Cosgrove Clayton: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
Cosgrove Clayton: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:656;Page:5620] 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour—Waimakariri) 
: 
 I touch on the Budget of course because we are in the estimates debate. I see that the legacy of the Minister of Corrections Judith Collins who is also the Minister of Police flowing from the Budget will be to institute in her own words a $21 million cut in police resources. It is interesting if we look at I think page 16 of the transcript of the meeting of the Law and Order Committee that examined the estimates for Vote Police. The Minister had initiated those cuts. No chief executive will come to the Minister and tell her that he or she wishes to cut the budget unless the Minister tells him or her that he or she wants in her words “savings”. The savings are cuts. I asked the Minister whether she would take responsibility herself for any degradation of service given that she had required $21 million in cuts in a recession when crime is likely to head north as it generally does in a recession. She said that Mr Broad could answer the question and that it was an operational issue. Then I put it to her that in theory if she had given $21 million in extra funding to the police she would crow about that fact—and she is fond of doing that. I am sure she would not consider it an operational matter and she would crow as she does extensively about how wonderfully that money had been applied and about any increase in service. But oh no if it is a cut of $21 million then that is an operational matter! 
This is a Minister who also trumpets the fact that she has delivered out of the Budget a whole 43 new police vehicles. That is not a bad thing I would have thought. Any new vehicle for our police is a good thing. Then a couple of days later we worked out that she requires as part of the $21 million worth of cuts police to take 443-plus vehicles out of the police force. She envisages that they will not be front-line vehicles. She said that they could be vans. Well I was at a police station recently and I stood in the car park with a particular officer and I asked him to tell me which vehicles in the car park were not front-line. He looked at me and said: “Clayton take your pick. They’re all front-line.” Even the car that is used by the police officer the day after the burglary to gain the evidence and to follow up on leads and the community police officer’s car that patrols around the mall are front-line. Does the Minister expect that we will see a return to the 1990s when the police had to wait an hour to get a car to respond to a call? That is what happened in the 1990s. In the Law and Order Committee I asked the Minister of Police whether given the historical precedent of what happened in the 1990s she thought that there would be a risk. Commissioner Broad responded: “It does create additional risk. That is surely evident.” That is this Minister’s legacy thus far. 
The other thing that this Minister is fond of crowing about is that she has put 600 extra police on the streets. That is what her political promise was. We unpicked that in the select committee. We asked her whether that was in addition to the 1250 police who were budgeted for funded and were being recruited by the previous Government. Her answer was: “Well ah no.” She then prattled on to say that there will be 600 new police but we now know that 380 of those were funded by the previous Government out of the Budget. That is a broken promise. 
I say to the Minister in the chair the Hon Judith Collins that her rhetoric on this matter is misleading possibly even more so than in respect of the previous vote Vote Corrections. She is cutting $21 million out of the police budget and does not have the fortitude to take responsibility for it. She is saying to the commissioner: “I am requiring the cut but if it all turns to custard and there is a degradation of service from our police it is your problem not mine.” She is saying that this Government is supporting the police so much that on the one hand it is giving them 43 cars and on the other hand as part of a $21 million cut in funding—which she calls savings—it is getting rid of 343 cars. By the way the promise that the Government will put in 600 police officers in addition to what Labour put in is now a complete and utter phoney a complete and utter hoax and it is in black and white that the Minister has admitted it. She finally admitted after months in office that oh no she bodged the figures and that 380 of those 600 police were actually funded for and implemented by the previous Government. 
I say to the Minister that she can smirk as she did in front of the select committee she can crow as she does in this Parliament and she can raise expectations—and my word they are raised because crime was going to be non-existent under this Minister—but if we go and talk to the police around this country we see that they are scratching their heads to identify non - front-line vehicles. Maybe the Minister’s self-drive vehicle could be classed as being a non - front-line vehicle.