Nash StuartSTUART NASH (Labour—Napier): The Deputy Prime Minister stood up and said: Let me tell you about National's announcements versus Labour's announcements." Well she did not actually mention many at all because she talked about John Key the whole time but let me actually put a little bit of reality into the situation just in my portfolio area to highlight Labour's police announcements and National's police announcements and how this has played out. What it does is it is a fundamental illustration of Andrew Little's leadership versus Bill English's following.Let me give you a little bit of history on this—a little bit of a time line. On 27 May 2016 the Minister of Police signed off on the Police's 4-year strategic plan which said no more police until at least 2020. A week later—a week later—Andrew Little showed leadership and said this was not acceptable and started going hard on this folly. A week after that—the second week of June—the Minister announced she was working on a plan for more police. It took only a week of Andrew Little going hard on this before the Minister said "Shivers maybe there is something in this."—maybe there is something in this. In October last year—October last year—Andrew Little released Labour's police policy which said 1000 more sworn officers in 3 years into the communities of New Zealand because we understood the severity of this problem.Still National's policy was no more police for 4 years. A mere 6 months after that utterance the first policy that National released for the 2017 general election was more police. That is good to see but what happened here is that Andrew showed leadership was listening to the community and came out with a policy. Six months after National said no more police Bill English announced more police. That is not leadership; that is following. It is a classic case of following.The reason for this is at the moment we have got dairy owners who are talking about arming themselves. We have got 50 youths in Manurewa fighting in public and knocking each other out with knives and batons and clubs. We have got youths in Kaikohe going hard and smashing up a petrol station. What we have got here is a very committed bunch of men and women in the police force but a police force that has been underfunded now for 5 years. It is not sustainable and the Minister of Police believes that just because she has made an announcement of 880 more police that is good enough. Well it is not.The mayors of regional and provincial New Zealand held a conference last week and the biggest issue that they said was facing their towns and cities is law and order and an increase in crime. This is not the fault of the good hard-working men and women on the front line. They have said that they are committed to New Zealand Police but over 50 percent of them said that they are not delivering on the promises made. What they need is more police on the front line. What we need to know what those mayors need to know and what the people of New Zealand need to know as well is: what is the plan? Where are they going? We have made a commitment that a decent chunk of our thousand more police are going into community policing. We need men and women on the front line keeping our dairy owners safe keeping the burglars out of our houses solving crime working with key stakeholders in our communities.What we are seeing in Hawke's Bay and in Napier is the community cops stretched even further. We are seeing burglaries increase by 22 percent we are seeing P at epidemic proportions and the police just do not have the numbers. And the Minister has the nerve to stand up and say: "Well we've got this policy: 880 more over 4 years." Well it is not good enough. We now want to know what the plan is. Where are these officers going to go? Are they going to go into our regions? What is the Minister going to say to the provincial and the regional mayors when they say: "We're at our wits' end. We should not have to employ private security guards to keep our communities safe."? But that is what is happening.This is a classic policy announcement where Andrew Little showed absolute leadership. He showed that he had listened to our communities and he came out with a completely costed police policy. What did Bill English do? He followed. That contrasts to the extreme: a leader versus a follower. Andrew Little is a Prime Minister and Bill English is someone who cannot even come up with an original idea of his own. Thank you."