Foster-Bell PaulPAUL FOSTER-BELL (National): Tēnā koe Mr Chair. It is a great pleasure to make a brief contribution in this Estimates debate Committee stage. Making particular reference to page 230 of the Estimates report Vote Justice and Vote Courts I just wanted to begin my contribution by noting how supportive many members of the LGBTIQ community in New Zealand are of the recently announced initiative which will require funding through Vote Justice to expunge the criminal record of gay men who before 1986 were wrongly criminalised in this country.There are many other arguably bigger issues to deal with in the justice system. There is the extra funding that we are putting into the court corrections and policing systems. But I do think that this investment of a relatively small amount of funding is important and on a symbolic level it is sending a message that we are righting a previous injustice that the contributions of all New Zealanders to our society are valued and that we as a country believe very strongly in treating all parts of our community equally. So I think this is a small but symbolically important measure.Turning to perhaps the more substantive areas of investment I think the estimates that we heard on the Justice and Electoral Committee detailed some very impressive levels of support for additional services going into our justice system. This builds on I think the excellent work done by previous Ministers of Corrections and I want to particularly congratulate colleagues such as Sam Lotu-Iiga the Hon Judith Collins and Anne Tolley who I think really did have a drive towards rehabilitation and redemption at the heart of what they did in previous years. And I think that we should actually believe very strongly in the redemptive and rehabilitative power of the corrections system to transform lives and to make sure that people do not reoffend.Building on that previous quadrupling of literacy training in prisons and building on that previous quadrupling of drug rehabilitation in prisons I am delighted to see that in this Budget there is an extra $255.9 million in operating funding alongside the three-quarters of a billion dollars in capital investment into our prisons to make sure that offenders are better managed and that the chances of them being successfully rehabilitated are significantly increased not only inside the prisons but also through the parole process.In particular I wanted to highlight the $30.2 million that has been dedicated towards prisoners who are at risk of self-harm or even suicide. As a civilised and decent country and with I think a population of Kiwis who are a very decent society decreasing the levels of self-harm and suicide in our correctional institutions is important if we are really to achieve that rehabilitative and redemptive outcome that I am sure we would all wish to see. So I want to particularly commend that measure.Other members have talked about policing. There was a comment made in a previous speech by Aupito William Sio who said that the Police had bid for a whole lot of extra additional staff beyond what was actually finally arrived at in the vote.I have to say as a previous public servant I do not know any Government department that does not ask for more than it thinks it is going to get. This is a simple part of the bargaining that goes on where a department will bid for as much as it can. I think this significant boost of police numbers of over 1000 extra staff—880 of whom will be sworn front-line police officers—will go down in history as one of the bigger increases we have ever seen into our public security and safety in New Zealand. For an example in the Wellington region where I know my friend Nicola Willis is campaigning very hard and knocking on doors—and it is an area that I have spent a little bit of time on in the last few years—there are 62 extra police officers who will be joining that already very fine body of men and women who are doing such a good job of protecting the New Zealand public. So I think this is an excellent investment and it adds to previous successes.