Larry Williams Drive

Let's talk about crime, because all the politicians are as they often do as election time approaches.Nothing unnerves an electorate like a crime wave and the party that seems the toughest to fight a crime threat gets a boost in the polls.Right now National and ACT are running the line that Labour is soft on crime.Yesterday, Chris Hipkins the Police Minister reiterated that the tough on crime rhetoric is exactly that, rhetoric.This morning Mark Mitchell said that Hipkins refusal to say whether they are either tough or soft on crime is evidence that they are in fact soft on crime.So today, Labour has unveiled what they call a gang crackdown.It's a spruce up of the rules.  Toughening some, closing loopholes, plugging gaps.The overwhelming feeling I had was that I couldn't believe that some of these new offences weren't already offences.Previously under the Crimes Act the crime of threatening with a firearm only applied if you were inside the same house as the good folk you were threatening.So driving by and shoo