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.

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