John MacDonald: Desperately-needed policy or desperate politics?

Here’s what Chris Hipkins should have said when he made the big announcement yesterday that, if Labour gets to form the next government, it will deliver 300 extra police officers and they’ll have a look at legislation to crack-down on gang convoys.

What he should have said, is: “If you vote for us, we will finally give you what you assumed we were going to give you, until you realised at the last minute that we had let you assume the wrong thing without correcting you”.

Because, when you think back to June this year, that’s all yesterday’s announcement was.

Because back in June, that was when we discovered that the 1800 new police officers that the current police minister and the Labour police ministers before her had crowed-on about for yonks, was actually 1,530 frontline officers and 270 “authorised officers” as the police call them.

And you’ll remember how all the time that Labour was banging on about 1800 new cops, nothing was said about not all of them being frontline, on the beat.

So what they've done now, is take the 270 we thought we were getting - until three months ago - and rounded it up to a tidy 300.

It's a sudden change-of-heart that is next-level cringe. Because of the hypocrisy.

Here’s a quote from some of the things the Labour leader said yesterday: “We know that one of the things that we can do that really helps to tackle crime in our community is to make sure that we have more officers on the beat, and that those police have the tools that they need in order to be able to tackle crime.”

And he said that with a straight face.

He also managed to keep a straight face when he said that the 300 so-called extra cops would change the ratio of cop-per-person in New Zealand from one police officer for every 541 people to one police officer for every 470 people.

And the reason why I was so impressed that he kept a straight face, is because he said that the reduced ratio of cop-per-person would come about by adding the 300 they’re promising if re-elected to the 1800 more cops we have had under Labour.

Again, more fudging. Because we don’t have 1800 more on the beat at all. We have 1,530 frontline officers and 270 “authorised officers”. 270 back in the office.

Police Minister Ginny Anderson was the same yesterday. Equally as brilliant in the straight-face department.

That’s why they should have said yesterday that, if they get re-elected, Labour will deliver what it said it would deliver in the first place. But didn’t.

And that’s why I think this so-called new policy is nothing more than desperate politics.

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