Cosgrove Clayton: Appropriation (2009/10 Estimates) Bill — Third Reading Imprest Supply Debate 
Cosgrove Clayton: Appropriation (2009/10 Estimates) Bill — Third Reading Imprest Supply Debate 
[Volume:656;Page:5920] 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour—Waimakariri) 
: 
 It is always a pleasure to follow that Minister Judith Collins. She made one of her usual astounding speeches. I remind that Minister through the Chair that her party only after the election and despite the crocodile tears we see now said how shameful it was that we have the second-highest incarceration rate in the world—and it is shameful. It was the National Party in Opposition though that said the previous Labour Government was not locking up enough criminals. It was the National Party in Opposition that said the Labour Government was soft on crime. It was the National Party in Opposition that talked about flat-screen TVs but I have now been around to 12 of our 20-plus prisons and I have not found one. I have not been shown one. No manager in a prison that I have been into—and I have been to over half of them—has shown me one and I have asked where these flat-screen TVs are apart from showing me the data screens in the central control unit where they actually observe prisoners and protect prison officers. 
Secondly this was the Opposition of course who said we were not locking up enough people. This was the now Minister and her ilk who said before the election that prisons were “Hotel Hiltons”—I think one of the expressions was—and that they were all holiday camps. So I was then astounded to see the Minister walk into the Law and Order Committee with a photo of a cell—I believe it may have been at Mount Crawford or Mount Eden—and say: “This is terrible. Look at what these poor prisoners have to put up with. We want to give them flash containers. It is terrible that prisoners are treated in such a way.” She said that after the election. So unless there has been a sort of road to Damascus experience for that Minister or unless some medical miracle or miracle of technology has happened that I do not particularly know about in respect of her personality it is the usual from Judith Collins. She said before the election that we were not tough enough and that we were not locking up enough of them but now she comes to the Chamber and wrings her hands about how terrible it is that the incarceration rate is so high. 
She went on to say that the police whom she is proud of—indeed I am very proud of them; I think that every New Zealander is proud of our police force—need adequate resources to fight crime. But did she mention the 343 cars that she has required to be cut out of the police vehicle fleet? Did that Minister at any stage say that she has required a $21 million cut in the police budget? Howard Broad the Commissioner of Police confirmed that for us before the Law and Order Committee when I asked him: “Commissioner Broad if police do not have vehicles aren’t we going to have a rerun of the 1990s where the police under that crew over there when they were in Government had to wait for an hour to get a car to go on a call-out? Will there not be a greater risk of degradation in response rates a longer time to respond to crime because”—and he agreed with me—“that is what happened under the National Government of the 1990s?”. He went so far as to say: “Yes there is indeed an additional risk to those response times and to those service levels.” 
But did we hear the boastful Minister talk about that? Did we hear her say that on the one hand—I think we did—she had given 43 police cars to the fleet but that on the other hand she had required 343 cars to be taken out of the fleet? She says “Well that is only non - front-line vehicles.” But I have not met a police officer or a police manager and I have questioned a number of them who can identify for me a non - front-line vehicle. I went to a police station the other day and I asked one of the officers: “Which of the fleet in the car park mate are non-frontline vehicles?” The police officer said that all of them were front line. Yet this Minister has stood up and said that the police need—as they do—adequate resources to fight crime. So does that mean a situation as we had in the 1990s where the community constable’s car is non - front-line? When the community constable identifies the shoplifter the bank robber or whoever and the offender jumps into a fast car to get away the community constable—as they had to do in the 1990s when that Government pulled this trick on the community the first time—will have to thumb a ride or get a cab. 
Is the community constable’s car non - front-line? Is the youth aid officer’s car at the Kaiapoi police station in my electorate a car that has now gone? Is the youth aid officer’s car non - front-line? So when we have a spike or movement in youth crime because the youth aid officer cannot get a vehicle to go and deal with young people in a rehabilitative sense or on occasion to go and chase them up and put the cuffs on will that Minister stand up and take responsibility? Oh no. I challenged that Minister at the select committee. I said: “If there is degradation in service and in response times for police because you as Minister have required a cut of $21 million out of the police budget and a cut of 343 cars will you as Minister take responsibility for that?”. Do members know what the answer was? She said: “Oh that’s an operational matter.” She said that it was an operational matter. Oh but it was not an operational matter when she spoke in the first police bulletin for which she was interviewed as Minister—when she said she had no problem in wading into the police’s operational authority to tell them she wanted her policies implemented as in where to put 300 extra police and we will get to that fudged number in a minute. Yet she now says: “Oh no it’s operational.” 
So I then said to the Minister: “Hang on if you had given the police an extra $21 million and there had been a wonderful increase in the level of service I’m sure that wouldn’t have been an operational matter.” I am sure the boastful Minister would want to come to the House and take credit for that. There is silence. It is operational when it is bad news; but she takes credit for what happened under a Labour Government. She puts out a press statement on every police station she has opened in the last 6 to 9 months and the last line of the press statement states: “This demonstrates the National Party’s commitment to the police in fighting crime.” 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: Hang on! 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: I can anticipate what Darren Hughes is going to ask: “Weren’t all those police stations budgeted for and funded under the last Government?”. But that is not “operational” is it because this boastful Minister takes credit for that. 
Then we come to the notion of 600 extra police which is the Minister’s stated commitment. It is interesting because she unpicked herself before the Law and Order Committee. We finally got out of her that there will not be 600 additional police over and above the 1200 staff put in place and funded by the last Labour Government. And how can I prove the great lie that keeps being perpetrated in this House that these people are unfunded? The problem with that is that over 40 of them were recruited under the last Budget of the last Labour Government. They were recruited and they have to be funded to be recruited. She unpicked herself before the select committee because we finally got out of her that it is not an extra 600 police it is an extra 240 over and above the 1250 whom we put in place. If we add the two figures together it is 600 but half of them were provided for and funded from the last Labour Government. 
The boastful Minister gets up and plays fast and loose with the facts and the truth. This is a Minister who thrives on selectively doling out information. This is a Government that has put a Budget together and now every week we lose 2000 extra people on to the dole queue. The Prime Minister criticised Phil Goff and others on our side for saying before the latest unemployment figures came out that the figure was 1300; now we know it is 2000. Added to that are the 2800-plus young apprentices who lost their jobs part-way through their apprenticeships and Government members crow that through their Job Ops scheme they are doing something about youth unemployment! Well we know about that. There are 9000 16-to-24-year-olds who will get 6 months maybe at “McD’s” flipping the old Big Mac—I am sure Gerry will line up for one of those. Then what happens to those young people? They will be back on the scrap heap. What happens to the 49000 other 16 to 24-year-olds who are not catered for under the Job Ops scheme that Mr Ryall and Ms Collins boast about? They get nothing. 
Then there is also a different sector. Unlike in the 1990s for the first time under this awful recession there are middle-class folk who were qualified and have worked hard all their working lives who never thought they would lose their job—they thought they were in a stable position; they thought they had a career right through life—who are losing their jobs. Suddenly that quartile of people—a new quartile a new sector of people—are losing their jobs and they do not quite know what to do. And this Government is doing nothing for them—not a thing. But Government members get up and talk about this Budget after they have gutted superannuation and KiwiSaver and tinkered around the edges of health. They gutted special-needs funding and then reversed that. Mrs Tolley is so proud of the fact that she reversed a $2.5 million cut that sold young kiddies with cerebral palsy down the river. She reversed it after weeks and months of stress for the families. That is the biggest $2.5 million “let’s get it off the front page” strategy of any Government in history. Then she sold those people out again by saying that if the children changed schools their funding was gone.