12. Police Resourcing—Numbers and Crime RateSTUART NASH (Labour—Napier) to the Minister of PolicePolice Resourcing—Numbers and Crime Rate12. STUART NASH (Labour—Napier) to the Minister of Police: Is there any link between the increase in crime and the decline in police numbers in the past year?Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Police): To my fellow right-winger the premise of the member's question is flawed. Police are funded for 8907 sworn staff each year and that has not changed.Stuart Nash: Can she confirm that her Government has failed on John Key's 2008 promise to maintain a police to population ratio of 1:500 and it has in fact worsened?Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Not really when you consider that we have got the equivalent of 350 police officers from the electronic assistance mobility programme that we funded for police as well as the fact that police now have Tasers firearms in lock boxes in their cars stab-resistant body armour new ballistic body armour enhanced pepper spray automatic number plate recognition boots for all the staff and sponge rounds for the armed offenders squad—none of which of course was funded by the previous Labour Government. Stuart Nash: If she has been in her words working on a policy for more police for quite some time" why does the police 4-year strategy show no plans to increase police numbers until at least 2020?Hon JUDITH COLLINS: As I could have said to Mr Leggett the other day at the police college in Porirua police 4-year plans are police 4-year plans; they are not necessarily the Government's 4-year plans.Stuart Nash: Did the Minister sign off on that police 4-year plan?Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Most likely at the time but of course things have moved on.Stuart Nash: Why has she said for months that funding and resources are sufficient and dismissed everyone including the Police Association which challenged this when clearly this is not the case?Hon JUDITH COLLINS: I think I have made it very clear that at the moment it is all right. But the trouble is that we are looking to the future and we are looking to the fact—Grant Robertson: This Minister is always looking to the future.Hon JUDITH COLLINS: —that so many New Zealanders now come back from overseas and the population is rising because of it. We are no longer losing 40000 Kiwis every year as we did under a previous Government.Stuart Nash: What has made the Minister change her mind on police numbers between May when she signed off on the police's 4-year plan and today?Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Looking to the future.Darroch Ball: Is she aware that raw front-line police data shows that in 2008 police attended 240000 confirmed offences compared with 2015 when they attended 280000 confirmed offences and how is that in her—and Bill English's and now the Prime Minister's—own words a reduction in crime?Hon JUDITH COLLINS: For that member's benefit the crime rate is looked at on a per capita basis. The population has increased by about 400000 New Zealanders because people like living under a John Key - led Government.Darroch Ball: Is she aware that those numbers of confirmed offences were provided to me by her office through answers to written questions just 1 week after she told this House that she stood by her advice that the crime numbers were down?Hon JUDITH COLLINS: I am very pleased that my office is giving the member assistance and I am sure that next time it will tell him that the crime statistics are actually worked on a per capita basis not just on the bald figures."