In January 2009 I broke up a fight between around 30 youths outside Henderson Mall. I don’t think I would do that now.
I had been in my Henderson electorate office. It was still school holidays and I was there by myself catching up on some work. John Key called and asked me to look into subsidising school holiday programmes for people who couldn’t afford them. He had just spent the school holidays with his own children and said that he had been thinking about how hard it would be for those that couldn’t afford outings or school holiday programmes.
I liked the idea and thought I would take a walk in the sunshine, think about it and go and get some lunch at the local mall. The area outside the mall was known as a youth hangout and many retailers had been reporting to me about drug transactions and general intimidation that some were causing. It was affecting their businesses and scaring some of the locals.
I had been working with local police and community patrols to try and do something about it. As I walked towards the mall I saw a large gathering of young people. There was tension in the air and there was pushing and shoving. That soon turned to punches being thrown.
I saw retailers locking their doors with customers huddling inside and looking genuinely scared. I felt really angry and without thinking about it too much ran into the middle of the fight and started shouting at them to stop and tried to separate them. In the few seconds it took me to get there I told myself not to physically touch any of the kids (they were about 15 to 20 years old), not to swear and to try not to get hit myself.