Williams PotoHon POTO WILLIAMS (Minister of Police): Thank you Mr Chair and I thank the member for his questions. Firstly can I acknowledge Constable Matthew Hunt who passed away while keeping us safe and doing his duty as a front-line police officer. I have to say that we ask a great deal of our women and men in the service of police and they do put themselves out there on the line every single day. I mihi to the family of Matthew Hunt and I also mihi to all the women and men of the New Zealand Police for the work that they do. They have a right to be safe at work just as they are doing their duty to keep us safe in our community. So I wanted to put that firstly on the line. As a result of that of course the police instituted their front-line safety improvement programme and from what I hear it's making great inroads. It's giving our front-line staff a sense of confidence in their ability to tackle difficult issues and do their job effectively. That really speaks to the work of the police that the police are the ones that we send out in difficult times to situations where they may not know what will confront them and we have an expectation not only that they do their duty but that they keep us safe as well and it's our role as parliamentarians to ensure that we support that work 100 percent. In saying that I want to support the police in what they have been doing to keep us safe at the border the work that they have been doing on managed isolation and quarantine and more importantly—most importantly to me as a member from Christchurch—the work that was extraordinary in the direct aftermath of March 15. The police are facing some very difficult issues and we as a community are as well and there's no doubt that there's concern for what is currently elevating gang violence in our communities. The response from the police has been not just around one or two things. They have been working to ensure that we have a programme in place that deals not only with the clinical response that we must have to disarm and de-escalate the current activity of gangs but that we put stuff in place that means that we can prevent people from getting into gangs in the first place and if they are in gangs we give them plenty of opportunities to exit out of that. I particularly want to point to a couple of key items and that's the transnational organised crime group and the Resilience to Organised Crime in Communities the ROCC programme. Now that sits alongside the operations—Simeon Brown: When's the FPO bill being introduced? Hon POTO WILLIAMS: —that we are currently involved in—and I'll get to your question Mr Brown if you just give me a moment. Simeon Brown: OK. Hon POTO WILLIAMS: Thank you. That sits alongside—because you asked about gangs. I've taken a note of your questions. You asked about gangs you asked about firearms offences and you asked about firearms prohibition orders (FPOs). So you've asked three questions and I'm answering them for you. If you would just give me a moment in order to do that that would be wonderful. So what I do want to talk about is the work that's happened around Operation Tauwhiro and I don't think that the members of this House realise how significant and in a short period of time since February how effective that has been. The numbers that I have—and I'm not sure how up to date they are—are 350 firearms seized $2.4 million in cash seized and 378 people arrested on firearms offences. So when members ask the question What are the police doing about gangs?" here I can point to a direct thing that has been happening just very recently on top of the work that they are doing around resiliency against organised crime and the transnational work and the work that they're doing in communities to divert people away from gangs. Te Pae Oranga pilots have been hugely successful—have been hugely successful—in reducing recidivism and reoffending by 22.5 percent and that's an extraordinary figure. Now just in terms of the question around firearms I would hope that the member would support the Government in its desire to continue its programme of firearms reform including the register and I know that—Simeon Brown: But when's the FPO bill coming in? Hon POTO WILLIAMS: Mr Brown just a minute—just a minute. Just a second. Hold yourself together for just one more minute and I'll get right to you. This is our significant programme and we've already done an enormous amount of work in that space. CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): You've got 26 seconds. Hon POTO WILLIAMS: OK right. CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Oh sorry—three minutes 26 seconds. Hon POTO WILLIAMS: OK. Simeon Brown: So do I get an answer? Hon POTO WILLIAMS: No you will get an answer. In answer to your question Mr Brown about the FPOs—and then I'll come back to some of the other things I want to talk about—I must remind the committee that your bill actually required a massive rewrite and that it wasn't fit for purpose when it came to the select committee. Some of the questions that you asked about including search powers—well that wasn't part of your original bill. But in answer to your question about when our bill will be here it will be some time this year. I want to talk—as I've got a couple more minutes left—about a couple of things that are happening here and that is around the work that police are doing in terms of addressing the overrepresentation of Māori and Pacific in our statistics. Now there's no doubt that that is troubling for me and for many of us that we continue to be overrepresented in the stats and it's my desire to work with the police to ensure that we look at those key issues that bring our people to the attention of the police. There's lots of work that needs to be done across the whole of Government to ensure that those drivers of crime are dealt with but actually there are all the social issues that we can support as a Government. But as police there is some specific work that they can do and that they are doing identifying those areas where they know that the bias has impacted on their decisions around how they charge or who they—Simeon Brown: Point of order Mr Chairperson. I appreciate the Minister's got a lot of things that she wants to say but this is an opportunity for the committee of the whole House to ask questions. I don't know how much time the Minister actually has left but I doubt it's very much and that limits my ability in the remaining time I've got to actually ask any future questions. CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Or anyone else's actually because this debate will finish at 9.14 p.m. OK? So taking points of order like that is going to delay things. The Minister has one minute and 31 seconds of time remaining if she wishes to use it and then the Labour Party will have no more time. Hon POTO WILLIAMS: I will sit down in a second but I do want to address that issue because it is a pertinent issue and it comes up in the House often. We must do better at addressing the issues that concern Māori and Pacific and those decisions of who we stop and how we speak to them and those charging decisions. But I do want to say that I'm heartened to see the work that police are doing in this space—Te Huringa o Te Tai for example—and the fact that the work of the Māori Pacific and ethnic services teams speaks to part of that."