Barry Soper: Tough talk on dairy robberies from Beehive

Paula Bennett is talking the tough talk, three months from an election. Photo / Greg Bowker

The criminals will be shivering in their boots at the tough talk that comes out of the Beehive.

There's something about National Governments' Police Ministers who clearly believe tough talk will make them sit up and take notice, and the rhetoric goes way back.

John Banks, who was brought up in a criminal household, once describing Mt Eden Prison as his ancestral home.

He was made Police Minister by Jim Bolger and never held back.

This man, who confessed he'd wanted to become a cop but was too short, was a big talker when it came to the crims.

He never minced words and when the low-lifes, as he often referred to offenders, were sent to prison, he didn't have much pity saying they'd be wallowing in what he said were Club Meds.

Move forward to the John Key Government and Judith "Crusher" Collins, so named because of her crackdown on boy racers, passing a law that confiscated their cars and put them through a crusher.

Unfortunately for her she never presided over a flattened car, that was done by Anne Tolley posing for the cameras with her stilettos triumphantly perched on a roof.

Now we've got Paula Bennett talking the tough talk, three months out from the election, about an issue that's getting a lot of adverse publicity, the growing number of dairy robberies.

Dairy owners are valued members of the community, known in the neighbourhood as hard workers who care greatly for their families.

If you've ever seen the play Krishnan's Dairy, based on a shop in Wellington, you'll know how hard they have to work for so little reward.

Well to their rescue is Police Minister Bennett who's extracted almost two million bucks out of the Government's coffers to turn up to 600 dairies considered high risk into fortresses, armed with fog canons and panic alarms.

They'd better be quick acting though considering most burglaries take less than a minute.

Bennett says they're doing what they can to keep dairy workers safe from what she calls the cowardly thugs.

The Minister refuses to accept the Government's partly to blame even though the robber's target is more often than not cigarettes, which are every year subjected to a 10 per cent increase in excise tax.

The Government's enemy from within, Act leader David Seymour, put it into a bit of perspective saying the fortress move's cynical, coming when it does, and will do little to make the majority of dairies safe.

Channel a bit more of that excise tax into what he calls tobacco crime and equip dairies with security systems like strong lock ciggie dispensers, Seymour suggests.

Who would have ever thought cigarettes would become the new criminal currency?