Mitchell Mark; Dean JacquiHon MARK MITCHELL (National—Whangaparāoa): Thank you Madam Speaker. Can I just take my first opportunity to congratulate you and acknowledge you as one of our Assistant Speakers for this term of Parliament. It's a pleasure to stand and take a call on the Address in Reply debate. Can I just acknowledge the opening comments of the previous speaker the Hon Nanaia Mahuta when she said that although they were surprised at the level of support that they had throughout the country they embraced that support and they realised that now there was a requirement to deliver for the country. I completely totally support those comments.Actually in reality for the next 36 months it's really important that this Government does deliver for our country because obviously with the challenges and the headwinds that we face globally and at home it's important that this Government which in the first three years of governance had a major issue in delivering sorts those problems out. They realise and understand that they do have a very strong mandate now. They stopped looking back. They have now exhausted the option of actually being able to blame the previous National Government. They've had three years in Government. They now have three years with a very strong mandate. It's important that they get out and they actually deliver.I want to talk about infrastructure and the delivery of infrastructure. I'm going to make it very local. I'm going to talk about a project that's critically important to my electorate. It's known as Penlink and it's part of the motorway network that will link the Whangaparāoa Peninsula into the main State Highway 1 network. I've been pushing for this project myself for the last nine years when I came in as the representative. At the 2017 election I felt fortunate that I was able to get support from my own team from the National Government at the time to say yes we would build Penlink and I campaigned on that in 2017. It is genuinely a shovel-ready project. It is fully consented. It is ready to go. The land procurement has been completed under the Public Works Act and in fact half of the road has been completed on the Weiti side of the river. This project is ready to go.In this election Phil Twyford visited my electorate three times with Marja Lubeck and they were very very clear about the fact that they had become fully committed and were behind Penlink and that it would be delivered and started in 2021. That is next year. Let me assure you that I will be holding this Government to account on behalf of my electorate to make sure that this road is started and it is delivered in this term of Government and that is going to be the litmus test because when the Hon Nanaia Mahuta said that they were surprised at the level of support I can tell you that there were people living on that peninsula that gave their party vote to you Labour on the back of that promise.That road isn't just important in terms of relieving the pressure on our roading network; it's actually a safety issue and the reason why it's a safety issue is because it's a peninsula. If we were to face a major civil defence event like a tsunami there's only one way on and one way off. That vulnerability was highlighted about three years ago when we had a fatal accident on the intersection of Whangaparaoa Road and Viponds Road that basically cut off and left 20000 people stranded on the peninsula. They could not get off. They said at the time the answer was Well we'll use the ferries." The problem with that is the ferry captains were stuck in the traffic and couldn't get out to Gulf Harbour. So it is a genuine safety issue as well. The promise has been made and I want to see that road delivered. I'll get behind and support any way that I can to ensure that that happens but fundamentally it now comes back on a Government that has made a promise that has said that it can deliver and I'll be watching very carefully and making sure that that road is delivered and we see the start to that road in 2021 next year as promised.The other point that I wanted to raise is around the Speech from the Throne the commitment to community safety and law and order. I can say that in my experience—and I'm proud to have had a 14-year policing career myself. Most of it was spent on the East Coast of New Zealand—Gisborne Ruatōria and Wairoa—where all of the toughest social issues that we have to face as a country are often seen in that part of our country. I have never seen the gang problem and the challenges we face around all those issues associated with gangs—whether it be the dealing in stolen property whether it be intimidation and standover tactics whether it be the dealing of class A and class B drugs whether it be the recruitment of our young people. I've never seen it as bad as it is today. I'll come back to my electorate shortly but I just want to share some of the headlines that we've seen as a country over the last weeks. Operation Cincinnati—this was great work and I want to acknowledge the police gang unit that actually runs a very very effective operation. "Twelve gang members arrested in major drug bust"—I think that was focused on the Comancheros. Outstanding. Good work. But then we have headlines like "Three men with gang links charged with Southland kidnapping and aggravated burglary"; "Whangārei shooting: Gang behaviour getting more vicious"; "Police plead for sightings of Mongrel Mob member after he breached parole went on run"; "Comancheros gang boss Pasilika Naufahu found guilty of money laundering conspiring to supply class B drugs"; "Violent gang member gets rewarded at sentencing for difficult upbringing"—that's outrageous; "Man charged over gang debt murder wanted to become a patched member".If I take it back to my own electorate we've never really had a gang issue. We've been very fortunate up in Whangaparāoa and before that in Rodney. Our police up there our police leadership and our local police service is very proactive and we're fortunate we're lucky and I thank them for that. But in the last six months we've had the Hells Angels buy a commercial property in Silverdale and set up a pad. Why? Why are they coming into the area? We see patched gang members on Grand Drive in the heart of Ōrewa—Mongrel Mob gang members. We see the gangs taking over local restaurants. We see a rise in theft a rise in violence. We know that there's an increase in methamphetamine coming into our community and that is actually even sadly ending up in our schools as well.So this Government—and I make an appeal to the incoming police Minister. We'll get behind and support her but you've got to get serious about taking these gangs on. You've got as an incoming Government now to send a very clear message to the gangs that actually our police are going to run the town not them. I went to a public meeting in the Hawke's Bay—the last week of the election actually—hosted by our candidate Katie Nimon. There was a massive turnout. Moteliers there said that the gangs because of this policy the current Government are running in terms of using motel rooms to house people have taken over motels in Napier. They've got a big problem with the upcoming tourist season where they don't have enough beds. They went from having three gang chapters to having nine. They've taken over Marine Parade. They've got massive massive issues down in the Hawke's Bay.I was down in Taradale last year at a public meeting because the local gangs conducted street warfare in the middle of the day in Taradale with firearms and they ended up with a shotgun pellet in a baby's seat. We're whistling in the grave. We're one step away from having a tragedy in this country and it's time actually for the Government to take their commitment around community safety and gangs seriously. I've got a meeting in my office tomorrow where I'm bringing together—it's with our local police area commander with our three councillors and our local board—to actually develop a local gang strategy for my own electorate. It's becoming that serious.Finally I just wanted to acknowledge that I had the mother of Constable Matthew Hunt Diane here yesterday along with her daughter Ellie and one of his best friends Sam. It was an honour for me to accept the petition. Just very quickly on the petition: she's not trying to change the rules around the length of sentence or interfere with that. Quite simply what Diane is saying is that if one of our police officers who we ask to go out on behalf of all of us to go out and accept risks and protect our communities if one of them is killed in the line of duty and they're convicted and sentenced to life which basically means 10 years that actually they carry out their sentence; they don't get the option of parole. That's us as a country sending a very very clear message that we support our police.I'd make an appeal to the Labour members and to the Government. You nod your heads. You're out there. You always stand up and you've got the right words. Actually you've got to back that up with actions now and support Diane support the family and support our police in that petition. Thank you Madam Speaker.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): I call Tāmati Coffey—this is a five-minute call."