Kate Hawkesby: Crime will continue until someone steps up and addresses the problem

I thought it was ironic this week when Grant Robertson admitted the rollout of the ram raid support for businesses has been too slow. Slow would be an understatement. I just can’t work out what’s going on here. Because every time you ask the Government about it, they say they’re chasing it, they’re telling Police to speed up, they want it sorted. Yet when you speak to Sunny Kaushal from the Dairy and Business Owners Association, he says the Government is the hold up. He says he has to chase government Ministers for months on end and even then they don’t get back to him. Then there’s the Police – the meat in the middle of this particular sandwich, the people the Government says are charged with sorting this, and they’re allegedly not doing it fast enough. So, if true, whose fault it that? Is it the Police’s? And if it is on them, is it because they are too under resourced? If they are, is that because this soft on crime government just hasn’t backed them enough, hasn’t supported them and resourced them enough? Or is it that they’re so snowed under with the surge in youth crime and offending these days that they literally just can’t keep up? Or is it that this Police Commissioners’ approach involves so much weighty bureaucracy and admin, that Police can barely get out from under their desks? I know a lot of Police listen to this show and they often message me and say that’s the case, some have even said they’ve left or are leaving because of it, because they literally can’t just get on and do their jobs. Being a police officer these days is not what they thought it would be, or what it used to be. So I don’t actually buy that this is the Police’s fault. But, back to the fund. This was announced back in May, this $6 million to help businesses, and here we are in the middle of November, and it’s still not sorted. Seven businesses have been helped. Just seven. At least five of those were trials set up by Sunny himself. So what have they actually achieved here? They’re supposed to be doing 40 to 50 business assessments a week Robertson says, yet they’re not. So why not? In a little bit of buck passing, Robertson says it’s up to Hipkins as Police Minister to chase this. So what does Hipkins say? Well he says since he took over in June – after Poto Williams was rolled from the portfolio based on incompetence, that’s me saying that by the way, not Hipkins, but he claimed once he took over, that Police were “hurrying up.” So why, six months on from the announcement, do we still have so little action? Is it acceptable that the Government looks to blame others – ie the Police, for stuff they just can’t seem to deliver on? Robertson was at pains to point out how awful being a victim of a ram raid must be, but every day there are more of them because this Government just cannot get its act together and provide the help needed. I don’t think blaming the Police is fair. This whole thing has become a political football that no one seems brave enough to actually own and do something about. You can see why these jewellers and dairies and liquor stores are beside themselves, and you can see why the ram raiders continue. Because no one’s owning this.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.