WAATEA NEWS COLUMN: Why the new tough on crime laws will inevitably hurt Māori most

Let’s be very clear, the new range of tough on crime measures announced by the Government last week will hit Māori the hardest.

Thanks to the bias against Māori by the NZ Police, we know Māori will be punished harder and prosecuted further than non-Māori and that means these new laws will inevitably get turned on them.

The ‘Coward Punch’ will be seen as any time a Māori hits someone first.

The First Responder assault laws already exist, but Judges rarely impose them because the vast, vast, vast majority of assaults on Fire Fighters or Ambulance staff are committed by people in trauma or in shock.

You just know it will be Māori who get the book thrown at them for this, because their trauma and shock is never as accepted as anyone else’s trauma and shock.

Finally, the new Vigilante powers that the Government wish to give retail staff AND bystanders will all be disproportionately used against Māori by reactionary angry folk who will believe they are covered by the new Vigilante laws to mete out justice as they see fit.

This is going to create a nightmare environment where reactionary angry people believe they can touch your children, can touch you, can touch your friends, and can touch your whanau based on the belief they think you are shoplifting.
NOT JUST retail staff mind you, every reactionary bystander out there will believe they can do this.

Good social policy avoids allowing you to touch fellow citizens by only making self defense a defense.

Bad social policy opens the law up and allows everyone to start hitting each other based on little more than a suspicion of theft.

Defenders of the Government will argue that there are a set of requirements before legitimising bystanders and retail staff, the problem is the kind of people who will want to utilise these new powers are not type who read the fine print.

This Government is greenlighting physical assaults against one another.

It is going to end badly.