ACT wants to grant security guards more powers, with industry concerns not many would want the extra abilities

The Party says police are overstretched and security staff can fill the gap - protecting retailers, transport hubs and businesses.

They'd like them allowed to detain and remove people, issue exclusion notices, and use force.

Security Association chief executive Gary Morrison says he doubts most security staff would want to be in that situation.

LISTEN ABOVE

ACT wants to grant security guards more powers, with industry concerns not many would want the extra abilities
The Party says police are overstretched and security staff can fill the gap - protecting retailers, transport hubs and businesses.
They'd like them allowed to detain and remove people, issue exclusion notices, and use force.
Security Association chief executive Gary Morrison says he doubts most security staff would want to be in that situation.
LISTEN ABOVE

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Kerre Woodham Mornings Podcast

Gary Morrison: NZ Security Association CEO comments on ACT proposition to give security guards more power

https://api.omny.fm/orgs/7784f840-c291-422a-924b-ad9000bbad71/clips/381b09a2-4f7a-4dc9-bd55-b47c0036dcea/transcript

Security guards will be given the power to detain people and use force under a sweeping ACT Party proposal that makes the very fair point that police are overstretched, and businesses can no longer wait for officers to respond. Some of them would see tectonic plates drift as they waited for the Police to respond to shoplifters who are slowly but surely causing their business to buckle under the pressure and the increased costs. Repeated shoplifters, those who just wander in, take what they want and leave because they know nobody's coming. Those who urinate in doorways and do all sorts of vile things I've heard about from inner city retailers because they know they're not a high priority. It's not good enough and nobody's come up with a solution yet until ACT's proposal. Under the plan, the accredited security operators would have and could use new powers on private premises, filling in the gap between police and community patrols. The policy would allow retailers, business associations, transport operators and others to deploy the guards. 

In the story in the Herald this morning, David Seymour said the law and order pledge would protect business owners. He said police can't respond quickly to every call and we know that – security professionals have the potential to fill the gap. New Zealand has twice as many licensed security officers as police officers, but they currently have no more authority than any other citizen. And it's true that this has been a hardy talkback chestnut. The question is always asked; why can security guards tackle pitch invaders but not shoplifters who are brazenly walking out of supermarkets with hundreds of dollars worth of goods in their trolleys, taking one hand off the trolley to give two fingers to the supermarket owners, the customers and the security guards?  

The answer is that pitch invaders are a threat to public safety apparently, to the players, to other people. So security guards are allowed to prevent disruption and mitigate high risk safety threats by tackling the hoors, whereas walking out with trolleys worth of stuff is not considered a threat to public safety. The physical intervention, the thumping tackles and the arm behind the back and the walking out of the grounds is purely for expulsion and safety, not for recovering property, which makes the tackle legally defensible if it prevents physical harm or major disruption.  The question is would you want to? Do security officers want the expectation on the part of the business owner and on the part of the customers, the legal customers, do you want that expectation on your shoulders that you will intervene? Do you want everybody to look at you and say well go after them? 

There's all kinds of crazy out there, especially with people who are just blatant career thieves. Will it escalate violence? If you do the thumping tackle, can you expect that the person who's trying to flee will resort to violence to get away? Will simply the threat of security guards being able to act rather than having to stand there like cardboard cutouts of coppers while the thieves laugh all the way to the boot of their car and load it up with all their goods? That must be so galling for everybody, for paying customers to have to see it, for the business owner to have to see it, for the security guards to have to see it, these lowlifes just walking out and laughing because they know that everybody is powerless.  

If you're given power, if the security officers have the power, will that be a sufficient deterrent? I'd really love to hear your thoughts on this. I don't know the answer. I'd love to see them get the powers, the legal powers to intervene, but are you paid enough to risk your life? The coppers aren't and yet they do and they're paid a lot more than you guys and girls. There's enormous acts of bravery on the part of security officers, but should there be an expectation of that kind of bravery? 

Security guards will be given the power to detain people and use force under a sweeping ACT Party proposal that makes the very fair point that police are overstretched, and businesses can no longer wait for officers to respond. Some of them would see tectonic plates drift as they waited for the Police to respond to shoplifters who are slowly but surely causing their business to buckle under the pressure and the increased costs. Repeated shoplifters, those who just wander in, take what they want and leave because they know nobody's coming. Those who urinate in doorways and do all sorts of vile things I've heard about from inner city retailers because they know they're not a high priority. It's not good enough and nobody's come up with a solution yet until ACT's proposal. Under the plan, the accredited security operators would have and could use new powers on private premises, filling in the gap between police and community patrols. The policy would allow retailers, business associations, transport operators and others to deploy the guards.&nbsp;
In the story in the Herald this morning, David Seymour said the law and order pledge would protect business owners. He said police can't respond quickly to every call and we know that – security professionals have the potential to fill the gap. New Zealand has twice as many licensed security officers as police officers, but they currently have no more authority than any other citizen. And it's true that this has been a hardy talkback chestnut. The question is always asked; why can security guards tackle pitch invaders but not shoplifters who are brazenly walking out of supermarkets with hundreds of dollars worth of goods in their trolleys, taking one hand off the trolley to give two fingers to the supermarket owners, the customers and the security guards? &nbsp;
The answer is that pitch invaders are a threat to public safety apparently, to the players, to other people. So security guards are allowed to prevent disruption and mitigate high risk safety threats by tackling the hoors, whereas walking out with trolleys worth of stuff is not considered a threat to public safety. The physical intervention, the thumping tackles and the arm behind the back and the walking out of the grounds is purely for expulsion and safety, not for recovering property, which makes the tackle legally defensible if it prevents physical harm or major disruption. &nbsp;The question is would you want to? Do security officers want the expectation on the part of the business owner and on the part of the customers, the legal customers, do you want that expectation on your shoulders that you will intervene? Do you want everybody to look at you and say well go after them?&nbsp;
There's all kinds of crazy out there, especially with people who are just blatant career thieves. Will it escalate violence? If you do the thumping tackle, can you expect that the person who's trying to flee will resort to violence to get away? Will simply the threat of security guards being able to act rather than having to stand there like cardboard cutouts of coppers while the thieves laugh all the way to the boot of their car and load it up with all their goods? That must be so galling for everybody, for paying customers to have to see it, for the business owner to have to see it, for the security guards to have to see it, these lowlifes just walking out and laughing because they know that everybody is powerless. &nbsp;
If you're given power, if the security officers have the power, will that be a sufficient deterrent? I'd really love to hear your thoughts on this. I don't know the answer. I'd love to see them get the powers, the legal powers to intervene, but are you paid enough to risk your life? The coppers aren't and yet they do and they're paid a lot more than you guys and girls. There's enormous acts of bravery on the part of security officers, but should there be an expectation of that kind of bravery?&nbsp;

Kerre Woodham: Should security guards have the power to intervene?

https://api.omny.fm/orgs/7784f840-c291-422a-924b-ad9000bbad71/clips/85dfe9e4-9825-4039-bcce-b47c0012b79d/transcript

From Michelin stars to school lunches, sublime, ridiculous. I think it's safe to say none of the school lunches on offer will be getting Michelin stars. Then the last lot probably wouldn't have either. A scathing report has been issued by the Auditor General, which says only 50% percent of the meals delivered by the new school lunch programme in 2025 complied with the Ministry of Education's nutrition standards. We haven't talked about the school lunches for a hot minute, have we? Remember when it was the topic du jour? The parliamentary watchdog also took aim at inaccurate costings for the lunches, safety issues, contingency planning, and their rollout. Associate Minister for Education and the equivalent of 'Thatcher Thatcher milk snatcher', David Seymour is the one that said no, we're going to do away with them altogether, oh all right we'll keep them, but they have to be cheaper. He’s hit out at the criticism, inferring the Auditor General took far too much notice of malcontents formerly involved in the scheme. 

“What they haven't done is a comparison of the quality before and after I took over. So they've been very critical in various ways and I'm happy to to answer their criticisms, but they haven't evaluated the whole programme and it appears that a lot of the initiation of the report and the feed into the report came from people that frankly had to be sacked after they were not able to manage the programme when I came in, and those who previously supplied the government, often at twice the current price. None of those people are very happy and they seem to have had a pretty good hearing from the Auditor General.” 

I don't think we can shoot the messenger. The office of the Auditor General has done some sterling work over the past few years and they're just simply looking at the numbers. But should we just do away with them altogether? Because when it was initially conceived, I mean if you look at the data, the 50% nutrition figure for the School Lunch Collective's meals was calculated by the Ministry of Education. It was disputed by the Collective, which said by Term 3 we'd got it up to 69% of the lunches complying with nutrition standards, and in Term 4 compliance was 75%. I bet your bottom dollar I was churning out school lunches back in the day that did not comply with the Ministry's nutrition standards. And probably, if you look at the kids' lunchboxes this morning, there's a lot of pressure from schools and fellow parents to produce nutritional, yet decorative, eye catching, pleasing to the palate school lunches. Honestly, that thing where you're doing the bento boxes with the pretty patterns in the sandwiches, as if parents didn't have enough to do of a morning. Anyway, they probably wouldn't meet the criteria every day either. 

And that's the thing. When school lunches were first envisaged, you and I, and indeed the MPs involved in the decision making, probably imagined a couple of Marmite or cheese sandwiches, some yoghurt, a muesli bar and an apple. Easy. Why not? Fill your boots. Do it. But that's where you and I, and indeed the MPs, are coming from a place of privilege. Who knew that a Marmite sandwich was privilege? It is. Bureaucrats stuck their oars in and said, no, when it comes to the school lunches for certain children, the school lunch may well be the only regular meal of the day. You privileged people with your Marmite sandwich go home to cooked dinners full of protein and veggies. These children don't. Therefore, we must cram as many nutrients and veggies as we possibly can into the school lunch to ensure these poor kids get their daily allowance. That's where it all got very, very, very complicated. Because if you're trying to make the school lunch the main meal of the day, generally it'll have to be heated. And you'll have to pack it full of veggies and some of these kids, you, some of these kids don't even know the texture of raw vegetables or couscous or rice or anything of the like.  

Some providers did it very well. Remember that school in Porirua? Where we had the lovely principal and they got the parents involved and they did their own lunches. And they were mums and they were sensible and they knew how to make meals on the smell of an oily rag and how to disguise vegetables. You grate the carrot into the spaghetti bolognese. You don't put it there in big lumps because they're not used to that, a lot of these kids – they don't want to eat chunks of carrot. Most parents who are listening to this show will know how you disguise veggies into food. You usually do it when they're about 18 months old, nine months to 18 months old. You don't make it slop, but get them used to texture and chewing and the like. And that's what you do. You don't hit them up with a couscous salad on day one and expect them to scarf it down. 

We come back to what success looks like for this programme. For me, I never imagined in 10 trillion years that it would cause this much angst, political toing and froing, that it would cost that much, around $328 million a year, that it would take up, command so much airtime and column inches in the media. It's absurd. I thought it would be a lunch as you and I know it, not every single calorie and veggie a child would need in a day. That it would be about improving attendance because when the kids knew there was a good meal for them, they'd turn up to school, and performance would improve.  

But no, that hasn't happened. School attendance hasn't improved and the only data around improved classroom performance is non-existent. You just get the touchy feelies – the children reported a better sense of wellbeing. Well, that's not getting an A+, is it? That's not being able to sit through a reading lesson. No, the programme's become more trouble than it's bloody worth. Do away with the government being involved, you know, give some money to the charities that do provide, KidsCan provide lunches, Sanitarium and Fonterra provide breakfast clubs. Either scale it right back and keep it simple and keep it as cheap as possible, the sandwich, the yoghurt, the apple, or just don't do it at all. 

From Michelin stars to school lunches, sublime, ridiculous. I think it's safe to say none of the school lunches on offer will be getting Michelin stars. Then the last lot probably wouldn't have either. A scathing report has been issued by the Auditor General, which says only 50% percent of the meals delivered by the new school lunch programme in 2025 complied with the Ministry of Education's nutrition standards. We haven't talked about the school lunches for a hot minute, have we? Remember when it was the topic du jour? The parliamentary watchdog also took aim at inaccurate costings for the lunches, safety issues, contingency planning, and their rollout. Associate Minister for Education and the equivalent of 'Thatcher Thatcher milk snatcher', David Seymour is the one that said no, we're going to do away with them altogether, oh all right we'll keep them, but they have to be cheaper. He’s hit out at the criticism, inferring the Auditor General took far too much notice of malcontents formerly involved in the scheme.&nbsp;
“What they haven't done is a comparison of the quality before and after I took over. So they've been very critical in various ways and I'm happy to to answer their criticisms, but they haven't evaluated the whole programme and it appears that a lot of the initiation of the report and the feed into the report came from people that frankly had to be sacked after they were not able to manage the programme when I came in, and those who previously supplied the government, often at twice the current price. None of those people are very happy and they seem to have had a pretty good hearing from the Auditor General.”&nbsp;
I don't think we can shoot the messenger. The office of the Auditor General has done some sterling work over the past few years and they're just simply looking at the numbers. But should we just do away with them altogether? Because when it was initially conceived, I mean if you look at the data, the 50% nutrition figure for the School Lunch Collective's meals was calculated by the Ministry of Education. It was disputed by the Collective, which said by Term 3 we'd got it up to 69% of the lunches complying with nutrition standards, and in Term 4 compliance was 75%. I bet your bottom dollar I was churning out school lunches back in the day that did not comply with the Ministry's nutrition standards. And probably, if you look at the kids' lunchboxes this morning, there's a lot of pressure from schools and fellow parents to produce nutritional, yet decorative, eye catching, pleasing to the palate school lunches. Honestly, that thing where you're doing the bento boxes with the pretty patterns in the sandwiches, as if parents didn't have enough to do of a morning. Anyway, they probably wouldn't meet the criteria every day either.&nbsp;
And that's the thing. When school lunches were first envisaged, you and I, and indeed the MPs involved in the decision making, probably imagined a couple of Marmite or cheese sandwiches, some yoghurt, a muesli bar and an apple. Easy. Why not? Fill your boots. Do it. But that's where you and I, and indeed the MPs, are coming from a place of privilege. Who knew that a Marmite sandwich was privilege? It is. Bureaucrats stuck their oars in and said, no, when it comes to the school lunches for certain children, the school lunch may well be the only regular meal of the day. You privileged people with your Marmite sandwich go home to cooked dinners full of protein and veggies. These children don't. Therefore, we must cram as many nutrients and veggies as we possibly can into the school lunch to ensure these poor kids get their daily allowance. That's where it all got very, very, very complicated. Because if you're trying to make the school lunch the main meal of the day, generally it'll have to be heated. And you'll have to pack it full of veggies and some of these kids, you, some of these kids don't even know the texture of raw vegetables or couscous or rice or anything of the like. &nbsp;
Some providers did it very well. Remember that school in Porirua? Where we had the lovely principal and they got the parents involved and they did their own lunches. And they were mums and they were sensible and they knew how to make meals on the smell of an oily rag and how to disguise vegetables. You grate the carrot into the spaghetti bolognese. You don't put it there in big lumps because they're not used to that, a lot of these kids – they don't want to eat chunks of carrot. Most parents who are listening to this show will know how you disguise veggies into food. You usually do it when they're about 18 months old, nine months to 18 months old. You don't make it slop, but get them used to texture and chewing and the like. And that's what you do. You don't hit them up with a couscous salad on day one and expect them to scarf it down.&nbsp;
We come back to what success looks like for this programme. For me, I never imagined in 10 trillion years that it would cause this much angst, political toing and froing, that it would cost that much, around $328 million a year, that it would take up, command so much airtime and column inches in the media. It's absurd. I thought it would be a lunch as you and I know it, not every single calorie and veggie a child would need in a day. That it would be about improving attendance because when the kids knew there was a good meal for them, they'd turn up to school, and performance would improve. &nbsp;
But no, that hasn't happened. School attendance hasn't improved and the only data around improved classroom performance is non-existent. You just get the touchy feelies – the children reported a better sense of wellbeing. Well, that's not getting an A+, is it? That's not being able to sit through a reading lesson. No, the programme's become more trouble than it's bloody worth. Do away with the government being involved, you know, give some money to the charities that do provide, KidsCan provide lunches, Sanitarium and Fonterra provide breakfast clubs. Either scale it right back and keep it simple and keep it as cheap as possible, the sandwich, the yoghurt, the apple, or just don't do it at all.&nbsp;

Kerre Woodham: The school lunch programme's become more trouble than it's worth

https://api.omny.fm/orgs/7784f840-c291-422a-924b-ad9000bbad71/clips/7ada5150-cf01-40d2-8b74-b47a001301a7/transcript

Multiple hospitals are dealing with failing infrastructure.  

Episodes of heavy rain are causing leaks and water damage at Middlemore Hospital’s aging maternity block.  

And conditions at Hutt Hospital are being described as “disgraceful”, with water getting into wards, collapsing ceilings, and potential electrical hazards. 

Nurses say they’re juggling patient care with buckets and mops, while Health NZ insists the issues are contained the hospitals remain safe.  

Chief Financial Officer Bevan McKenzie told Kerre Woodham those specific issues will be addressed over the next 12 months under the remediation programme. 

More broadly, he says, they have a weather tightness programme being implemented across the Health NZ estate, and they’ve earmarked $10 million for improvement in 2026/27 to continue that work.  

McKenzie says that water-related issues are complex, as it can be difficult to identify where they’re stemming from, and wants to acknowledge the work the clinical and facilities teams are doing to improve the situation.  

LISTEN ABOVE 

Multiple hospitals are dealing with failing infrastructure. &nbsp;
Episodes of heavy rain are causing leaks and water damage at Middlemore Hospital’s aging maternity block. &nbsp;
And conditions at Hutt Hospital are being described as “disgraceful”, with water getting into wards, collapsing ceilings, and potential electrical hazards.&nbsp;
Nurses say they’re juggling patient care with buckets and mops, while Health NZ insists the issues are contained the hospitals remain safe. &nbsp;
Chief Financial Officer Bevan McKenzie told Kerre Woodham those specific issues will be addressed over the next 12 months under the remediation programme.&nbsp;
More broadly, he says, they have a weather tightness programme being implemented across the Health NZ estate, and they’ve earmarked $10 million for improvement in 2026/27 to continue that work. &nbsp;
McKenzie says that water-related issues are complex, as it can be difficult to identify where they’re stemming from, and wants to acknowledge the work the clinical and facilities teams are doing to improve the situation. &nbsp;
LISTEN ABOVE&nbsp;

Bevan McKenzie: Health New Zealand Chief Financial Officer on the ageing and leaky infrastructure at Middlemore and Hutt Hospital

https://api.omny.fm/orgs/7784f840-c291-422a-924b-ad9000bbad71/clips/822920c3-dd1f-41a9-bee9-b479001b1e72/transcript

Gary Morrison: NZ Security Association CEO comments on ACT proposition to give security guards more power

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