Remember back in February, the Government announced it was proposing to give police officers the power to issue move on orders to deal with, as it's described, disorderly behaviour in public places. What they mean is antisocial homeless people who are startling the horses, putting people off coming into the city, creating all sorts of disgusting messes for business owners to clean up. People who don't comply with the move on orders could be fined up to $2,000 or face three months in prison. Documents proactively released by the Ministry of Justice show that officials estimate up to six people a year could be jailed for noncompliance with the move on orders. 

The Labour Party obtained some documents under the Official Information Act, and those documents quoted Treasury saying it didn't support the orders given the benefits of the proposal are not clearly evidenced and implementation will exacerbate justice sector cost pressures. Treasury also questioned the highly uncertain modelling suggesting six people could be jailed per year. Treasury seems to think there will be far more than six. 

I don't know why they would think that. You can kill somebody as a drunk driver and not go to prison. You can commit all sorts of heinous crimes and be excused because you had a dreadful upbringing again, having been excused the previous two to three times you appeared before the beak. So I don't know why Treasury suddenly thinks that all of a sudden the judges are going to grow some cojones and send people to prison, because if they're not doing it for people who kill others because of their drunk driving and dangerous driving, they're not going to do it for some poor hapless soul who's got nowhere to go and addiction issues, are they? 

Paul Goldsmith, the Justice Minister, said just like the gang legislation, which prompted similar warnings from similar agencies, the Government was confident in its policy. He said police can operationalise this —what an ugly, terrible word, but nonetheless, that's the one he used— in a way that's highly effective. He said the policy was about reclaiming the streets and city centres for the enjoyment of everybody. He reiterated that only people who refuse the orders will face prosecution and said a move on order is not a criminal charge, although refusing to comply with one is. 

I have an awful lot of sympathy for retailers, business owners, those who live in the city or the cities around New Zealand having to put up with antisocial behaviour from very odd people. Not everybody is like that. There are a lot of people who are on the street who are lovely, who are perfectly reasonable humans who have had a string of bad luck – there but for the grace of God go you or I. They are not all the same at all. 

But having wandered the length of Queen Street at the end of last year, it was a beautiful day, I had to be somewhere, and I thought I'd take the long way and see for myself what the city was like. Yeah, there are real issues to deal with within, certainly within Auckland, Auckland's Queen Street, and no doubt in your main centre as well. There were drunken shirtless men brawling very close to the Louis Vuitton and the Christian Louboutin shops. There were troubled individuals displaying aggressive and frightening behaviour, the yipping, yelping man that jumped out at passersby. He wasn't bad, he was just sad, but you know, it was alarming, and especially if you had the kids with you while you were doing some last minute Christmas shopping. It wasn't conducive to an easy, pleasant experience. And it should have been, it was a beautiful day, you know, there are some lovely historic buildings, there's some nice parks where you can sit. It should have been lovely. 

But because of the unpredictable and in some cases aggressive behaviour of a small number of people, it wasn't. And I haven't been back since. But when the inner-city motels were opened to the homeless during Covid and communities were formed and made, it created a whole new vibe, if you will, in the city. When you have nothing, a routine, a bunch of mates, a place you know can be everything. So once they arrived, they stayed. I have some sympathy for those who are homeless for myriad reasons, but unacceptable behaviour is unacceptable behaviour. When people are brawling, when they're being public nuisances, when they're impinging on the right of other individuals to walk freely, when they're using shop entrances as bathrooms that other people then have to clean up, that is behaviour that needs to be curbed. And if move on orders help restore order to the cities, if move on orders sharpen the focus of social agencies to find permanent homes for those without them, so much the better.