Mitchell MarkHon MARK MITCHELL (National—Whangaparāoa): Thank you Mr Chair. I have to say that I've been looking forward to this Estimates debate and having the Minister in the House because I heard on the grapevine that he was gloating in Copperfield's saying that I hadn't been asking him questions so I hadn't been putting the pressure on him. So now I get my chance to ask the Minister some questions.I have to say that I thought that I'd give him a bit of time to get his feet under the desk because he came in promising big things and last night what did we have? Seven ram raids. We had seven ram raids last night and by the way when I took over the police portfolio nine months ago we were told that these rain raids were a spike and that they were going to diminish. Well that's a very long spike—a nine-month spike—in ram raids and what it actually does—Hon Member: A spate—it's a spate.Hon MARK MITCHELL: —is it actually just underlines—yeah a spate. Exactly—define a spate. Maybe the Minister can get up and do that: define for us what a spike or a spate is.The sad reality of it is this Government has poured a lot of money into our police service. They promised 1800 police officers. They're two years behind on that and they're still not clear. The Minister in fact is confused in terms of when those numbers are going to be delivered and the sad reality is like usual they've actually delivered worse outcomes. We've had an over 20 percent increase in serious violent crime. We've had a massive increase in gang members. They are recruiting quicker than we can actually recruit and train our police service.The first question that I'd like to Minister to answer—and this relates directly to ram raids because I've heard the Minister and I've heard the Prime Minister both get up and say that the Government or the police's response to the ram raids was the formation of the dedicated retail crime unit. The dedicated retail crime unit is a joint venture put together by Retail NZ—and I acknowledge them and the work that they've done in supporting their members. But it was quite simply a small unit. I think it has two sworn officers and three non-sworn. But maybe the Minister could stand and tell us exactly how many numbers the retail crime unit has that's been set up to respond to and get under control the serious violent offending that we see with these ram raids and aggravated robberies—I've had a ram raid and an aggravated robbery in my own patch in the last month—and explain to us exactly how this dedicated retail crime unit is actually dealing with that issue because Minister if you actually look at the numbers there doesn't seem to be any impact at all and by the way if you were to go and talk to Police National Headquarters or the commissioner and ask them and say Was the retail crime unit set up to deal with ram raids?" they'd be very clear about the fact that it was not set up to deal with ram raids. It was set up and announced with Retail New Zealand to deal with shoplifting and loss prevention and as a coordinated response to those types of issues. So I'd like the Minister to actually stand tell us exactly how many people are inside the retail crime unit exactly what they have done to start to get control of these ram raids and this violent retail crime and actually maybe inject a little bit of honesty into it. I'm going to go back to Operation Tauwhiro where we saw exactly the same pattern emerge with this Government where they'd get up and they'd say "Our response to the gang violence and the drive-by shootings is Operation Tauwhiro." Operation Tauwhiro was never established to deal with gang violence; it was established to gather information. Day after day you had a Minister standing in this House touting Operation Tauwhiro as being the response to the gang violence and I had front-line police every day coming to me and saying "What a complete sham and they're deceiving the public. We've been asked through our normal duties to record any gang contact any firearms taken or any warrants against Operation Tauwhiro. We don't have any extra staff. There's no extra funding." and yet it was put out there as a strong response to the gangs.So I'd like the Minister to stand and actually explain to the committee exactly what the retail crime unit is how many staff are in it and exactly what they're doing to deal with a continuation of what we see in violent ram raids."