National’s boast to journalists that their new gang law will ‘stretch’ human rights is as childish as it is dangerous
Are we living in a different dimension to the one that National inhabits?
Are they just saying shit because they have panicked and should we give them the benefit of that doubt or should we crucify them for proposing more ill thought out counter productive bullshit that simply plays to their voters ignorance and petty bigotries rather than attempt to solve the problem?
The multiple examples of this behaviour demands the latter.
- Boot Camps (they don’t work and are actually a front to put teenagers into adult courts)
- Privatisation of State Housing (this has only created more homelessness)
- Moving the evidential thresholds in the proceeds of crimes act to probable from beyond reasonable doubt (this has inadvertently reset the entire economic model of the black market and exacerbated the meth trade)
- Demanding all prisoners must admit guilt before they are eligible for parole (which has ratcheted up prison numbers)
Each sound great to the ears of ignorant voters but they inadvertently create another problem far worse than the one they were designed to supposedly fix.
National’s boast today that they wish to implement new powers against gangs that will ‘stretch’ human rights is another ghastly attack on the common good by floating ill thought out laws and using them to bait petty hates.
The $82 million to ‘fight’ meth has some good elements, extra sniffer dogs and more vigorous scrutiny of port workers but other parts of it are stupid, counter-productive and in some cases down right dangerous.
The $40million for more meth rehabilitation looks like most of it will be outsourced to Christian organisations, which doesn’t really prop up public addiction services.
The increased penalties for synthetic cannabis is counter productive when you consider the market would dry up tomorrow if people could get actual cannabis.
But the most dangerous idea is to allow the Police to ‘stretch’ human rights with new search powers.
Please remember that the Police have already been given extraordinary search and surveillance powers, but what National are suggesting is that all Gang Members could be subject to ‘unreasonable’ searches.
That means side of the road strip searching, that means Police would never need to have reasonable cause to justify any search and it allows Police to search people unreasonably based on mere association.
Who decides who is a Gang Member to have this level of police power used against them? Well that’s the truly dangerous bit, in the past the Police have defined a ‘gang member’ as anyone who works in a group of 3 who are working against the law.
That sounds like most environmental and political activists that I know.
These extreme and abusive search powers are being sold to be used against Gang members, the truth is they can quickly be used against anyone.
To boast to journalists that you intend to ‘stretch’ human rights is as childish as it is dangerous.
With over the counter cough medicine banned. Precursors for the manufacture of P has to be imported in small amounts destroying hundreds of families per dose. Dispite the threats of high penalties that are under corporal punishment the solution seems to be to care for drug traffickers in Dillon dollar jails. Dispite the destruction of whole families this miss-directed campaign to label drug makers and drug takers as to hard to contemplate we’ll treat them all the same in billion dollar jails.
Leadership these days ain’t what it use to be.
Do They think that ordinary kiwis trust them? Why would we?
Your experience Martyn shows how far they are willing to push existing laws. This and as you say other strange promises show how desperate the Nats are.
National tactics copied from Germany 1933 era.
Where the Government of the day made an ‘event’ occur to upset the general population.
One situation they set-up was allowing gypsies and vagrants loose in heavily populated cities until those people began to cause concerns among the general population and guess what?
Yes the Government took action rounding all the gypsies & vagrants up and ‘disposing’ them and this made the government look good.
National have replicated this here.
Interesting you say that, Cleangreen. I’m slowly reading “1938” by Giles MacDonogh, and he describes precisely those events. He also describes how Jewis attempted to gain Exit Visas to flee Europe – many attempting to head for Palestine.
Replace “Jews” with “Muslims”, and reverse the direction of refugee flow, and it has an eerie resemblance to Europe, circa 2017…
“Replace “Jews” with “Muslims”, and reverse the direction of refugee flow, and it has an eerie resemblance to Europe, circa 2017…”
So in other words, a near polar opposite of 1938. And unless you’re a European currently tolerating the rank intolerance of Sharia adhering Muslims to all things non-Muslim (i.e. essentially every Western ideal), why is this “eerie”, exactly?
Yes Frank and woe be it if we raise the word about what did happen in Germany pre-war eh!!!
We get dumped on by conducting harikari (suicide) and by being blamed with that awful word “Godwin law”
I was taught at Napier Boys High in History during the late 1950’s to look at history to see the signs of where we are going today.
it seems some are trying to stop us from this now at our peril….
“in the past the Police have defined a ‘gang member’ as anyone who works in a group of 3 who are working against the law.”
This cynical twisting of the law was used to jail 4 of the activists arrested in the Operation 8 raids. They Crown were able to hang them out to dry by combining trivial breaches of firearms regulation, none of which were imprisonable offences in themselves, with the fact that there were more than three of them associating with each other. This kind of weaponization of the law is a far more of a threat to a decent and democratic society than a few outlaws.
I’m, guessing Labour’s Greg O’Connor is all for it? This sounds EXACTLY like the sorts of policy he spent TWENTY-ONE YEARS promulgating. He should just join National already, so I won’t have to swallow vomit whilst ticking the Labour box.