Estimates Debate — Vote Police

I appreciate the opportunity to speak briefly to the estimates debate on the police. I want to start by pointing out that in all of our debates on the Budget, the Labour Party has been quick to highlight that our hope was for a Budget that would set out a strong vision for work, for family, and for housing, because those are all of the areas where we desperately need a strong vision for New Zealanders. But underneath all of that, of course, are the fundamentals; the things that of course central government is involved in. Justice and law and order underpin whether or not our families feel secure in their homes and their communities.

One of the things that I feel frustrated by in the police portfolio is that the Minister of Police has started to take for granted, I think, that the basis on which she funds police is her determination as to where the crime rate sits. Of course crime in New Zealand is recorded crime. The rates that we use, that we talk about, are all based on whether or not the general public are phoning in and reporting crime to the police. In order for people to continue to do that, it relies on people feeling like that is a worthwhile venture, that their report will be responded to, and that they will get some kind of either attendance by police or some resolution to the issue that they have raised. So it does become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If the police do not attend, someone is less likely to report, and therefore it looks like your crime rate is going down.

We raised this at the Law and Order Committee during the estimates with the Minister. She claimed that my view, and to raise this issue, was very last century. I thought that was curious given it is an issue that members of the public themselves have raised. She claimed, for instance, that for property offences, of course someone would phone in and report something because they require it for their insurance claim, ignoring completely the fact that we actually do not know how many New Zealanders have contents insurance. In all likelihood, I imagine, members of our poorer communities may be less likely to have contents insurance and yet are more likely to be preyed upon when it comes to things like property theft. So I do not believe, Minister, that it is a strong foundation to argue that based on all of those premises and the crime rate we can therefore reduce our resourcing of policing.

In fact, it is not just in the operational budget, because in this Budget we have seen a decline in the police budget by $40 million. It is a $40 million reduction—and that is on top of frozen budgets and cuts—in operating expenditure for the police. The Minister tried to claim that it was not actually a cut in funding; the Government just was not putting in the extra boost it put in last time. Let me explain what that extra boost was. It was a supplementary appropriation. Mid-year the Government realised that it had not given the police enough to do the job and so it had to put a little bit of extra sneaky money in through supplementary appropriations. The Minister claims those are costs that we will not be facing again. They were basic costs like redundancy—redundancy that was occurring, mind, to try to get police costs down.

We are in a vicious cycle with our police at present and we can see the impact it is having. Example one is ageing police cars. We have now 71 vehicles that failed their warrants of fitness in the last year, and 58 vehicles have done over 200,000 kilometres. I have heard of police vehicles breaking down on the job. These vehicles are a key part of the police doing their job. Not only is it an ageing fleet, they have got fewer cars since this Government came into office.

Example two, we are seeing the police having to make cost-cutting priorities between drug squads and reallocating people to child protection teams. Those are not two areas that you should pick and choose between. Demand does not lift and drop when it comes to serious organised crime and child protection. In fact, if anything, both of those areas are escalating, and we need to maintain our focus on both.

Finally, staffing numbers—they are lower now than they were even 2 years ago. This was the Government that in 2008 promised New Zealand a ratio of one police officer per 500 people. The Minister conceded at the select committee that they have given that promise away. They no longer retain that commitment. Why? Because apparently everything is going swimmingly. Ask New Zealanders whether they think crime is going down. Ask them. I think they will tell you that from this high-profile, serious violent crime we are seeing, it certainly has not.

I would be very interested if we did indeed ask New Zealanders whether they thought that crime was going down, because public trust and confidence in the police is at an all-time high. The reality out on the streets is that New Zealanders do know that things are going extremely well. Crime is at a 35-year low. You do not make up those statistics. You cannot fiddle them. That is the reality. Road fatalities are at a 60-year low—down, down. Trust and confidence in the police are up. In fact, when you have a look at the engagement survey that the police have an independent company do for them, staff engagement is at an all-time high.

So the police have never ever been in a better space. They are better resourced, they are better focused, they are better managed, and they have a better Government backing them every inch of the way. They have come through 4 years of massive change. They did it themselves. It was not driven by the Government. They knew that they had to come out of 20th century policing into 21st century policing.

A lot of what we are hearing from the Opposition about numbers and about police officers sitting in police stations waiting for people to come and report crime is very last century. The modern police officer is in the right place at the right time with the right tools and the right information. When we talk about them being in the right place, we talk about them being out on the streets where people can see them. Foot patrols are up by over 150 percent. We are having police out on the streets 150 times more. They are being seen by people in the right places at the times when crime is happening. The police are now focused on preventing crime rather than responding to crime. That does not mean that if you are in trouble you cannot call the police, but they say that policing is more about it being better to prevent crime happening in the first place, than to respond to it and try to resolve it afterwards.

When we talk about them having the right tools, look at the smartphones and look at the iPads that this Government has rolled out. There are 350 extra police officers’ worth of technology that they can use. They are showing us how over the next 5 years to 10 years we are going to see a transformation in the way that evidence is kept and presented. In fact I have seen it already, such as using FaceTime to record a drug deal going down. There are amazing things that the police are finding that this new technology will enable them to do.

When you talk about equipment now, they can start with the most important tool that they have, which is their tongues. You watch police go into some very dangerous situations and the first thing they try to do is talk someone down, then they have their batons, then they have pepper spray, then they have Tasers, and, finally, every police car now has access to a Glock and to a Bushmaster rifle.

The police know this Government backs them. We are backing their district command centres, which allow district commanders to look at where the need is right across a whole district and to move his or her resources around as the public’s need dictates. That is modern policing. That is not 20th century policing; that is modern policing. We are allowing the police to get on and manage themselves so that we have in this country one of the most effective police forces in the world. We are the envy of many other police forces in the world and we should be getting behind our guys instead of trying to criticise these statistics and the work that the police are out there doing. We should be backing them and saying that they are a tremendous group of people, who are out there working with victims as the focus and preventing crime before it happens. I am proud to be the Minister of Police.

Vote agreed to.

Vote Serious Fraud agreed to.

Vote Conservation agreed to.

Vote Housing