Dairy owners are congratulating the newly elected National-led government with Act with NZ First also likely to feature. They are asking for quick action to get on top of the retail crime emergency all over New Zealand.

“We’re looking to the new National-led government to stop this relentless crime onslaught,” says Sunny Kaushal, Chair of the Dairy and Business Owners’ Group.

“We want the political parties that’ll make up the new government to turn what they told us on the campaign trail into policy.

“Number one, for us, is a return to the pre-2017 Police model where retail crime was taken seriously. Before 2017, Police made arrests in almost half of every retail crime they attended but by May of this year, criminals had a 93.5% chance of never seeing the inside of a court.

“And while we do welcome extra Police, they’ll take time to recruit and train whereas there are things that can be done right away. Like getting the three strikes law back onto the law books.

“What we need seriously need fixed is the Crimes Act. We need citizen's arrest powers widened to daylight and doing that empowers shopkeepers to security guards.

“This bizarre day/night split, is why those tradies in Christchurch to the NBR owner just recently, were probably told to let thieves go.

"What we also need define what reasonable force actually means when it comes to defending your own property. Australia has similar self-defence laws to ours but they go that extra step. Here, you can barely touch someone stealing from you.

“We need the pendulum swung back to the law abiding and not criminals, who know their rights better than most lawyers do.

“We’ve also got to tackle a begging epidemic. One Aussie customer described Central Auckland as edgy and that was not meant as a complement.

“We need to act for a real change to take back our country and get it back on track. That starts by sorting out the crime emergency,” Mr Kaushal said.

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