If you believed the heat in the debate, letting the police move people on was some sort of dystopian incursion by an overlord destined for revolt and rampage on our streets. 

The Labour Party still argues the Government made homelessness illegal, which of course they did not. 

At the very start of the scrap was the basic idea that too many people were having their day ruined by too many other people who seemed to think they could behave any way they wanted with no consequences. 

Lying in a shop doorway was okay because you were "homeless". Turns out virtually none of it was true. 

The law has arrived. The Police are enacting it and by all accounts, guess what? It is nothing like the scandal the apologists made it out to be. 

The Wellington City Mission, among others, is deeply appreciative of how the Police are handling matters. 

This is the gang patch debate all over again. It's the end of the world until it isn't. 

Turns out most of your troublemakers are just that: drug-addled, booze-addled, or both. But not homeless per se. 

And those who are homeless are being taken for help; food, shelter, support, and warmth, all of which are provided. 

There is an industry in this country of handwringers and NGOs, quite often the same people who place far too much emphasis on being apologists. 

Rights are not evenly distributed. Somewhere along the line a business' right to be open, operate, and welcome in a punter whose main purpose is to have a simple transaction is somehow put below the right of a troublemaker to cause havoc and upset. 

All the law that got so much attention and caused so much upset was trying to do was strike a balance. 

And once it arrived, as it did last week, and it got applied, which it has by the way in a fairly small, yet effective fashion, we find out all the gnashing of teeth and all the preview-style drama was never necessary. 

So much so that those who work with the vulnerable are appreciative of how it's all playing out. 

Imagine if we put the same energy into being productive and positive as we did into warning about impending doom?