Nash Stuart; Mallard TrevorHon STUART NASH (Minister of Police): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. Mr Finlayson is surely the definition of a self-made man who worships his creator but I do have a lot of respect for the former Minister. He did a fantastic job and I wish him the best when he leaves this place in not too many months and finds a new law job.Madam Deputy Speaker I congratulate you as well. It is fantastic to have a former Deputy Mayor of Napier sitting in the Chair. Well done! Great things grow here there's no doubt about that.I would like to talk about Labour and New Zealand First's plan for policing: 1800 more police. This is the first time there has been an increase in police numbers since 2008. The last time this happened—Chris Bishop: That's not true.Hon STUART NASH: The last time this happened Mr Bishop was as a result of a New Zealand First - Labour coalition Government.Chris Bishop: Oh rubbish!Hon STUART NASH: Oh no no. Actually Mr Bishop is right: what happened was these troops actually hit the ground in 2009 because they were in training college—but that was as a result of a Labour - New Zealand First coalition deal. Then what happened? Nine years of no more police. No more police and what happened during that time? What happened during that time? Crime increased methamphetamine supply flourished 8 percent of burglaries were solved and 38 percent of crimes against a person were solved—totally unacceptable. But almost what's worse—almost what's worse—is that the morale in the New Zealand police service dropped.The interesting thing the interesting message about the latest New Zealand Police Workplace Survey the last one undertaken under that Government is that—so 80 percent of men and women who serve in our New Zealand Police service or over 80 percent actually said they were committed to the communities they serve and committed to the New Zealand Police service. Good hard-working men and women who know what has to be done. But then what the survey shows is that 60 percent of these people—of the good hard-working men and women who are out there keeping our communities safe putting the bad guys behind bars—said they were simply not delivering on the promises that they were making to their communities. These are the men and women who know how to keep our communities safe they have fantastic ideas they're out there often putting their lives on the line keeping us safe and they themselves said they were breaking the promises they were making. And what's worse is that 60 percent of these men and women said that they had an undue level of workplace stress.Well what was the Government's response to this? Nothing. The Government did nothing. In fact in April 2016 the then police Minister signed off on a four-year plan that said No more police until at least 2020." So yet again—yet again—it has taken a Labour - New Zealand First coalition Government to listen to the communities that we serve.I undertake street-corner meetings nearly every Sunday in my community and the biggest issue—it doesn't matter where I am what demographic—is policing in our communities. We all know that our communities are concerned about our safety. We all know that our communities are worried about the lack of police resource. We've listened and that is why in our coalition agreement we have said "1800 more police."But the interesting thing is that this is an aspirational target. I'm the first to admit that. It is an aspirational target. In fact the Leader of the Opposition talked about this as an aspirational target. But he talked about it as if it is a bad thing. Well we are an aspirational Government. We are an aspirational Government who is going to set aspirational targets and work incredibly hard to meet them. So don't talk to me about aspiration as being a bad thing because I think it's a fantastic thing. The aspiration that we have for the New Zealand Police service is to once again build it into a service that our communities can have confidence in in which the men and women who work there develop fantastic work stories and know that they can meet the promises they are going to make to their communities.The question that I am often asked by the media and by colleagues and by people in my electorate is where are these officers going to go. And it is a very good question. What I can say is that the Commissioner of Police and I are coming up with a really robust plan of where we think the resources are needed. But the thing is you don't have to have pips and swords on your shoulder to have good ideas. So what we're going to do when we come up with a draft plan is we're going to travel up and down this country and talk to the men and women of the New Zealand Police service and ask them for their feedback what their great ideas are and how they would like to see their 21st century police service run. Once we do this consultation this engagement and get these ideas in we're going to modify the plan. What we're going to do is craft a 21st century service that represents the values of the men and women who serve and the communities they represent.This is a very exciting time for the New Zealand Police. One thing I will say is it's not going to happen overnight. You can't simply train a thousand men and women a year and get them into our communities. But what I can say is that in three years' time policing is going to look a lot different in New Zealand than it does now.Chris Bishop: Oh OK. Righto big talker.Hon STUART NASH: When I hear the Opposition spokesperson for police rubbish this I say to him "Are you really rubbishing the fact that we want to put 1800 more men and women on the streets in your electorate?" If that member did not hear what his community was telling him during the election then he simply wasn't listening because all of us over here heard it. Ron Mark heard it. New Zealand First heard it. Labour heard it. And we're doing something about it. We're doing something about it. So keep up the criticism Mr Bishop keep it up—because while he criticises we're going to be doing. We've got a plan we've got an action and the commissioner has said to me "Mr Nash we can deliver for you."—we can deliver for you. So we are going to deliver for our communities because our communities have told us this is what they want to see. And believe me we're going to deliver.In the last two minutes there is one other area in a portfolio of mine that I'd just like to elaborate on which is small business. There's about 500000 Kiwis just under 500000 Kiwis that count as small business. This is the small to medium sized enterprise sector—the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment definition is 19 employees or less—and it makes up 97 percent of the workforce. It's a really important part of our economy—in fact you could argue the backbone of the New Zealand economy.There was this group that was set up in 2002 and it was called the Small Business Development Group. What it consisted of was some really engaged men and women in the sector who gave up their time to sort of consult on policy—to give the Government advice on what worked and what wasn't working and what the community was saying. In fact you could argue that these were tentacles of small business into the Government. It was a fantastic initiative and it survived Labour and it went into National.But the sad thing about this is the last Minister for Small Business decided to can it. She decided to get rid of the Small Business Development Group. It's astounding isn't it? It's astounding to the point where Government ministries themselves are actually saying "Well where do we go for a reference? Who do we run our policies past? Who can we talk to if we want to know what the mood of the small business network is?"This is the thing: I'm going to get this small business development network up and running as a priority. In fact I'd like to expand it and I've got a whole lot of plans that I want to do for small businesses and the way they engage with Government in a really proactive way.But if I look across my whole range of portfolios the thing is I think that after nine years the Government just stopped listening. They just stopped listening. They lost touch. They didn't listen to the community about what the police were saying. They didn't listen to small businesses and the voice that they wanted to have around Government. It's just disconnected.The thing that's so exciting about what we've now got in Parliament about what we've now got in Government about the people who are creating policies and are going to drive them forward is it's transformational. It's exciting. It's about what this country needs and it's going to take it forward. I often say whether it's in Napier or giving speeches that we live in paradise. We absolutely do. In fact we have won by and large the lottery of life living here. We really have. But we can do things so much better. We can do things so much better. We have a plan. We have a plan around policing. We have a plan around small business. We have a plan around education around housing around corrections and what you're going to see here is—Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member's time has expired. We come now to a series of maiden speeches. Fifteen minutes is allocated for each. The first is Mark Patterson."