Lee Melissa; Rurawhe AdrianMELISSA LEE (National): I move That the House take note of local issues.Thank you very much Mr Speaker. It's a great pleasure to rise in this debate. It is my very first time to talk about local issues and I'd like to talk about the Mt Albert electorate which was in fact the former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's electorate. She's no longer there and since then as the list MP who looks after the Mt Albert area from the National Party a lot of the community have been in touch more so than normal. One of the biggest issues that they contact me about is actually law and order and the victimisation in our suburbs and I'm sure that my colleague Helen White probably also hears about this. The issue of victimisation in the Waitematā area has actually gone up tremendously as well as in Auckland City.I had the Hon Mark Mitchell in the electorate last Friday for a law and order public meeting which was well advertised and the room at the Mt Albert Senior Citizens Hall was pretty full and there were people who wanted to discuss issues. One of the stories that a father brought to the meeting was actually really really moving and touching. He was very emotional actually because he was away overseas and his wife and his daughter had been held up in a home invasion by people with hammers who were threatening them. When he got back he felt helpless and powerless and he raised this issue with the police who were there—and I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the area commander Alisse Robertson who came to the meeting to address the meeting and answer questions about the police actions on this lawlessness.We have had quadruple the number of ram raids in New Zealand. Apparently there has been a 465 percent increase in the last two years and the majority of those caught doing these actions—70 percent of them—are under the age of 18 years old. The Government has actually spent $6 million on crime prevention on fog cannons and bollards but it seems nothing is actually working—well not effectively anyway. Retail crime costs this country more than $1 billion a year and I have to say that when the Minister of Police Ginny Andersen earlier answered a question that Mark Mitchell asked her she said the police are more resourced than ever before. That might be true statistically but I'd like to urge the Minister to reconsider her answer considering the fact that front-line police actually feel the brunt of these increases in ram raids and lawlessness in our country and in every shift of police that I meet with they are short staffed. They have police front-line officers who are away because of stress and because of mental health issues as a result of this lawlessness that they have to actually face day in day out.The thing is that this Government doesn't seem to be dealing with it. The majority of the complaints apart from the sheer amount of lawlessness that we face in Mt Albert—I mean we're talking about the local dairies or the local coffee shop. There's Handpicked Coffee Roasters for example on New North Road; Stewart Dawsons at St Lukes the murder of Lena Zhang Harrap in Mount Albert itself and obviously Janak Patel in Sandringham last year in November. Hon Scott Simpson: Labour is soft on crime. MELISSA LEE: I mean we are facing softness in our justice system. Labour is soft on crime." is what I'm hearing from the people in Mt Albert and I'm sure Helen White is actually getting that from the constituents as well because they feel that we're not doing enough. They feel that there are not enough police to actually come to their aid. The justice system they feel is actually hitting the offenders with a wet bus ticket instead of being harsh so that they understand that they are not supposed to do these actions. The victims are the biggest worry that I have because when people are victims of home invasion or they're victims of ram raids it lasts a long long time for them to actually get over the crime and I think this Government needs to do more in this space. SPEAKER: Before I give the next call I just want to remind members that this is a local issues debate. It shouldn't venture off too far into general policy areas and I'll be listening very carefully to this."