Penk on TOP

Chris Penk makes some good observations:

The number of left bloc parties needed to form a coalition to govern, on a good day, would be no fewer than four. That’s Labour, the Greens, Te Pati Maori and Opportunity. When I say “on a good day”, naturally I mean from the perspective of Chris Hipkins, Chloe Swarbrick and the taxi drivers who will be transporting the rest of us to Auckland Airport’s international terminal.

I think the idea that you need four parties to agree to form a Government will be off-putting to some people. And TPM is effectively two parties (Tamihere faction and the rest) co-existing together so it could well be more like five parties.

But what of Opportunity’s policies, I hear you ask? It may well be that they have a large number of thoughtful offerings across a range of policy areas. Their hastily-withdrawn policy around “youth justice” was not one of them, however. Raising the age of the Youth Court jurisdiction for a thug just shy of his 25th birthday involves relatively little “youth” and even less “justice”, at least from the victim’s perspective.

Yep, 24 year old rapists would get a family group conference!