Bill Dalton

There is no doubt politics is a tough playground to play in. Gordon Brown, the British Prime Minister was one of the strongest and most decisive leaders during the economic meltdown that struck the world in 2008 and 2009. He acted whilst others dithered. But it appears the British public have given him no credit for that international leadership.

And now Britain has got a ridiculous government that is bound to fail. No coalition government has run full term in Britain other than in war time, and this one will be no different. How can a party on the right of the political spectrum, work successfully with a party that is radically left of the Labour Party. It beggars belief.

It is almost as stupid as the situation we have here in New Zealand. How any one party can produce Don Brash and his Orewa speech and John Key and his pandering to all things Maori, I don’t know. How does a government made up of a steady as you go – don’t upset the voters party, a redneck right wing party and a what’s in it for us racist party, govern New Zealand? And the answer to that is not very well. Clearly the New Zealand economy is being as well managed as possible in these extremely difficult times but the degradation in the social fabric of our country is alarming.

We will never compete with Australia economically but we can be a nicer place to live. Right now we are not.

A client said to me yesterday that all the bright kids are heading overseas and New Zealand is becoming a nation of dumbos and slick-willy financial conmen. A bit radical I thought but I know where he is coming from.

We seem to have our priorities all wrong. We have armies of policemen doing booze checkpoints at 4.30 in the afternoon in Waipukurau and yet violent crime is out of control on our streets. We are told by the police hierarchy that they are having a war on speeding and if necessary they will sit policemen up trees to catch speeding motorists.

How bloody silly is that? Don’t waste the time of police personnel by sitting them up trees to catch some poor sod doing a few clicks over the limit – put them on the streets in our cities and let’s get rid of the scumbags that are increasingly giving New Zealand a poor reputation.

Our Government needs to know that there is more to running a country than fiddling with the figures and pandering to their junior coalition partners.

Recently I made my strongly held views about the Corrections Department’s decision to bring PD and parole centres to a busy street near you, very clear.

In that piece I referred to criminals frequenting these facilities and I have been taken to task for that. I’m told it is disrespectful to call them criminals, they are people who somehow society has let down. I’m told that it is not the criminal’s fault they decided to break the law, it is the honest citizen’s fault for somehow failing them.

What a lot of rot. If a white collar worker commits fraud and is convicted for it he is a criminal. If a storeman steals from his employer and is convicted for it he is a criminal. And if an unemployed person is convicted of a crime then he is a criminal. Calling them clients is just crap.

Sure society could do more for the underprivileged in our society to guide them into positive activities rather than anti-social ones. And sure it is better to attend to the ills of society than simply parking an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. But if individuals make a personal decision to indulge in criminal behaviour, it doesn’t matter what socio-economic group they come from or whether they are black, white or brindle, they are criminals.

I am certainly not saying – and never have said that the criminal justice system is the answer to all of society’s social problems but it is a necessary evil and the facilities need to be put in appropriate places.

So what is an appropriate place? Well it is certainly not on a busy arterial route into the CBD with houses down one side of the street. It is not next door to a school shop frequented by youngsters and it is not just along the road from a large liquor store and a dance and fitness studio where youngsters are arriving and leaving in their performance attire.

Surely it is at the back of an industrial area somewhere, where these fellows loitering around do not create an eyesore or a threat to the security of local businesses.

Again I stress, these people are not clients as the Department of Corrections likes to call them, anymore than prisoners are guests. For whatever reason, whether it is a failure of society or not these people are criminals and they should not be encouraged into inappropriate areas.

There are times in your life when you have got to get up on your hind legs and stand your ground. And I absolutely support those Flaxmere residents who are saying “We don’t want a Department of Corrections facility in the middle of our community.”

Let’s be honest about it. Despite the fact that the Department of Corrections call these people clients, they are criminals. And they are recidivist criminals. You don’t get PD for a first offence. Why should these criminals be encouraged to congregate in the middle of a good suburb like Flaxmere?

It appears that the Department of Corrections has a policy of bringing their undesirable clients to the centre of a community near you. They have just decided to open one of their “client service centres” – in the centre of Gisborne. The local Government there turned down the application but of course the Department took it to the Environment Court. The Department has unlimited financial resources so, of course they won. Just as they will in Flaxmere.

In Napier we have the same problem. I must declare an interest in the Napier situation because I own property next door to the proposed centre. The Napier “drop in centre” for the dross of our society is planned for Taradale Road, one of the main arterial routes into the Napier CBD. In what way, I ask, does such a centre belong in a light industrial area, with residential property on the other side of the street? It gets worse. The residents on the other side of the street were not even accorded the status of being affected parties. How could they possibly not be affected?

The access and egress to local businesses has largely been ignored. It seems no one cares that congestion, lack of parking and an inability to bring supplies to established business will dramatically damage the very comfortable relationship between light industry on one side of the road and pleasant residences on the other.

Or do those who control such matters on a local level know, that us poor locals don’t have the resources to take on, in the Environment Court, a Government Department more interested in serving their clients, the local criminal fraternity, then they are in protecting the law abiding businesses and residential locals.

Frankly it makes me sick in the guts to find in this wonderful country of ours, that the law breakers and those charged with the responsibility of attending to them, get more consideration than those of us who go about our day in a lawful and peaceful manner.

The Green MP Keith Locke is one of those people that make me think that all prospective members of parliament should have to sit an IQ test – and yes, perhaps that should extend to local body representatives as well.

Locke has raved on, to anyone silly enough to listen to his opinion let alone respect it, about the introduction of Tasers to the New Zealand Police Force. Frankly his argument is illogical and lacks that important ingredient, common sense. Take the recent incident using a Taser as an example. A deranged individual was coming at Police with a knife. Simply put, if they hadn’t had access to a Taser, the Police would have shot this person with a gun, probably killing him. Is that what Mr Locke would prefer to have happened?

The sooner the New Zealand Police have a Taser in every car the better. Who knows it might just encourage some of the low-life in our society to have some respect for the Police. I know the New Zealand Police will have strict protocols around the use of the Taser and in any case, you can absolutely guarantee that if you are going about your lawful business in a decent and respectful manner, you will never be Tasered.

Objection to the Taser is just another example of a society that is going soft on discipline. On Sunday morning the head of the Primary School Headmasters group said, and I quote: “The days of wagging your finger and telling the kids to sit down and be quiet are history.” Doesn’t that just say it all? A senior headmaster in our primary school service, telling us that you can not, as a teacher, demand that the kids in your care sit down and shut up. I can tell you they would if I was their teacher.
Again it is a case of taking the easy way out – of not going to the trouble of instilling discipline in these kids at a young age and frankly our society is worse for it. And its’ only going to get worse. These kids who are not learning discipline, and respect for those in authority, are going to grow up and breed, and what chance have their kids got of growing up to be decent productive citizens.

The one word that seems to be missing from any discussion on discipline and respect is consequence. It seems if kids don’t do as they are told at school today they don’t suffer any consequences. It seems that fools like Keith Locke would prefer that violent lawbreakers do not suffer a painful consequence. And of course the fact that they may be shot dead instead doesn’t seem to enter his little head.

Bring on IQ tests.

I don’t know about you but this Global Warming argument is starting to wear a bit thin with me. We’ve just had the coldest winter I can remember – two weeks of spring – then straight back into the depths of winter. Right now you could make a very good argument for the place to be warmed up.

And as I sat by the fire on Sunday night, reports were coming in telling us that hundreds were stranded on the Napier-Taupo Road. But the report that really got me thinking on Sunday night was the one that told me that the police, including the armed offender’s squad, were pursuing a dangerous armed offender through rural southern Hawke’s Bay. These poor cops had been dragged away from their warm homes and families, to trudge through mud, snow and sleet, knowing that at any time the offender could take a pot shot at them.

These cops were working, as it turned out, long hours in appalling climatic conditions, in distinct danger and you know, as a society we take them for granted.

We pay them appalling wages and we don’t even think enough of them to provide them with decent working conditions. I have been in both Napier and Hastings police stations in recent times and the working conditions we ask our cops to work in are simply, in my opinion, unacceptable. Appalling interview rooms, lack of good clerical equipment, smoko rooms that are an insult to the staff, nowhere for the staff to put their bags so they all end up down the hall, the list goes on.

Right next door to the Hastings police station, the government has built a new courthouse and the court staff is justifiably proud of it. Wonderful facilities for all the staff, brilliant facilities for those accused of crimes and – well I won’t go into the palatial facilities for judges.

My argument is simply this. Somehow we can find the funds to build beautiful new courthouses whilst at the same time we deny our front line police what I would consider basic amenities.

And don’t start me on cost cutting by cutting down the number of police cars, etc.

It is high time we recognised the job our policemen and women do and rewarded them appropriately in every way.

On this, the morning of Len Snee’s funeral, I would like to offer my sincere condolences to the Snee family – especially to Joe who is a great friend of my son Mac. Mac and a number of Joe’s friends are flying in to be with Joe and the family at this time and I think that is just neat – that is what friendship and respect is all about.

And of course our thoughts are with those who were so badly injured and their families. We can only hope that their prospects brighten.

The police did an amazing job of resolving the situation on the hill with no further loss of life and no further serious injuries. And of course they weren’t without their critics. 

I was in Christchurch on Monday morning and the letters to the editor of The Press, included one from Waimarie and another from RD6 Christchurch. These fellows were expertly able to decide from rural Canterbury just where the police went wrong – how they could have handled the situation so much better and how the situation could have been resolved so much sooner.

In Napier we had some of the top policemen in New Zealand. We had the Special Tactics Group – the SAS of the police. We had the Armed Offenders Squad – a highly trained group of professionals. We had a specialist team from the army. We had psychologists and specialist negotiators. And yet scores of people from one end of the country to the other thought they knew a better way of handling the situation. They had no knowledge of the difficulty of access to the site – no knowledge of the background of the offender – no knowledge of what the police were being told by the offender and his associates and yet – they knew it all.

I wonder how keen these self styled experts would have been, for the police to throw caution to the wind and storm the building as they were suggesting, if their eldest son was an Armed Offenders Squad Officer in the front line.

Last night, at the request of a few ratepayers I went and had a look at a problem area in their suburb. Clearly it was a problem to some but not to everyone in the area.

These people lived alongside one of the alleyways that run between parallel streets and they are fed up with the appalling behaviour that goes on in that alleyway. Underage drinking – drugs – offensive language – broken glass – rocks thrown on roofs – it all happens in the alleyway.

They want it closed.

Other residents of the suburb say hang on – “you bought a house next to the alley – if you close the alleyway we will have to walk much further to get to the shops and school and the suburb designer thought it should be there.”

They want it left open.

Of course, since the suburb was designed, things have changed. Because of the problems of bad behaviour in our society, designers no longer put narrow dark alleys in suburbs. They include open grassy areas that encourage people to behave decently, if for no other reason than they can be seen.

The alleyway in question was narrow – poorly lit and not far from a very active bottle store. Evidence of poor behaviour was everywhere. Despite the efforts of the residents, you could see where the bottles had been smashed, the overhanging creeper had been set alight, graffiti had been sprayed down the tin fences and all sorts of things had been smoked.

I’m told that at times syringes are found in the alley and on the neighbour’s front lawns.

Of course 99% of this activity is at night.

The other residents of the suburb say: “We want the alleyway to remain. When we are walking the dog at 3pm it is a nice short-cut between streets. When we go to the shop to buy a few things, we now have less distance to carry things home.”

The “close the alley team” says they will have to walk for an extra one to two minutes.

So there’s no easy answer. You can’t open the alley during the day and close it after dark.

At the end we will have to make a decision which of course is what councillors are paid to do.

I have always said that my generation is the lucky generation.  Lucky because we haven’t known war or depression – both very strong influences in our parents’ lives.

But I’m beginning to re-think this “lucky” tag.  The communities our parents lived in, from my observation, seemed to be much nicer communities.  Murders were so infrequent they made headline news for days.  Certainly they didn’t have to cope with communities that contained the insidious gangs we now have to put up with.

We used to think that these appalling gangs, financed and fuelled by P, were confined to the big cities – largely South Auckland.  Now right here in Hawkes Bay we have them gate crashing parties and chopping and bashing people up with machetes and iron bars.  What is our society becoming and where to from here?

I’m sure our parents didn’t have to cope with the topsy turvy situation we find our financial sector in today.

Over the last couple of years we have seen a number of pretty rumpty financial companies fall over and I’m sure that poorly run companies have always collapsed.

But now with the so-called benefit of instant communications, we are starting to see sound, well run companies striking difficulties.  The problem is confidence or more specifically the lack of it.

Under the new continuous disclosure rules – finance companies have to report regularly the state of their finances.  Now you might think that’s a good idea but it can cause problems.

Most companies, at some stage, go through difficulties and in most cases trade through them and regain their strength.  When they have to tell the world they are having difficulties, even small problems seem huge in the eyes of an already nervous investing public.

So often small problems, become big problems because investors know information that in the past they would not have, and naturally take a conservative view.

The problem we have in New Zealand at the moment is a crisis of confidence.

The one thing my parents didn’t have in their day was a Governor of the Reserve Bank who could give some leadership.

In my view that is one thing that hasn’t changed.

The word crisis is so over-used these days that it has almost lost its meaning, but frankly the law and order situation in this country is a crisis in the true sense of the word.

In fact in some areas of the country – South Auckland for example – it appears that law and order as we know it has completely broken down.

And the question is why.  My view is that we are pumping huge resources into the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff, where we should be stopping those that are likely to fall over that cliff.

We – the humble taxpayers – spend a fortune on legal aid – why don’t we spend that money on preventing crime.

Why don’t we have a fair and reasonable review of the New Zealand Police.  The New Zealand Police force is seriously under resourced.  We hear all this garbage about increasing police numbers by 1000 but lets look at the facts.

For years, when the police have asked for better pay they have been fobbed off with extra perks.  Now when a police officer leaves the college in Porirua, he or she starts with 7 weeks holiday per year.  They then get toil – time off in lieu – which can add up to several more weeks leave per year.  Many officers struggle to take the time off they are owed.

The truth is that most police officers don’t necessarily want that much time off.  They would prefer to have more standard leave provisions and to be paid a decent wage.

The government has lost the plot.  Take the wider public service for instance.  The government, concerned that they are failing to retain valuable civil servants, have announced they are going to give them an extra weeks leave.

How does that help?

How does a civil servant, including the police officer, pay for the inflated price of petrol or cheese with an extra weeks leave.  What they want is a wage that allows them to continue to serve their country.

And this propensity to grant extra leave rather then extra money, compounds the problem of the lack of service from civil servants – particularly the police.

It sounds wonderful to hear that we have an extra 1000 police to protect us. The truth is that inexperience is replacing experience and a substantial proportion of them are on leave anyway.

Until we sort out the resourcing of our police force the situation in South Auckland will get worse and spread throughout the country.

I am sure – if my kids were asked to name one word that came to mind, when discussing their upbringing – it would be the word consequence

If there was one thing I drummed into their little brains it was that their actions would have consequences. If they behaved well, there would be positive and good consequences, and if they were naughty there would be negative or bad consequences. And I make no excuses for the fact that sometimes that meant a smack on the bum.

So I was delighted when John Key announced the National Party’s policy on troubled youth yesterday. Delighted, because for too long these young yobbos have been able to roam our streets, tagging and terrorising, stabbing and stealing, and society seemed powerless to stop them.

For those dregs of society, unsociable and unlawful behaviour had no consequences.

So I applaud John Key’s announcement – the policy may need a little modification but at least he has recognised the problem and decided to do something about it.

Contrast this policy with Labour’s track record in the area of youth crime. In eight years Labour has totally failed to recognise and address the growing problem.

And in response to John Key’s address, Annette King came out with a statement that epitomises Labour’s whole approach to governance.

She said that National’s policy was short sighted because it concentrated on the minority who are trouble makers and ignored the vast majority who were good citizens.

How bloody silly is that? The policy announced, was specifically developed to deal with the trouble makers – that is the whole point of the exercise – a point clear to you and I, but obviously lost on Annette King.

Labour and its army of law drafters, has inflicted so many unnecessary laws and regulations on us over the last eight years, and now it would appear they want us to ignore the huge and growing problem of delinquent youngsters whilst we concentrate on those who are productive members of society.

Talk about putting your head in the sand.

Anyway, at least it’s election year.