McDowall JamesDr JAMES McDOWALL (ACT): Thank you Mr Speaker. To close up the general debate today I'd like to shift the House's attention to an issue that is front of people's minds in Hamilton and that is the out-of-control crime wave—especially youth crime and retail crime—that is ruining livelihoods and the reputation of the city. Mayor Paula Southgate has recently said that the situation is beyond urgent". Since Labour got into Government we have seen a 400 percent increase in ram-raid occurrences around the country—an average of 10 a week. In Waikato there were 81 ram raids that were counted from May to October. Just a few weekends ago there were seven businesses as we would have seen in the media targeted by ram-raiders in one night—seven in one night—and 29 retail burglaries occurred in the week leading up to it and I thought I would just show one example of a shop in the Hamilton West electorate. [Holds up photograph] This is an upstanding citizen here who is waving a machete and he's smashed his way into the store smashed through a whole lot of bottles—it's a bottle shop obviously—and then chased the retail worker that was there and swung it a few more times and it luckily missed the retail worker. We've since learnt that that particular upstanding citizen was arrested in the Chartwell mall but as to whether or not there are any consequences we don't know yet. We haven't actually been able to find any of that information.So there are businesses that have been repeatedly targeted by youth criminals. As I said for one dairy owner in Te Rapa it was 10 times in a week. It is absolutely out of control. A manager of a jewellery store I spoke with had just finished cleaning up after a smash-and-grab and went to her car in the evening in the car park and was then the victim of an armed robbery—on the same day. The owner of a sports shop in Victoria Street after his third ram raid basically gave up and said "I can't do this anymore. We won't be here next year. This is just too much." and I remember one sports shop in Hamilton West had had up to 10 smash-and-grabs.In question time I asked about the Retail Crime Prevention Programme. It actually astonished me how much of a fail that has been and certainly that was the impression I got on the ground talking to business owners who have tried to go through this process. I did expect there to have been—I mean I couldn't find one speaking to owners but I thought well someone must have had something installed through this programme in Hamilton. But evidently the answer from the Minister today is it's zero which is astonishing. So of 18 stores visited and that's assessments done 16 were determined to be eligible and there are issues with their eligibility—you know if you've got one business with multiple outlets they can't get any attention because it doesn't matter how much their revenue is or their profit they're considered a large business and therefore they won't get any support.The Minister as he responded to my question in question time said that they won't consider reimbursing business owners who have just had to bite the bullet—not literally luckily—and go and get the funding themselves and go and sort it out privately and get bollards installed and some have actually done a bit of number eight wire on that. So perhaps the Government wants to have a look at that.In addition to the rise in thefts burglaries stolen vehicles and ram raids that is destroying my city's reputation another issue at the top of everyone's minds and central to this is: where are the consequences? Ram raids are being carried out by the same hardened group of young people quite often who face no consequences. Considered too young for prison of course they're known to escape from youth justice facilities—assuming there's even enough space for them—and often they are sent home to families where they have a lack of guidance and discipline.Wraparound support is important but I think that for repeat youth offenders wraparound support should also include ankle bracelets especially if they're just going to be tagged and released into the community to terrorise business owners and retail staff. We would ask where is the escalation—where is the Government's escalating response to these youth criminals?—because at the end of the day if they're just going to get tagged and released then one day they're going to be 18 and will hit the adult justice system and then things get real and people will ask why this wasn't this dealt with and why wasn't this sorted out. Hamilton has sadly become a ram-raid gravy train that is facilitated by this Government. However there's a big opportunity in Hamilton West. It is a staging ground for what is to come next year for this Government and I'm standing to represent local people and local issues and to be their representative to send their message to the Government. Thank you Mr Speaker.The debate having concluded the motion lapsed."