Connell Brian: Estimates Debate — In Committee Procedure 
Connell Brian: Estimates Debate — In Committee Procedure 
[Volume:618;Page:14422] 
BRIAN CONNELL (National—Rakaia) 
: 
 We have a new nickname for that member now—“Repetitive Clayton”. He was really starting to scramble. I think he said the same things about 10 times in the last minute. Never mind one has to commend the guy for getting up and trying to defend the indefensible. George Hawkins does not have the courage to stand up and take a call so he said to Clayton Cosgrove: “Mate can you help me out because I’m really scrambling here. These guys have got the better of me.” 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: The member knows that is not acceptable. He will stand withdraw and apologise. 
BRIAN CONNELL 
: I withdraw and apologise. That Minister is not prepared to stand up and take a call and he would rather have someone do his bidding for him. But he has forgotten something. After his name is the title “Minister of Police”. That in my book means he has to take some responsibility. That man should get on his feet take some responsibility and try to defend the men in blue as the last member was trying to do. 
I tell Clayton Cosgrove the “Clayton’s” member for Waimakariri that this piece of paper emphatically states that crime is on the way up not on the way down. It does not matter what the village idiot says when he comes to the select committee—the crime rate in this country is going up. One cannot say that black is white or white is black when it is not true; one simply cannot say that. As for Clayton Cosgrove saying he had done so much work in getting police resources for the good people of Waimakariri he completely forgot to say that the majority of those resources had been programmed under the last National Government. 
The other issue I want to take him to task over is this. I have never in this House—and I do not do it publicly—bagged front-line coppers. The coppers in Darfield Ashburton Leeston and Lincoln know that I come to this House line up the Minister of Police and say we want more resources in those areas. No matter what I say he is not giving them to us. I was quoting an example of the Southern Communications Centre before and I will go back to it because it puts it into some sort of stark reality. The Minister came to this House on 23 June and said that there was no problem with the Southern Communications Centre—that its performance target in despatching coppers to 111 calls was to do so within 2 minutes and 90 percent of the time he said it was being achieved. Well barely a week before that I had in my possession and the Minister would have had access to it as well a memorandum from the manager of the Southern Communications Centre who said: “We on some occasions only achieve 73 percent of that target.” The other thing this Minister of Police said to me in the select committee was that sick leave at the Southern Communications Centre was not a problem. Well someone is confused because the Southern Communications Centre manager in the same memorandum stated that sick leave was going through the roof. Do members know what the response of the Minister is when we say that issue has to be fixed? “Oh I am going to find some more staff but I haven’t budgeted for it.” 
The real rub about the stress and the strains at that Southern Communications Centre is that coppers are not being despatched to crime scenes quickly enough. The waiting time in some cases down in the South Island for coppers to get to burglaries is nearly 4 days and the Minister of Police sits there and will not take a call. He sits there with a smile on his face—a pathetic smile because he knows that I am right and he is wrong and he is on the way out because we will not tolerate that. 
Do members know what is really bad about all of this—his response to limited police resources? He is directing more and more of them to trap hitherto law-abiding motorists on the road. 
Hon Richard Prebble 
: Like the Prime Minister! 
BRIAN CONNELL 
: Well that was an exception was it not? She can zoom through south and central Canterbury at 160 kilometres an hour with police affirmation and nothing happens. The Minister gets up in the Chamber and says: “If you don’t want a ticket don’t speed.” Well I will not use the “hypocritical” word but boy we have got him on his feet at long last.