Mitchell Mark; O'Connor GregHon MARK MITCHELL (National—Whangaparāoa): Thank you Mr Speaker. Firstly I'd like to take the opportunity in the House to acknowledge the passing of Senior Constable Bruce Lamb after 45 years' service in Christchurch most of that on the New Zealand police dog section and Armed Offenders Squad—one of our most highly decorated officers and probably best known for the incident that he attended in Christchurch when he was shot in the face by an offender with a shotgun and his police dog Gage went to his defence and was shot and killed. I just want to acknowledge Jill his children Christopher Michael and Kimberley. Christopher and Michael have followed in their father's and their mother's footsteps. Jill was also a member of the New Zealand Police and Michael is now a police dog handler working in Christchurch and Christopher is a Detective Sergeant on the organised crime unit up in Auckland. I want to pass on to them and thank them and acknowledge the service that Bruce gave to our country which he was extremely proud of. He loved being a police officer. Many of the headlines that the media have reported on have referred to him as a famous dog handler. He would have loved that. That's the sort of headline he would have written for himself. But I just want to say that his service in Christchurch on Sunday is the biggest police service I have been to since I attended Constable Matthew Hunt's service in Auckland. It was a tribute to him and I want to let the family know that they will continue to be wrapped in the support of the police family to make sure that there are people walking alongside them to try and soften the blow of what was a truly remarkable and extraordinary man. Thank you very much.The Budget this year clearly showed that the Government has put up the white flag and is surrendering on law and order public safety and crime in this country. There was nothing in there. There were no new initiatives. There was nothing to bolster any of the initiatives that are currently ongoing. The only thing that we have seen from this Government was a knee-jerk reaction with an $11 million announcement for fog cannons when on the same day the data came out showing that there had been a 55 percent increase in ram raids.When this Government came into Government in 2017 the first thing they did is they held a justice summit but they forgot to ask the victims. They invited the gang members along and they forgot to ask the victims. The next thing they moved on to do was repeal the three-strikes legislation the only tough piece of sentencing law that we had on our books. If that wasn't bad enough what was their third priority? Their third priority was emptying the prison muster by 30 percent. Well they've actually been successful in that one because it's down to about 22 percent. But at the same time we've seen a 33 percent increase in violent crime we've seen an over 500 percent increase in ram raids a 41 percent increase in victimisations an over 60 percent increase in gang membership and gang numbers in this country and on top of that our assaults on police have gone through the roof. Quite simply at a time when they were repealing the three-strikes legislation we were saying to them Stand up a dedicated gang task force." We needed that back in 2017. When did they do it? They did it 18 months ago with Tauwhiro which actually was just a spreadsheet exercise. Cobalt—can I acknowledge the officers on Cobalt. They're still spread too thinly. They're doing the best that they can. But in the last two or three months we've seen gang numbers increase by 300. It's obvious that what the Government are doing is not working.At the same time that we were saying "Take our firearms prohibition order (FPO)." which will actually make a difference and give the police some real powers what did this Government do? They passed an FPO that's been used twice in nine months. Why? Because they were warned. They were warned by the National Party and they were warned by the Police Association that unless you give our front-line officers a warrantless search power this is useless. It's not worth the paper it's written on and it's been used twice. So unless a member of the Opposition wants to stand up and explain to me that there are only two gang members in New Zealand that actually carry firearms it's been a complete waste.What's the other piece of legislation that they passed? The other piece of legislation was the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Amendment Act 2023 where we said to them and the Police Association again said to them "Lower the threshold. Don't make the threshold $30000. It'll be difficult for the front-line officers to use. Disrupt and put pressure on the gangs." What did this Government do? They passed the legislation with the $30000 threshold.This Government cannot be taken seriously in terms of public safety and crime. Everything that they've done is lip service. It's ineffective and it's only been done because there has been political media and public pressure. They don't take it seriously. That was reflected in this Budget when there's no new funding for any of the projects that the police need to actually be able to roll out and the only funding that did come was $11 million as a knee-jerk—DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member's time has come to an end."