Crime, truancy, cost of living are top of National Party’s list

• By Christopher Luxon, Opposition Leader and MP for Botany

You might have seen news reports last week that showed retail crime has spiked to more than 10,000 incidents in a single month – the highest in recorded history.

On average, 8745 retail crime incidents were recorded per month to the end of November last year. In October 2022 alone, there were a staggering 10,020 incidents. That’s both alarming and incredibly concerning.

Criminals feel emboldened because they know they will not be held accountable by this soft-on-crime Labour Government.

That is why violent crime is up by 21 per cent and why New Zealanders have seen a 56 per cent increase in gang members.

A National Government I lead will crack down on crime. New Zealanders should feel safe in their homes and communities.

We know a lot of the crime is being committed by youths and people who are associated with gangs.

National will introduce a Young Serious Offender category to increase consequences for repeat offenders, and the worst repeat offenders could be sent to Young Offender Military Academies for up to 12 months for intensive rehabilitation.

National will also ban gang patches in public and give police non-association powers to prevent gang members from communicating and planning criminal activity.

We will allow police to issue dispersal notices where gang members come together in public to intimidate, threaten and sometimes assault members of the public, and give police the warrantless search powers they need to take the guns out of the hands of violent armed gang members.

Under Chris Hipkins as Police Minister, Labour has been nothing but soft on crime.

So far, Labour’s record in law and order has been to remove the Three Strikes legislation for serious repeat offenders, reduce the prison population despite the clear increase in crime and not back our police to give them the powers to take firearms off violent criminals.

Another issue is our truancy rate. Our kids are disengaged from education and not going to school. More than 100,000 Kiwi kids are still chronically absent from school.

National would hold ourselves, schools, and parents accountable for ensuring that kids are regularly in school, including setting clear expectations for schools and parents that kids not going to school is no longer an option.

We will shift resources from back-office bureaucrats in Wellington to the frontline, so schools have the support they need to give every child the opportunity to benefit from a world-class education.

Finally, you will have seen Chris Hipkins parked up a number of Labour’s unpopular pet projects until after the election.

Hipkins wants Kiwis to think Labour is listening to voters’ concerns about their priorities but the reality is the Jobs Tax is just being delayed, hate speech legislation is out for more consultation, and Three Waters is still happening.

You can’t trust Labour. The leader may have changed, but Labour hasn’t.

They’re still obsessed with ideological pet projects, they still have no plan to reduce the cost of living and they are still addicted to wasteful spending.

New Zealand needs more than a Labour Government who have changed leader and woken up to the fact the country is going backwards.

They need a National Government that knows what it stands for, won’t abandon its programme in an election year and will deliver results so that all New Zealanders get ahead.

National will address the cost of living, lift incomes, restore law and order, build infrastructure and deliver better health and education.

National will repeal Labour’s Three Waters, stop Labour’s hate speech legislation and axe Labour’s Jobs Tax once and for all.