Nash Stuart: Annual Review Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeNash Stuart: Annual Review Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 03 May 2016. Volume:713;Page:10686. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]STUART NASH (Labour—Napier): Let me tell you a story about a member in this House who was driving on a street in Whangarei on Friday evening at 5.30 with his wife his 4-year-old daughter and his 13-year-old daughter. A woman ran a stop sign smack into the side of his truck and it wrote the truck off. He phoned up the police. Heaven forbid—there was no one injured thank goodness. He phoned up the police. The police said: “We’re too busy to come.” This was one street away from the brand new Whangarei police station that the Minister of Police had opened—one street away from the police station and the police said to him: “We’re too busy to come but make sure you report it to the police within 72 hours.” The witnesses who came over and this member himself smelt alcohol on this woman’s breath and the police were too busy to come.I ask you is this the sort of service we expect from our police? Is this the sort of society we have now come to?Mr Goff has told about six stories of New Zealanders in trouble—in trouble. What do New Zealanders do when they are in trouble? We learn from as soon as we can dial the phone to dial 111. Every single one of Mr Goff’s people did that and no one turned up because the police are too busy.Whenever a Minister assumes a portfolio he or she is given something called a briefing to the incoming Minister. Judith Collins got one when she reassumed the police ministry in November and the No. 1 priority in that briefing was not solving crime was not resolution rates was not more cops and was not more stations. It was fiscal sustainability. The police sent a very clear message to the Minister saying: “We are in trouble. We do not have enough money to do the job.” We can see this in the crime statistics and we can also see this in the messages the police themselves are sending us.I want to say that I have immense respect for the police officers who keep our community safe. They are hugely committed. They are very passionate about their communities but they are stretched. In the biennial Police Association survey last undertaken in December of last year 74 percent of Police Association members said that they were dissatisfied with the number of front-line staff—74 percent were dissatisfied with the number of front-line staff. And 86 percent of Police Association members—so these are the police themselves—are saying that front-line officers are under-resourced. But even worse I think is that 27 percent of police—that is one in four police officers—believe there is a risk of service failure at the front line due to recent cuts. We have a real problem and this needs to be addressed by giving the police the resources they require to do the job.Recently the Counties Manukau crime prevention manager blamed the media for the increase in burglaries in March of this year. He said: “The media around burglaries has been one of the contributing factors to the increase of burglaries because people think it’s a crime they can get away with.” I do not believe that criminals undertake a detailed risk analysis to determine what they can and cannot get away with.What I would say is that the media’s analysis of this has perhaps led to a general waning of confidence in the police and this is something that needs to be addressed under urgency. In fact from 2013 to 2015 the public’s trust and confidence in the police dropped from 81 percent to 75 percent. Admittedly that is a lot higher than say the 25 percent that politicians get but firemen have a public trust and confidence level of 93 percent and ambulance officers 92 percent.Sir Robert Peel said that the public are the police and the police are the public. The police do operate well when the public believe that communities are safe. When members of the public see that only 8.7 percent of burglaries in Wellington are solved then they have good reason to be concerned. When they see that about 6 percent of all burglaries in Auckland are solved then they have reason to be concerned.There are basically two facets to policing: you have got the traditional “let’s lock ’em up” facet and then you have got the community policing. What we have seen just recently is the community policing—