Retail crime group chair accused Labour of ‘misinformation’ over costs

Wednesday, 12 November 2025

The chair of the Government’s retail crime taskforce accused a senior Labour MP of sharing “misinformation” when she revealed details of how much was being spent on the group and its salaries, emails released to The Post show.

Sunny Kaushal, a former chairperson of the Dairy and Business Owners Group and small business owner, was appointed chair of the Ministerial Advisory Group for Victims of Retail Crime in July last year.

The group has since been responsible for proposing policies including the controversial call to widen citizen’s arrest powers, which the Government is considering.

The cost of the group, including the fee paid to Kaushal, has previously been reported, largely due to parliamentary written questions from Labour’s justice spokesperson Ginny Andersen.

Kaushal is remunerated at a rate of $920 per day along with for “actual and reasonable travel, meal and accommodation costs”. Under his government contract, he can work up to 250 days a year.

Over the first year of the group’s operation, he was paid more than $238,000.

But in correspondence to Goldsmith obtained under the Official Information Act, Kaushal took issue with data requested by Andersen in June, accusing the former justice minister of “maliciously” sharing numbers in an effort to make the group look bad.

“[Andersen] intentionally chose an unusual, weird date range - 1 March to 10 June - which included arrears and invoices paid from previous two months … making the numbers appear inflated [sic],” wrote Kaushal. “The delay in processing invoices at [the Ministry of Justice] was due to staffing shortages at the time.”

A table included in Kaushal’s email showed that he was paid over $95,000 during this period, but that it included “variance” of about $17,000 which amounted to five weeks of arrears along with additional expenses.

In his July message to Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith, Kaushal described Andersen’s framing of the fee paid as “intentional misinformation” and said it was designed to “discredit and distract” from progress being made to tackle retail crime.

“The reality is that we’re well ‘under budget’ and ‘underspent’,” added Kaushal in his message.

No record of Goldsmith responding to Kaushal was included in the documents. Given the figures were released by Goldsmith, there is no suggestion they are incorrect.

In response to a written question from Andersen at the time, Goldsmith confirmed that the group in total had spent “$507,468.71 from 1 March 2025 to 10 June 2025” - the timeframe with which Kaushal privately took issue.

At the time, Goldsmith told reporters that as the advisory group’s budget was $1.8 million a year, it was performing within its means.

'The point of the advisory group is to come up with well-thought-through, oven-ready legislation for us to get on with, and that's what they've done,' he said.

While Andersen didn’t respond directly to the claims Kaushal made, she doubled down on her criticism of the group. Via a spokesperson, she told The Post that the person who had benefited most from the ministerial advisory group was Kaushal himself “and sadly not small business owners who continue to face the direct impact of retail crime”.

She continued: “They’ve spent millions, a lot of which is going to Kaushal himself and his office space, only to rehash bad ideas like citizen’s arrest in return.”

Andersen previously told reporters it was unclear why an “exorbitant amount” was being spent on the group.

Kaushal, via text, told The Post that the group’s fees had been “wrongly characterised” to suggest he worked “about seven days per week”.

In fact, “I worked an average of under five days per week at the time of the [released] email”.

He did not respond to a question about whether he stood by labelling it “misinformation”.

On top of incomes, the retail group has leased offices amounting to $100,000 a year, with documents showing Kaushal specified certain requirements for the space.

“The Ministry of Justice property team have been working to identify suitable options that meet the particular requirements Mr Kaushal is requiring,” documents released under the Official Information Act show. The group has also taken on three contracted staff members.

Retail NZ boss Carolyn Young, another member of the ministerial advisory group, said she was not “particularly focused” on the conversation around cost as it was out of her control “and I'm just more interested in making a difference”.

Asked about the group’s value for money, she told The Post that the “whole point of a Ministerial Advisory Group is that they've got the authority of the Minister to go [about] things in a quicker way than the department could”.

In terms of costs, “the budget … sits with Sunny and the minister and [the] Ministry of Justice”.