Collins JudithHon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Corrections): I would like to congratulate that member who has just resumed his seat Fletcher Tabuteau. Now that is a proper Opposition general debate speech. So much better than that pathetic little effort from Mr Andrew Little—much much better. That member has been in Parliament for only 2 short years and he does really well. He knows how to do it: a bit of faint praise a bit of slap round the Government" and a little bit of saying how much he admires the Hon Hekia Parata—and he would not be alone in that; a lot of people do. Well done. But you know what does Andrew Little talk about? Banging on trying to stop me and everyone else who loves economic development from shopping on a Sunday—Easter Sunday. You know is it not up to us as adults to make our own decisions about what we do on Easter Sunday? Some of us will go to church some of us will go shopping and some of us will be just blessed that we have a day off. But one of the things that we do not want to be doing is harking back to the past like Mr Andrew Little who is living in the past and is very upset about technology and anything that is new. You know what it is probably because actually iPhones and technology do not pay union fees and they do not vote for the leader of the Labour Party. That is probably about it because if they did they certainly would not vote for him.Now let us look at what is really important: policing and corrections—fantastic great areas. In police we have put a huge effort into technology as well as extra police officers. Police have got a mobility programme that has revolutionised the way that they work. I think back to the days when we first came into Government in 2008 and what we actually had to deal with and what we did not have. We did not have Tasers for police. I remember the great debates in the House about what was going to happen—police were apparently going to torture people with these Tasers. Did they? No they did not. In fact what the people who were so concerned—the Labour Party and the Greens—were all really concerned about is that police would do that. They forgot to say: "Oh yes and there's a camera on each of these Tasers that works as soon as it's drawn out of its holster and actually police are going to have to record that and it's digital and it's easily downloaded and it'll be reviewed and all these things."We have got police we have got better access to firearms we have got stab-resistant body armour we have got new ballistic body armour we have got enhanced pepper spray and we have got automatic number-plate recognition. We have got all these things going but we have also got iPhones. We have got smartphones where police can actually—when they stop someone else hopefully not me on the side of the road for speeding—check all the details; they can put the driver's licence details in. They are not little bits of paper—they are not trying to struggle with that in the rain and in the dark. They can scan the driver's licence hoping that the driver does actually have a driver's licence. They can do all those things. It saves time and what it has done is it has put a huge amount extra in terms of police hours on the road on the beat doing preventative work and catching criminals—and boy have they done well.Crime is down by 16 percent since 2011—this is a huge drop—but in addition to that what we are seeing is police being really proactive on methamphetamine. I think everyone in this House should be thrilled about that. This is a massive resource for police. It takes a lot of effort a lot of surveillance a lot of electronics—you know that technology thing again—and it is very dangerous work. The trials involved are very time-consuming and very difficult and the sentences handed out are very long. What we are seeing here though is police working particularly with their technology partner Vodafone in an innovation centre that they have got constantly looking for new ways in which to use technology—and smartphones are just one of them.Having files on their phones—this is the sort of thing too that the Department of Corrections is doing particularly when it comes to its staff in the probation service who go into offenders' homes to check on what is happening and to go through their case management work. Those corrections staff are put in danger unless they have the right information about what they are going into. They now have smartphones with files on them; they do not have to lug round big files that can be left somewhere—people's privacy is not compromised as it could be—but also there are alerts on those phones telling them about anything that has happened with that offender anything that might give them concern that they might end up going into a dangerous situation. They have help alerts on those phones to get someone should they need assistance. It is such a different world. And that is because technology not only throws up challenges but it throws up massive opportunities to actually keep our people safe keep our staff safe. This Government is committed to that."