Estimates Debate — Police

Members, we now have the Minister of Police.

Thank you, Mr Chair. Look, as chair of the Justice Committee, I’d like to take a brief call to outline the work that was done with the Justice Committee in terms of the Estimates for 2022-23 for Vote Police and Vote Serious Fraud.

As part of this year’s Budget, the approach intends to increase collaboration across the public service agencies and improve value for money for New Zealanders. The justice cluster includes Police, Justice, Corrections, the Crown Law Office, and the Serious Fraud Office. Ministers within that group identified key priority areas, and those include better outcomes for victims, improved access to justice and addressing issues with remand, and, finally, better-enabled organisations and workforce.

In terms of Police, we heard first and foremost about organised crime. In May 2022, the Government announced a joint initiative between the Ministry of Justice, New Zealand Police, and the Department of Corrections to address gang crime and the violence associated with gang crime. The appropriation for preventing harm from organised crime through the cross-agency approach has $94 million over four years to fund this initiative. The bulk of this funding goes to New Zealand Police, with $87.3 million. The appropriation funds work to combat organised crime and programmes to prevent harm caused by drugs, firearms, violence, and serious criminal offences. Part of that work, we heard at the committee, was also in the seizure of illicit drugs such as methamphetamine. In June 2022, Police seized almost $60,000 worth of methamphetamine and more than $11,000 in cash. That particular operation was in the Bay of Plenty. The Commissioner of Police told us that police will continue to do work in this area.

We heard that the National Organised Crime Group and district police stations aim to identify methamphetamine supply paths and hold those suppliers to account. The police commissioner also told us that waste-water testing provides information that is very useful to track down and find where methamphetamine is being used. The police have access to 75 percent of the waste-water network. The police commissioner said that police saw in increase in methamphetamine during COVID-19 lockdowns, which aligns with their understanding of levels of stress, and police have subsequently focused on addressing the demand for methamphetamine and what attracts people to use drugs.

We’ve also heard of some other initiatives in terms of where work is being done to prevent crime or address the underlying causes of crime, and Te Pae Oranga was an example provided to the committee. Budget 2022 proposes funding $81.85 million over four years for initiatives relating to Te Pae Oranga Iwi Community Panels. This initiative aims to address the underlying causes of low-level offending. It started back in 2013 with Iwi Community Panels just in the Hutt Valley, Gisborne, and Manukau. This has subsequently been expanded to substantially more sites.

The police commissioner told us that the formal criminal process is not always effective in addressing the underlying causes of offending, and we have heard that police have seen a 22 percent reduction in harm from reoffending when people have participated in Te Pae Oranga. There are Iwi Community Panels in 20 locations around the country, but the police plan on establishing Iwi Community Panels in 10 more locations soon.

The last point I’ll touch on is the improvement in diversity in the New Zealand Police service. The Minister told us that one of the biggest areas where crime is under-reported is sexual offending. He told us that he hopes that increasing the diversity in the police will help to address this issue. The Minister said that the increasing number of women joining the police service over the past five years is worthy of acknowledgment and celebration, particularly because women are disproportionately affected by sexual offending. The police commissioner told us that communities that experience issues such as family harm more than others—he said that people need to feel comfortable cooperating with the police when the police service reflects the diversity of our communities, and they will continue to strive to meet marks in those areas.

I’d like to conclude by saying that the Justice Committee was well-engaged and had a good time asking the range of questions we did. It was a good report back in terms of the progress being made overall in the areas of Vote Police and Vote Serious Fraud.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I have to say that I’ve been looking forward to this Estimates debate and having the Minister in the House because I heard on the grapevine that he was gloating in Copperfield’s, saying that I hadn’t been asking him questions so I hadn’t been putting the pressure on him. So now I get my chance to ask the Minister some questions.

I have to say that I thought that I’d give him a bit of time to get his feet under the desk, because he came in promising big things and, last night, what did we have? Seven ram raids. We had seven ram raids last night, and, by the way, when I took over the police portfolio nine months ago, we were told that these rain raids were a spike and that they were going to diminish. Well, that’s a very long spike—a nine-month spike—in ram raids, and what it actually does—

💬 Hon Member: A spate—it’s a spate.

—is it actually just underlines—yeah, a spate. Exactly—define a spate. Maybe the Minister can get up and do that: define for us what a spike or a spate is.

The sad reality of it is this Government has poured a lot of money into our police service. They promised 1,800 police officers. They’re two years behind on that, and they’re still not clear. The Minister, in fact, is confused in terms of when those numbers are going to be delivered, and the sad reality is, like usual, they’ve actually delivered worse outcomes. We’ve had an over 20 percent increase in serious violent crime. We’ve had a massive increase in gang members. They are recruiting quicker than we can actually recruit and train our police service.

The first question that I’d like to Minister to answer—and this relates directly to ram raids, because I’ve heard the Minister and I’ve heard the Prime Minister both get up and say that the Government or the police’s response to the ram raids was the formation of the dedicated retail crime unit. The dedicated retail crime unit is a joint venture put together by Retail NZ—and I acknowledge them and the work that they’ve done in supporting their members. But it was, quite simply, a small unit. I think it has two sworn officers and three non-sworn.

But maybe the Minister could stand and tell us exactly how many numbers the retail crime unit has that’s been set up to respond to and get under control the serious violent offending that we see with these ram raids and aggravated robberies—I’ve had a ram raid and an aggravated robbery in my own patch in the last month—and explain to us exactly how this dedicated retail crime unit is actually dealing with that issue, because, Minister, if you actually look at the numbers, there doesn’t seem to be any impact at all, and, by the way, if you were to go and talk to Police National Headquarters or the commissioner and ask them and say, “Was the retail crime unit set up to deal with ram raids?”, they’d be very clear about the fact that it was not set up to deal with ram raids. It was set up and announced with Retail New Zealand to deal with shoplifting and loss prevention and as a coordinated response to those types of issues. So I’d like the Minister to actually stand, tell us exactly how many people are inside the retail crime unit, exactly what they have done to start to get control of these ram raids and this violent retail crime, and actually maybe inject a little bit of honesty into it.

I’m going to go back to Operation Tauwhiro, where we saw exactly the same pattern emerge with this Government, where they’d get up and they’d say, “Our response to the gang violence and the drive-by shootings is Operation Tauwhiro.” Operation Tauwhiro was never established to deal with gang violence; it was established to gather information. Day after day, you had a Minister standing in this House touting Operation Tauwhiro as being the response to the gang violence, and I had front-line police every day coming to me and saying, “What a complete sham, and they’re deceiving the public. We’ve been asked through our normal duties to record any gang contact, any firearms taken, or any warrants against Operation Tauwhiro. We don’t have any extra staff. There’s no extra funding.”, and yet it was put out there as a strong response to the gangs.

So I’d like the Minister to stand and actually explain to the committee exactly what the retail crime unit is, how many staff are in it, and exactly what they’re doing to deal with a continuation of what we see in violent ram raids.

Can I begin by acknowledging the New Zealand Police and their contribution here at Parliament today, another difficult day—a day I think New Zealand Police were nervous about. I for one, as a member of Parliament, welcome back protesters to the forecourt of Parliament. I think it is healthy for democracy that we once again have protesters assembling on the front lawn. I also congratulate the New Zealand Police for a very well-executed operation that saw those protesters able to exercise their democratic right to protest and leave again, and I hope that we will see more of it because I think it is important that people are able to protest out the front of Parliament.

The police did New Zealand proud today in their response. There were no issues there. I congratulate the organisers of the protest as well—I want to acknowledge that—but also the police, who I had the opportunity to thank for their contribution, because I do, in my first remarks in this Estimates debate, want to acknowledge the difficult circumstance they found themselves in earlier this year with Operation Convoy and the images that we all saw on TV that evening. Some of us saw them a little bit closer than that when that operation was unfolding. I think it is good that we have had a protest at Parliament today where those scenes were not repeated, and I hope that that is a sign of things to come.

In terms of the 1,800 extra police that the member Mark Mitchell mentioned, I can say that we have made a clear commitment that we will hit the 1,800 by the middle of next year, and, in fact, we may well hit that, if not by the end of this year, then very early next year. So we’re sitting at having over 1,500 of those extra police on the job now. There are about 240 due to graduate from the Police College who are at the Police College right now, training to be police. That will get us very, very close to that 1,800, but it may well be that we achieve it by the end of this year, or, more likely, probably very early next year, we’ll see that extra 1,800, ahead of schedule.

In terms of ram raids, I don’t agree with the member’s assertion that the police are responsible for ram raids. The young people doing the ram-raiding are the people responsible for ram raids. Police will never be able to be outside every business or standing beside every car to make sure young people don’t hijack them and use them for ram raids, but what the police are doing is exactly what we would expect of them, which is that they’re following up each and every one of those incidents.

There are consequences of that offending for those young people, and so I’ll give the member some numbers: 768 prosecutions for a wide range of offences relating to ram raids are under way or have been under way, 324 youth referrals, and 69 incidents are still under investigation. I went through with him the number of charges and the number of individuals that have been followed up on across Auckland and across the Waikato, in particular, in question time recently.

I think the police are doing the right thing in following up to make sure that they are identifying those individuals. Sometimes it does take some time for them to identify the individuals concerned, and then they follow up with appropriate action. They are also following up with the local businesses as well—particularly those businesses that have been repeatedly victimised—to make sure that they are getting the support that they need. In some cases there isn’t a lot of additional support that those businesses are asking for and in other cases they’re asking for some significant extra support, and the police are working through those with them.

There are consequences for young people involved in ram-raid activities. But the solution ultimately rests beyond just the police and it looks at all of the other things that we are doing to make sure those young people are positively engaged, because, at the end of the day, the police can respond to events and they can respond to offending, but, actually, the entirety of the community has the responsibility to make sure that we’re doing everything we can to prevent that offending in the first place. In terms of those young people, I have some sympathy for the challenges that the police are faced with, particularly with some of those repeat offenders.

Thank you, Mr Chair. Minister, I was looking at the key performance indicators (KPIs) in the Budget and they focus on what I would call business as usual (BAU), including when we look at those statistics to be captured for pistol shooters, or what I would call dealer BAU. It has extended licensing processing, which was originally at 30 days. In the last Budget, it was increased to 60 days, and it’s now gone through to 90 days. Another assessment goal is on following up expired licences, giving that a time frame of 60 days—and for those at home, that’s when a firearms licence has expired and the holder has not yet contacted police. The police actually need to go and check on them—actively find them—and check on the status of them and any potentially illegally held firearms that they may now have.

This is really important. If we recall 13 years ago, we had the Jan Molenaar incident, where he was not checked upon and was in possession of illegally held firearms which he then used against Constable Len Snee, wounding three others as well as taking the life of Constable Snee. No one had checked up on him, so I can see this—but this is BAU stuff. This is stuff that had been identified 13 years ago as needing to be checked up on.

We have an increase of $208 million going into firearms and yet no KPIs whatsoever on how we are going to assess that particular spend, what we are assessing it against, or how we’re going to have any way that we can make sure that the firearm owners are feeling that that $208 million is actually going to address illegal firearm use by gang members and by those whose licences have expired. Instead, we’re looking at KPIs for just BAU, or business as usual. Could you talk to the communities about why there are no KPIs for that spend?

I thank the member for her very reasonable questions. I know that this is an issue that she cares a lot about, and it is an issue that I have been looking very closely at. The member will be familiar with the fact that we have a challenge in the way firearms licensing operates in New Zealand as a result of a decision by Government several decades ago to move from lifetime firearms licences to licences that need to be renewed every 10 years. The result of that is that every 10 years, we get a spike in the number of people applying to have their firearms licences renewed, and whilst the age profile of that particular group, that particular cohort, is suggesting that eventually that would dissipate, the reality is there’s still probably several decades more if we don’t do something to flatten the curve and smooth that out.

I think the way things operate now, where the police have to resource up every 10 years for that spike and then, potentially, resource down, isn’t really a sustainable model. We do want to reach the point where we actually have a relatively flat line in terms of the number of firearms licence renewals that occur every year, because then the police can resource that appropriately. All of the systems and processes that are in place can be robust, and I think that there is a better way for us to get to that point than what we’re doing at the moment.

So I am looking very closely at that—to acknowledge the member’s previous questions. I do think that that’s likely to involve some legislative intervention in order to be able to achieve that, because there are a number of issues that we need to grapple with. One is we need to find a way of flattening out that curve.

The second is we need to make sure that those who have applied for their firearms licence to be renewed don’t become non-compliant during the period of time it takes for them to have their licence renewed. That is something I am acutely aware of, and I am acutely aware that that problem will increase exponentially if we don’t do something in the next sort of 12 months or so as we head into that next peak, and I absolutely accept the offer from the member—and, I think, from the National Opposition as well—that we need to work together as a Parliament to make sure that we find a pragmatic solution to that relatively quickly to give those firearms owners certainty, including on things like them not having to transport their firearms because they are technically outside of their licence period, and so on.

So I think there are some pragmatic solutions that we can find to that. Obviously there’s a Cabinet process to go through before I can set out the details of how I think that will look, but I’m relatively confident we can find a solution that’s pragmatic, sensible, and protects our legal, licensed firearms – owning community.

In terms of the KPIs, obviously processing and KPIs around processing will be easier to have in place once we flatten that demand curve out so that there’s a more even level of demand. It’s very difficult for the police when every 10 years they have to go through this peak, so if we can, as a Parliament, find a solution that stops them having to deal with that, then, actually, I think the KPIs around that and around the practical enforcement measures that go with that—for example, people whose licences are not renewed or, for whatever reason, their licences are taken away—then, actually, the KPIs that will flow from that, I think, will be much easier to define.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I just wanted to pick up on the Minister’s comment in terms of acknowledging our New Zealand Police service, and I’m glad that he did that. But I’d remind the Minister that it’s not just on events like we see today, with protests out in front of Parliament. Our New Zealand police officers are out there doing an outstanding job every day and every night, protecting and looking after their communities, and I’d like to see the Minister—and he made a very good point. He said that the police aren’t responsible for the ram raids, and they’re absolutely not. They’re not responsible for the ram raids. In fact, I’ll tell you what: the police are not responsible for most of the social issues that this country faces. However, more often than not, the blame is laid at their feet, and I’d like to see the Minister—even in the last week, when our police service was accused of being racist—actually come out and defend them and say “No.”

We have one of the best police services in the world. They don’t get to choose what they deal with. They just have to deal with what’s put in front of them, and I think, Minister, that you’ve hit the nail on the head yourself by saying that they don’t get to choose who’s actually doing the ram raids. They don’t get to choose who’s joining the gangs. They don’t get to choose who’s perpetrating domestic violence. They don’t get to choose what groups decide to do that, in numbers. What they do do is they have to pick up the pieces and respond to it and do the best that they can to actually keep our communities safe.

So it would be very nice for the Minister to come out and be very clear and refute and push back on criticisms of our police service. I’m not saying that they shouldn’t be regulated—they are. We have the Independent Police Conduct Authority, and in my experience any rotten apples in the police are identified and drummed out very quickly, because most members of the police understand that they’re joining a massive legacy of the people that served before them and they want to protect that and they want to maintain the highest possible standards and serve our country without fear or favour.

I want to come back to the police numbers, and I do want to seek clarity from the Minister on this because, actually, numbers do matter in a service like the police. The front line have become a bit fatigued with the debate around this and the moving of the goalposts.

In the pre-Budget announcement, the Government announced that they would deliver the 1,800 police target by December 2022. That was the new number we were given. The Minister came to the House and was very clear about the fact that the numbers—the 1,800 net new police officers—would be on the street, serving their communities, by the end of this year. But then the incoming Minister, Chris Hipkins, in answer to a written question, said that “Actually, the target is going to be June 2023.”, and now he’s stood in the House and he’s given an even more confused sort of answer: “Oh, we’re not too sure. You know, it might be the beginning of the year, maybe the middle of the year—you know, I really don’t know.”

It doesn’t give a high level of confidence, Minister, that you’re across your portfolio on something as critically important as the numbers. Well, the other members across the House think it’s funny. I can tell you right now—I can tell you right now—that the officers that are out there working night shift don’t think it’s funny. They’d actually like to see some numbers. They’d actually like to see some additional support.

The other question that I have for you, Minister, that I’d like you to answer is that in Budget 2018, the targets for the median response to emergency traffic events were: urban, seven to eight minutes; and rural, 11 to 13 minutes. In Budget 2021-22, the targets have been increased: for urban, 10 to 11 minutes; and rural, 15 to 16 minutes. You’re increasing the response time. In my view, a modern police service should be decreasing response times. Response times should be getting better, not worse. So I’d like the Minister to stand and actually respond to both those issues that have been raised. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Chair. Thanks, Minister. I’d just like to agree with you in saying thank you to the police out there for today and for other protests in the past. I understand you’d have some sympathy for the protesters. I was a policeman here in 1997 during a student protest, and I—

💬 Hon Chris Hipkins: I know nothing about it.

You’ve hardly changed a bit.

I’ve just got a quick question regarding burglary clearance rates. Given that the average statistic that is agreed upon is that a burglar is caught for one in every 15 to 20 burglaries that they commit, with a 12 percent clearance rate, and the aim for next year is 12 percent as well—between 11 and 15 percent—would you support legislation aimed to deter these burglars, or offenders committing these burglaries, and, if not, I wonder what you’ve got in mind?

Thank you, Mr Chair. Minister, can you assure our communities that you are addressing the seriousness of gang interference in our neighbourhood safety and livelihoods when the word “gang” is only mentioned once in the entire Vote Police budget? Where it is mentioned, it’s in relation to $155 million expected to come in from the proceeds of crime. I’m just wondering what we can tell our communities about—more than just taking money from the gangs, but what we’re actually going to do to combat the gangs by putting more budget into a spend that will help keep our communities safer.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I just draw Minister Hipkins’ attention to the fact that on the retail crime unit, I still haven’t heard an answer on that. Either he doesn’t know how many people staff it or their work output or exactly what they’re meant to do, or he does know and he’s just too embarrassed to tell the committee. I want to acknowledge them because they’ve been set up for a specific job—and I’m sure they’re doing a good job—but they certainly were not set up to deal with ram raids.

I’d like to ask the Minister a question around mental health. Mental health in this country, unfortunately, as we all know, is heading in the wrong direction, and there’s lots of different drivers for that. One thing our police service has done for a long, long time, and that is being the first responder and the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff in terms of having to deal with people with, often, serious mental health issues, but just because they have a serious mental health issue doesn’t always mean that the police need to be involved. They’re actually far better off, in my view, being treated and helped by a properly trained mental health expert or medical expert.

The police currently, with the spike in mental health issues in this country, are dealing with over 122 mental health - related cases a day. In my view, other Government agencies have to step up, because the problem with the police service—and this is just my own opinion—is they’re an agency that, number one, they attract, I feel, the best people in the country, and the New Zealand Defence Force is another one. They always problem-solve and they always set themselves the target of finding and achieving what’s put in front of them, but what that means is that other agencies—Government agencies—that aren’t as motivated end up passing more responsibility and the police end up absorbing that and taking that on board. So what it means is you can end up with a police officer, or even two of them, tied up for an entire shift babysitting or looking after someone with a serious mental health issue or mental health issue, and that’s a very, very poor use of their time. They have very specialised training, they have powers that no one else has in this country, and to have them sitting around and having to care for and babysit someone with a mental health issue—they’re not trained to be able to triage or work out what that person needs. That has to be done by the health system.

So I’d like the Minister to be able to stand and tell the committee, inside the Budget, what the plan and how he intends to support his agency in being able to make sure that they actually have got support from other agencies to step in and relieve that pressure. Of course, there’s always going to be some cases that the police have to be involved in because, sadly, sometimes, when people have got serious mental health issues, they’re also violent, and they can hurt themselves and they can hurt members of the public. So of course that is going to require a police response. But a large number of the cases don’t, and absolutely the wrong place to have those people is sat in a police cell or in a police station, being guarded by police officers.

Thank you, Mr Chair. Look, I welcome the opportunity to respond to a number of the issues. Mark Mitchell asked me to be more specific about the number of extra police on the beat, so I will: As at 31 July, 1,526 of the extra 1,800 police have been delivered. I can tell the member, for contrast, that that’s 1,526 more police—extra—than were delivered under last National Government, who, of course, delivered no extra police.

To put that into a very real context, as at June 2017, when the National Party was last in Government, there was one full-time equivalent constable for 545 New Zealanders. As of 15 August this year, there was one constable, full-time equivalent, for 495 New Zealanders, and that number continues to improve. In fact, in this year’s Budget, we made sure that that number won’t go up again, by making sure that the Police’s funding will increase in line with the population so that they can continue with at least that ratio, unlike under the National Government, where the police were run down.

So I want to acknowledge the police for the sterling work that they did, despite the fact that they previously had a Government that wasn’t willing to back their tough talk with extra resources for the front-line police. If the National Party really does value the front-line police to the extent that they say they do when they’re in Opposition, perhaps when they were in Government they might have backed that up with some actual cash and some extra resource, rather than leaving them out there on their own without it.

To run through a few other points that members have raised, I believe in the notion that justice should be blind in the sense that it shouldn’t matter what your gender is or what your ethnicity is—you should all be treated as equal before the law. I absolutely support the work that the police are doing to make sure that there isn’t any bias in any of their systems and processes, and I think that all New Zealanders should welcome that effort.

That doesn’t mean that anyone is saying that the police are racist; it does mean that, as with every other institution in the country, we should be looking to make sure that the systems and processes that are in place are not biased against one group of people or another, or do not privilege one group of people or another. Unlike the member opposite, Mark Mitchell, I don’t think that talking about the increased diversity in the New Zealand Police force undermines confidence in them one bit, which is the claim that he has previously made. I think it is fantastic that a quarter of our cops are now women. In fact, I look forward to the police making further progress in that regard, and I welcome the fact that our police are more ethnically diverse now than they have ever been in the past. I can look forward to that trend continuing, and, unlike Mark Mitchell, I don’t think that saying that publicly is in any way undermining confidence in the New Zealand Police.

In terms of the other issues that were raised, Nicole McKee raised the issue around whether gangs should be mentioned more in the Budget documentation, and I’d have a couple of points with regards to that. First of all, the gang activity work often falls under the heading of “organised crime”. The word “gang” might not be used, but the words “organised crime” certainly are used quite a lot, and there is quite a lot in the Budget that’s focused specifically on organised crime. So it’s just a question of terminology in the Budget documents, but I would point out to her that all offending matters, whether it’s done by a gang member or anyone else. Actually, the police have got a difficult job to do, and we are backing them to do that very difficult job that they have.

Mark Mitchell raised some good points about the issues around mental health. Police are often on the front line of having to respond to mental health. They are often the first responders, and under our Government, we have been supporting the police in a co-response model, which is producing some very, very welcome results. We know that where there is a co-response, where the police are working alongside trained mental-health professionals to respond to those types of call-out, actually, it’s better for the health system, because fewer people end up in the emergency department and fewer people end up needing more intensive support, and so I welcome the fact that some of our previous district health boards supported that, but I note that some were not. I think it’s a fantastic thing that we now have a national health service so that we can get a bit more consistency in the way that the health system is working with police in order to reduce some of the pressure that they currently face, because I do think the health system could play a bigger role as first responders when it comes to mental health, and that will help to ease some of the pressure on police.

In terms of the questions around burglaries, I do acknowledge concern around burglaries. It’s very unpleasant for anyone who is involved. It can lead to people feeling unsafe. I do note that in most settings, the rate of burglary is continuing to decline. There is a challenge in retail, where we’ve seen those numbers going up quite modestly, but, actually, for home burglaries, for example, the trend number is down. Schools, education areas—the trend line continues to go down. That is a welcome thing, and I really support the police’s proactive work in that area.

Firstly, because, as usual, the Minister gets up and mischaracterises things that I’ve said, let me be very clear about diversity. Diversity in the police force has been important to them for decades, Minister—not just the last five years; for decades—and I can say that I was very proud when I served that we wanted our police service to reflect the community that they serve and we were well down the track in achieving that. So diversity is extremely important, not just in our police service but in every agency, and I celebrate that.

But the point that I was making to you, Minister, was quite simply this: at that time, there were 25 drive-by shootings. I lost young Constable Matthew Hunt from my own patch. He was gunned down in broad daylight. There are important issues that, as the Minister of Police, you should be razor-focused on. So celebrate policies that have been around for a long time and celebrate the police and the great work that they’re doing in that, but, as Minister—especially as an incoming Minister—acknowledge the fact that, unlike the previous Minister, who that said there’s no increase in gang numbers and there’s no gang increase in gang violence, in our country at the moment, there are levels of lawlessness and there are levels of violence and gun violence that need to be addressed. That was the point that I was making, Minister, and I stand by that point.

The Minister has not responded to my question around response times in urban and rural areas for serious motor vehicle accidents or motor vehicle accidents, so I hope that he will get up to respond to that. He hasn’t responded to my question about the retail crime unit. He got up again and just talked about recruiting numbers. He still hasn’t responded to that, and I’ll ask him this question on serious crime. There are supposed to be 700 serious crime officers in place; there’s 340. There’s 340, Minister. The Prime Minister, on three occasions, and the Minister of Police have misled the country, again, by saying that we have 700 serious crime officers in place. We don’t—there are 340. Where are the rest coming from, because by my calculations, you’d have to have every officer that’s going to be trained from now through to the middle of next year put straight into a crime control unit or a serious crime control unit.

So I’d like to hear from the Minister: at a time when organised crime, when gangs and gang-related crime is increasing daily, why is that crime control unit not got the 700 officers that it was promised, and why is it operating at 50 percent of the staffing that it’s actually meant to have? Thank you, Mr Chair.

Thank you, Mr Chair. Minister, I’m going to ask some questions about the Vincent Street loss of firearm owners’ data that occurred back in May. I wonder whether or not you can assure firearm owners that their information under the new registration system that will be paid for out of this Budget will be secure and that no breaches will occur of their personal data to third parties, either in digital or in print formats, and whether there is a portion of money within that Budget put aside to help some of the victims of that data breach with security?

Thank you, Mr Chair. In terms of the organised crime unit that Mark Mitchell raised: yes, the member is correct that we’re about halfway there to the target of additional organised crime staff. One of the things that he’ll be aware of is that you don’t typically recruit people directly into those organised crime roles; you’re actually taking them off other front-line roles, and it’s important that we make sure that we’re training enough police to backfill those roles.

Of course, all of this would have been much easier if the last Government hadn’t neglected the police so much. We have a lot of catching up to do. I do find it somewhat ironic the member’s coming to the House on a regular basis, tub-thumping and, effectively, saying why is it taking so long to clean up all of the mess that they left behind when they didn’t invest and support the New Zealand Police to the extent that they should do.

In terms of the national retail investigation support unit that the member has asked about, of course it is not the only part of the police that’s working on retail investigation. Of course, it is part of the day-to-day work of the front line, but in terms of that specific unit, I can confirm that they have identified 43 offenders and arrested them and have charged them with 307 different charges. As I indicated, though, that is just the work of that unit, and there is a lot else happening across the police’s front line to deal with those particular issues.

In terms of the traffic situation that the member has raised, that is something that I don’t have the information to hand on, and it is something that I will look at.

Just a short question for you, Minister: will there be any incentive to return police training to 26 weeks instead of the reduced 16 weeks, and why was it reduced? Was it to make up the 1,800 numbers quickly, or is it for some other reason why it was reduced from 26 to 16 weeks?

That was a decision, obviously, made before I became the Minister of Police, so it’s not something that I can give the member an instant answer to, but I’m happy to look further at that. Obviously, we are very focused on getting as many police on to the beat as quickly as we can.

In relation to numbers, Minister, what is his commitment and what is his view—and I understand that he’s just been on a road trip around the country, as I have. There are proposals currently under way in some districts to reduce numbers in outstations, and I think that one of the most effective policing models is to have police in their communities.

In fact, if it was up to me, we’d be going back to basics and we’d be seeing a lot more beat constables out there in retail areas, building relationships with shop owners, gathering intelligence, and actually having that trusted relationship. Unfortunately, at the moment they’re almost stretched to breaking point because of all the crime and all the social issues that they are swamped with and having to deal with. But it would be a huge retrograde step, Minister, to start to see staff pulled out of rural or smaller stations.

Has he had any information on that, and what is his commitment, as the Minister, in this Budget to ensuring that our smaller outstations continue to be manned at their present levels? In fact, in my view, they should be doing a review in terms of increasing police officers.

I thank the member for the patsy question, because I have seen some data on that, in fact, that shows the number of outstations and smallest police stations that were closed, predominantly during the tenure of the last National Government, as a cost-cutting measure because Police’s funding was not keeping up with the increasing pressure that police were facing. I have several of them in my own electorate that were closed during the tenure of the last Government.

Now, I looked closely at that, and one of the arguments that the police have made—it was an operational decision from the police to close those outstations—is that they would actually rather have the police out and about than sitting in a small, isolated area, often by themselves. It’s better to have the police out on the road in a car than sitting in what is, effectively, an office waiting for people to come to them. I actually think that, operationally, that’s a good decision for the police to take.

Similar debates are happening around the country when it comes to police station opening hours. Now, police can wait at the police station for people to come to them, or they can go out and they can actually respond to callouts. They can go find bad guys, and that’s actually what I think the police should be doing. So where the police have done analysis that shows that they were getting very, very few people walking in during certain hours and have made the decision to adjust their police station hours accordingly in order to free up extra police resource to get them out on to the beat, I actually think that that is a welcome process that police have been engaged with, and rather than attacking the police for that, I think we should welcome the fact that they are making sure that they are getting the most productivity out of the police staff. But when I talk to police, the last thing they want to be doing is spending unnecessary amounts of time sitting somewhere in an office or in a police station when they can be out and about doing the job that they are passionate about.

I don’t think the Minister fully understands the concept of it: just because you have, for example, a rural station that might have three police officers stationed there, it doesn’t mean that they’re sitting in the station all day. They’re actually out working—they’re actually out in the community. I asked the Minister very clearly: are there any plans to reduce numbers around the country at those outstations and pull them back into a central station in a central role—because, fundamentally, I agree with them. I know that there were stations closed and a lot of them were kiosks, and there was a review done around that. Fundamentally, my core belief is that you should have as many police out in the community as you can.

So I’m asking the Minister—and I’d like him to respond, because I’ve also been out and about and I have had information come back to me that I don’t think is good. We are going to be heading in the wrong direction and there’s going to be a reduction in numbers at outstations. So could he please stand and give this committee—he’s just made a big speech about how important it is to have these stations and he lost the ones in his own area. Stand up now as the police Minister and make that commitment and say that at least the current staffing numbers at the moment in these stations will remain and that they will not be reduced.

What I can give the member an absolute commitment on is that this Government will continue to increase resources to the police so that they don’t have to reduce the number of kiosks and outstations, as they had to do under the last Government in order to make ends meet, effectively. What the police do in terms of reviewing where they position people is an operational matter for the commissioner and for the people who work under the commissioner, and I’m not going to interfere in that. But I am absolutely confident that the processes the police have in place in terms of deciding where to deploy additional resource are robust ones.

Thank you, Mr Chair. The Minister can’t get up and have a bob each way. He can’t say, “Under the last Government, they closed kiosks and stations.”, and then stand up and say, “Well, you know, that’s an operational decision for the police.” Either the Government is responsible for it—he seems to say that the previous Government was responsible for that—but now, under his leadership, he’s saying, “You know what? That’s actually an operational decision; that’s the police’s decision.”

So on the record—because there are actually quite a few policemen and policewomen around the country that work and man these outstations that’ll be watching to see. There are some plans afoot, and the Minister would know that, so it’s very interesting that he actually won’t stand in the House and say, “Under the last National Government, they closed stations. We wouldn’t do that under Labour.”, but then he gets up and goes, “But that’s an operational decision for the police.”

Are they going to maintain their numbers, are they going to be able to stay in their communities, or is there going to be a reduction? It’s a pretty simple question. If the Minister—as he seems to have told the committee that the Government has got control over that and the Government can have a say on where the stations are and how many people are in them then stand up and make a commitment.

I’ll go through it slowly for the member: under the last Government, the newspaper headlines were very clear that the police were cutting the number of kiosks and outstations that they were operating because they didn’t have enough money to keep them going. That was an operational decision that the police made, so it was a decision by the police, and they made it because the last Government choked off their budget so that they didn’t have enough money to do the job that the last Government were asking them to do.

That hasn’t happened under this Government. We’ve been continuing to increase the funding so that they don’t have to make those kind of decisions.

Members, it has come time for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break. The committee will resume at 7 p.m.

Sitting suspended from 5.56 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Members, the time has come for us to resume the debate. Before the dinner break, we had the Minister of Police in the chair, and we have five more minutes.

Actually, Minister, you won’t have to reply to this one because I’ve only just written and sent a letter to you today, but it’s a relevant one because I’ve written multiple times before. It’s around what are you doing or, rather, what is the Government doing to address, or, rather, to provide support to the various business owners affected by all of these various ram raids and stuff? I’ve written—granted, to your predecessor—and I’ve asked for more support, particularly out of the proceeds of crime side of things. It said, “Oh well, we’ll have a fog cannon.”, which is a somewhat good start. But I was wondering, quite openly, is there a way that Government can provide more support, from more secure doors, roller doors, bollards, and so forth, and I hope it’s not putting some of our police that I engage with on the spot, but they’ve been very clear that these would be very prudent measures.

Anyway, I’m not here to chew up your time unexpectedly, but what more can be done to support our local businesses?

Thank you, Mr Chair. I’m happy to provide a very brief response to that. The police are focused on making sure that they are providing additional support to small-business owners, particularly those who have been repeatedly victimised by ram-raiders and so on. So that includes things like bollards and fog cannons. Fog cannons have proven to be very effective in small-business settings, particularly in shops like dairies for example. I think that’s given the shop owners a great deal of comfort. We’re looking pretty closely how that’s working and what more can be done. There is more funding available there to do more of that, and so we’ll continue to look at that.

There was one question from Nicole McKee from before dinner that I didn’t have the chance to answer, and that was just around the Vincent Street incident, where some firearms records—hard-copy firearms records—were stolen from a police station that was no longer in use. The member’s question related specifically to what reassurances we can give about the new firearms register and safety and security of that information. The point that I would make to her is that the register will be a digital register rather than a hard-copy paper register, and, as a result, there will be very rigorous testing to make sure that peoples’ records are kept very securely. I’d liken it a little bit to the difference between having your money in the bank and having your money in a safe in the wall at home: you might feel that the safe at home is quite secure, but, actually, the bank—even though it’s accessible over the internet—is still probably going to be a more secure place to store your cash. With the firearms registry, a similar principle might apply. A very secure locked cabinets is one way that you can store information, but, actually, digitally online—as long as all the safeguards are there—is a very, very secure way of storing information.

A very curt response. What is cash? Sorry—I’m only kidding.

Look, just to acknowledge the Minister’s comment on fog cannons, I’ve certainly seen in my own electorate that they have deployed well and have been really very effective. The Minister may be aware, but last evening, for the eighth time, one of my liquor stores got ram-raided. The dairy beside it in Ōrākei has been hit four times. So I suppose this is as much a remonstration and a request, as it escalates, for him to follow up—as he has said, yep, there are fog cannons. But as more and more of these events occur of how obviously police, but through his support that—yeah, that other options are made available.

Just building on that: obviously, in my electorate of the North Shore, the statistic that worries us—and this is what I’d be interested in the Minister’s comments on—is that, actually, 60 percent of the people undertaking these ram-raid incidents are not identified. A lot of the narrative in the media has been around the 40 percent that have been identified—of which are young people—but the concern and the statistic that my communities are more worried about is the fact that six out of 10 of these incidents aren’t being identified, aren’t being captured, and aren’t feeling the consequences of the law. When we’re seeing brazen attacks on Michael Hill Jeweller on Hurstmere Road in Takapuna and we’re seeing—as my colleague has mentioned—dairies continually being rammed, not once, not twice, but three times, this is a concern, and I think it’s a broader concern. I’m interested in the Minister’s perspective around what we are doing about the people that aren’t being captured.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I think that’s a fair point, and in terms of the identification, I’d be wary of the statistics just on the sense that they are often a snapshot in time and the fact that an offender is not immediately identified doesn’t mean that police stop investigating and stop trying to identify them. So there are a number of cases where they have photographic evidence of people, but they haven’t quite yet figured out who those people are, but that doesn’t mean that they have stopped looking for them. So I just would make that point.

I certainly understand the point about repeat victimisation and the need to make sure that we’re focusing additional support on those who have been the subject of several offences, and in terms of the youth offending side of ram-raiding—which is a very dominant part of it at the moment—the conversations I’ve had with police at a local level is that while they might not be able to identify every one of the offenders, they often know who the ringleaders are. So by targeting those people who are kind of commonly involved, they can often start to break some of that down and disperse some of that activity. So that, I know, is a focus for the front-line police who I’ve been speaking to about that.

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