KEY POINTS:
The scourge of Auckland's homeless, Councillor Paul Goldsmith, has one thing in common with his victims - he tends to fade into the shadows each time the spotlight focuses on him and his mean little crusade. The good thing is at least some of his conservative colleagues at Auckland City Council are starting to squirm with embarrassment too, hoping the whole issue will just go away.
On the defensive in Friday's Herald, the Remuera councillor and community services committee chairman submitted a piece claiming he had no plans to "criminalise" homeless people or to pass a bylaw "that would grant powers to uplift the homeless and either dump them out of town or take them to prison".
He then contradicted himself by saying "the community should have the right to ask someone who is lying in the pavement in the middle of our city, in the middle of the day ... to pick up their things and go." He talked of "creative" sanctions for those who refused, "such as obliging offenders to avail themselves of services or to attend appropriate courses for addiction or other problems".
It was the same day the new hairy-chested National Government was railroading legislation though Parliament, including a bill to criminalise the parents of truants. It was enough to make one wonder what was so different from the Nanny state they claimed to be liberating us from?
Whatever Mr Goldsmith now claims his motives are, only three months ago he was declaring his frustration to a Herald reporter that the council could order people around in all sorts of ways, but could not do anything about the people sleeping on footpaths.
He complained that the Bill of Rights limited the council's actions and "maybe all we can do is ask Parliament as loudly and clearly as we can to bring in legislation that allows the police to do the job - picking people up and moving them somewhere else".
Mr Goldsmith's one-man crusade was sparked one winter's morning when, while striding to work, he caught sight of two homeless people on a mattress in a puddle of urine in Queen St. Not the most salubrious of sights to be sure. But nor was it part of an epidemic of such behaviour.
In June, the annual census of primary homeless people living within a 3km radius of Sky Tower uncovered 91 people.
That dealing with the problem is a little more complicated than Mr Goldsmith's suggestion of "obliging offenders to avail themselves of services", is highlighted by the fact that on the night 91 were counted sleeping rough, there were at least 267 boarding house vacancies.
Many of the 91 will have been banned for behavioural reasons from the boarding houses and the downtown emergency shelter. They'll be the ones who have fallen through the gaps in the mental health and social welfare services. Spending up to $50,000 of city funds "to explore the development" of a punitive bylaw, is a waste of rates. What's the use of a law enabling the police or Mr Goldsmith to hustle these lost souls from pillar to post, if the so-called problem remains unsolved? In Auckland, the mental health and detox facilities are inadequate or not there.
Citizens and Ratepayers councillors last week delayed approving Mr Goldsmith's call for a new anti-homeless bylaw while officials were sent off to investigate whether the punitive powers the Citrat councillors desire can be achieved by "tweaking" existing public space bylaws.
It's not the compromise they are trying to make it out to be, but a sneaky backdoor attempt to dodge the flak pouring down on them.
Mayor John Banks, who famously spent some time sleeping rough, has questioned the need for the homeless bylaw. Now would be a good time for the mayor to take his mate Mr Goldsmith to one side and pull rank, telling him that on this subject, at least, he knows better.
