Advocacy wins better security
28 November 2022
The government pick and mix approach to the Crime Emergency shows some promise by lifting one suggestion we put to the Minister of Police six weeks ago. Delivering it will be a different kettle of fish.
“The money for businesses is welcome but this is not government generosity and Prime Minister implied,” says Sunny Kaushal, Chair of the Dairy and Business Owner’s Group.
“We’re an unofficial tax collector for around a billion dollars each year and that’s just from the tobacco tax and the GST on that tax. We appreciate that they have listened to our request for a grant, but this grant for fog cannons is a small fraction of what we generate for the Minister of Finance each year.
“We also ask why it took so long and why it took the loss of a good kiwi, one of our own, to transform the crime emergency into a political one.
“We put this grant idea to Chris Hipkins on 19 October. One month ago, he told Mike Hosking on the radio, that we’d get a considered reply. I guess we got that reply today in the Post Cabinet Press Conference.
“We’ve had suppliers approach us five months ago offering fog canons and bollards. Our advice is to trust the market and allow stores to organise things themselves. Government should require photographs and receipts, proof, backed up by inspections because businesses know what works and what does not.
“Yet what has been driving a lot of this crime, the massive taxes on cigarettes, did not rate a mention.
“One kilogram of tobacco is now worth some 30% more than a kilogram of silver. Thugs know this. It’s why they have hit us again and again and then spread to Michael Hill Jewellers, liquor stores, vape stores and other retailers.
“We get bashed by criminals then bashed by the government and academics for selling it. Meanwhile, the Minister of Finance willingly takes it from us.
“We look forward to Minister Hipkins considered reply as we have other solutions that would rapidly drop cigarette sales without wiping us out.
”While the response is a start, we need to see delivery at pace otherwise it will be as successful as other announcements.
“We just don’t want another family to suffer and grieve as we’ve seen this week,” Mr Kaushal said
How we rated the response against the eight-point plan put to the Police Minister on 19 October 2022 (reply is still awaited):
It starts from admitting we have we have a crime emergency and that most crime is not reported because there’s a fundamental loss of faith in the system.
We rate today’s announcement a ‘C ‘ There has been an underplaying of retail crime for some time now that continued in the press conference. Today only occurred because of a death that may have been preventable.
Enlarging the Crime Fund to $30m, targeting 10,000 retailers. Using a “High Trust model” not bureaucracy to speed security delivery (dairies are the government’s unofficial tobacco tax-collector for over a $1bn in tax and GST).
We rate this a ‘B’ because it would be higher but the last fund failed to deliver after half a year. It sounds good but it could be faster if they trusted the market and businesses to sort suppliers than having to go through government approved lists.
Get smokers into vaping to remove a big driver for ramraids and robberies. We need reform because we cannot actively market the three vape and smokeless tobacco flavours we’re allowed t sell, to 451,000 smokers even when they ask for a pack of cigarettes.
We rate this a ‘D’ as there was no announcement when we see smokers daily and we could get them into better and cheaper products for their health benefit and our safety. We only want the freedom to engage smokers when they ask for cigarettes.
We need to adopt the “broken windows” approach where no crime is minor by better using council paid staff (like turning Auckland Transport’s 400 traffic wardens and Transport Officers into UK-Style Police Community Support). This is true community street policing; especially in the CBD’s.
We rate this a ‘D’ as there is no acknowledgement that emptying prisons, a growing gang numbers and culture, high truancy levels, and the lack of consequences for wrongdoing, may just be a part of the problem.
Deploy Artificial Intelligence based street lighting and CCTV in partnership with councils to close blind spots and to direct camera operators to where issues are to track them.
If the money for councils is this, then we welcome it ‘A-‘ but as a start. It needs a much bigger investment using the billion dollars from tobacco tax could provide. This is to deter criminals by tracking their movements making policing far more effective.
We need Police and MSD aligned to deal with feral families who don’t care where their children are, or what they get up to. The role of the state is to intervene in the interests of the child not allowing dysfunction to continue.
We rate this a ‘D’ as there was no mention.
We need beggars and the homeless off the streets and put into specialist centres, modelled on refugee resettlement, that’ll fix addiction, numeracy and literacy etc.
We rate this a ‘D’ and invite media (and MSD) to visit the homeless who spend the working day outside Countdown in Victoria Street, Auckland.
The law of self defence needs to be modelled on that of Australia. It must allow retailers and anyone to defend themselves, their family, their customers and their own property.
Another ‘D’. In New Zealand you cannot defend your own property and this is why Australia’s laws,. Their law defines force that ours does not. It is superior law making.
For More Information here see Minister Hipkins Crime Reduction Manifesto