O'Connor GregGREG O'CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): It gives me great pleasure to stand here to talk on the justice Estimates and like the speaker before me Brett Hudson I'll focus on policing aspects. But what I will do is be just slightly more positive. The politicisation of policing is a shame. It's done by both sides. You're seeing it there—and to be fair Oppositions do it all the time. But when the rubber hits the road there's one test we all need to sit and it's a test we all sat on 15 March this year and watched how effective our police are. I personally having policed in Christchurch and I have to say knowing well the two officers who were involved in capturing the offender and knowing the type of police officers they were I think—and the identity of those officers may never be known publicly but anyone that does know them will know they're the sort of police officers that anyone would be very proud to police with and I'm proud to say I did as I policed with many of those other Christchurch police officers. I was lucky enough this year to have a trip through the Christchurch justice centre. Look I'll give the Opposition credit; that was a fantastic idea after the earthquake to put all those justice-related departments together and it works well. So congratulations to whoever's idea that was. As I walked around the station I saw a lot of people I knew a lot of people I'd worked with and they're good experienced people. It gives me no surprise that they reacted so well to the extent that not only those two police officers but actually when the police and emergency service response to that tragedy was debriefed not only in New Zealand but internationally—we had all those experts from United States and unfortunately they are expert at those mass shootings—they all saw how well New Zealand had reacted.So rather than negativity can we just take a moment and actually be very grateful at how well-served we are not only by our police but justice.CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): We are getting to the Estimates aren't we?GREG O'CONNOR: That then now takes me on to the other part of what really faces us in the future and every department—we've again heard about many of the different initiatives that've been brought in. Unfortunately where we've arrived at we now have a situation where our prisons are full. We've reduced it by a thousand but it may well be that they increase because unfortunately nothing is in isolation. The real issue we have in this country is gangs and methamphetamine. Unless we take a joint approach to that if we stand and bicker in this House and get the sort of small-mindedness we've just seen then nothing will be done. I will ask the Opposition to actually sit back and think: do they really want to score political points or do they want this country to be actually safer?I would say that the only way it's going to become safer is if we can actually sit back and join everything up. It's not just a matter of We're going to fix this bit and that bit"; we've actually got to join everything up. Unless we do something about methamphetamine—methamphetamine is cheaper and more available than any time it has ever been which means that everything we've done to date has failed. Our prisons: OK we're a thousand less than we were but it's still far too high—certainly our imprisonment rates are far too high. Certainly our Māori imprisonment rates are far too high.So what we heard during the Estimates this year from the various departments that came to us—CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): At last.GREG O'CONNOR: Oh I had to mention the word "Estimates" did I Madam Chairperson? I didn't realise that was the word. I thought it was inherent in everything I was saying. However I will mention the word "Estimates". What we did hear is "joined up". When we heard from corrections we heard about the different strategies they're employing and we heard about one of them in Northland. Again I sat through the family violence in Christchurch group where all the different departments were sitting there and they didn't leave that meeting until they had a plan to deal with overnight incidents. That's the type of thing we're going to have to do because again lying behind even those family violence incidents lying behind so much of our crime stats—and I've had personal involvement in this recently—is methamphetamine is drugs and are gangs.We have 6500 gang members in this country. That's the patched members. Forget about how many prospects there are how many hang arounds how many associates or how many founding members. That means—CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): Could you sort of introduce some money into this?GREG O'CONNOR: —their sphere of intimidation is huge Madam Chairperson.CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): Budget?GREG O'CONNOR: Madam Chairperson—gang members Estimates crime; I don't believe you could get closer to the subject than mentioning actually crime.CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): Yes you could. I believe you could.GREG O'CONNOR: So in the eight seconds left to me I will say: can we please depoliticise this? Can we please do something in drawing this up? Thank you Madam Chairperson."