4. Question No. 4—Prime MinisterNICOLA WILLIS (Deputy Leader—National) to the Prime MinisterQuestion No. 4—Prime Minister4. NICOLA WILLIS (Deputy Leader—National) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by all of his Government's statements and actions?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Acting Prime Minister): Yes in particular the new tools to reduce gun crime that come into force today. Firearms prohibition orders will improve public safety by stopping people whose behaviour and actions represent a high risk of violence from accessing firearms or restricted weapons. The new legislation gives a judge the power to impose an order lasting 10 years and makes it a criminal offence to breach the conditions of the order with a breach being an imprisonable offence. The delivery of this legislation had been promised by previous Governments but is actually finally being delivered.Simeon Brown: Took five years for this Government to do.Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: It took Mr Brown nine years to do nothing; we have done it.Nicola Willis: Why have ram raids increased fivefold under Labour?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: As we know in the current period of time ram raids have increased although overall levels of crime have come down. There is from time to time spates of different types of crimes. We do know that in recent times we're starting to see that trend downwards but clearly that is now a focus for the police; they've been arresting hundreds of people. We've been trying to get in behind the causes of that. What we haven't been doing is reheating old failed policies like boot camps.Nicola Willis: Does he think the current approach to youth crime is working when there is a new ram raid every 15 hours?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I think that the initiatives that the Government is undertaking—including making sure that we get wraparound services around all of those who have been convicted and making sure that we get in to those families to make sure that they are given the support that they need—are starting to work. What won't work is a policy that the National Party previously had where 86 percent of the people in the boot camps reoffended; it's a failed policy.Nicola Willis: What evidence does he have that the Government's soft-on-crime approach is working?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The member is completely incorrect in her description but if she does want evidence we can return to the Ministry of Social Development study that said that 86 percent of people reoffended when this was tried by the last National Government. We could go to the evidence from the then Prime Minister's Chief Science Advisor who on 12 June 2018 said Boot camps do not work". All boot camps do is create faster fitter criminals who do more crime.Nicola Willis: Does he think the Government's policies are working for people like Vape Room owner Savi Arora who told Newshub that he got a call from neighbours at 3 a.m. to alert him of the ram raid to his shop: "I felt so terrible it was so stressful it was very scary. I have a little kid at home and my wife didn't want me to go and check it out"?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Every member of this House would have extreme sympathy for anyone who is affected by a ram raid. The police are actively making sure that they arrest those who are responsible. We have a focus within our approach in the justice system to supporting and protecting victims and stopping them from being victimised in the first place. The member's party's policy of boot camps will create more criminals and therefore more victims. It is a failed policy. The member should be embarrassed by it.Nicola Willis: Does the Acting Prime Minister understand that victims of crime don't want his sympathy; they want a stop to reoffending and how many more retailers have to have their stores destroyed and their customers terrorised before his Government takes some serious action?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: We are taking action. We are seeing the police arrest record numbers of people here. We are getting in behind the causes of these crimes—the families the people who need our help and support to be able to turn their lives around. What those people will be feeling today is that the National Party have no new ideas. They're reheating Bill English's leftovers. It failed there it failed in the UK—we will get fitter faster criminals doing more crime. It is an embarrassing policy which actually I don't think that member would support.Nicola Willis: Does he see a connection between soaring truancy rates under Labour and soaring youth crime and if so what's he doing about it?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Every day a member of the National Party gets up and says that this is truancy when in actual fact during COVID people were obeying the rules of keeping their children home because they had to isolate. The member needs to actually get her facts right instead of scaremongering like that.Nicola Willis: When will his Government stop making excuses and stop wringing its hands and instead take action to get our kids back to school and off the streets where they are raiding stores and creating carnage?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: We are taking action. We have arrested people those programmes are now being wrapped around those who have been arrested. We are intervening to make sure that families have got the support they need. We have got programmes to make sure that we get young people back into school and back into work. All the National Party has to offer is a failed policy—it failed in the United Kingdom it failed in New Zealand—and that's as good as it gets: fitter faster criminals doing more crime victimising more people. They are a failure of a policy shop over there."