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11:36 am, December 21st, 2025 - 9 comments
Categories: law, law and "order", national, paul goldsmith, same old national -
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National’s anti shoplifting champion Sunny Kaushal is in the news again.
I have followed his involvement with this Government with interest.
We go back quite a while.
He was a good Labour Party activist for a number of years and clearly hoped to be an MP.
He and I stood for the New Lynn nomination in 2017. We both missed out.
I licked my wounds for a while and then became reenergised. A progressive future is too important.
Sunny turned to the dark side and went to National.
He has been a very good activist for them since then. I have witnessed a transformation of the Indian community in Tamaki Makaurau to become less tolerant of crime and I am sure that his persistent campaigning is at least partially responsible for this.
I don’t blame them.
To our merchant class the impression of a crime wave was strong.
It does not help talking about long term trends and how things were much worse back in the 1990s, the understandable desire for action is all important.
So Sunny in his role as spokesperson for the Dairy and Business Owners Group and his more recent role heading the Ministerial Advisory Group on Retail Crime has played an important political role.
Over the past few years he made some incredible statements like:
And he is being paid a significant amount of money to do so. He earns more than a back bench MP and nearly as much as a Minister.
The workoutput is pretty skinny. So far there has been tweaks to trespass law, and some increases to the penalties for theft as well as introduction of the bill introducing changes to the law around arrests. Technically these are relatively simple changes that do not need a dedicated office to collate and drive them through.
And Kaushal has got into some public strife for the catering bill for meeting with local businesses where the food on offer included rock melon, goat’s cheese and prosciutto crostini, mini chicken and leek savouries, and $9 bottles of Coke which normally cost $5.50.
From Jimmy Ellingham at Radio New Zealand:
At a recent select committee meeting during Parliament’s scrutiny week, Labour MPs queried the spend on the February meeting, which was $4075.
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith, who was present, admitted to the NZ Herald the event was “clearly over-catered” and “probably had too many scones”. He did not respond to RNZ for this story.
The costs also included charges for chairs, paper plates a lectern and an AV technician.
Fifty cheese-and-tomato sandwiches cost $175, as did 50 chicken-and-cheese sandwiches.
Bottles of Coke and Sprite – 2.5 litres – which cost about $5.50 at the supermarket were charged to the group at $9 each. About 80 people attended.
In March, a two-hour meeting for 150 people, held in South Auckland, cost $3980, including $800 for venue hire and $120 for security. The $3060 catering bill for the two-hour meeting wasn’t broken down.
In July, another two-hour meeting in Auckland for 80 people, attended by Goldsmith and Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee, cost $4013.
That included chairs and equipment hire. The catering came to $2063.
Kaushal has previously been questioned about the advisory group’s general spend, which includes its $100,000-a-year central Auckland office space. Kaushal billed $230,000 for his first year of work, a daily rate of $920.
And he continues to be politically active. Here is a post he put up recently supporting the Papatoetoe Otara Action team. He said the group’s achievement was “a genuine grassroots result built on connection and trust”. The election which they won has recently been overturned because of the concern of widespread voter fraud.
Sunny may want to recheck the results. C&R (National in drag) won four out of six seats on the Puketapapa Local Board and in the Maungawhau subdivision City Vision surprisingly won one of the four seats.
His office feels like State funding of Political Parties but only for one side, the side that happens to have all of the money.
If a Labour Government had engaged in this sort of partisan behaviour there would have been a huge outcry in the media. But apart from the excessive catering bills they have not really talked about the extraordinarily political nature of his office. Or should it be funded by funding collected for victims.
Thank God Auckland Labour spat him out.
He rose to fame after buying the Shakespeare hotel in Albert Street when there was a 20metre deep trench right outside, and then forming a minor media circus of festering complaint.
After that he was a minor Nat star.
Sucking on the taxpayer tit for as long as these fools will have him.
He always was a greasy waka jumping opportunist. The person who sold him the pub was the better business person. We note that he is not complaining now that the footpath outside the pub is twice as wide so he can put tables on it to almost double the capacity of the downstairs bar of the pub.
Exactly how I feel. NZFirst (or even a reincarnation of the United party) would be his natural home.
I have no argument with what is written in the post. As observed above he comes across as an opportunist grifter and if a cow will stand, you milk it.
What I want to know is; what is the progressive response to victims of crime considering "It does not help talking about long term trends and how things were much worse back in the 1990s, the understandable desire for action is all important."
This is where the left comes across as weak on crime. I am aware of falling youth crime rates and the real solution is not boot camps and a bigger prison roster.
How to meet that desire for action in a progressive way?
Wish I knew. Stop blaming families for being poor. Resource health/education rather than punitive schemes, e.g. boot camps – there but for the grace of God go any of us.
Some Kiwis will deny the impact of poverty on social outcomes with every fibre of their being – who knows what combination of forces might fuel such a lack of empathy.
fund ACC properly
fund education properly
pay compensation to victims of abuse in state care
fix the housing crisis
fund mental health
honour Te Tiriti
not this simplistic "lock 'em up and throw away the key" bullcrap
Sunny was always hanging around Helen Clark back in the day. A brown-nosing opportunist.
Crimes and misdemeanors are committed by people who have been abused by the capitalist state since before they were born, either directly or by neglect.
Inadequate diet and ante natal care for expectant mothers. Third-rate over-crowded housing conditions. High cost and lack of support to access appropriate health care and education.
The list goes on: not only is it bad social policy but bad economics.
In this election campaign, coming up, we need to see some numbers on the cost of looking after young people and their care-givers properly vs the costs of not doing so.
And appeal to the vast majority of electors to get in behind doing the right thing.
Remember, a sovereign government with a free-floating currency can never run out of money.
Cheers
The proposal for Citizens Arrest is madness. Goldsmith got called out on it the other day and was like um er the Select Committee will sort it out. Restraining children – ffs and citizens arrest for anything under the Crimes Act. There were some other things floating around that Retail NZ weren't keen on like being able to pepper spray a shoplifter. I don't know where that got to. Labour funded bollards, cannon sprays and roll down security doors. What's happening now is that crime has gone elsewhere and actually gotten worse. Meth anyone? But hey Sunny grifter boy, enjoy your morning tea.
The imaginative leader's aim for the future young person would be to grow an all-rounder in skills and education with a cheerful disposition and willing to work on gig jobs but have registered with the state to follow some personal skill that would not be harmful or entirely foolish. (If throwing yourself off a cliff with some butterfly wings – they would have to pay a special ACC and private insurance cost)!
We don't need a lot of education as AI will counter all or supply something but we do need skills and to belong to a community of positive achievement. So learning cooking,woodwork, mechanical engineering (a little computer engineering), all have music, and some aspect of maths to teach orderly mind control. Also be encouraged to read and discuss stuff along set parameters, helping the orderly mind. Arts also, and plant and animal care. Different languages, especially sufficient sufficient Maori and tikanga not to be an ignoramus.
Most people are still living in the 20th century trying to adapt to the 21st net set up to catch them. It is like watching a film where you observe interesting stuff but are apart. But adapt is one thing, adopt is another. Hold a piece of your antique brain back from modernisation which is melting down to jelly-like solidity.