Negative police officers to date - Sunny Kaushal & Paul Goldsmith want '5 million Kiwis' to help fight crime
Police numbers are now -72 compared to November 2023 as police attrition increases. Kaushal leads a $3.6mn govt funded retail crime committee to come up with solutions, and is paid $920 a day for it.
There are few things that make me viscerally irritable in politics, but seeing the government proposing citizens’ arrest as a method to curtail crime - while losing more police officers than it can hire because it’s unwilling to pay for professionals - does raise ire.1
The idiocy of encouraging citizens to lunge at each other in the face of retail property theft is mind-blowing.
Ands not surprising when the person behind it is Minister Paul Goldsmith, a man who orderd Te Reo Māori scrubbed from Matariki invitations - a gesture so narrow minded, it was no surprise to later learn he adulated Alan Gibbs, thinks highly of Don Brash, says colonialism was ultimately good for Māori, and is considered by some who know him as a “historian for hire”.
In my view, Goldsmith could be an ACT politician.
Under Luxon’s National government, Paul Goldsmith has been rewarded with multiple ministerial portfolios: Justice, Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations, Media and Communications, Arts, Culture and Heritage.
And it is as Justice Minister that he has overseen changes that point to a more divided, American style justice system for us -
Building mega prisons without a business case that could harden crime and increase gang membership - while telling Kiwis, mega-prisons have “no downsides”.
Together with Luxon telling Kiwis that there are no budget constraints to prisons funding (contrast this to their health system approach), ignoring warnings that high prison rates will not improve crime & are a tried and failed “moral and fiscal failure” , overseeing the scrubbing/weakening of Te Tiriti from numerous law - 28 laws at last count, and implementing a controversial gang patch ban that hides gangs from sight and excludes Nazis and Destiny Church.
That’s not all of course.
In July 2024, a day or so after National Party member and Labour Party critic, Sunny Kaushal, was on TV again, talking about the latest dairy attack in Auckland, Goldsmith announced the formation of a new retail crime advisory group.
Kaushal would head the group, and the committee would be funded with $3.6mn to talk about retail crime and recommend solutions.
It was not clear what qualifications Kaushal had to take on such a position.
At the time, Kashual told Newstalk ZB he was “grateful”.
No wonder he was - paid $920 a day, up to a maximum of $230,000 a year -Sunny’s already invoiced ~$90,000 for 3 months of work.
When Labour criticized the government around this two days ago, and asked what Kaushal and the committee had delivered, Paul Goldsmith rushed out a statement saying a recommendation was coming soon.
And that, it was revealed yesterday, is expanding citizen’s arrest for retail crimes.
Goldsmith will amend the Crimes Act 1961 to allow, among other things, citizens intervening to stop any Crimes Act offence at any time of the day.
He said:
"This initial package of reforms ... will give Kiwi businesses additional tools to deal with those that are robbing them of their livelihood and economic growth."
Does the National Party Coalition government not feel that their manipulation of this phrase “economic growth” as an excuse to implement counterproductive, harmful and regressive policies is not far beyond its use by date yet?
The plethora of negative possibilities for retail citizens’ arrest boggles the mind.
In the ordinary course of training, retail staff and financial services staff are always advised to not risk life or injuries as what is most precious is life, and in tense and high stress situations, anything can happen.
In late 2022, in the Sandringham dairy case last year, where a dairy worker was sadly killed, the victim followed the offender 100 metres in an apparent attempt to retrieve the stolen property.
But all this was irrelevant to Goldsmith who framed his proposal as an opportunity for “Kiwi businesses” to defend their “livelihood and economic growth”.
That sounds to me that lowly paid workers may be asked to double up as property defenders in dairies around the country.
It appears Kaushal’s months of deliberation after July 2024, had been leading up to this moment.
In January 2025, Kaushal wrote an op-ed in NZME with the emotional appeal:“Fighting crime needs the team of five million” .
That’s certainly not how he presented it when Labour was in power: People arresting each other in the name of law and order. Low paid workers fighting for their lives to apprehend criminals.
Is this what we’ve come to as a country under this government?
5 million people ready to take on each other in the name of property?
The govenment promised 500 extra police, and yet can’t even get us to net 0 (we’re at -72, according to Labour), while Police Minister Mark Mitchell shamelessly ignores this, and uses random tweets to claim violent crime is coming down.
The Police Association has come out swinging on the idea of citizens’ arrest too saying it would “make life more unsafe for a lot of retailers and members of the public who get involved.”
"It's not worth getting hurt, or even killed, for a few dollars or some cigarettes.”
Police officers are highly trained and equipped to deal with criminals, however, they still suffer assaults…
"The idea that the public can do this safely is just putting them at risk that isn't necessary.”
And Labour’s Ginny Andersen has got it right too -
“These are millions of dollars that could have gone to resourcing frontline police. Instead, they’re being used to pay a lofty salary for Kaushal to rehash his bad ideas.
“His advisory group initially promised recommendations within weeks, but after months of delay, they’ve produced proposals that encourage citizens to use force against retail crime, something Police have consistently warned is unsafe.”
Sunny Kaushal is “grateful” to National.
He has upgraded his LinkedIn profile to “Chairman - Ministerial Advisory Group”.
He gets paid almost $1000 a day and comes up with tired solutions that put more people at risk.
Rather than demanding this government implement appropriate, long term view measures - police numbers, fog cannons, addressing poverty, hardship, inequality, mental health - all the real stuff, he’s come up with a potentially dangerous, hair brained idea.
Kaushal is grateful.
I am not.
Paul Goldsmith’s history as Finance Spokesperson
As National Party Finance spokesperson in 2020, Goldsmith proposed a plan for New Zealand that had a $4bn hole in it.
He only realised after Grant Robertston informed him.
Goldsmith batted the hole away as an “irritating mistake” - a mistake, that in any normal enterprise, would find the person rapidly demoted and/or relieved of duty.
Goldsmith was harbouring ambitions to become Finance Minister when it all happened, writing well crafted, articulate op-eds for NZ Herald about how he would be an effective and strong Finance Minister should National get into power.
That honour ultimately went to the former oil and mining executive’s daughter, former Fonterarr lobbyist, and NZ Initiative Director, Nicola Willis.
On that note, by some accounts, Luxon is still running to NZ Initiative for hair-brained ideas on how to fix the economy.
The same way, perhaps, that the later day UK Tories, and in more spectacular fashion, Liz Truss, were merely orchestrating the ideologies of Atlas Network junk tank’s policies there.
According to one right wing commentator in the know -
We all know how that went.
This is who our leaders are.
Let that sink in.
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Even after lowering requirements to join, there are fewer police officers in the country than 14 months ago when the government promised 500 more cops
When I worked in mental health our clinical staff were required to undergo regular training to use any form of restraint, like holding a patient's arm. Non clinical staff like me were expressly forbidden from using any form of restraint. But it seems that any retail staff or bystander will now be approved to use whatever force is necessary to hold a shoplifter, or anyone else they think is a criminal, till the police arrive. Who could possibly dream up a law like that and what could possibly go wrong?
This CoC is now forming Quangos. They did this under Key. Like the rotten lunches, this will have unintended consequences. Desperate stupid straw clutching. Complete failures in terms of Governance. Everything is driven by ideology. Not a sensible idea between them.