Cosgrove Clayton: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
Cosgrove Clayton: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:661;Page:9485] 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour—Waimakariri) 
: 
 In the brief time we have available I want to make a couple of remarks concerning the funding of the New Zealand Police. I am pleased that the Minister of Police is in the chair because it was and still is that Minister who makes a great play of talking tough and saying she will back the police. [ 
Interruption 
] However those members do not like this debate because unlike a select committee they cannot shut this debate down which the chair of the Law and Order Committee sitting over there has tried to do in that committee. 
There is a worrying trend within the New Zealand Police and it is not about the police officers themselves. The trend is that this Minister after talking tough making a large amount of promises grinning like a Cheshire cat and having a wee giggle as she does has embarked on a series of cuts that are evidenced in the documentation that is before us—[ 
Interruption 
]—and they do not like it. It was this Minister who said she would put 600 new police on the streets by the end of 2011 when we know that although that sounds good in theory in practice approximately 380 of those 600 officers were already promised. Before she says that one has to follow promises with funding I say that those officers were already funded and being trained under the previous Labour Government. 
We know the obsession the Minister has with her own patch of Counties-Manukau and she and her Prime Minister celebrated the 200th graduate police officer to go into Counties-Manukau. OK that is fair enough because we know that Counties-Manukau has some unique crime and violence problems but here is the rub: we found out courtesy of an Official Information Act request and one district commander Mike Bush that the Minister has according to her own departmental papers provided only 25—she now says it is 43—police cars for the so-called 300 police she is putting into Counties-Manukau. District commander Bush made a very interesting point. He said that that is one vehicle for every 12 officers. The Minister says it is now 43 but let us not quibble. Even if it is 43 it is far less than the normal ratio. Of course district commander Mike Bush comments in the Official Information Act memo this ratio of 1:12 is “considerably lower” than the current ratio which ranges from 1:4 to 1:6. This is not a bureaucrat; this is a senior police officer who is probably the first at district commander level to question the rationale for this policy. 
Chris Auchinvole 
: We get our policemen out on the job. 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: Those members interject and fluff about over there but the member for West Coast - Tasman who has lost cars in his patch will not stand up and protest that in this Chamber. That member will not stand up for his local police force on the West Coast; he hides away. 
I also say to the Minister that she is a Minister who—according to district commander Cliff in Canterbury who has verified it publicly in documentation that has been tabled—along with this Government required a $21 million cut in police resources. Firstly it manifested in 340 cars or 10 percent of the vehicle fleet going. The Minister said: “It won’t be front-line vehicles. It’ll be things like vans.” Even in my patch the community cop now has to drive the police prison van around because the van did not go but his squad car has gone. The youth aid officer in Kaiapoi has to get a pool car when she can get it to chase down young offenders. 
So what we have— 
Sandra Goudie 
: Oh rubbish! 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: The member says it is rubbish. I invite that member who chairs the Law and Order Committee to go to the West Coast to go to the Kaiapoi Police Station to go to the Rangiora Police Station and to go up and talk to district commander Mike Bush in Counties-Manukau and ask him why he said what he said. I do not think district commander Bush is a liar. I think he is a man of his word I think he is an honourable person and unlike the Minister of Police and the politicians in this Chamber he is a front-line trained professional crime-fighting police officer. If anybody knows about the resources that police need it would be that district commander. The Minister laughs and looks likes the political version of a Cheshire cat; she is good at that. She stands up to say “Oh Mr Chairman” but she does not match her rhetoric with resources. The question I have for this Minister is why if the police had all these resources did they not come to us and ask us—