Halbert Shanan; O'Connor GregSHANAN HALBERT (Labour—Northcote): Thank you Mr Speaker. I'm very proud to work hard to serve my North Shore community. It's a special place to live with great local businesses yet frustratingly we have of course seen a high number of crime issues in our area including ram raids. There have been ram raids on jewellers in Birkenhead and vape stores and dairies in Hillcrest and other examples including students being robbed of a significant amount of cash by offenders who went to great lengths to impersonate police.As the local MP I stand to speak to this to acknowledge the issues that my community face but what is important here is the response to crime in our community and how further incidents can be prevented from taking place and that is what we need to talk about. I've particularly been impressed and grateful at the work that the New Zealand Police are doing locally to catch offenders when these issues take place and the work that they're doing locally to prevent crime in our area. This has had a tangible impact on our offending rates. However we need to lock in and sustain this progress and we need to continue to introduce innovations in combating crime and keeping people safe in my community making our communities safer with the roll-out of state-of-the-art tools and training to front-line police staff.I receive regular briefings from our local community policing team in Glenfield and the area commander and it is important to note here that police staff numbers in the Waitematā district are up 15 percent—that's a 15 percent increase—since 2017. That has enabled my community and the New Zealand Police to re-establish community policing teams across the North Shore and the Kaipātiki Northcote and across to Takapuna as well. People like having their local community constable in place and present around the community and they've also in modern day extended this service to our online community. Police actively investigate every ram raid and the issues and incidents that we have had locally and work hard to hold offenders to account.I'm pleased about the work being delivered in the community including better street lighting CCTV systems installed by the Birkenhead Business Association and the support being put in place to strengthen glass and to install street bollards and fog cannons into our local shops. This is work that has been put in place through the double investment from this Government into the retail crime prevention fund and then some.This year the police commenced a nationwide roll-out of the tactical response model. To be clear this is important because it's not the armed response teams in place; it's the tactical response model. Smart policing can anticipate dangerous and high-risk situations before they arise and we need more focus on community programmes that we see locally to support youth justice.While there has been a small increase in police proceedings against children in 2021-22 compared to 2020-21 the numbers show that high-risk children with complex needs are committing much of the offending. Those youth are who we need to continue to work with to reduce their offending and yes they are young people impacting my community when it comes to ram raids.I want to acknowledge not only the work that is ongoing in my community but the youth programmes that have been established out in West Auckland and in South Auckland because it's not just young people from my community that choose to do ram raids locally; it's an Auckland-wide challenge that we're trying to overcome. This work is difficult work. It's tough work that we are all trying to get on top of. But I believe that the work we're doing with young people is working and that it has to work and we need to focus on long-term solutions while we deal with the day-to-day challenges that we're seeing. This includes the decline in youth offending through programmes like Kotahi te Whakaaro which has seen only 27 of the 147 children engaged in the programme reoffend. That's an important piece of work that is supporting not just individuals—children and young people—but their families too and as the local MP that's what I stand for for long-term challenges. DEPUTY SPEAKER: Before I call Mr Penk I'd just indicate that there will be seven unallocated minutes at the conclusion of Mr Penk's speech provided he goes his full five minutes in which case I will then open the floor to bids. Chris Penk—starting now.