In a recent address to a parliamentary select committee, top NZ policeman Mike Bush said NZ badly needed new “hate speech/ crime” laws. After the hearing, Bush spoke to assembled media and said-

“We have crime categories at the moment that do apply but we’re just working through the pros and cons of whether or not it would be the right thing to do to recommend a specific crime type.”

Mike Bush is paid $680,000 per year to run our Police Force. While he frets over new so called hate crime laws, the burglary resolution rate has dropped to below 10 per cent in some parts of the country. That means 90% of the people who commit real crimes are getting away with it. In Auckland last year the burglary resolution rate was just 7.2 per cent.

The unelected Bush has been talking to the Human Rights Commission, another unelected group, about the need for a specific hate crime offence. Why is it that a Senior Public Servant appears to be quite ignorant of his role in society and how democracy and the law work in Western societies?

Here’s the news Mr Bush.

Parliament makes the laws. The Police enforce the laws.

If you want to running to the media with calls for new laws, and likewise chatter with groups like the HRC, then maybe you should quit your job and stand for election.

Maybe you should quit your job anyway being that you apparently misunderstand such a bedrock principle of Western government.