Media won’t celebrate drop in violent crime

We show you how the media presented the good news of the significant reduction in victims of violent crime, and how they tried to twist the narrative away from celebrating a great trend.

SCRIPT:

It was a good day last Friday.

The Government had some good news. And whatever side of politics you’re on – unless you believe we should abolish prisons (like it seems Te Pati Maori do) or defund the police (like it seems some in the Greens want to do) - we should all be celebrating.

According to the official media release:

A tough on crime approach and a near doubling of police foot patrols have driven a huge drop in the number of victims of violent crime since this Government was elected, figures show.

The latest New Zealand Crime and Victims Survey shows there were 49,000 fewer victims of violent crime in the year to October 2025 than two years previously.

“Since day one, we’ve been working tirelessly to restore real consequences for crime, and to place victims back at the centre of the justice system,” Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith says.

“We have reformed the sentencing regime so those who cause the most harm are imprisoned for longer, given Police effective tools to deal with gangs, stopped taxpayer funding for the proliferation of cultural reports, made stalking an illegal and jailable offence, given victims of sexual assault the power to determine if offenders are granted name suppression, restored Three Strikes, and much more.”

“A higher visibility of Police in our communities goes a long way to deterring crime and keeping criminals off our streets,” Police Minister Mark Mitchell says.

“It is no coincidence that our back-to-basics approach to policing is having a positive effect on reducing violent crime. Backing our frontline has seen more Police out on the beat, with foot patrols almost doubling since coming into Government.

…..“It’s very encouraging to see we’re continuing to track ahead of our violent crime reduction target, with there now being 49,000 fewer victims of serious violent crime than when we came into Government,” Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith says.

“The latest figures show 136,000 New Zealanders were victims of violent crime in the 12 months to October 2025. This huge drop in the number of people affected by violent crime is fantastic progress but our work is far from over.

Children’s Minister Karen Chhour says Oranga Tamariki figures show there has been a 22 per cent drop in serious repeat youth offending compared with when the Government came into office.

“This is well ahead of our target of a 15 per cent drop before 2030,” she says.

This is a great news story.

Here’s just how dramatic the drop has been. The start of the graph is when the National / ACT / NZ First coalition came into power, and within 6-7 months, the rate of victims of violent crime started to plummet.

Here’s the trend. This is from the Salvation Army State of the Nation report released last month.

This is all victims of crime – and I’ve shown where the Labour-led Government kicked in end of 2017 and then the National-led Government end of 2023. Victims of crime were increasing but what is also noticeable is the light green line – the number of proceedings against offenders. It was decreasing.

That’s what you call “soft on crime”.

Here’s the specific violent crime stats. And you’ll note that since 2020 when Jacinda & Labour had an absolute majority, the number of victims had increased by a third!

32.3% (in the red square).

But in the last year, it dropped under the current government to just a 1.9% increase.

Here’s all assaults

Over the last 10 years, an almost 60% increase. Last five years, 33% overall. Last 12 months. Less than 2%.

Impressive.

What a difference when adults are in charge, and we target criminals with consequences.

And of course the National government were able to point out just how bad things had got under a Labour government before the last election

This is how they posted it on their National Party facebook page

But here’s another key stat that shows you why the media should be celebrating these stats.

This is from 2023 but you can see that Maori are disproportionately the victims of violent crime. Isn’t it interesting that it’s Te Pati Maori and the Greens that want to go soft on crime.

Sadly, Maori are also disproportionately represented as offenders.

Is this why the media are a bit conflicted on all of this?

So let me show you how the media presented the good news of the significant reduction in violent crime to you – some good, some bad.

And how they tried to twist the narrative away from celebrating a win.

Especially the state broadcaster TVNZ and their 1News at 6pm.

So here’s Stuff’s – and we’ll come back to their ThreeNews 6pm coverage shortly

Government ‘very proud’ of drop in violent crime victims, according to survey

Radio NZ

Ministers say ‘tough on crime’ working as new figures unveiled

NZ Herald

Crime survey shows 49,000 fewer violent crime victims, ministers say

Ministers say? Actually, it’s the hard data. Statistics. Factual evidence.

1News

Gang members now officially outnumber police officers

Wait, what? Where did gang member numbers come into it?

And does 1News actually celebrate the decrease in victims of violent crime and the obvious success of the policy in any way on the 6pm news.

I’ll show you.

But first, let me show you the press conference that the Government leaders had with the media pack.

Now I’ve been a victim of these media packs. And basically the media are trying to get the “gotcha”. They’re not really interested in you expanding on the facts that led to the media conference.

They want you to falter – to come under pressure, and say something which is super controversial – or so outrageous or be like Chloe on Q&A where you don’t have all the facts and figures and it just makes you look bad.

I remember the media conference we had when we won the cannabis referendum – and it was pretty clear that most of the media pack had voted Yes! They weren’t impressed that the NO vote had won.

I would say almost hostile towards us.

The first question was something along the lines of – do you realise you’ve just empowered and enabled the black market & gangs – or something like that.

I don’t think we actually heard – “congratulations you just helped NZ dodge a bullet”, as is being proved by what’s happening in US states that have legalised. Or “how did you achieve such a great result given that we the media were working so hard to promote the Yes vote”.

So to the press conference on the good news about violent crime.

This was last Friday.

Now in fairness the media can ask the politicians any question on any topic they want, but you’d sorta think that the main focus would be on these great statistics, and how bad things had got under the previous Labour government.

Here’s the first question. Not – “congratulations, what do you attribute the success to, why were the Labour and the left so bad at this”.

It’s “there’s still 136,000 victims”.

Will the media only congratulate a government when the number of victims of violent crime is zero?

Do they live in the real world?

Next question - What % of these young adults have experienced violent crime in the last year.

Now Luxon actually does a good job of simply returning to the facts – and how they’ve turned things around

But then we get a hint of where the 1News reporter wants to take this. Apparently gang numbers have increased and apparently they’re more than number of cops. By three – yes three – as you will see shortly.

But Luxon rightly connects decreased visibility of gangs.

But nobody asks the question – how do they know the gang numbers exactly. They know how many police are on the payroll, but how do you determine gang numbers.

Ironically (!), back in 2021, the same media were saying that New Zealand’s leading authority on gangs says that police gang statistics have been sharply over-estimated and are inaccurate.

The figures were used on Wednesday by National Party leader Judith Collins to call for harsher action on organised crime across the country.

She said the number of gang members in Wellington have almost doubled in three years.

However University of Canterbury lecturer Jarrod Gilbert told Morning Report this is simply not true and there are problems with how the numbers are collected.

“It’s incredibly easy to get on that list, because a police officer can see someone’s wearing a patch, or whatever it might be and so their name goes on the list, but then if people leave the gang it’s very very hard to identify when that occurs.

“The list is growing very very quickly but it doesn’t shrink correspondingly.”

There are gangs on the list that don’t exist, he said.

“It could be as much as double the reality.”

Okay – that’s interesting. Someone needs to tell 1News eh

Perhaps the answer depends on who’s in government?

The 1News reporter then says – well you promised to reduce gang member numbers (even though we can’t accurately define how many and the number could be double the reality.)

But a suitable response from Luxon. He’s enjoying this – and he’s doing well

Then another dumb question. “You’ve attributed this to tougher sentencing laws and increased police visibility. Do you have any data to back this up?”

Um…. Maybe google? I can find it. Why can’t you.

There’s also some questions on the Move On orders regarding homeless people in the CBD which the government had announced five days before.

And then this one.

“You’re tough on crime. Are you gonna be as tough on child poverty”. That’s what you call a side-step eh

Some more questions on begging laws, and also Air NZ who had just announced that financial loss.

Then back to our intrepid 1News reporter – and it’s “the gang numbers are up”

It’s still “a broken promise” apparently – even though the victims of violent crime have dropped a third since this tough-on-gangs stance….

Another question. (I’ve gotta give credit to Luxon, Goldsmith and Mitchell. They somehow manage to keep their cool!)

1News again. He’s desperate.

“Number of people convicted of violent offending is higher. Are you cherry picking that stats?”

Well yes there are a number of data sets. Victims. Number of times a victim has been a victim – a person could be a victim more than once. Arrests. Proceedings. Outcomes.

But here’s the answer. Conviction stats are based on whether a government is tough on crime. Victimisations will be a consequence of that approach.

Labour weren’t tough on crime. The current government are. And we can see the results.

Here’s another great image

Don’t hear much about ram raids now, do we.

This is a significant result because law and order was the 2^nd highest issue of concern for voters leading into the last election in 2023 – according to the IPSOS polling.

There were also questions in the media conference around - cyber security, Air NZ entitlements for MPs, dog attacks, asking the PM – would you travel JetStar. “I have”, poverty etc

So…

How did the 6pm television broadcasts cover this.

Listen carefully to the opening statement from the reporter…..

“quick to ignore the 136,000 people who reported being victims….”

No they’re not “ignoring”. Don’t be silly. Did you say that when the number was more than 210,000 victims when Labour was running the country? That Labour was “ignoring” the victims….

“While ministers credit policy changes & stronger police visibility, the survey measures the numbers, not what caused the shift…”

Um – that would be consequences of “tough on crime” policies.

And we’re back to 136,000 still victims. No credit to the Government for dropping the total number by a third!

The real question is – what’s happening in our Pacifika communities. That would be a good investigation to be had.

Interestingly, while Stuff’s ThreeNews didn’t want to talk about the level of the DROP in crime stats, their next story was all over the INCREASE in child poverty…

Now 1News.

And you’ll find out why their intrepid reporter Inspector Clouseau was targeting gang numbers rather than decrease in violent offences

See if you see this graph. And is there any celebration of the significant decrease in victims of violent crime.

3 more gang members – based on figures that nobody can rely on or can guarantee.

Have we got to the graph of declining violent crime victimization yet?

“Depends on where you look and who you talk to…”

But as you saw, reporter Benedict Collins (who anyone who watches McBlog will know that I have no respect for as a reporter because of a hatchet job he did on us a few years ago) went to Labour for a response.

Labour’s police spokesperson Ginny Andersen told 1News that National “has always talked a big game on law and order, but they’ve absolutely failed to deliver – and this is just evidence of that”.

Ooof – apparently this is a big failure.

Really?

A decent reporter would have asked the previous Minister of Police – um, this person Ginny Anderson – why the violent crime had exploded to such a number and why they were so useless at their job.

You see, I don’t know if you saw but gang numbers were also apparently rising under Labour – a 50% increase during Labour’s first term in Government under Jacinda. Did the reporter mention that?

Or perhaps a half-decent decent reporter could have asked one of Labour’s previous failed police ministers – like the one circled. The current leader of the Labour party.

You know, some decent investigative journalism.

It was a sorry day for media last Friday, but not unexpected.

Perhaps give credit to the Government that they can keep their cool when they’re dealing with the media.

But also give yourself credit that most people can see through the media narratives that are being fed to us. This is why trust in the media is tanking, and people are switching off.

The media only have themselves to blame.