Mike's Minute: The PM lacked a backbone this week

Another missed opportunity this week driven by fear and blunt honesty, or lack of it.  When asked on Wednesday in Parliament whether the Government was going to change the law to ban homeless people from camping in downtown areas of this country, the Prime Minister gave us an answer of a scared person.  Technically it may currently be true they have not discussed it in Cabinet. Technically it may be true they haven't passed a law.  But that wasn't the point. The point is trouble in CBDs is crippling entire cities and it needs to stop, and that’s where his answer should have started.  Then he should have gone on to say we have had meetings, and we have worked out no one has the power to really tackle the issue, so we are going to change that.  Then he should have outlined how they were going to change it.  We don’t deal with emotive stories well, because of fear, and that needs to change as well.  Homelessness for many is sad. Not all, but many. There will be addiction, and sorrow, and madness, literally and figuratively, and you can get lost in that if you let yourself and then you end up like the Labour Party – apologising for shocking outcomes.  Rotorua anyone?  But each part of any given emotive story has a weighing. If the weighing is wrong on one part, then disaster ensues. Being afraid to deal with a very real problem for fear of offence is overweighing the plight of the homeless.  The homeless need help but they can't wreck the joint simply because of their status. They don’t get more rights because of who they are, and we can't look away just because it's easy to do so.  Also requiring their share of weight is every business operator, bus driver, worker and citizen who wouldn't mind using their CBD but doesn’t, or is fearful too because our leaders won't deal with hard issues.  No one argues it isn't a problem. We can debate a bit, if you like, on how we resolve it. But resolve it we must and that involves getting the problem out of downtown and it requires the right attitude to do it.  Labour asked the question because they back the homeless. They are happy to wreck cites and businesses and their record shows that.  The Prime Minister failed to show up as a leader and run with a solution, because as he stood, his backbone vanished. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.