Underwhelming

John Key's State of the Nation speech - boot camps for young offenders, apprenticeship-type scheme (presumedly extended from existing one), forced parental classes if your kid offends, some longer sentences for under 16s.

THAT'S your big State of the Nation speech? Colour me underwhelmed and disappointed. Why can't this guy come up with something interesting enough that I'm actually keen to have him as PM? Labour seems as light on policy but at least I have their recent policy implementations to go on.

I suspect many of those arent his personal views. The times i have heard him speak he has come across fairly pragmatic in his views.

But yeah, nothing to be particularly interested in.

Exactly, which I've always been impressed with. But they just aren't backing up that with anything of interest - if a completely fresh face wants to win an election away from a long-incumbent you should be pointing out the significant changes you'll make, surely?

I just keep liking the sound of the guy in various interviews and the like (always seemed to do well with Havoc in what is a constantly pro-Labour interview), but just get entirely underwhelmed whenever policy is discussed.

His speech wasn't that all-covering was it?

I think we are at the stage or near it when something has to be done about youth crime. The notion that reducing poverty would address it has been shown to be wrong in the past decade. I'm not so sure that waiting until a kid is 16 or 17 is the solution... some of the worst offenders seem to be well on their way at 15 or younger. It is a thankless effort to solve it - you either do nothing and look like asses, or come down hard on it and look like an old-school headmaster caning someone.

I can't wait for Labour's usual "promising trends in these areas" type line when they do theirs tomorrow (or is it Weds?)

R

Yeah and on that note - it bothers me that the UN is towing the no prison for under 18's.

I think we need a combination approach, the thread here is a good start http://www.biggie.co.nz/interaction/forum/viewtopic.php?t=197665

but we also need to been seen to be being hard on the worst, repreat offenders so that people see justice and dont get the perception that a) people get away with shit b) if you offend you wont get caught and if you do you wont get punished.

I suspect boot camp will do more to help little princes and princesses than south Auckland taggers.

actually on the note of the linked thread. Stopping them from becoming criminals is one thing but properly dealing with the existing criminals is another.

I agree. I can't understand when people say longer prison sentences don't work - they must work in some ways.. keeping the worst people out of public longer.. and for kids growing up seeing that certain crimes mean spending your teens and 20s locked in a small room.

I still think the idea I proposed in another thread was worth developing: the progressively (and manadatory) longer non-parole periods the more you are convicted. It serves everyone's interest best - giving first time criminals a chance to set their crap out, but in the knowledge that a career in crime will only mean they spend more and more time behind bars (after proving themselves to be beyond rehabilitation).

I also think rehabilitation needs to be revamped from scratch. It's obviously not working the way we do it. Throwing more money wont fix it - it needs new ideas (and not from the Green Party )

R

Yup - his own notes on it are titled A Fresh Start for NZ: State of the Nation.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/asset/Key2008AFreshStartforNewZealand.doc

I've got nothing against the policies announced in there, but they aren't massive changes from the existing policies in place. Just underwhelmed if that's what he comes up with for his big State of the Nation speech...

oh well unlike the previous dude he doesn't seem to have alientaed a fair chunk of potential voters

but yawn

it would be wrong for this chap to get the big job without ever having to actually announce some serious policy... which could be the case

second yawn

A state of the nation speech? It looks more like he watched TVNZ news for the last seven days then wrote something on the hoof.

I also note that he wants to "contract out" some of these boot camps - and that National is all in favour of private prisons.

This is were creating a prison-industrial complex gets you:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19152.htm

oh was that what it was?

A real conservative wouldn't spout this sort of sensible social work and be a f*cking merchant of liquid money death.

For young offenders I think we need to go back to basics. These little bastards are turning into criminals because they can. The slow escalation of bad behaviour, anti-social and abusive behaviour, petty crimes, more serious crimes, assaults etc, all go pretty much ignored until someone gets seriously attacked, stabbed or killed.

Then we stick em in jail and expect it to make some difference - the only thing it really achieves is keeping them off the street for X months until they can then continue unchanged from exactly where they left off.

General humiliation would work well. Minor crimes like shop lifting and tagging would quickly lose their appeal if the offender found himself wearing a pink dress for a few days while being paraded around in front of his mates at school haha

so helen's gonna keep the little brats in skool until 18?

that'll work

policies based on our media driven fear of youth

policies aimed at those whom can't vote

shaping up to be a winner of a election year

:yawn:

Do you think there is a problem with youth crime or not BD?

glad you asked - all crime is a problem bob

I choose not to be afraid of our younger members of society

Precisely. Underwhelming on all sides.

Do you think it is being adequately dealt with and or that there should be youth specific programmes?

I think most people agree we need to do something other than what we are doing and like any issue (including some that are close to your heart) many people over-react and the media makes its issues out of that.

While i dont really agree with vocational training from school i think it cant be worse than whats happening now.

The other things is that even with a job skill many of these people arent going to be fit for employment, but at least there will be one less thing keeping them from being useful.

The other thing that struck me about the boot camps is that im not sure i really want criminals with good discipline... lazy stupid ones are so much easier to catch.

I'd prefer our military were focused on their own training and defence of our nation and other roles that is their domain

pushing problem youth (outside of the work they already do in this area) on them seems counter productive to their primary role

one hopes those in boot camp aren't given any combat training - imagines a army of disciplined fighters tagging my fence

I giggled a little at the labour MP whom suggested Key's strategies apply to about 1000 people

as for Labour's solution - as yawntastic as nationals

we already have many schemes and the like in place, can't they focus on improving what is there? (yeah not a vote winning tactic)

short term keeping people in training will reduce the beneficery numbers... but will it actually help these people

what ever happened to empowering our youth???? These schemes seem to be designed to punish them

The reality is you cant forcibly empower someone (personally I hate the word with a passion).

there is little you can do by force that will work long term (except kill them)

I believe in allowing people options - options for education, options for decent employment (this is an area we are lacking in big time), a chance to own their own house or whatever they aspire to etc etc

having both major parties kick of their year with "nanny state" policies is disturbing

We really need a good old fashioned war, to cull some of them problem youth

We sure as hell arent lacking in decent employment.

Unless you think people who didnt pay attention at school or want to walk straight into a 100k pa job deserve fulfilling creative jobs as a right?

Unless NZ gets its worker productivity up we will have very few good jobs but at the moment theres a shortage of people who actually want to work, but if you do there is a lot of work for you at good pay.

productivity will increase as (sorry I can't resist) workers are empowered to perform

wage rates & conditions need addressing - for the majority

so we should pay them more and they will work harder?

Perhaps if we kicked the unions into touch and were able to pay the harder workers more the others wouldnt take a free ride.... but apart from that there is very little evidence that increasing workers pay or even happiness increases productivity (assuming the work conditions arent absolute crap to begin with).

In fact there is a fair amount of evidence that trying too hard to make workers happy decreases productivity overall and happiness in the medium-long term.

note: i am NOT suggesting a treat them mean approach to HR.

The fact is the NZ productivity is pretty shit (ie $$$ in:output and until it improves ramping pay up will mean less jobs remain and those that do will be generally higher skilled.

You read my mind. Was thinking the same thing this morning. Do they set up a special unit for reject/punks or put them into basic training with others?

Would you join the army as a career if you knew a couple of the guys in your training unit were probably there in lieu of jail? Makes you reaaaally want to trust your unit.

I'm sure they've thought of that and have some idea. The army no doubt is good with this kind of stuff.

R

I dont think they go through basic training, it would be more like the disipline/confidence/team building exercises that are part of the army. I think it will do some of them good - there was a show in the UK where people were taken on these and it *looked like* ~50% of them got some good results, another 30% seemed to get something out of it.

From Public Address, not sure of where it was said, Morning Report perhaps?

Amen. One of the wonderful things about Western states is that we treat the military as a servant of security, not as some grab-bag milieu that is a trainer of youth etc.

BTW Clark PWNED Key.

Get Outward Bound to do it then. The Army's role is to fight NZ's wars.

I dont think its an army role at all - simple army style which could be anything. I would assume they would have counselling and other social workers too.

dnt thnk so

Thats not what the media/polling is saying.

75% in favor of keys policy in online polls (admittedly though they can easily be skewed, are self selecting etc).

Clark: constructive
Key: tired

key looks bright eyed to me

clark very tired looking and ready for retirement

While I wouldn't go with PWNED, I tend to agree (this is based on speech content as I read transcripts, didn't see coverage). Primarily because she was coming from a position of incumbency so could hold a more positive message where Key had to go on the negative attack. Combined with a "send the kids to army training message and force their parents to take a course" you're never going to come off like a positive, constructive guy.