Ball DarrochDARROCH BALL (NZ First): I am glad that the Minister just finished speaking about the youth justice system and how great it is. She must know that she is being so totally disingenuous when she is talking about the reduction in youth crime. She knows that the measurement of youth crime changed in 2014. What a surprise!From 2014 no longer does the youth crime rate include apprehensions or arrests or offences. What does it include? It includes the Youth Court appearances. The Minister just stood there and said that the youth justice system aims to keep them out of the court. So what a young person is doing in police diversion like the Minister mentioned is offend and offend and offend and not once be measured by the youth crime rate—until they offend 10 15 20 times before they get to court before they get to the Youth Court. That is why the Minister can stand up with smoke and mirrors and say the youth crime rate has decreased. It absolutely has not and that is why the Minister is being disingenuous.She also said that the police were being fully funded. I know in my central districts region and police district that they could not afford a wreath for Anzac Day for Feilding. That is how funded they are. I have been told that at the Palmerston North police station they could not afford to replace a light bulb because they are so broke. We had a case a couple of months ago in Palmerston North—an individual who got shot during duck hunting could not get a proper prosecution because the Crown prosecutor could not get the evidence from the police because the police did not have enough funding through the Institute of Environmental Science and Research to get the specialist evidence. That is the state of an apparently fully funded police force.There are a couple of things in this Budget—that this Government has added to this Budget—around crime and around youth offending. Police numbers it is talking about. There are 800 new police—not even nearly enough. It is not even nearly enough. Security for dairies—and it is talking about new prisons as well. It is talking about a billion dollar spend on new prisons. Oh and it is also talking about extending the youth residence beds as well. All of those four things have one thing in common: they were all reactive policies. They were all reactive approaches to dealing with the issues of crime.It is no surprise that the Government has a reactive approach to youth crime because it has got a reactive approach to pretty much everything else here that it deals with—the reactive approach to the 90000 young unemployed people the reactive approach to the immigration issue the reactive approach to emergency housing for homeless. But there is a difference between being proactive and stopping crime in the first place and where the funds should go versus being reactive and where this Government is putting its funds into.The cause of all of this—a major cause of all of the crime—which I have been talking about for a very long time is the failing youth justice system. There is no real funding going into the youth justice system at all throughout this Budget. Sarah Dowie mentioned the drivers of crime. If this Government cannot see that the main driver of crime is the youth justice system—or perhaps it is a Government that does not want to see that the driver of crime is the failing youth justice system. The fact of the matter is that all of those robberies that we have been hearing about—the aggravated robberies in the dairies half of them are being committed by 15- to 19-year-olds. It is half of them. That is the failing youth justice system.In New Zealand over 1 year in the last 2 measurable calendar years 2015-16 there has been an increase in the serious offending by youth offenders up by 12 percent. Burglaries are up by 13 percent robberies are up by 40 percent—in just 1 year. Homicides are up by 40 percent in just 1 year. But apparently this is a justice system that is working that is fully funded. It demonstrably is not.But you see I have mentioned that the serious offences by young people have increased by a substantial amount. So you would think that an accountable justice system would have a corresponding increase in the number of convictions. But no there is a decrease in the number of convictions of young people. This is a justice system that is not working.