John MacDonald: Is a boot camp military-style if the military aren't there?

Canterbury Mornings with John MacDonald

When you think of military-style academies for young offenders, is the military part of it with a capital M or a small m?

Because the Government’s in the firing line after confirming that there are no military personnel on-site at the trial academy which started-up last week, and that there’ll be no military personnel there on an ongoing basis.

Which, in my mind, makes it a military academy with a small m. Or a nill-itary academy. There’s no way you can say it’s military-style if no one from the military is there.

The Government, though, is saying that the defence force has had back-office involvement in planning things. But that’s a bit like me having a chat to a mate who’s a chef and then inviting you over for dinner and saying ‘welcome to my restaurant’.

You’d be the first to say, ‘hold on mate, this isn’t a restaurant because it’s just you and no kitchen or waiting staff. And the last time I checked, you weren’t a chef’.

And if I said to you ‘oh no, no, no…I’ve got a mate who’s a chef and he’s been heavily involved in planning things for tonight and given me a few pointers so, yes, welcome to my restaurant’ If I said that, you’d laugh at me.

And this is the same. You can’t say you’re setting up a military-style boot camp —or a military-style academy— and then, when it comes to opening up - you have a bunch of social workers running the show with no military there at all.

Because that’s what’s happening. Oranga Tamariki is in charge of the bootcamp.

We know why that is, of course. Because, after all the big talk, the Government was told in no uncertain terms by the Defence Force that it wasn’t interested in looking after and sorting out young criminals.

Possibly because it had had a gutsful of patrolling managed isolation quarantine hotels during the pandemic.

Corrections were the same. They weren't interested. And so Oranga Tamariki was the next cab off the rank. Well, they were the only cab on the rank, to be fair.

But, whatever the reasons why the military aren’t involved, we have our much-hyped military-style academy with no military personnel on the ground. That’s despite Police Minister Mark Mitchell earlier claiming there would be a heavy defence involvement in the boot camp.

Mitchell said 30 New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) personnel were actively supporting the programme, ranging from “back-office” policy work through to delivering it “on the front line”.

But that isn’t the case at all. With the Minister for Children Karen Chhour saying “there will be no New Zealand Defence Force staff working directly with the young people on the pilot”.

So it’s not a boot camp. I even think it’s stretching it to call it a military-style academy.

It was late 2022, when National announced the boot camp plan, calling them “Young Offender Military Academies”. It said the academies would be run by the Ministry of Justice and Defence Force.

Not surprisingly —and I can see why— Labour is going full noise and accusing the Government of misleading the public.

Labour’s children’s spokeswoman Willow-Jean Prime is saying it just looks like window dressing and the Government misled the public.

But, even though I think the military should be involved on the frontline for the boot camp to be what was promised, I don’t think the Government has intentionally misled the public.

I think what’s happened is it was a half-baked idea thrown out there at a time when ramraids were going through the roof and when Mark Mitchell sounded like he had a police radio scanner next to the bed and, every time he heard them heading off to a ram raid call-out, he’d put out a media release.

And, with all that going on, National announced the boot camp or military-style academy idea before actually talking to the defence force about it.

So, in a way, National misled itself in terms of the practicalities of what it wanted to do.

So I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt in that respect.

But, if these academies are going to live up to expectations, then I’m in no doubt that the military needs to be more involved than just giving backroom advice.

And, if the Government can’t get the defence force excited about the idea and willing to be part of it, then it needs to come clean, admit that it was a half-baked idea and stop calling it a military-style academy.

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