced…
There are people working hard to improve the New Zealand justice system, Walker says, including judges “who know what goes on”, but the debilitating effects of generational trauma, marginalisation and culture loss are crystal-clear in A Voice for the Silenced.
One interviewee phoned up later just to thank him for listening.,,
Another man Walker visited for an interview said nothing to him for a long time, which he knew was a way of “testing him out”.
When the man eventually started to speak, he and Walker found a connection talking about their shared link to the East Coast iwi Ngāti Porou and their respective mountains.
“We kind of connected genealogically, is how I would put it, and talked about the relationships wider than just him and I.
He was seen as extremely violent, but there was a soft side to him, too. He birthed his daughter, you know?
“He cried, that particular guy. And I just think, ‘Whoa, geez.’ He was seen as extremely violent, but there was a soft side to him, too. He birthed his daughter, you know?”
Walker spoke to six of the 17 Waikeria Prison inmates who took to the roof of the high-security unit in December 2020 in A Voice for the Silenced.
Many have been trying to move NZAO into the late 20th century for building better people from the rather torn ones who entered the justice system.
This from Celia Lashlie to The Treasury 2005.
Guest lecture – Celia Lashlie – Criminal Justice
The Treasury New Zealand
https://www.treasury.govt.nz › our-events › criminal-just…
Celia Lashlie was the first woman in New Zealand to work in a custodial role in a male prison, starting at Rimutaka Prison in Upper Hutt in December 1985.
A Tribute for Celia Lashlie
time-space.com.au
https://time-space.com.au › 2015/02/20 › a-tribute-for-…
20 Feb 2015 — Celia Lashlie was a champion of the delightful strengths of teenage boys. As the first ever female prison officer in a New Zealand male prison, …
The Conversation about boys’ and girls’ schools is worth having …
TimesLIVE
https://www.timeslive.co.za › opinion-and-analysis › 202…
6 Jun 2025 — I am reminded of Celia Lashlie, a New Zealand social worker and outspoken feminist who began ‘the good man project’ in the men’s prison system because of …
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/2018656307/celia-lashlie-her-life-s-work-and-last-days
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/105573733/new-film-captures-the-legacy-and-final-days-of-social-justice-campaigner-celia-lashlie
Celia herself on film passing on as much gold as she could before ….
https://www.celiafilm.com/and
https://helptank.nz/project/detail/2263
Untill we deal with the causes of poverty we will never lower crime rates .Just look at the hysteria being whipped up around petty crime by the gold ferret while major fraud and cyber crime goes un punished because it is da pakeha that are doing the big stuff .
It is easy to round up a few brown people and make an example of them and say ,LLOK WE ARE TOUGH ON CRIME ,but we will not fix the cause of that crime POVERTY .What excuse do those pakeha have for those major frauds they commit against their employer of family members stealing hundreds of thousands of $ to fund extravagant life styles .The answer is greed .
Singapore brings in thousands of immigrants as cheap labour to build their roads, tunnels and sky scrapper buildings. We have to be careful when we compare ourselves with other countries, we like to compare ourselves when it suits our agenda. For example, if we look at the UK and USA prison rates, harsher penalties haven’t worked in these two countries.
I run into dumb fucks all day long. The only response is pro-actionary. So, beyond Labour.
About the tough on crime folk, they’re as thick as dense posts. Though the loveliest folk otherwise. Just not about Maori. So, not really.
\
So, fuck them.