Andersen GinnyHon GINNY ANDERSEN (Minister of Police): Thank you Madam Chair. Right I will respond to those in order. When I became the Minister of Police Mr Mitchell I was asked what my aspiration as the Minister of Police is for New Zealand. I stand strongly by my answer—it is to make New Zealanders feel safe. I stand by that. That is still my aspiration as the Minister of Police. I was asked about the three main ways by which I intend to do that—I stand by those three main ways which I will continue to work on.The first way is by backing our police by making sure that they are resourced by ensuring that we do have 1800 additional police officers working in New Zealand by the end of June and specifically that 700 of those additional police officers will be specifically dedicated to tackling organised crime and gangs.The second is by tackling retail crime by ensuring that our retail crime prevention team is appropriately resourced. It has now had a second tranche of funding totalling $15 million to provide security prevention and advice to those small-business owners that have been victims of an aggravated robbery; and also with my other hat on as the Minister for Small Business by enabling quicker access to security features such as fog cannons to be done online.The third area that I've really wanted to do to deliver to make New Zealanders feel safer is to deal with the issue of youth crime. I know this goes to the heart of people feeling that New Zealand needs to be safer. The fact that young people are out after hours committing aggravated robberies in stolen vehicles is simply not acceptable. It is a symptom of something that is not going well and we need to look within that family unit and provide wraparound services to ensure the care and protection of those young people are put first and foremost in order to reduce the offending that we are seeing within our community.The point that Mr Bayly raised in relation to other services that work alongside police—this is a really fair point to make. One of the opportunities that has come through the spike of ram raids that we've seen is that we are seeing Police and Oranga Tamariki working more closely together than we have ever seen before and particularly in those 24 to 48 hours—when it's that circuit-breaker or the Kotahi te Whakaaro. It's those high end high-need individuals that police are getting far greater engagement with Oranga Tamariki in a short period of time and I see that working really well.One area that I would always want to see improvements in is mental health. I know far too many hours of front-line time is being dedicated to areas that police are not trained in delivering. Mental health continues to be problematic. There've been some good pilots going on in parts where we're seeing people with trained medical expertise in mental health sitting alongside police officers—this is well outside the review but I'm keen on seeing more of that happen. I think it holds great benefits to be able to get those people who are in distress the medical attention they need but also to free up police officers so that they can be doing those things that they need the most—to be out in street doing their job essentially.Finally Operation Cobalt has been a great success. The number that I've just actually heard tonight is the total number of charges now exceeds 35000 across different crime types—35000 charges laid by police specific to organised crime. That is a significant amount of activity that we are seeing in that space. It's the extension of work that goes right across police but I would like to point out that having by the end of June those additional roles specifically dedicated to target organised crime has had a significant impact.For the public they have been able to see increased visibility of policing in and around events that do involve larger numbers of gang members in public places. That has I believe contributed to managing some of those events we'd seen in the past that were really concerning the community in terms of their safety.Operation Cobalt is a nationally coordinated operation with all districts right across New Zealand. It specifically addresses unlawful behaviour and intimidation by gang members that affects the community's sense of safety both in our communities and on our roads. So I see that particular operation as being hugely successful and I'm pleased to see it continuing to deliver results.