Palmer has advice for Aucklanders

Press, 28 June 1989, Page 5

Palmer has advice for Aucklanders

PA Auckland Love your neighbour — it may help ease the crime rate, says the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Palmer. He told a public meeting in Auckland that the city had the best and worst New Zealand could offer. It was a divided city, with racial tension and a self-centred ity“Auckland has always been the go-getting city of New Zealand. That has made it a lively city, a city on the move. But there is a price to pay. “When you’re flat-out

trying to make a living, trying to get ahead, you don’t have time to look around. You don’t always have time to see what’s happening to your neighbour. The community that loses touch with one another is the community where crime can flourish,” said Mr Palmer. The attitude that members of the community had to each other was one element in the complicated problem of crime, he said.

The Mayor of Auckland, Dame Catherine Tizard, said the crime problem was not Auckland’s alone and she was sick of the city being cited as unique.

“My initial reaction was anger with a Christchurch M.P. coming here and telling us Auckland was different and worse than other urban centres in New Zealand,” • she said. But as an answer to the country’s crime problem, the Mayor said, a closer community appeared the only solution. “The answer is, I guess, in every possible arena to do what we can to reduce attitudes that result in violence. We must recognise that New Zealand is a violent society. That is the only solution — to make very fundamental changes to people’s attitudes to other people.”