It doesn’t take long for the ugliness to surface in a crisis.

We have friends in Auckland who have a visitor from Hawkes Bay staying with them because she is afraid to be alone at night.

She is afraid to be alone at night because her neighbourhood is getting ransacked by gangs stealing stuff.

It is the latest chapter in the Hawkes Bay tragedy. A tragedy that sadly is also obsessing the media to a point they have forgotten other parts of the country, like Gisborne, who at one stage were the centre of the drama, until they weren't.

I note over the weekend the growing anger in Auckland of the 5000 or so who still don’t have power.

Auckland is, comparatively speaking, untouched but the bit that got hit is watching and wondering.

But back in the Bay - as the gangs turn up and the locals form street blockades, the first question you obviously ask is - why do the locals have to form street blockades?

Where are the police? An even more interesting question is, where is the Police Minister?

The Police Minister has been an issue for this Government. When Poto Williams got appointed she turned out to be a shambles. It was Jacinda Ardern's fault.

Like the appointment of Andrew Coster, Williams was a touchy feely sort of idea. The kind of idea Ardern specialised in, until the polling got so bad they had to move her on.

Anyway, once they rolled Williams, Chris Hipkins got the job and watched a lot of ram raiding go on. Fortunately he was saved by the Ardern exit, and once becoming Prime Minister, he handed police back to Stuart Nash. Who, as luck would have it, is a Napier local.

But, sadly, in the part that clearly isn't being attacked by the gangs, because he knew nothing about it until the media told him.

Once the media told him he said they should, and I quote, "pull their heads in".

He didn’t stop there. He said the leadership of the gangs should tell their people to get out of their cars as now is not the time for this behaviour. Sadly no journalist present had the wherewithal to ask, when is the right time for this behaviour?

And dare I go down the track of this Government's record on gangs generally?

So once again, once the hi-vis is no longer needed and some action is, the Government haven't got a clue.

Grant Robertson was also in the Bay, in hi-vis looking at the Redcliffe substation that was known, apparently, to be a sitting duck for years. And his conclusion was they needed to have some talks about what to do. But talks don't turn the power on and it certainly doesn’t stop it going off.

This Government is good at emotion. As was pointed out various times last week, it does disaster politics well. The Ardern years have been saturated in it.

What the country needs now though is action. This lot, if the gang looting and the Police Minister's vigilance on it is an example, will once again talk big, but deliver little, if anything