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Summarised by Centrist
Mike Hosking says the latest “advice ignored” story, Paul Goldsmith reportedly ignored over proposed move-on orders, is really about the quality of official advice and the media’s appetite for using it as a political weapon.
Hosking argues the media treats any instance of ministers ignoring advice as if it were automatically scandalous, when in reality “advice is not automatically right” and “more often than not the media seems to think it counts for something, hence their obsession with coverage”.
When Hosking looks at the advice itself, he says it is “a mixture of the vague, wrong and made up”. He zeroes in on the claim that “evidence of a growing public disorder problem is limited”, responding: “Are they serious?” He mocks officials as people who “work from home and looked out their kitchen window at morning tea time and didn’t see any disturbances”.
For Hosking, the real test is what people experience in places like “Queen Street in Auckland, Courtenay Place in Wellington or their environs”. He asks whether there is “a person” who has walked those areas and “not seen the trouble and upset the wonks can’t see”. He is equally dismissive of official reliance on police prosecution data, saying: “Just because you didn’t prosecute doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”
In his telling, move-on orders are not aimed at “anyone and everyone”, but specifically “the ones who cause trouble, who abuse the shopper or stop the proprietor getting into their business”.
While some defend “the right for a drug-crazed lunatic to be able to say what they want and do what they want, where they want”, he says the public is asking whether “a punter should be able to go about their business unhindered”. “Out here in the real world, the answer is, yes.”
