More “creative” spin (read fibs) from Key

Nice to see Key warming to his “1000 reasons why I hate New Zealand and New Zealanders” campaign in his recent speech to the Sensible Sentencing Trust. This time the theme appears to be that New Zealand is overwhelmed with violent crime. We’re all going to hell in a violent, p-induced frenzy of handbaskets - apparently.

I perused the speech expecting the usual inward groan associated when reading Key’s platitudinous drivel - but the figures he trotted out to pump up his scaremongering seemed, well, completely out-of-whack. I suddenly got interested and decided to check them myself. He said, as a matter of fact, violent offences were now 17,000 higher than they were in 1999. He also said:

• a violent crime every nine-and-a-half minutes;
• a sexual attack every three-and-a-half hours;
• a robbery every three-and-a-half hours.

Damn, I thought, if Key’s right, New Zealand must be in some kind of trouble. Hell, I almost rushed out to buy new locks for my doors! Of course, I needn’t have worried: Key wasn’t actually quoting facts. That would be too boring. No - Key was being “creative” with the truth for maximum effect. No doubt his creativity was well received and accompanied by the usual Cro-Magnon chest beating that follows any gathering of the Sensible Sentencing Lynch Mob Trust. But let’s look at the facts. Something, it seems, the Spotty Dicks in the Tory “Research” Unit seem incapable of doing.

First off - has violent crime increased by 17,000 between now and 1999? Well, I don’t have the final figures for “now” - because the courts are still processing arrests. But we can look back at the most recent convictions data. The 2006 figures released by the MOJ last year. According to these figures, there were 15287 violent offences in 1999 and 17,059 in 2006. That’s a difference of 1772 - not 17,000. Key is out by an order of magnitude. An horrifically embarrassing mistake if it weren’t deliberate. And, if it were deliberate, an outrageous lie. I guess Key decided “less than two thousand” sounded too crappy and decided to juice it up.

Key said a “violent crime happens every nine and half minutes”. Well, there are 525,600 minutes in a year - so it’s a simple matter to divide with 9.5 minutes. That would put violent crime at around 55,000. Again, the MOJ figures show the annual numbers of violent crimes hover around 15,000-16,000. Oh, and there’s a reason he chose to go back only nine years and not a nice round decade - 1998 was a doozy year for violent crime. We’re only now getting back into the same levels of crime experienced when National played Mr Nasty with the social support structures in our society.

In 2006 there were 200 too many rapes. But even the Sensible Sentencing Trust would see that a rape every two days, while absolutely too many, is a far cry from the imagery Key was trying to conjour up with his “sex attacks every three and half hours”. Again, Key is off by an order of magnitude. OK, I know sex attacks covers more than just rapes. But let’s be absolutely honest (unlike Mr Key), National deliberately fudging these figures to ginger up its argument that New Zealand is falling to bits. Oh, and he does the same thing with robberies. There are around 200-300 robberies a year. That’s a rate of one every couple of days. Not every few hours.

But the truth about all this scaremongering and data legerdemain is that it’s really about the parlous state of the National Party - not New Zealand. John Key, much to the chagrin of his colleagues, has basically capitulated on nearly all core National policy. In his desperation to realise his Dale Carnegie aspiration to become PM, Key has sold out virtually all of National’s core policies. Along with the tax cut mantra, this basically leaves only one hoary old drum to bash: Law and Order. It’s the only fertile ground where Key seems willing to differentiate himself with the other parties. So, I guess a little creative accounting is needed when your intellectual arguments are soft.

A final note on methodology: I am 110 percent certain some cretinous soul will attempt to cobble a story together about Key using Police reported crime or some other over-inflated data. Don’t bother. As we’ve stated on this blog before, using those kinds of data would be disingenuous at best and bullshit at worse. Key liberally uses phrases like “offences” and “crimes” throughout his speech. He doesn’t moderate his words with qualifications such as “alleged” or “reported”. No - he makes assertions about crime as a stone-cold fact. And there’s only one way something becomes a crime in this country and that’s when a court decides it. The only true way of determining the level of crime in this country is to look at the conviction data. That’s what we did. That’s what Key should have done - had he wanted to be honest.

Could we do better with violent crime? Absolutely. Is violent crime on the increase? Yep - but it’s not out of control. The truth of violent crime is far less catastrophic than Key is prepared to admit. Key wants to scare voters into believing that violent crime is out of control so he can run the trite line that a bunch of namby pamby socialists can’t be tough on criminals and keep you as safe as the Iron Fist of conservatism.