Ardern Jacinda: Estimates Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeArdern Jacinda: Estimates Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 02 July 2014. Volume:700;Page:19167. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JACINDA ARDERN (Labour):I appreciate the opportunity to speak briefly to the estimates debate on the police. I want to start by pointing out that in all of our debates on the Budget the Labour Party has been quick to highlight that our hope was for a Budget that would set out a strong vision for work for family and for housing because those are all of the areas where we desperately need a strong vision for New Zealanders. But underneath all of that of course are the fundamentals; the things that of course central government is involved in. Justice and law and order underpin whether or not our families feel secure in their homes and their communities.One of the things that I feel frustrated by in the police portfolio is that the Minister of Police has started to take for granted I think that the basis on which she funds police is her determination as to where the crime rate sits. Of course crime in New Zealand is recorded crime. The rates that we use that we talk about are all based on whether or not the general public are phoning in and reporting crime to the police. In order for people to continue to do that it relies on people feeling like that is a worthwhile venture that their report will be responded to and that they will get some kind of either attendance by police or some resolution to the issue that they have raised. So it does become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If the police do not attend someone is less likely to report and therefore it looks like your crime rate is going down.We raised this at the Law and Order Committee during the estimates with the Minister. She claimed that my view and to raise this issue was very last century. I thought that was curious given it is an issue that members of the public themselves have raised. She claimed for instance that for property offences of course someone would phone in and report something because they require it for their insurance claim ignoring completely the fact that we actually do not know how many New Zealanders have contents insurance. In all likelihood I imagine members of our poorer communities may be less likely to have contents insurance and yet are more likely to be preyed upon when it comes to things like property theft. So I do not believe Minister that it is a strong foundation to argue that based on all of those premises and the crime rate we can therefore reduce our resourcing of policing.In fact it is not just in the operational budget because in this Budget we have seen a decline in the police budget by $40 million. It is a $40 million reduction—and that is on top of frozen budgets and cuts—in operating expenditure for the police. The Minister tried to claim that it was not actually a cut in funding; the Government just was not putting in the extra boost it put in last time. Let me explain what that extra boost was. It was a supplementary appropriation. Mid-year the Government realised that it had not given the police enough to do the job and so it had to put a little bit of extra sneaky money in through supplementary appropriations. The Minister claims those are costs that we will not be facing again. They were basic costs like redundancy—redundancy that was occurring mind to try to get police costs down.We are in a vicious cycle with our police at present and we can see the impact it is having. Example one is ageing police cars. We have now 71 vehicles that failed their warrants of fitness in the last year and 58 vehicles have done over 200000 kilometres. I have heard of police vehicles breaking down on the job. These vehicles are a key part of the police doing their job. Not only is it an ageing fleet they have got fewer cars since this Government came into office.Example two we are seeing the police having to make cost-cutting priorities between drug squads and reallocating people to child protection teams. Those are not two areas that you should pick and choose between. Demand does not lift and drop when it comes to serious organised crime and child protection. In fact if anything both of those areas are escalating and we need to maintain our focus on both.Finally staffing numbers—they are lower now than they were even 2 years ago. This was the Government that in 2008 promised New Zealand a ratio of one police officer per 500 people. The Minister conceded at the select committee that they have given that promise away. They no longer retain that commitment. Why? Because apparently everything is going swimmingly. Ask New Zealanders whether they think crime is going down. Ask them. I think they will tell you that from this high-profile serious violent crime we are seeing it certainly has not.