Collins Judith: Supplementary Estimates — Imprest Supply Debate 
Collins Judith: Supplementary Estimates — Imprest Supply Debate 
[Volume:655;Page:4515] 
Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Police) 
: 
 The people most upset with Budget 2009 are those sitting opposite me: Labour Opposition members. They went up and down the country during the last election and told people that a National Government would cut the benefit rates and entitlements of the poorest and most vulnerable but we did not. The angriest people are people like the Hon David Cunliffe—who I thought was about to have a heart attack he was so angry—because we did not do that. In fact the most vulnerable New Zealanders were protected even more than they ever were under a Labour Government. This Budget was not the “Slash-and-burn” Budget that some newspapers had gone to such efforts to have cartoons ready to portray. It was a Budget that was moderate sensible and had new core Crown spending of $2.9 billion combined with recent tax cuts. That is the sort of spending that will help keep this economy going. 
It is very important that we look at the circumstances of the elderly. This Budget locks in national superannuation at 66 percent of the average wage. Every member on this side of the House who went to all the Grey Power meetings during the election campaign had to listen to Labour Party members say that a National Government would cut national superannuation. National members said time and time again that national superannuation would stay at 66 percent of the average wage and by gosh it did! National fulfilled its promises. 
Benefits student support and Working for Families are maintained at current levels despite the worse economic conditions that this world has seen since the 1930s. Every other country is going through the most appalling situation with their economies with 9.5 percent of people in the US now unemployed. That is an appalling situation. Yes we have more people unemployed now than we did a year ago but this time a year ago it was pretty apparent that things were turning for the worst. I remember the Hon Ruth Dyson standing up as the then Minister of Social Development and Employment and skiting that only 290 people had lost their jobs or words to that effect. She said that everything was going to be fine. It was pretty obvious that things were not going to be fine this year—the level of how tough it was going to be was never obvious yet this Government has been able to present a Budget where more money is spent on things that will support the economy and our most vulnerable New Zealanders. 
This Budget provides a $3 billion boost for health over 4 years that is focused on front-line services not on conferences. That is something that really upsets the Labour Party because its view has always been to have a conference a strategy and a report then that is it. Well I say that that is not it. Conferences strategies and reports do not feed one child and they do not make the sick well. Yet in the last few months we have seen the Hon Tony Ryall as Minister of Health show what happens when we have a Minister of Health who is in charge and is on top of his game. 
We have seen $1.68 billion spent on education to raise student achievement. Why do we never hear about that from the Opposition? All those members want to talk about are Moroccan cooking classes that might have be dropped or as we heard today some make-up classes that were dropped—I can understand why the Labour Party is worried about that but the rest of the country is not. People want to know that their money is being spent wisely on creating jobs and in helping New Zealanders to get the education they need. Many New Zealanders will need to retrain but they will need to retrain for jobs and not for hobbies. Six hundred more police will be on the beat by the end of 2011—600 more than there were when we came into office—and there will be 246 more probation workers. 
I will take a little time to talk a bit about the Department of Corrections. When we came into office in December last year we found that in the dying days of the previous Labour Government Phil Goff had been asked for special help by the parole section of the Department of Corrections. But what had happened? That section did not even get an answer. Instead this Government was left with an utter mess. We were left with a parole system that was underfunded and completely under-resourced and that had had a whole lot of community sentences dumped on it without the resourcing for that. For year after year the parole section had cried for help for some budget assistance and some leadership from its Minister. But he was never there; he was always off overseas looking to buy cameras somewhere. 
Instead we have had to pick up this problem and now we have some fantastic results coming out of our parole section. We have some great results. When Mr Goff was last in office 58 percent of our high-risk offenders were complying with parole requirements; now 77 percent are—a complete turnaround in a matter of months—and that is before all the budgetary considerations have come into it. That is what leadership and some more money does—and no I tell Mr English that he cannot have any back. I say we are going to do even better. 
We were also left with a crisis of capacity in the prison service because the previous Government liked to lock up people but it forgot that the housing for that had to be provided. What that Government did provide was extraordinarily expensive. It cost $643000 a bed at the Spring Hill prison. I repeat: $643000 just in case anyone thought I had that wrong. Now all we hear from Opposition members in relation to other solutions about the burgeoning prison population is that the idea was not their idea so it cannot be any good. They do not have one solution despite 9 years of a Labour Government. Instead they have left us with another mess to pick up and we will sort that out. 
One of the other things we could talk about at this point is education. For the building of new schools and the modernisation of existing ones we have budgeted $523 million. Which one of us here has not been to a school in our electorate and thought about what could be done to improve education particularly for our most vulnerable children whose parents do not have any excess money to help their school and for whom their school has to be funded fully in all ways? Here is $36 million to help students meet national standards in literacy and numeracy. We can talk all we like about tertiary education and we can talk all we like about Moroccan cooking classes. We can do all of that but if our children are coming out of school after 10 years’ education and cannot read and write then that is absolutely a national disgrace. It is an international disgrace for a country like this where education has been free for primary and secondary schooling since the Great Depression to have people coming out of schools and frankly filling our prisons. About 80 percent of our prisoners are said not to have numeracy and literacy to the level they should do. Many of those prisoners have never had a chance at education because it has been denied for them from the very start. 
There is $900 million in this Budget for justice initiatives aimed at improving public safety. It is not about writing reports but about improving public safety. It is not about going to conferences—no it is about public safety. There will be 600 more police on the streets at a cost of $182.5 million 246 more probation officers 29 front-line managers and 26 psychologists to improve the quality of parole and home detention management at a cost of $255.9 million. There will be a thousand extra prison beds through double-bunking at five prisons plus planning for additional capacity at the cost of $385.4 million. That is a lot of money; it is a lot of money at a time when this country should have more money in the bank and when New Zealanders should have more money in their pay. Unfortunately so much money was wasted by the previous Government. That Government thought it was much more fun to go and buy a train set—KiwiRail—and burden this country with a debt for years to come.