Becs McKay

So, in the final few days of this election period, we learn that National is now not the trusted party to manage anything we elect and pay tax for our government to do.

Anything, that is, except for managing crime.

But in what has become the National brand of mistruths, disinformation, and manipulated data, let’s take a deeper dive into some of their claims, shall we?

1. “Ram-raids are down”: Police data shows us that ram raids came down under the previous Labour government, picked up briefly under our current Coalition, before continuing their trend down (despite any misleading graphs claiming credit that you may have seen amongst National’s AI slop and attacks on Chloe Swarbrick of late).

2. “Youth crime is down”: Similarly, youth crime has trended down for the last decade, despite a small Covid-era bump. The data National used to manipulate us here came from 1058 Oranga Tamariki individuals, most of which aged out of the system during National’s time in power to God knows where.

National used them as a data point of now “non-offending”. I’m sure you understand how this little detail skews things in the data set, as well as how it nicely reflects their trademark lack of care and consideration for anyone but the wealthy and sorted.

3. “There are fewer victims of violent crime”: it’s difficult to know exactly how many fewer victims National claims there are as the figures they publish keep changing. The tool National uses here – the NZ Crime and Victims Survey – is made up of 8000 individuals and excludes the violent crimes of murder, manslaughter, abduction, and crimes against children ….you also have to have a “fixed abode” to participate. So that means rough sleepers, transient populations, and women in family violence refuges aren’t included. And wouldn’t you know it, but these groups are statistically more likely to be victims of violent crime.

And based on National’s record of marginalising vulnerable groups and ignoring the bigger picture determinants of crime (and crime prevention), is anyone surprised at this point? In fact, Police data shows us an actual increase of 7 percent in violent crime under this government.

All this to say, as you head to the voting booths in these final hours, or maybe reflect on your vote if it was for this current government who’s “plan that is working” remains as counter-intuitive, baseless, and lacking in detail as ever, know that violent crime is not down. And where it is, National cannot claim credit.

But hey, rough sleepers can now be fined $2000 (which they definitely don’t have) or spend three months in our thriving prison industry (up 25 percent under this government) where we taxpayers will fit the bill at a rate of between $120,000 and $180,000 a year.

That’s this Government’s record. That’s the detail they don’t want to talk about. God help us all if they get one day more to continue breaking the basics and screwing our future.