Venu Menon
Wellington, May 30,2023
The House witnessed a robust debate around retail crime with Minister of Police Ginny Andersen standing by her statement that: “It is my view that New Zealanders feel safer with a Government on track to deliver 1,800 extra police.”
National’s Mark Mitchell asked how New Zealanders “feel safer if, by her [the minister’s] own admission, there is an increase in crime?”
Mitchell pressed the minister to inform the House of the increase in violent retail crime.
Acknowledging there has been an increase in retail crime, the minister pointed to the $11 million in additional funds for the fog cannon subsidy, which was announced on May 29.
She said the additional funds were “in order to assist those small business owners who are experiencing an increase in retail crime.”
But Mitchell wanted to know why retail crime had risen a further 55% “whilst the Government’s failed fog cannon policy has been rolled out?”
Police Minister Andersen sought to turn the tables on the opposition member by saying the previous National government had failed to bring down retail crime. Andersen stressed that the Labour government was focused on investing in frontline services as well as family harm services in communities.
“We know for a fact that young people in New Zealand were left in homes, exposed to rates of family harm and 10 years later, those young people are presenting in our criminal justice system.”
To a pointed query by Mitchell on whether “ram raids [had] increased or decreased since she became the minister,” Andersen admitted that retail crime had “spiked in August of last year and the average out is at 55 per month over this year.”
She said that was why the Government was focused on investing in retail crime prevention, such as fog cannons, and in programmes such as “circuit breaker” that identify and target the drivers of crime.
ACT Party leader David Seymour sought to draw the attention of the House to a semantic question around Prime Minister Chris Hipkins’ statement to the media that “we don’t have a problem with crime, just a challenge.”
Andersen responded by pointing out that she and Hipkins were on the same page on the issue of retail crime.
The minister said the Government was tackling the problem [retail crime] from “both ends.”
From one end, it was “to enable those small business owners to feel safer in their workplace” by stepping up protection measures such as fog cannons.
The other end from which the problem of retail crime was being tackled was by enabling programmes like “circuit breaker” and Kotahi Te Whakaaro to “work with young people who are in homes which are experiencing complex and ongoing problems.”
Police Minister Andersen also fended a question from Chris Baillie of the ACT Party who asked if she believed “police feel safer, given that there has been a 300 percent increase in assaults against police since 2017, and, if police don’t feel safe, how can ordinary New Zealanders?”
In response, Andersen pointed to the Government’s investment in the Tactical Response Model (TRM), which had been rolled out across New Zealand.
“What the TRM delivers is a combination of intelligence and extra kit to make sure police are deployed and fully equipped to respond to higher risk in individual circumstances,” the minister told the House.
Venu Menon is an Indian Newslink reporter based in Wellington
