Prosser Richard: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeProsser Richard: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 28 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:10447. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]RICHARD PROSSER (NZ First): I am pleased to rise from the cross benches—from the moderate sensible middle ground it could be said—on behalf of New Zealand First to take a call in this Budget debate and to take a call on Vote Police. It is with some sense of déjà vu that I rise. Looking back at my speech to the House in August of last year I find that very little has changed in terms of the lack of proper regard accorded to the police by this inadequate Government and this inadequate Budget. The bottom line for the New Zealand Police in this Budget is that there has been a cut of almost $36 million from the previous year’s appropriation—$35799000 to be precise. The Government can spin that any way it likes but a cut is a cut. A reduction is a reduction—$36 million give or take off the budget from one year to the next represents an actual net fiscal loss. This is a mathematical reality which is impossible to fudge. The police have $36 million less to work with this year than it had last year.In these times of rising crime when we should be spending more on the police and not less the Government is cutting the budget. In these days when more and more experienced police officers are leaving the force are becoming disillusioned with the job of policing in New Zealand and are jumping the Ditch to Australia in droves to work as police officers across the Tasman where pay rates are realistic and resourcing is actually adequate the Government is cutting the budget.This Government has fallen into a trap. It has fallen into the classic trap of believing its own propaganda. This Government has been telling us for so long now—it has told us so often and for so long—that crime rates are falling that it has actually begun to believe that this is so. But it is not so. Crime rates are rising. Crime is increasing steadily as it always does when fundamental mismanagement of the economy results in lean times and hardship for many ordinary people. Ordinary people turn to crime and regular criminals get worse. People stop reporting crime—ordinary people stop reporting crimes because they know nothing will be done about them. The police do not have sufficient resources to investigate and everybody knows it—the people know it the victims of crime know it the crims know it and so do the police themselves. The regular cops on the beat who day by day are becoming frustrated to the point of leaving for Australia know it too and the Government is cutting the budget. In the face of all this this Government is cutting the budget—$36 million from the bottom line. Why? Has it forgotten? Is this Government so out of touch with reality that it does not remember or never knew why policing is important and why it is that people need to be protected?Someone sent me an anecdote just this morning. Someone sent me a story that illustrates this very subject very well. It purports to be from Psychology 101 or somebody’s interpretation of it. At any rate if you start with a cage containing five monkeys and inside the cage you hang a banana on a string from the top and then place a set of stairs under the banana before long a monkey will go to the stairs and climb towards the banana. As soon as he touches the stairs you spray all the other monkeys with cold water. After a while another monkey makes an attempt at climbing towards the banana with the same result—all the other monkeys are sprayed with cold water.Pretty soon when another monkey tries to climb the stairs the other monkeys will try to prevent it. Now you put the cold water away. Then you remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new monkey sees the banana and attempts to climb the stairs. To his shock all the other monkeys beat him up. After another attempt at the banana he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs he will be assaulted. Next remove another one of the original five monkeys replacing it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm. Then you replace a third original monkey with a new one followed by a fourth then a fifth. Every time the newest monkey takes to the stairs he is attacked. Most of the monkeys who are beating him up have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs; neither do they know why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey. Finally having replaced all of the original monkeys none of the remaining monkeys will have ever been sprayed with cold water; nevertheless none of the monkeys will try to climb the stairway for the banana. Why one might ask. Because in their minds that is the way it has always been.That is how Government operates and it is why from time to time all of the monkeys need to be replaced at the same time. Perhaps that is what is wrong with this Government. I am not suggesting for one minute that the members of the Government are monkeys not even in jest—not even in jest. It is a metaphor; that is all. This is a serious matter. Some time in the not too distant past this National Party which forms this Government abandoned its roots and took to promoting neo-liberal economic ideology. Since then members have come and gone members have joined and resigned—they have been a part of that party and then left again. Today as a result there are too few members of the Government who remember being sprayed with cold water. There are too few within the Government’s ranks who remember the cold water of the electorates’ backlash and who remember the beatings given to the National Party in 1999 and 2002. Too many of the Government’s members have forgotten why they are supposed to be there or perhaps they never knew. Too many of them appear to have no understanding of what it is that the Government is supposed to do.As Abraham Lincoln put it: “The legitimate object of Government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done but cannot do at all or cannot do so well for themselves in their separate and individual capacities.” This National Government appears to have forgotten that fact or perhaps too many of its members never knew it. It is a fact that society needs to be safe that people need to be safe. It is a fact that the people the citizens of society have a right to be protected from the actions of criminals. They have a right to expect that they will be protected and their families and property will be protected and for that to happen the police need to be properly resourced. We need to have enough police officers and we need them to be out in the streets and out on patrol. We do not need fewer police. We do not need them to be stuck in back offices doing paperwork because the support budgets have been cut. We need more police out on the beat more police who are actually available to investigate burglaries of property crimes.We need more police on checkpoints breath-testing drunk-drivers before they crash before they kill and maim innocent people. We do not need fewer cops and fewer cars because the operation’s budget has been slashed. It is not good enough for this Government to hide behind the excuse that less is being spent this year because some new police stations were built last year and we do not need any more of them. That is a red herring and a disingenuous explanation. It is not good enough for them to hide behind that excuse when we still have too many unsolved burglaries and too many drunk-drivers on the roads and too many cops being assaulted and beaten and shot at and stabbed. Too many good cops are giving up in frustration and leaving for Australiawhen we still have under-manning and sole-charge rural stations and people not reporting crime because they know that it will never be investigated.It is not good enough that this Government is cutting money from the police budget when it should be being increased. Perhaps it is time to replace all the members of the Government at the same time just like the monkeys in the cage. Perhaps it is time to replace them with a New Zealand First Government which will accord the police the recognition and resourcing that it requires and that we all deserve. This is a dreadful Budget and the reduction in Vote Police is as incomprehensible as it is irresponsible. New Zealand First condemns this Budget and we urge the House to do the same. Thank you.