Bakshi Kanwaljit SinghKANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI (National): Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker for the opportunity to participate in this debate. First of all I would like to start by condemning the cowardly act of three people in London that left many dead and injured. That shows that we are in a vulnerable situation. We are lucky to be living in New Zealand but we are not immune to such situations. That is why we keep reminding everyone that we will have to remain vigilant to see whether there is anyone or any activity that is not favourable or whether a person might have an evil plan to act upon. We have to remain vigilant and make sure nothing of such kind happens in New Zealand. Once again I pay my tribute to those who were affected particularly the Kiwi who got injured. I pray for his fast recovery.The previous speaker Chris Hipkins mentioned that he was listening to the Hon Mark Mitchell's speech and he felt like sleeping but I can tell you Mr Assistant Speaker that the speech by the Hon Mark Mitchell was of much better quality. Chris Hipkins started with a puff—with a high pitch. Within 2 minutes he ran out of that puff and went down and certainly you felt the same. It did not have any content. This was the opportunity for him to spell out some of the policies on which he was going to work if he was going to plan a Government in the future but he did not have anything just criticism for this Government.This Government has been working for many years—for the last 9 years—to ensure that this country progresses well. In the past 3 years almost 200000 more jobs have been created. We had 50000 more elective surgeries in the past few years which is helping Kiwis to progress. There has been a 57 percent reduction in teenage mums on benefits. All these figures are the figures that are helping this economy in the long term and we will continue to work on this. I would like to congratulate Steven Joyce on his first Budget which has been very well accepted all over.I would like to start by touching upon the justice sector which has got more than half a billion in extra funding to ensure that people living over here feel safe in their home at their work and in their community. We will invest $46.9 million in the next 4 years as operating funding to reduce burglaries and youth offending with new initiatives. The new initiatives will include $32.9 million to improve the availability of rehabilitation and reintegration services for burglaries and those under the age of 25 who are most at risk of committing crime in the long term. We have to ensure that the people who get into these criminal activities—we have to reintegrate them. We have to ensure that they get some kind of training or education so that they can work with their mana and make some money for their families. If they keep reoffending that shows that we are training them to be hard-core criminals and that is not acceptable to this Government. We are providing $13.9 million for professional youth mentoring. As I mentioned it is important that we encourage them so that they can have the proper kind of training or education so that they can go and work at a place.We are also investing $37.2 million in operating funding to reduce the harm caused by family violence. I was speaking at a public meeting last weekend where we were trying to make awareness among the Indian community because we have seen a great increase in family violence among the ethnic communities and we want to ensure that nobody suffers from any kind of abuse at their home whether it is mental physical or sexual abuse. That is not acceptable to anyone in New Zealand. That is why we are investing extra money to reduce family violence. Over 2 years $12 million will be invested into the whānau community action fund which will work hard to reach out to whānau to reduce family violence. Family violence is one problem that really is the triggering point for people to suffer and when they see that there is violence at their home they become because of their trauma—they just do what they see at home.There is $1.8 million to extend the community-based Gang Action Plan pilots to June 2018. Gangs are another big problem in our country and we are working to reduce that. In the past few years we have seen that the police have been investigating their assets and seizing them and that has touched more than $200 million. We hope that in the next few years they will be able to increase that asset seizure by $400 million.We are also investing in police. Police will get 1125 more police officers in the 4 years to come and 880 extra police officers will be on the front line. That front line will definitely make the difference for people to feel secure. The Safer Communities Package unashamedly targets offenders to ensure they are off our streets. We want to ensure that people walking on the streets feel better. It is not the money we have already announced but on Friday the Minister of Police announced $1.8 million more for shopkeepers to help them put extra gadgets in their shops so that they can use those gadgets in case of emergency. The feedback we are getting from shopkeepers is that they are really happy that the Government is listening to them. Up to 50 percent of funding will be provided and the police will recommend which shopkeepers should get how much funding to make sure that those areas are safe.I did ask the Minister of Police during question time about Operation Dukan which is an operation that has been launched all around Auckland where more than a thousand shopkeepers have been visited by the police to assess the security measures in their shops. They were really pleased to see that the police are taking those initiatives and the presence of the police on the street is making a real difference to ensure that the people are safe.Lastly I would like to touch upon infrastructure where we are investing $4 billion in years to come. It is very important that we have to keep up with the infrastructure. Chris Hipkins mentioned that the schools are overcrowded and the reason is that in the last 9 years of Labour Government the investment was not properly made into the schools to keep up to make sure that the future is secure. This Government is making up for those deficits and we hope that we will be up to the mark. We can see in Auckland that a number of schools have been built and a number of classes have been built—not only those things but we can see the construction is going on all over Auckland. We can see a number of cranes working in the commercial sector. We can see that roads are being expanded all over Auckland so that the congestion on the roads can be reduced. There are so many things that we can do further and we will continue to work upon those areas and ensure that the future of all the New Zealanders is safe and that we are living in the best atmosphere over here. Thank you.