Hosking praises Winston

Mike Hosking writes:

It’s on days like yesterday I honestly believe that under different circumstances, and with a different temperament, New Zealand First could actually have been a significant political force for good.

What they did in killing Labour’s three strikes law repeal is being the party that MMP cries out for.

A sensible, middle of the road, ballast against the madness and extremities that some parties are capable of, even if that party in this case was a mainstream so-called middle of the road operation.

Repealing three strikes was pure madness, it misread the problem, it completely misread the public view and it was hopelessly wanting in terms of an answer. 
People would have died because of it.

Having fewer people in prison, having a more lenient approach to people being punished for crime, giving bad people the benefit of the doubt more often would have, as sure as night follows day, have led in some way shape or form to carnage among innocents who never deserved it.

We could see it, thank the good lord New Zealand First could see it, and they were able to do something about it.

The real danger of the Labour Party was on show in this thinking – they are obsessed, if not blinded, by hand-wringing ideology.

Yep again we owe thanks to NZ First for doing the right thing here. And we should be aware Labour will try again. They are hopelessly out of touch with mainstream NZ on this issue. The average Labour MP will be surrounded by friends and activists who all hate Three Strikes, decrying it over their lattes.

This is a Labour Party that’s a mixture of out of its depth, delusional and inexperienced.

Tell us what you really think Mike!

Three strikes had all of those attributes, and I think back to the interview with Justice Minister Andrew Little a couple of weeks back when I suggested people would die as a result of the nutters being out on bail. And Little said as long as authorities could get to the offender quickly it would be OK.

As though that made any sense at all. So you stab someone, the coppers round you up within half an hour. That’s OK is it Andrew?

It seems it is.

But for this week the three strikes call is a win – and a large one at that. In my mind he gets to do three nutty things before he unbalances the ledger.

Well one of them is suing the head of the public service while Acting PM. So that leaves two more.