Albert you didn’t know this

Ms Lee - a National List MP and candidate in the Mt Albert election - apologised yesterday after saying at a public meeting on Wednesday night that the new Waterview motorway would channel South Auckland criminals past the electorate and reduce crime.
As reported NZ Herald Friday 15 May.

Ms Lee has been rightly and roundly criticised for her comment. It was insensitive, inaccurate and I am sure deeply offensive to the citizens of South Auckland. It implies that the people of South Auckland are second-class, lack culture and vision and have little to occupy their days. It was a vicious attack—her suggesting that South Auckland people are so lacking in anything else in their lives that they would want to visit Mt Albert. Nobody wants to visit Mt Albert. Mt Albert people don’t want to visit Mt Albert. It vies with its sister, Mt Roskill, as the most crushingly boring place in Auckland. To suggest, as Ms Lee does, that even South Auckland criminals would have reason to visit Mt Albert shows an astonishing lack of knowledge about the criminal classes—South Auckland or anywhere. My friend Whetu, who crops up on these pages from time to time, tells me that it is a fundamental of good thievery that one steals only what one can sell.
ME: And you can’t do that in Mt Albert?
HE: Nope.
ME: Why not?
HE: Nuttin there.
ME: Nuttin…Nothing?
HE: Me cuz, Jonno, he a bit of an apprentice, you know. He went to Mt Albert to steal stuff.
ME: Did he? And…”
HE: A Bell TV, three lava lamps, six fondue sets, two Barry Manilow posters, four crates of National Geographics and a PYE Radiogram.
ME: He raided a second-hand store?
HE: Nope. An upmarket house in Grande Ave.
ME: So it’s not true that the new motorway will divert South Auckland criminals?
HE: Only get us through Mt Albert quicker to get to good places.
ME: Such as?
HE: Swanson.


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