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Matthew Hooton: What’s gone ‘wrong’ with the millennials?

Author
Matthew Hooton,
Publish Date
Mon, 2 Jan 2017, 8:38AM
Revelers enjoy the Rhythm and Vines festival in Gisborne (NZ Herald)
Revelers enjoy the Rhythm and Vines festival in Gisborne (NZ Herald)

Matthew Hooton: What’s gone ‘wrong’ with the millennials?

Author
Matthew Hooton,
Publish Date
Mon, 2 Jan 2017, 8:38AM

When you agree to host talkback over the summer break, you say to the station manager: “But nothing happens over summer. What the hell are we going to talk about?”

And the station manager replies: “Don’t worry, as long as you get through the first week, the second will be a breeze: there’ll be a big teenage riot on New Year’s Eve and you’ll be able to talk about that all week.”

I even had the cops lined up to come on the show today to talk about the riot.  I was going to take the cops’ side and ask why they didn’t get the batons out earlier!

But the millennials have let us all down.

According to the police, pretty much well behaved on New Year’s Eve.

“There were no significant issues or incidents reported to Police at any of the main events or celebrations,” say the police.

There were just minor disorder incidents, and a few liquor-ban breaches and intoxication incidents.

Celebrations in the Auckland and Wellington CBDs, in Hagley Park and Cathedral Square in Christchurch, Dunedin, Queenstown and Wanaka all went to plan with no seriously bad behavior, say the cops.

Even at Rhythm & Vines and good old Whangamata or Mt Maunganui pretty much everyone was well behaved.

So my question is: What’s wrong with this generation of teenagers and twenty-somethings?  Didn’t they get the memo that New Year’s Eve is about drugs, booze, and fighting with the cops?

In fact, it turns out that what we’re learning is that the generation born in the late 1990s and early 2000s is the first since the Second World War to be better behaved than their parents. They don’t drink or do drugs as much as their parents, and they’re even starting having sex later.

So this morning we’re going to ask the police: What’s gone ‘wrong’ with the Millennials?  How come they’re so well-behaved?  Or is it that the cops are doing their jobs differently?

We’ll be talking to top cop Richard Chambers about what’s different about today’s teens and today’s front-line cops that made this year’s New Year’s Eve one of the best for New Zealand in living memory – and one of the worst for talkback hosts!

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