OPINION
Stuart Nash, unencumbered by having to toe the party line is throwing his former colleagues under the bus as Labour and other crim-friendly groups start shouting about the coalition Government honouring yet another promise.
Stuart Nash has hit out at his former Labour colleagues over changes to laws targeting gangs he wanted to introduce, but which others wouldn’t progress due to fears they would unfairly target Maori.
Last year the Labour government changed the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act to allow police to seize gang leaders’ property, such as cars and bikes, if valued over $30,000 and if it could not be proven they were paid for legitimately.
But then-police minister Nash wanted the threshold lowered to $0 – a plan he says was dashed by Labour’s Minister of Justice Kiri Allan over concerns it would hurt Maori and would contravene the Bill of Rights.
Speaking to Newstalk ZB’s Mike Hosking this morning, Nash hit out again at Allan, saying at the time his view was “pull your bloody head in”.
He strongly denied that such a move was aimed at or would hurt Maori, saying police were “race-agnostic” when it came to dealing with gangs.
NZ Herald
Of course, it wasn’t aimed at Maori, it was aimed at criminals, no matter what their race. It was Kiri Allan who brought race into it. Nash was right, and Allan was wrong.
Nash told Hosking this morning the conversation was not held in Cabinet – which would make it confidential – but was a conversation he had as soon as he became Police Minister.
He believed $30,000 was too high a threshold because “you can engineer a sale where you can buy a Harley for under $30,000”.
Nash – who took over as Police Minister from Chris Hipkins when the latter became Prime Minister – said the first thing he did in the role was talk to Hipkins about dropping the seizure limit to $0.
“He said, ‘Well, see if you can get it past Kiri [Allan]. And I went to Kiri and said this is what I want to do. And she said ‘No, we need to leave it at $30,000.’”
Nash then asked to take the issue to Cabinet.
“And she said ‘No, this is what it’s going to be.’ She obviously went to Hipkins and Hipkins said, ‘Okay, we’re going to leave it at $30,000?. Why? Because it’s anti-Maori. Bulls***.”
Nash claimed police were “race-agnostic” when it came to gangs.
“It doesn’t matter if they’re Maori, European, Chinese, Indian, what ethnicity – a gang member is a gang member is a gang member and they need to be held to account.”
NZ Herald
Nashy was dead right. Kiri Allan was a crim-friendly politician who brought race into the debate, and Chris Hipkins was a vacillating weasel who lacked the courage to tell his minister to pull her head in.
Nash said the harm gangs perpetrated across communities, including destroying communities through methamphetamine, meant “we need to go really hard” on them.
“I think the men and women in our [police] service do an absolutely brilliant job. But we, as politicians, have got to give them the tools to do this.”
Asked by Hosking if it was fair to say the incident showed a strong Maori caucus in Labour who were protecting “Maori behaviour and Maori issues”, Nash said that was not a fair statement.
He believed Kelvin Davis – who is Maori – would have backed him if the issue had been taken to Cabinet.
Asked if the spat showed Hipkins was a weak leader, Nash said he believed “in this case, he got it wrong”.
“I think he misjudged New Zealanders’ appetite to really go incredibly hard against the gangs.”
NZ Herald
Hipkins was wrong, and gutless. The voting public has had a gutful of gangs predating on society, and want them bashed hard and locked up. But Labour didn’t do that; they cowered under perceived racism from their caucus members.
In the end, we voted to toss the crim-huggers out and bring in a government more attuned to the way ordinary New Zealanders think…and the left can’t fathom that, or the reasons they lost.
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