King MattMATT KING (National—Northland): Thank you Mr Speaker. This Government talks a big game—they talk a big game. If this was an Olympic sport they would be the world champions. So I'm going to call them the Gonna Party": they're gonna do this and they're gonna do that. But their spin doctors they've got to come up with some more lines. This "nine long years of neglect" thing—that's wearing a bit thin. Like the media said it's a cliché. It's wearing thin because it's simply not true. The numbers do not match the rhetoric. In fact things have got worse under this Government. Just about everything has got worse. Business confidence has plummeted down to the levels of the global financial crisis. Costs have rocketed. Homelessness is up. Everything I'm saying is the truth. Hardship grants have doubled if not trebled. There are 15000 more people on the dole. Rents and costs of living have gone up. Less people are getting their cataract operations and their hip operations. Less immunisations—SPEAKER: Order! The member means "fewer".MATT KING: Fewer. Thank you Mr Speaker. There's more misery—there's not less misery; there's more misery. They promised 100000 KiwiBuild houses. What are they gonna do? A fraction of that and they're all in the wrong places. More people are being taxed—more tax more tax—but nothing is being built. Twelve vital roading infrastructure projects have been cancelled or postponed. Oh but they're gonna build a train track from Dominion Road to Māngere. Big deal. Broken promises broken promises. But let's talk law and order. They promised at the election 1800 new cops—not 1800 cops minus the ones; 1800 cops on the total. And what have they delivered? Somewhere between 400 and 700. That's not even half and those cops were the ones that we promised and funded in the 2017 Budget. But I heard at question time today—I could not believe what I was hearing—Stuart Nash saying "No we didn't say 1800 on top of; it's just 1800 trained." I could not believe it. That is outrageous. He is going to be coming back to the House and correcting that comment because he has made those statements in the media in select committee in this House and in answer to written questions. It's 1800 cops on top of the existing number. They can't dial that back and they can't back-pedal. But I could not believe that they said that. But you know the other thing that they've done? I understand that the PCT the police competence test has been dropped as a recruit so you don't have to pass it to get through the recruiting stage until you get to police college. Now I was a policeman. That PCT is a basic test. It represents jumping through windows walking along balance beams climbing fences dragging bodies—all those sorts of things that are part and parcel of being a cop and that is a minimum requirement. If you can't pass that you do not deserve to be a copper. But now they tell me you don't have to get that PCT test until you get to police college and then you have to pass it in police college. But what happens if someone gets to police college goes through the training and can't pass the test? What a waste of taxpayers' money. It's a bare minimum. But why I think they're doing it is—the police are doing it because they're getting pressure from this Government to pump more recruits through and so they're going to drop standards. But you know what—because it is a dropping of standard because if it isn't why drop it? I don't want to be in a country where the standards of police are dropped. You know what happens in those countries. We want good well-trained high-standard policemen because we need them because we're getting a whole lot of extra gang members—1400 gang members to be exact. And I can tell you this: gang members—not all of them but most of them—are prolific criminals. They're some of the most evil criminals we've got and we've got 1400 more of them. I have dealt with plenty of them. So our society is getting a whole lot worse. Where is all this heading? I don't know but I'm really concerned. What's this Government gonna do about it? Not a lot I'm guessing."