August 19, 2016 7:00am by David Farrar

Almost everywhere in a city is within 1 km of a school

Hutt South MP Trevor Mallard believed the monitored property was within one kilometre of a school or playground, meaning it breached rules set down about homing this type of offender in communities.

He intended to raise his concern with Corrections officials this week.

“They appear to have done a round-about route to the school rather than as the crow flies.

I don’t think offenders should be next to schools, but being 1 km away is not that close. The reality is that almost all of Wellington will be within 1 km of a school. There are 174 schools in Wellington and 393 ECE centres. So imagine 567 one km radius circles. That could be up to 1,800 square kms of area. Wellington City is 290 square kms, Lower Hutt 377 kms, Upper Hutt 540, Porirua 182.

So demanding that an exclusion zone be a one km radius from a school is a bit nonsensical.

And arguing it should be as the crow flies rather than along walkable routes is also silly, as you know people can’t actually fly.