Ball DarrochDARROCH BALL (NZ First): Thank you Madam Chair. Before I go into the report from the Justice Committee I just want to go into a couple of things that the National Party members have been saying. Mr Bennett stood up and he spoke for about half of his five minutes rambling on about how much of an issue the huge prison population was. He was asking the Minister of Justice What's the Minister going to do about it? The Minister can't fix it." But then he started saying things like that it was over 10000 and in a couple of years it's going to be over 14000. It beggars belief that he is actually standing there while he's making his speech thinking that this has all been caused over the last nine months and that anything that we've done over this side of the Chamber has caused that horrendous corrections hand grenade to be lobbed over our way. It is demonstrable that it has taken at least the nine years that that National Party was in Government and that it caused the very issues that he's complaining about now. He started spouting off about the mental health issues and the rehabilitation and how we're going to fix that. He talked about the rehabilitation rates in general and how we're going to fix that. And then he puts it all on us.Yeah it is all on us because we're in Government right now and we're doing something about it. All of the Ministers in the sector have put forward a plan not only for this Budget coming forward but for the rest of the term as well and we're going to do something about it. We've got an actual ambitious goal. That's probably what's surprising for the likes of Mr Bennett and the other backbenchers sitting over that side of the Chamber: the ambitious nature—the challenging nature—that we have when we set goals like 30 percent reduction in the prison population. But we don't look at the mountain and say that it's too high; we come up with a plan and we come up with policy that backs that up as well.What Mr Mitchell said when he spoke—and he was actually first to respond to the Minister. He said that he came into this House as an MP to make it better more safe and not to make it less safe for the public of New Zealand. Well perhaps he just needs to look over the last nine years. First of all—I've already mentioned the increase in prison numbers—the decrease in the police numbers under that Government. It wasn't just a decrease in the rate of police numbers being added; they actually had a decrease over the term—a decrease over the term. So when we've got another aspirational ambitious challenging target of putting 1800 new front-line police onto the streets all they want to do is complain—all they want to do is complain. How many police did the National Party end up adding over the last nine years? Minus 16.Hon Andrew Little: It went down.DARROCH BALL: Minus 16. It went down and all we've been hearing is complaining about when and why and how we want to have 1800 new police. What their excuse is when they don't like it is that apparently 1800 new police is going to cause more prisoners and it's going to cause more crimes. Well if you look at it one-dimensionally like that perhaps they'll be correct but we look at it in multidimensional facets over this side of the Chamber. There will be a couple of hundred more beds that are needed because of the police that've been put on the front line because they're there to combat the crime that is being committed right now: but for the added front-line being put out there that crime would go undetected. That's what the National Party is saying. That's what the National Party wants us to accept—that's what the National Party wants us to accept—but it's very important to note that actually the Commissioner of Police during these hearings told us that New Zealand's operating model focuses on preventing harm and crime in the community.One of the questions when Mr David Bennett stood up was "How are you going to do it? How are you going to reduce the prison population by that much?" Well there's a new word—perhaps it's new for that member but it's not for this side of the Chamber—it's called prevention and that's one of the major roles that police officers have in this country. They don't just go out there and arrest and be reactive like that Government thought they did and how that Government utilised our men and women in blue. They're there to prevent and that's what they're going to do.I can't go through all of the good things that this Government's going to be doing with this appropriation in these sections in five minutes but we will deliver."