HOLMES TO BENNETT: Wash your hands of violent thug or lose your daughter

Fairfax Media

Holmes: "Why do I feel like this? Because my own daughter, as it is widely known, is connected to a young, useless Headhunter."

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BROADCASTING GREAT Paul Holmes is urging Social Development Minister Paula Bennett to stop supporting her daughter's gangster boyfriend - saying criminals are bringing good families down. After going through his ordeal with daughter Millie, who has battled addiction to the drug P, Holmes said he felt for Bennett as a parent.

"I feel possibly the minister is there already, but there comes a point where you cannot allow your heart to break any more. There comes a time when people have to take responsibility for their actions."

He said should Bennett's daughter not dump her boyfriend, the minister should also cut her daughter off.

Holmes told the Sunday Star-Times that "life experience" had taught him tough love.

"Once I would have said `Oh, but what about redemption, I'm sure that person can change'. Now I'm not so sure. If I were Paula and my daughter did not wash her hands of that ignorant, violent thug, then I would wash my hands of my daughter."

Bennett allowed Viliami Halaholo - her 21-year-old daughter Ana's boyfriend and the father of her two-year-old grandchild - to stay with her before he was sentenced in June 2007 for attacking a man with a fence paling. The man suffered a broken jaw and a 10cm head gash. Bennett was forced to apologise to Prime Minister John Key for failing to mention letters she wrote in support of Halaholo, 23, being bailed to her house.

Key yesterday said Bennett continued to enjoy his complete confidence. "The only comment I would make is you can't always pick who your children choose to have as friends."

In March last year Holmes's daughter Millie, 20, was sentenced to 12 months' supervision after being convicted of possessing methamphetamine and allowing drugs to be consumed at her flat. She and boyfriend Connor Morris, 20, and the son of a Headhunters' gang member, are due in court this month on a separate charge of possessing methamphetamine.

Holmes said he wasn't criticising Bennett politically. But he wondered if her personal judgement had become "clouded". "She's done her best in difficult circumstances to bring up a girl to whom she offered a future. That girl has gone and got herself involved with, judging by the offence for which he's currently in prison, an irredeemable bad violent piece of s--t. Because she loves her daughter, I would say, and because she's anxious to look after her grandchild, Paula Bennett has gone the extra mile for the young man.

"Why do I feel like this? Because my own daughter, as it is widely known, is connected to a young, useless Headhunter. My daughter knows where I am, but she knows we will have nothing, ever, to do with Headhunters."

He said all gangs were "filth, criminals, low life who have no aspiration, no respect for work and peddle drugs".

Holmes said he'd paid a $1740 bill for damages to an apartment that he'd rented for Millie. Before Christmas he took the bill to "that Headhunter front called the fight club" in Ellerslie where her boyfriend appeared to be based most of the time.

"I handed the bill to this young Headhunter scum and spoke to some old hard nut Headhunter called Doyle. I've never had a reply from the young man, or his father, or his family, or the Headhunters, or that ridiculous fight club.

"But of course those people, the Headhunters, people like Paula Bennett's daughter's violent thug boyfriend, do not appreciate the hand of decency when it is offered. I paid the bill so that others would not come hunting for them."

He said he was tempted to "go around to the Marua Rd fight club and stand there with a megaphone, and remind them that one of their members owes me $1740. In fact for Christmas, my wife bought me a megaphone.

"I say this because I am not remotely frightened of the Headhunters or any of their scum ilk, or any of the useless, aspirationless, ambitionless young thugs who phone me, threateningly, day and night," Holmes said.

"And as soon as all parties get off their arses and, once and for all, find a way to ban the Headhunters, the Mongrel Mob, Highway 61, and all other filthy gangs, the better."