Minister Chris Hipkins inherited the police portfolio five months ago. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Police Minister Chris Hipkins has hit back at criticism of Labour’s approach to crime by calling National’s rhetoric lazy.
His comments follow National leader Christopher Luxon describing the Labour Government as soft on crime and describing their policies as “kumbaya” and “a lot of mush”.
National recently launched a policy that would send young offenders to military camps to break the cycle of repeat offending.
Hipkins isn’t a fan of this idea.
Speaking to The Front Page podcast, the Minister of Police said he wants to focus on things that work based on past experience.
“The ‘tough on crime’ rhetoric is actually the easy part, but it doesn’t work,” he says in response to the clamour for Labour to introduce tougher penalties for young offenders.
An example he uses is the introduction of the boy racer car-crushing legislation, which was introduced under National in 2009 to discourage young offenders from illicit racing.
“I think in the entire time that law change has been in place, we’ve only seen [a few] cars actually crushed. Boy racers were still out there wreaking havoc. The rhetoric just didn’t work.”
He says the military academy policy falls similarly short when it comes to measuring its effectiveness.
“They’re doubling down on a policy that doesn’t actually reduce offending by that much, even by their own estimates. One of their own candidates said over the weekend that the potential reduction in re-offending was only about 15 per cent.”
This policy is only the latest instance of the National Party using the issue of crime to attack the performance of the Government – which has piled pressure on Hipkins in his five months on the police portfolio.
“The politics in this space is often very lazy. The National Party’s political approach in this space is very lazy. They haven’t sought to understand what’s going on and what’s actually going to make a difference.”
He further adds that the notion that Labour is soft on crime doesn’t stack up when viewed in the context of the Government’s systematic targeting of gangs in recent months.
“There have been over 15,000 criminal charges filed against gang members since Operation Cobalt was started earlier this year and nearly 20,000 infringement offence notices have been issued to gang members. Police are out there very actively policing in that space.”
But is this enough to encourage the public to feel safe when crime feels so much more visible than it once was? And if the Government isn’t willing to get tough on young offenders, then what exactly are they doing to stop ram raids?
Listen to The Front Page podcast for Hipkins’ explanations on these complex issues.
Warren Pay, jailed for murder, is now free after being re-sentenced for manslaughter.