Analysis: Christopher Luxon is unlikely to find himself on the back foot at Parliament this week, unlike the last time he announced a major crime policy.
National’s November reveal of a plan to send youth offenders to boot camps run by the military was a bit of a political debacle. The last attempt to do so, under the previous National government, was shuttered after it was found not to be working. The policy initiative by Luxon and the party’s justice spokesperson Paul Goldsmith was cast as vindictive and ineffectual.
With its announcement at its annual conference on Sunday of a package of changes to sentencing and victim support, National has learned the lessons of the boot camp disaster. The headlines will zoom in on the tough-on-crime element of the policy, but there’s something there for everyone.
A restriction on judge’s discretion to discount sentences, ensuring sentences aren’t reduced more than 40 percent from their starting point, would address a growing number of anecdotes of multi-year prison sentences watered down to home detention and community service. Alongside the (previously-announced) restoration of Three Strikes rules, this measure allows Luxon to adopt a tough-on-crime posture.
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“I make no apology for being tough on law and order. This Government obviously isn’t putting the public’s safety first, but a National government will,” Luxon said on Sunday – a big applause line.
The focus isn’t solely on punishing criminals, however. Cash currently going to pay for cultural reports for offenders would be redirected to victim support, boosting that budget by about a third, National said. And remand prisoners – currently 43 percent of all prisoners – would have access to rehabilitation services that are currently restricted to people who have already been convicted and sentenced.
“It makes sense that if you have people locked up, you should do what you can to turn their lives around. That’s ultimately better for them, and better for all of us. The more offenders who change their ways, the safer our communities will be,” Luxon said.
Labour was quick to criticise the policy, as expected, but it won’t have as easy a time of denigrating it as it did the boot camp one.
“He’s talking about being tough-on-crime, soft-on-crime. We don’t talk about those things. We talk about what works,” Justice Minister Kiri Allan said.
She focused on the fact National doesn’t know how many sentences would be lengthened by its policy, nor how many additional prisoners it would create. That’s a troubling blindspot, but Goldsmith says the data simply isn’t available – it’s more due to bureaucratic incompetence at the Ministry of Justice than to a blunder by National.
In some ways, the new crime policy exemplifies National’s focused, policy-based approach to the campaign highlighted at the conference. Sunday saw three presentations and Q&A sessions by National MPs on the problems and policy solutions in three important areas: Infrastructure, health and education.
Whatever might be said about the sentencing policy, it’s hard to say it isn’t at least a serious one. That’s the case for much of the rest of National’s policy in the areas traversed on Sunday, too. While boot camps made headlines, that isn’t representative of the stuff National has been putting out this year.
Compare that to Labour, which chose to announce that it would be making no changes to the super age at its own annual congress a month ago. Important, sure, but not new. That conference was much more focused on introducing Chris Hipkins to the party and the country.
The governing party seems to have stagnated since the Budget, which itself failed to have the cut-through Hipkins might have wished. The flagship policy on ECE has been mired in doubts from the sector over whether it can be implemented. The move to scrap $5 prescription fees was a political success, but only because National bungled its response. It is still doubtful if the policy itself will be be a vote-winner with the people Labour is courting.
Against National’s weekly churn of new policy, we’ve seen basically nothing big from Hipkins since the Budget. At best, Labour has been invisible. At worst, it’s been making headlines for ministerial conflict of interest scandals.
Labour will need to seize back the narrative soon, if it wants to bolster its chances going into campaign season. Otherwise Luxon, armed with his array of policies on all of the key issues, starts to look like the Prime-Minister-in-waiting.
