On the Early Edition with Andrew Dickens Full Show Podcast Wednesday the 21st of October 2026, Police arrests for retail crime are through the roof, Retail NZ CEO explains.

Labour’s promising to cut emergency department wait times, Association of Salaried Medical Specialists' Executive Director Sarah Dalton tells Andrew if the plan will work.

The Drug Foundation says three New Zealanders a week are needlessly dying to overdoses; Drug Foundation Executive Director Sarah Helm tells Andrew what needs to change.

Plus, Gavin Grey UK/Europe Correspondent has the latest on Prince Harry says he would like to 'reconcile' with his family, and the BBC has confirmed the closure of tv and radio channels BBC Three, BBC Scotland and BBC Radio 4 Extra linear broadcast services in Q1 of 2027.

Get the Early Edition Full Show Podcast every weekday on iHeartRadio, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Retailers are celebrating the Police crackdown on retail crime.

Annual Ministry of Justice data to June, shows record-high finalised charges for theft from a retail premises, topping 21-thousand - more than tripling since 2022.

Retail NZ believes offending's down as much as 30 percent since last year.

Chief Executive Carolyn Young told Andrew Dickens Police's national retail crime unit has had success tracking repeat offenders.

She says they're able to pull together a file on someone connecting a wide range of offences from different stores and send officers to apprehend them.

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The other day Christopher sent conniptions through the commentariat by saying we'll be lucky to have a Government by Christmas.

I'm not surprised.

So we have an election on November 7.

Writ day is December 3.

That's the deadline for all the votes to be counted.

It's 3 weeks later.

It's always been 3 weeks later.

Now here's a thing.

Same day voting was removed from this election and the reason given was to make the vote count faster.

If it's not faster then the allegations of electoral manipulation will be strengthened.

That is was done to disenfranchise the votes of the lazy, ignorant and young.

So let's watch to see if they beat the deadline aye?

And by the way, there are 64,000 young voters yet to enrol with 3 days to go untill the deadline which was brought forward by a fortnight.

So let's just say we know the vote by the start of December.

Then the negotiations begin with the so called minor parties looking to have a stronger hand. That's going to slow things down.

Then there's Christmas.

Then there's the January holiday.

And all this depends on whether the mandate is clear which it is fair to say is currently looking murky.

So it's going to be a while. Christmas looks a forlorn hope to me. February seems more likely.

And then I have odds on any coalition being shaky and it's be an even bet on whether we'll be back to the polls in a year.

Buckle yourself in. This is going to be a wild ride.

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