Newshub’s incredibly bad gang take

• mickysavage
• 2 years ago
• Categories: crime, jacinda ardern, labour, Media, national, police, social media lolz, the praiseworthy and the pitiful, you couldn't make this shit up

Yesterday the Government announced a slate of new powers designed to address gang violence.

The list is pretty impressive.  It includes:

• New powers to target the associates of organised criminal groups and restrain their property, when it is clear their legitimate finances would’ve been unlikely to have enabled them to acquire the assets.
• A new court order that will mean criminals based overseas who have assets in New Zealand will face losing those assets, unless they can provide proof within two months that they obtained their property legally.
• Amending a technical gap, which will allow the Official Assignee – the government body that manages assets restrained under CPRA – to hold seized property longer than 28 days while the court considers an application for a restraining order.
• Allow funds in KiwiSaver schemes to be subject to civil forfeiture orders, eliminating the potential for criminals to hide illegal funds in their KiwiSaver.

I presume that Newshub were given a heads up on what was being proposed.  So how did it respond?  By running a bullshit line suggesting that Labour was soft on gangs because, can you believe this, an individual gang member said that gangs should not vote for National.

Yep no reporting on what was proposed.  No comment about Bill of Rights issues or the nuance of confiscation orders.  Just a denial to an allegation that Labour may be soft on gangs because someone said on social media that his mates should not vote for National.

Is this how turgid our media has become?  Do they really think that Fox News is a model to follow?  That instead of reporting on issues our meadia should engage in cheap shots against the Prime Minister that are reality and substance free?

If there is an issue that should be reported on it is how naff National’s proposals are.

Newshub could have said how weird it was to propose that pictures of gang members wearing bling should be banned.  Or that bits of paper given to gang members would stop them associating with each other or that banning gang insignia would somehow make things better.

They could have theorised that the bling ban made gang members, not to mention pretty well everyone else, thought that National was willing to scratch any anti gang itch for support.

To be frank I have reservations about the confiscation proposal.  This could give the police the power to harass marginalised communities.  Harassing someone the police think are criminals by using the lower civil evidential threshold of something being more likely than not appears at first blush to undermine a fundamental principle of the Criminal Law requiring proof beyond reasonable doubt.  A deeper discussion needs to be had.

But don’t look to Newshub as a place where this discussion can occur.  They are far too busy running ridiculous hit pieces on Jacinda Ardern.