Meager James; Mitchell MarkJAMES MEAGER (National—Rangitata): Thank you Mr Chair. I was reluctant to take another call because I had a good crack at the start but given the enthusiasm of the committee on this topic I did want to look back a little bit. I wanted to talk or a question about past resourcing of police and in particular in the technology space and in and around this idea that if we can get our systems to work smarter and not harder we can actually gain a lot of efficiencies and a lot of resource out of the existing resource that we have. The reason I raise that is because I didn't make a lot of contributions during the annual review debate—I allowed members to have a pretty free-flowing debate back and forth—but the one contribution I did make was towards the end. It might sound a little flippant now but hear me out because I've got a good train of thought going on this. It was around health and safety and resourcing for our local police.The issue is that in my electorate mid-Canterbury and South Canterbury over the history of the past few decades we have had about three or four of the top five temperatures ever recorded. So when you are a front-line police officer and you're operating in the middle of summer in those temperatures wearing your full kit—and the Minister of Police will know probably what it's like to wear some of that kit. I tried to carry a bit around when I visited Ashburton a couple of weeks ago and after a couple of minutes of just holding it I could feel the strain—that was in an air conditioned office. So if you have our police officers running around in 38 or 39 degrees wearing this kit—one of the suggestions from the police in Timaru was looking at different types of uniforms and looking at a summer uniform for some of our police officers in those areas where it is quite stifling or looking at different ways of operating—maybe they could remove their tactical vests sometimes.The reason I come to that is because that is probably a question around resourcing. Every time we make a decision we're going to have to make a decision on what stays and what goes. So I just wanted to ask the Minister if he's satisfied with the work that's happened in police so far around looking at where they can gain efficiencies where they can use technology to replace some of the paper-based systems.I visited Ashburton Police Station a couple of weeks ago and I met two pretty brand-spanking-new constables who'd been in there for a couple of months. They love their job; they love being part of the police force. The one thing that surprised them was the amount of desk work that they had to do and the amount of paperwork they had to do. They pulled open a filing cabinet—it was empty at the time but they said Here's where my next files are going."So I just wanted to know if the Minister's satisfied with the amount of work that's happening has happened in the past year around trying to look at where we can gain efficiencies and use technology to operate in a more effective way and if he has any strategic intentions moving forward about where we'd go in that space.Hon MARK MITCHELL (Minister of Police): Yeah look very good question. I'm not sure I'll be very popular raising this but there was a time when the part of the police uniform was walk socks and shorts.Hon Member: Yeah bring it back.Hon MARK MITCHELL: I'm not sure we're going back there. Cameron Brewer: Show us the photos.Hon MARK MITCHELL: Nah it wasn't in my era. But look you raise a really good point. There was a very big investment made into police back in 2013-14 in terms of technology. They got tablets and they got mobile phones. The reason for that is obviously we wanted a modern police force with the best technology available. And it was a big drive to the point that you raised: get them out of the office allow them to be back out on the street visible and back in the community—and that was very successful. But the police have got an ongoing programme of always looking at updating modernising the technology that they have. There is a big project under way at the moment around a new digitised communication system for police for St John's and for Fire and Emergency New Zealand. Probably once that's delivered we could probably broaden that out even further.In terms of uniform I agree with you. Police are constantly looking at providing a uniform that is functional that police officers can feel comfortable in. I agree with you—when you think about a hot summer's day and the amount of equipment that they are wearing the core heats up pretty quickly. So it's trying to get that balance between making sure they've got the protective equipment and they've got the tactical equipment—that it's functional and it's comfortable and they can work a whole shift without putting unnecessary strain on the body."