National candidate talks crime and safety with party faithful

“What can I do to help keep our society safe?” was the challenge the National Party’s Christchurch Central candidate Dale Stephens issued to the small but engaged crowd at a public meeting on Tuesday night.

Although there was no official dress code, blue collared shirts were the ‘mode du jour’ at Tūranga, the city’s central library, where Stephens invited the roughly 70 attendees to join a “positive discussion” about what is important for the city.

The meeting was billed as a conversation about “keeping New Zealand safe” and those Stuff spoke to raised their concerns about safety in the central city, soft court sentences and a lack of consequences for criminals.

“The message is being sent, you can do anything you like, and that distresses me”, said David Cook, a self-confessed “male, pale, stale”.

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For half an hour Dale Stephens and the party’s social development spokesperson Louise Upston shared their views on law and order, child poverty, benefits and the importance of family.

There was a definite emphasis on accountability, self-responsibility and consequences.

“If you get nothing else out of tonight, I want you to understand that we all have a responsibility for how we look after our people, how we make our city safe”, Stephens told the crowd.

Given the vast majority of the audience were gold card holders, asking people to ‘text to ask a question’ rather than passing around a microphone was an interesting choice. But nevertheless, Stephen’s inbox was humming.

‘How do we turn young children away from offending?’, ‘How will National deal with rising gang numbers?’, ‘How can [people] get around the city safely’, were among the questions texted in.

Older residents feeling safe in the central city received multiple mentions. Stephens acknowledged this was a problem that had been a long time coming.

He told the audience an anecdote about his time as a police officer in Wellington, but when it came to tangible solutions on central city safety he expressed very few ideas.

“We’ve all got one of these” he said, lifting his phone again.

“Make the call, use the triple one… And if you can help out, do what you can to help out”.

Overall, the discussion was light on policy promises; certainly nothing the National Party faithful hadn’t heard before.

But as audience members headed out into the balmy Christchurch evening, they appeared content with what they had heard.

“Have a great, safe evening”, Stephens called.