Mike's Minute: Time is up on excuses for thuggery downtown

Although Auckland gets the headlines, it is not alone when it comes to the destruction and degrading of downtown areas.  The bus facility in Dunedin has been dealing with a death, but as my daughter who lives there told me, it's been a mess for years and you avoid it.  Quick question: what's the point of a public transport facility if it is famously bad, so you don’t get near it?  New Plymouth I read is having growing issues, and good old Auckland once again last night had the Police Minister as their guest, as a series of business owners told their story yet again.  I know he is a regular here, but you can't fault Mark Mitchell on engagement. If the government has one bloke who is determined to sort some stuff, its him.  He fronts, he listens, and he explains.  Trouble is, we get impatient around issues like crime and thuggery and we are triggered by the one event that went pear shaped, not the 37 that were contained or quelled.  Which is not to say any of it is acceptable, but the downtown Auckland story is one of despair, and deprivation, and dishonesty. Leader after leader, from mayors offices, to business groups, to police, to ministers, to councillors have all had plenty to say over the years.   But its failed. And in that failure actually might be a bit of hope, if this government has the fortitude to act.  The reason we are here is because we wanted to try hugging people. We would let them out of prison, we would give them home detention, we might not even charge them at all. And if we did, we could rely on a nice judge to wag his finger and tell us not to do it again after he read the cultural report.  The advantage of that is we know what doesn’t work. Is tossing them in jail the answer? Probably not long term.  But surely its reached the point where it’s the best we have.  As Levin showed us over the weekend, the respect for law and order is gone, and it's gone because we got soft, and thugs love soft and take advantage of it.  When the centre of a countries biggest city is a no go zone and there is an industry in meetings of anger, despair and exasperation from businesses going broke because of fear...  Time is up on excuses.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.