The National Party says it would put a dedicated team of 50 police officers on Auckland’s trains, buses and ferries if it wins the 7 November election. It announced the policy on Sunday morning, the same morning the City Rail Link opened to the public.
The Auckland Transport Police Team would be paid for with $7 million a year from Budget 2027, RNZ reported. The officers would work on trains, buses and ferries and at stations and transport hubs, with a focus on “high-risk routes” and peak hours, according to 1News.
“Every Aucklander should feel safe catching public transport, whether they’re heading to work in the morning or travelling home late at night,” National’s police spokesperson Mark Mitchell said in comments reported by 1News.
“Police should be where people are. As more Aucklanders use public transport, it makes sense to have more police on the network,” Mitchell said, according to RNZ.
Mitchell linked the policy directly to the new underground rail line, which is expected to lift peak commuter capacity through the city centre by around 50 percent. “The City Rail Link will increase peak commuter capacity through the city centre by around 50%. That means more Aucklanders relying on public transport every day, and later services,” Mitchell said, 1News reported. The rail link’s first day did not go entirely to plan, with a small fire at WaitematΔ station stopping trains through the new tunnels for up to an hour.
In a statement, National said the team’s job would be “preventing antisocial behaviour, protecting passengers and transport staff, responding quickly to incidents, and bolstering confidence in safety on public transport”, the NZ Herald reported.
Politicians cannot direct police where to patrol, so the plan works at arm’s length. According to the Herald, a re-elected National Police Minister would write to the Police Commissioner stressing the importance of visible policing on Auckland’s public transport network, and the Government would then fund the new team. “Consistent with their independent operational role, police will retain full decision-making powers on the size, location, and timing of any police presence on Auckland’s public transport network, including which stations and routes have more visible policing,” a National policy document said.
The team would start in Auckland and could be extended to other cities if it works, RNZ reported. National pointed to the British Transport Police, which has more than 3000 constables across the British rail network including the London Underground, as an overseas example.
Auckland already has its own uniformed staff on the network. Auckland Transport employs transport officers who patrol trains, buses and ferries. When a new group graduated in August 2024, an Auckland Transport trainer told RNZ the officers were warranted, which meant they could issue fines or ask passengers who had not paid their fares to get off, but that their powers were limited. Auckland Transport’s own website currently says recruitment for the transport officer role is on hold.
“Auckland Transport’s staff already do important work keeping the network running safely, but they do not have the powers of sworn police officers,” Mitchell said on Sunday, 1News reported. The Herald said that includes the power to arrest.
Safety on Auckland buses has been a recurring worry. In the same August 2024 RNZ story, Auckland Transport said bus operators had reported 120 incidents of violence, threats and aggression across the network in the first six months of that year. The Herald noted several cases of alleged assaults on buses in 2026.
This is not the first time the Government has promised more police on Auckland public transport. In October 2024, after a fatal attack in Onehunga, Mitchell as Police Minister and then Transport Minister Simeon Brown said Police had increased staff presence and visibility across public transport in the city. The same release said $15 million from Budget 2024 for bus driver safety would reach public transport authorities by the end of that year, to pay for things such as retrofitted safety screens and real-time CCTV monitoring. Brown also floated widening sentencing law to protect passengers. When the Sentencing (Reform) Amendment Act passed in 2025, it made offending against a public transport passenger service worker an aggravating factor at sentencing, but the law as it stands does not list passengers. The difference now is that National is promising a dedicated team with its own funding.
The new pledge comes with a recruitment question attached. The coalition agreement between National and New Zealand First promised to train at least 500 new frontline police within the Government’s first two years. That deadline passed on 27 November 2025 without the target being met, and RNZ reported at the time that Treasury analysis pointed to September 2026 as the likely date instead.
On Sunday, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said there were now an additional 366 officers with more than 300 in training, and he expected the 500 target to be reached before the end of the year, the Herald reported. “That’s why we’re confident we can push on and recruit another 50,” Luxon said.
The money is modest by the standards of election promises. Spread across 50 officers, $7 million a year works out at about $140,000 for each officer each year. Whether that is enough to recruit, train and equip 50 extra officers, and how quickly police could find them while still catching up on the 500, was not spelled out in the published reports of the announcement.
Law and order is one of many issues voters will weigh before 7 November. To see how your own views line up with the parties, try Newswire’s voting tool.
Would a dedicated police team make you feel safer on Auckland’s trains, buses and ferries, or would you rather see the money spent another way? Tell us what you think in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job π
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