Borrows Chester: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
Borrows Chester: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:637;Page:7919] 
CHESTER BORROWS (National—Whanganui) 
: 
 The huge concern before the public of New Zealand at the moment is just what we are doing around crime and around punishment. We will save the issue of punishment for the debate around the Department of Corrections. 
What is the Government doing around crime which is the province of the New Zealand Police? We have found in recent times that Treasury’s report has been scathing of the Government’s efforts in respect of policing. Labour has piped on about its crime reduction strategy yet Treasury finds there is no overarching goal it is not linked to justice sector spending and there is limited measurement of outcomes. The review of the effectiveness interventions is “less than ideal” to use its own words. It goes on to say that what is particularly disturbing is that the crime reduction strategy has no particular focus on stopping intergenerational crime or consideration of the role of early intervention in areas such as education health income support and housing—all of which impact on crime. 
The fact is that when one is talking about crime one is talking about something that is a multi-agency approach towards a social condition. When Labour came into Government in 1999 it promised it would crack down on burglary. Yet only 15.7 percent of all burglaries were resolved last year and that is down on the year before. We heard from my colleague the statistics around increases in all sorts of crime—violent crime grievous assaults homicides etc. No one appears to be asking the question of why New Zealand has these terrible violent crime statistics. We know for instance that Kiwis murder each other more frequently than the British do. No one seems to be looking at that in any real depth at all yet there this huge problem is. 
When we talk to those who want to report serious crime that is not violent crime—but that has just as much of an effect on New Zealanders’ ability to do business in this country—we find that it has become increasingly difficult for people to report for instance a fraud offence. Not long ago we heard from a private investigator who was contacted by a complainant who had been to the police to report an $80000 theft as a servant incident. The police had told him to go away because they had no one to take a report of the crime so the complainant went to the private investigator who investigated. The investigator found and interviewed the offender. The offender coughed—he admitted what he had done. He admitted the whole offence. He admitted that he had a problem and that that was why he was pinching the money. The complainant went back to the police and said: “Here’s the offender turn the key on him. Let’s put him before the court.” But the police said they would not do that unless they could be sure the offender would plead guilty. So the private investigator went back to the offender and got an undertaking on an affidavit form that he would plead guilty to a charge of theft as a servant—or its related offence as it stands at the moment. Then the police finally took action. The offender got 200 hours’ community work and had to pay back $15000 in reparation out of the $80000 he stole. 
What level of confidence can New Zealanders have in respect of the police’s ability to do their core business when we find that amongst our community every avenue of core police business is being done by a parallel organisation for people who have the money to be able to pay for crime services? That is not the country we grew up in and it is not the country we want to live in. We want to know that when we ring a 111 emergency call centre someone will come. We want to know that when we report a burglary we will get more than a little slip in the mail that we can take along to our insurance company and that actually someone in a blue suit will turn up and investigate the crime that has been reported. We do not want to have to go somewhere else. We do not want to ring and have to push button A for this and button B for that. We want a police service we can rely on. 
One thing we should never do is try to hold the Minister of Police to account for what is happening within the department. It was interesting to see the “The Politician” cartoon in this morning’s  
Dominion Post 
. 
It asked what the police were saying about this culture of silence to which the Minister’s reply was: “They won’t say.” Recently I got absolutely caned for asking a question as to why the number of traffic infringement tickets had gone up from 311 in 2000-01 to 34000 last year. What happened? I was absolutely bollocked for having the audacity even to ask the question. People have a right to answers. This is a Government not a dictatorship.