McCully Murray: General Debates 
McCully Murray: General Debates 
[Volume:611;Page:8552] 
Hon MURRAY McCULLY (NZ National—East Coast Bays) 
: 
 Watching the face of the Minister of Education during that last diatribe from the junior Minister Mr Duynhoven was indeed revealing. It was clear on his face and on the faces of other members opposite that they were reflecting on the fact that they had kept this place in urgency to pass the “Save Harry” legislation. The look on the face of the Minister of Education said it all. That expression said: “We got it wrong. We made a mistake.” The embarrassment on the face of the Minister of Education was absolutely visible to all of those who looked. 
As a hard-working local constituency member of Parliament who frequently listens to the views of people in my electorate I know that there are many people out there who look at the happenings in Wellington scratch their heads and wonder what planet this place is on and in particular what planet this Government is on. I know that when I return to my electorate tomorrow night I will again be meeting bewildered people who wonder just how some of this stuff happens. I know already from the telephone calls that I have had as the news bulletins have carried the news that my colleague Shane Ardern is to face a police prosecution that there are people out there who are scratching their heads in amazement and some of them are downright angry. What they say to me is that they cannot understand how the police can find time to carry out an instantaneous investigation into this very serious offence—driving a tractor—when they who are burgled who are assaulted and who have serious crimes committed on their doorsteps not only cannot get an investigation from the police but in many cases cannot even get a response from the police. They look at the stupid action on the part of the police in preferring those charges against Mr Ardern and ask just what planet these people are on. 
Who was the idiot in the police who made up his mind to prefer such charges? Who was the idiot who decided to waste court time? Who was the idiot who decided to waste police time that should have been spent looking after the safety and well-being of ordinary law-abiding New Zealanders? I have a message for the Commissioner of Police. He should get a grip. There are people out there people represented by me and by others in the House who know that there are serious criminal offences being committed on their doorsteps who have their cars interfered with and their homes invaded and where are the police when they want them? Yet the police have time to carry out a very speedy investigation into someone who has committed the serious offence of driving a tractor and to make a decision within a few hours that it is serious enough to warrant prosecution. The people in my electorate will shake their heads in amazement. 
It is part of a wider trend that I have seen in the police force in recent years. The police have simply lost the plot. In my electorate there are people whose businesses are about to be closed down because they are in the dangerous business of selling gift baskets. The gift baskets happen to have liquor in them and the police have appropriated funds solemnly given to them by this Parliament to challenge the decision of the Liquor Licensing Authority to try to ensure that the Liquor Licensing Authority’s decision to license dangerous gift-basket purveyors is overturned. I have people who cannot renew the licences for their businesses but the police—who cannot attend to serious burglaries or assaults—have time to take expensive court cases to overturn law-abiding decisions on liquor-licensing provisions. 
I also say as the Minister of State Services is in the House that they shake their heads in wonderment that we have—