Mitchell Mark: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Mitchell Mark: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 14 August 2012. Volume:682;Page:4359. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to take a call on Vote Police and I would just like to also acknowledge and congratulate Minister Tolley Police Commissioner Marshall Deputy Police Commissioner Mike Bush and Deputy Police Commissioner Viv Rickard. In a service like the police strong leadership does matter. You will get results and good morale through strong leadership and the police service at the moment is enjoying very strong leadership. 
I would like to talk a little bit about the two pillars that the police commissioner has announced and that Minister Tolley has announced as being the cornerstone of how policing is going to be rolled out and continue to move forward. For me it is quite an exciting change and it is really a fundamental change in the way the police are doing business and the way that they are serving our communities. It is actually a change not just within the police service. We have the Minister for Social Development here today as well and I have to say that her ministry is taking the same approach. Historically the police or Government agencies were often seen as fairly threatening or intimidating organisations to engage with for people to go in and seek help from and I think that with the first pillar which is Prevention First the police are going a long way towards actually breaking down those barriers getting rid of those historical barriers and getting out into the community more. 
Going back to when I served a lot of what we did really was reactionary. We would get in our police vehicles at the beginning of a shift and we would go out and we would react. We would attend to jobs and we would not really interact with the community a lot outside of that initial response. Our community constables were tasked with doing that and they were just a very very small number. 
We have had what are called the neighbourhood policing teams which are now being deployed around the country and I would just like to take the opportunity to commend the area commander in my own electorate Inspector Scott Webb and his team because we have actually been very successful. They have rolled out the Prevention First model in the electorate. It is working very well and it is getting fantastic feedback from the community. 
But in the last 2 or 3 months I have been able to get out and visit the Warkworth Police Station the Whangaparaoa Police Station Orewa Tauranga with Minister Bridges yesterday and Counties-Manukau. We were lucky as the Law and Order Committee to actually go up to Counties-Manukau and have a look and see what they are doing with their neighbourhood policing teams. I have to say that it is very very impressive how they are rolling that programme out and how they are really getting into the communities now. Not only were the police officers on these neighbourhood policing teams extremely enthusiastic about it—and it is a major shift in the way that they think and the way that they do business and you could see that they had taken real ownership of the communities and the areas that they were responsible for—but it is obvious that the communities are responding to it as well. And when you see these guys out there every day they will go out and they will put community meetings together. They have got a marquee that they will just take out to a local park. They will put it up and they will get everyone out of their houses and out into the park. They will actually interact with them find out what the real issues are in the communities and then start to be proactive in how they address them. This is a really big fundamental change in the way that policing is being done in New Zealand. I think that it is going to go from strength to strength and we will continue to see the great results that we are seeing. 
Coming back to social development this is the same model that is being rolled out as well in many ways—these barriers are being broken down and all of a sudden people are feeling confident interacting with Government departments which before they may not have felt very comfortable about. 
In relation to policing and seeing a higher presence of police out on the streets I remember in 2005 I drove from Auckland down to Taupo a trip that I made fairly regularly. Because I policed in that area I always took an interest in seeing how many police were actually out on the road. In 2005 I made a trip from Auckland to Taupo and did not see one police car or one patrol in that whole time on State Highway 1. This year I made the same trip and I saw nine patrols between Auckland and Taupo. 
When I visit these police stations and in particular Tauranga yesterday the thing that strikes me is that you will walk into a mess room into an area where normally the guys are working and there will be only two or three policemen in there. The rest of them are out on the street—the rest of them are out in the community. I think that this is a very very positive thing for our communities. They are seeing their police out there more. They are taking more of a Prevention First approach where they are actually getting in there and identifying what the issues are before they even become issues rather than reacting. So I just think that this is a very good model and I know we are going to continue to see fantastic results. Thank you. 
Vote agreed to.