Mike's Minute: Do Labour expect us to believe them on crime?

I have found one of the Prime Minister's real skills - announcing bollocks with a straight face. How is it humanly possible to stand there in front of the nation's media and tell us that when it comes to crime, when it comes to ram raids, we have had a gutsful. Have we Chris? When did you work that out, you insightful genius, you? Did you work that out when the National Party announced that those filming these sorts of events will get extra sentencing, because it's an aggravating event? And so you copied it? Or did you work it out when you saw yet another poll with your party tanking because, among the many other things you’ve cocked up, crime is a catastrophe and your hair-brained plan to let people out, or not put them away, or stick an ankle bracelet on and watch them abscond anyway, hasn’t really worked? Or have you actually suspected it all along, but you just couldn’t bring yourself to admit what an abject failure the whole mad, ideological balls-up has been? Anyway, there you were announcing tougher sentences. Here is the next problem, as we outlined yesterday. We had the 19-year-old facing two ram raid charges, both of which carried maximum ten-year sentences, in front of Judge Cassidy. She also said, like good, old “tough as nails, take no prisoners” Chris Hipkins, that people are sick of it, they are fed up. And then after telling the punk about the ten years of jail, she went on to discount the sentence to the point of 14 months jail. But because that’s below two years Government policy kicks in, spot the soft on crime Government policy, so they will now be spending a few months at home with name suppression. So when Chris tells you about jail, firstly you have to believe he believes it, which he clearly doesn’t, given he has had 6 years to sort it but is now in full panic mode. Then even if you can bring yourself to believe he believes it, you then have to have judges that have a backbone. Desperation in politics is an embarrassing and ugly thing. There is nothing more unedifying than someone heading up a Government about to lose, literally making stuff up in the hope that you are fool enough to believe what they have done for six years doesn't matter, and it's what they do now in panic, that does. If you're that naive or, dare I suggest, thick, you and Labour deserve each other.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.