Sunny Kaushal: Crime Advisory Group chair hopes to start addressing retail crime by end of the month

Retail crime is on the rise once more — with latest Police data showing it's up 17 percent in the first five months of this year.

In central Palmerston North, five people have been arrested for stealing thousands of goods from Farmers and Rebel Sport on Friday afternoon.

And in Christchurch's New Brighton, a community pantry and Countdown supermarket were targeted on Saturday.

Sunny Kaushal — the chair of the Government's newly established Crime Advisory Group — told Mike Hosking he hopes to start work on addressing the issue before the end of the month.

“But I promise the day we start working, within two weeks time, I will have the first proposal on table.”

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Despite the noise around cops cops on the Bacon crime
coming down, the internal police start to shows we've got
a seventeen percent increase in retail crime in the first
five months of the year. Last year there are about
forty one thousand instances recorded this year, we're pushing fifty,
so forty one to fifty. Chair of the Dairying Business
Owners Group, Sunny Koschiel's back with us, Sunny morning.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Very good morning, Mike.

Speaker 1 (00:19):
And now you're working with the government on this crime group.
You've got to come up with the answers. Pressures on you, mate,
what are you going to do about it?

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Yeah, there's a huge pressure and a lot of work
to do. The Advisory Group would start working very soon
and we will come up with those specific proposals and
changes in policy and that decision to urgently address these challenges.
The data that you have seen that we compared, you know,
first five months of twenty twenty four versus twenty twenty three.

(00:49):
There are some good news, but there are bad news
as we see. So this is really concerning and highlighting
the need to get PANDEM back to the low abiding.

Speaker 1 (00:59):
Do you do you see it and feel it? Because
I mean, the vibe has been that there are cops
on the beat, things are working, the crackdown is on,
and so this for many people will become as a
shock wind.

Speaker 2 (01:10):
It is, it's very frustrating, but it's also because that
things have been let down go to the deep in
tracks for a very long time, so that need to
be addressed quickly. You know, as you see the ram
rates are down with the you know of course the
message which is going from the government, and also there's

(01:30):
a five percent fall in robberies and there's burglaries are
down ten percent. But the bad news is the sexual
offenses are up and the acts intending to cause injury
what we have seen recently in Papatu to the attack
on a jeweler and also an attack on the security guard.
So those kind of crimes are up four percent so

(01:53):
and they are around eleven every day. So these need
to be stopped and we need to take our intactions exact.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
Couldn't agree more. When are we going to get the
first idea from your group?

Speaker 2 (02:04):
The group has yet to start working, so you're hoping
to start working by end of this month. But I point,
as Mike did, the day we start working within two
weeks time, I would have the first proposal on table.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
All right, mate, I appreciate it very much. Sunny Kerschel,
who's the Diary and Business Owners Group president. And I'm
just checking up because I'm absolutely certain that Mark Mitchell
when they announced that group that they were setting up
see the first idea, because it's going for two years.
And the criticism was two years. I mean, come on,
why were at a work and greep and they're going
to come back with some proposals. No, they said the

(02:40):
proposals would be just a couple of weeks away. The
first ideas would be coming forward, said Mark Mitchell in
just a couple of weeks time. For more from the
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