Refusing to listen to evidence, experts or experience the Government is stubbornly marching ahead with its boot camps.

“In their pilot, the government has repurposed the programme Labour set up to target the young offenders toughest to crack. They should drop the boot camps altogether and continue this instead,” Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime said.

“We saw from our circuit breaker programme that 76% did not reoffend. So, we know there are alternatives that actually work.

“We’re now about a week out, and the government continues to ignore warnings from experts, confronting stories from survivors, and decades of evidence on boot camps.

“History, and the same Defence Force tasked with running them before, tell us this is the wrong choice.

“It wasn’t ‘acceptable 20 years ago’ as Minister Chhour claims, it’s clearly not acceptable now and we cannot risk repeating the same mistakes. Young offenders will only end up as hardened adult criminals.

“Christopher Luxon and Mark Mitchell were notably absent as Minister Chhour fronted the policy.

“If the PM and the Police Minister are getting cold feet, they can cancel the pilot now – it’s not too late.

“Troubled tamariki need a Minister for Children to stand up for them, not a drill sergeant,” said Willow-Jean Prime.