New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s security detail has cut a media briefing short over protesters in Auckland.
He was holding a press conference yesterday after a walkabout with police to discuss concerns with businesses in the CBD.
Luxon was talking with media when one of his security officers could be seen coming into the business, actively looking around, before placing a hand on the Prime Minister’s shoulder and informing him they had to leave now.
An RNZ journalist at the briefing said he understood protesters were en route to the location, but the prime minister left before they had arrived.
According to The New Zealand Herald, they were pro-Palestine protesters.
Police beat teams
He was also joined by Police Minister Mark Mitchell, and Associate Police Minister Casey Costello and Retail Crime Ministerial Advisory Group head Sunny Kaushal after police added another 21 officers to their CBD beat teams this month, bringing the team to 51.
It is part of a drive to expand the number of police visible on city streets, with the Auckland team expected to increase to 63, another 17 officers joining the Wellington team, and 18 more in Christchurch.
Luxon said the expanded teams was a “great start, and more than a great start … it’s a collaborative effort and what you’re seeing here is that there’s really good join-up.”
He said with cruise ships coming back to New Zealand, it was important to do better and it was important for people to feel safe.
Patrolling Auckland was a collaborative effort, which was seen yesterday with numerous council and Heart of the City security staff also on the beat.
“Police are obviously at the heart of the whole issue, but they are working really constructively with the security officers from the different retail complexes, with the city council . . . ”
Prime Minister Luxon’s press conference cut short. Video: RNZ News
Beat policing makes difference
Some business people Luxon had spoken to told him they had seen a difference when it came to on the beat policing.
Mitchell said it was also about having all the govenrment and community agencies working together. He said the briefing he had seen from police showed crime was starting to trend down.
“It’s only early signs, it’s green shoots . . . I don’t have the numbers that I can give to you today but it’s numbers that police have been working on.”
Coster said it was a long-term thing that needed to be seen having a continued effect.
He said the deployment in the CBD was significant.
“Not just our beat staff, but also our public safety units, our community policing staff, and we have a tactical crime unit focused on the central city as well.”
“That’s a very big deployment, on a regular basis.”
Luxon walked through town, stopping to chat with security officers.
“It’s been really good, an announcement and then quick implementation, and you guys joined up together and you’ve been acting more as a tighter eco-system, is even better,” he said to one Britomart security officer.
He also greeted pedestrians as he made his way up Queen Street, some shouting expletive expressions of shock at seeing him.
Murray from Queen’s Arcade on Queen Street said the situation had improved.
“It’s nice to see the police around the lower city CBD,” he said.
“We’re all working together, it’s going to be difficult. We kind of expect the council to do their part in this too with some of the projects, perhaps, homeless people that cause us a little bit of grief, and are a nuisance to themselves and the public,” he said.
He said rough sleepers were still an issue, and that pedestrians felt intimidated by them.
‘We expect churches to face up’
Earlier, speaking to reporters, the prime minister said churches behind the faith-based care institutions needed to be “fully responsible and accountable”, and destruction of records “doesn’t sound right”.
Yesterday’s standup followed the release of the Royal Commission’s report into abuse in care this week, a massive 16-volume report still being digested by the survivors and the public.
“We expect the churches to face up to their responsibility,” Luxon said.
The report noted the president of the Law Society had advised the head of Presbyterian Support Otago to destroy records of children in its care to protect the organisation’s reputation.
Frazer Barton told RNZ Morning Report yesterday he had advised Gillian Bremner to “destroy them at an appropriate time — that’s not ‘go ahead and destroy them now'”. The files were destroyed in 2017 and 2018.
Luxon said he had not been briefed on that but the government wanted to ensure records were available – including being available to survivors.
“I haven’t seen what he’s particularly briefed or asked,” Luxon said. “All I’m focused on is actually responding to the recommendations, working with the survivors, making sure that churches are held responsible for the abuse that they’ve caused as well.”
Asked to comment on his reaction to hearing that records had been destroyed, he said “it doesn’t sound good, it doesn’t sound right, it doesn’t sound what we’re asking churches to do.”
He said the churches should front up and be held accountable.
“We’re asking for them to be fully responsible and accountable.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
