John MacDonald: On why the government should be hitting the brakes on controversial bootcamps

Canterbury Mornings with John MacDonald

The minute the defence force said it didn’t want a bar of the new youth boot camps, the Government should have put the brakes on then and there.

It didn’t, though, because it had talked a tough game before the election and like hell it was going to back away from that promise now.

But it should have.

So, let’s give the Government another chance and let’s see if it’s prepared to stop being so gung-ho now that we know that two of the kids who did a runner from the programme were involved in what appears to be some sort of car-jacking attempt at the weekend.

I don’t hold out much hope. But, at the very least, the Government should be pressing pause.

It should be pressing pause until it’s worked out whether this is a full-on residential programme or whether it’s still happy to have the kids go in-house for a bit and then send them back to the lives they came from in the first place. Because why would you do that?

It should be pressing pause to see if it can get the military involved on a much greater scale. The scale that it talked about before getting into government - without actually talking to the military.

It should be pressing pause until it gets Oranga Tamariki properly on-board. Because, let’s face it, boot camps are the last thing OT wants to be involved with.

I know that because I have some familiarity with OrangaTamariki and I know that sending kids to boot camps goes completely against its DNA.

It should also be pressing pause so that it can get advice from actual experts in this field. Instead of pressing on blindly with something that it knew it could get votes for - but, at this point anyway, looks like something doomed to fail.

Not that Phil O’Reilly feels that way. You’ll know him from his time with Business New Zealand. But he was also a member of the welfare advisory group that was in place during the last version of the boot camps under John Key’s government.

He said on Newstalk ZB this morning that boot camps work and he hopes the Government doesn't lose its nerve.

If you’re thinking ‘hold on a minute, these two kids weren’tactually under lock and key because they’d finished what’s called the “facility-based” part of the programe and were in family or community placements, and so why do you want to write-off the boot camps because of that?’

If you’re thinking that, then doesn’t the fact that they did this when they were away from the boot camp show you that this idea doesn’t work?

Since these two did a runner, and since a third young person who was involved in the programme died in a car crash, the Government has been at great pains to point out that other kids involved have got back into education or found work.

Which is great. Don’t get me wrong.

But it’s not enough to convince me that the Government should just keep on keeping on without, at the very least, talking to a few experts, trying to get the military more involved, and deciding whether this “community placement” part of the programme is actually a good idea.

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