Heather Duplessy-Allen

Morning, Brendan.

Good morning, Heather.

Do you reckon it's going to work?

Absolutely.

We know early intervention works.

We did some research of an early intervention programme.

We worked with youth offenders three or four years ago, and we showed that every dollar of government money put into one of our programmes returned $7.10 in savings to the community and the taxpayer going forward.

As for Blue Light, most listeners will know we've been around now for 44 years.

We're a youth development organisation and a charity, but our key partner is the New Zealand Police, and it's through that network that we'll be able to actually target youth

early intervention and prevention for young kids were just on the early cycle of youth offending.

And I like the idea of sport, and I have to thank the Minister Mitchell and the team at New Zealand Sport for recognising something that Judge Beecroft, from years ago as first the Principal Youth Court Judge and then the Children's Commissioner,

I always say the kid in sport stays out of court because it's that pro-social, that pro-social involvement with coaches, other team members.

One of the most famous persons you may remember, Heather, was Jonah Lomu, who was in a youth gang in Otara and involved in quite a vicious assault.

And then he ended up being put at Wesley Cole, has got into rugby, you know, that sort of purpose, discipline, a sense of hope for the future, looking at how well he did.

Yeah.

What do you guys do?

Because you don't do strictly sport, do you?

You do youth camps, right?

We've got a really long-standing relationship with the New Zealand Defence Force.

It has probably the best youth development unit in the world.