Eagle Paul; Dean JacquiPAUL EAGLE (Labour—Rongotai): Kia ora Madam Speaker. It's great to be able to speak on I guess another issue involving first responders and in this case it's the Policing (Killing a Police Dog) Amendment Bill. I want to just acknowledge the New Zealand Police and particularly the dog section. I know members of that section and the work that they do and can I acknowledge Mark Mitchell and Matt Doocey for not only their work in it but in the previous speech I talked about that not being genuine. I believe there is a genuine desire here from both members to do this because I know that and look I have seen a police dog in action on a rare occasion and I did wonder what the heck was going on. You could hear sirens. I was down at Shorland Park there on the south coast of Wellington and I just heard a flurry of Holden Commodore dog vans and out pop dogs and off they run. Police were everywhere and I didn't really know what was going on but what I do know and what I did see is that the police dog handlers rewarded their dogs for capturing the offender or whoever was doing a deed that was wrong and they did that with love. I thought Now there we go—there goes a part of the police service I certainly wouldn't want anything to do with." but I do acknowledge the importance of our police dog section in the New Zealand Police. I said also in the last call that I spoke on regarding first responders that there had been calls on our opposition to that being part of the soft on crime mantra of this Government. Can I reinforce to you that this is not true and that—Hon Dr Nick Smith: It is true. PAUL EAGLE: It's not true and can I just correct the member who's being a little unruly on that side of the House that the mantra of this police service under this Government is prevention first and they will know that. They will know that anything that happens comes with a prevention-first value approach and they know that if things worked previously then they wouldn't need to do things like this. But in that essence we are opposing this bill and that's no disrespect to those members. It's really saying "Hold on a minute." in terms of increasing the maximum sentence for the killing of a police dog from two to five years' imprisonment. That underpins that decision. It underpins it because it's saying that actually I know—and I said this in my last speech—that the policemen and women of Aotearoa New Zealand go to work not thinking that there will ever be a case where they go there thinking "Hopefully there'll be a sentence of five years versus two." That's not what they think. They're there to do a job and to do a job well. That includes just catching the offender or contributing to the process of catching an offender and the dog is the mechanism in that sense. So there's no disrespect there. The issue here is just purely I believe around the deterrent being the extension of the time frame from two years to five years. That's for me the heart of the opposition to such a bill—saying "Does that underpin the need for this amendment bill to go forward?" We've heard already some of the reasons why in terms of the killing of police dogs—very few—and look it could all change in a flash. Something might be happening right there right now somewhere around Aotearoa New Zealand. Can I say this: that on balance in terms of how this bill's been put together what the bottom line for this and whether it will make a major difference I don't believe it will. I know that the police dog section of New Zealand Police would want any protection they can get but this probably isn't one of them. I don't know that because I haven't sat down and talked certainly with our district police service but I do know this: that more equipment or more resources of any sort would certainly override this amendment bill. Kia ora. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Five minutes in reply—Matt Doocey."