Collins Judith: General Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Collins Judith: General Debate 
[Sitting date: 29 August 2012. Volume:683;Page:4868. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Justice) 
: 
 Thank you for the opportunity to speak in this general debate. I listened to the last 5 minutes of the member who has resumed his seat Mr David Shearer the current leader—apparently—of the Labour Party and I looked for heard and waited for one solution. There was not one. There I think is the essence of what is going on in this Parliament. We have in Government a Government that makes decisions. We have in the Opposition one that does nothing but whinge. Every single thing that this Government proposes for economic growth the Opposition is against. We can be guaranteed of one thing: whatever it is the Opposition is against it. The Leader of the Opposition has said that it is against poverty. Fine so where are his solutions? Is he for growth? No. Is he for mining? Well possibly this week but maybe not next. Is he for cutting down regulation? Well no probably not because something else might happen. He just wants wages to grow and yet he does not think about the consequences. He does not think about people actually losing their jobs. He does not think about where we trade because he is against trade these days. We have now got a Labour Party that is nothing except opposition; it is pro-nothing except itself. 
We have had in fact over the last 2 years 60000 new jobs created in this economy despite the fact that we have been in one of the toughest financial situations of the world since the 1930s. That is what we have seen. We now have three-quarters of all income earners paying a tax rate of no more than 17.5 percent. 
 They are incentivised to work. They are incentivised to take on overtime. They are incentivised to get ahead. One of the biggest efforts from this Government—one of the biggest results of the work that we have done in Government—is what we have seen in terms of interest rates. For most New Zealanders who want to own their own home or do own their own home a rise in interest rates is one of the toughest things that they will face. What we have now seen are interest rates for our home owners and our borrowers in business down to the lowest rates in 45 years. This means that for someone who has a $200000 loan they are saving $200 per week every week and it has been going like that pretty much since this Government has been in office. That is all to do with the fact that this Government is keeping its costs down making sure that all of the money we spend we spend wisely. 
By goodness when I think about wise spending none of it has been so wise might I say to my colleagues as in the justice sector. Some fantastic spending has gone on there and some great results. This Government has not just done what Labour did—just build new prisons which it did in the 2000s under Phil Goff and his leadership in this area. Four new prisons were built. Well we did not have to do that. My colleague Anne Tolley is getting to close prisons these days. When Labour came into office we had 5000 prisoners; when it left it left us with 8500 prisoners. We have now got the biggest sustainable drop in the prison population since the 1930s all under a National Government. In all of that what we have done is we have in fact— 
Hon Phil Goff 
: So lucky with what she inherited from a Labour Government. 
Hon JUDITH COLLINS 
: He says that I am so lucky. I inherited corrections from that member and I would like to tell him that it was a mess when I took it over and it is a great portfolio now. 
Let us look at some of the other things we are doing. We are cracking down—[ 
Interruption 
] See? They are against that too—against that. What we have got is the lowest crime rate in 30 years down to 1982 levels. We are dealing with cyber-bullying we are dealing with child pornography we are dealing with public protection orders we are reducing unnecessary parole hearings we are preventing released offenders living next door to their victims under the changes to the Harassment Act and we have changed the Crimes Act to make it an offence for someone to stay silent when they know children are being abused in the house where they are living just like the Kahui situation. We are dealing with that and we have cleaned up the finances around that. We have done some excellent work and we have got more to come. That is just some of the work that we are working on. 
But actually in addition to all of that we have given renewed confidence to the Public Service to be able to get on to do the best job it can. With the police we have a police force with public confidence at record highs as far as I recall at 84 percent—84 percent. They are even more trusted than family general practitioners. These are unbelievable rates compared with anywhere else in the world. I look around at other Governments in similar countries in some of the jurisdictions in Australia and the UK and elsewhere. We are seeing police numbers drop in this country. Crime is not going up; it is going down. We have done an excellent job and there is even better to come.