Mitchell MarkHon MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney): Thank you Mr Chair. The thing that amazes me at the moment is that I'm waiting for a Government member to stand up and tell us what you're doing. Actually be positive; be aspirational. Tell us what you're doing because all I'm hearing at the moment—all of you you're acting like the Opposition; not like the Government.If I can firstly acknowledge that it's good to have the Minister of Police here in the debating chamber and also—Hon Todd McClay: Rather than in the gym.Hon MARK MITCHELL: That's right. And can I acknowledge Greg O'Connor too who sits on the Justice Committee and of course has got a big background in terms of public service with our police service and with our association.I want to just very quickly raise an issue. Mr Ball just got up and made a huge issue about—his last point that he was trying to drive home was around the prison population. And yet a fortnight ago he voted down a bill that was in this Parliament that would have actually stopped people and helped prevent people from going back into prison.Darroch Ball: No it wouldn't have.Hon MARK MITCHELL: Yes it would have; yes it would have. Let me explain the bill to you. The bill was quite simply this: anyone that's been convicted and as part of their sentencing they've got the opportunity to do community service—right? So they go out and they've got an opportunity to put something back into the community and they're collecting a Government payment of some sort and they refuse after three warnings to turn up and actually engage in their community service then they can start to have some of that taxpayer-funded payment reduced—right?Now the reason for that was to give them another chance and stop them going back into the prison system. So what did Mr Ball do? What did Mr Ball do to try and support that bill and stop people going back into the prison system—the one that he just stood up and made a big deal about? How do we stop people going back into prison? What did he do? He voted the bill down. He wouldn't support it. So don't stand up there preaching to us and lecturing us Mr Ball that you're worried about the numbers in our corrections system when you didn't support a bill that actually would have stopped those numbers from growing. You're talking out of both sides of your mouth.There's one issue that I do want to raise and that Mr Bishop raised while I've got the Minister of Police here and while Greg's in the debating chamber also. This is a genuine concern. The 1800 new police officers—that's great. We've invested heavily in technology. We recognise that technology is working and our front-line staff especially have been huge beneficiaries of that. It's actually got front-line police officers out of the police stations and back out on the roads and in amongst the public where the people like to see them and where they do their best work. So that's great. Chris has highlighted the issues around the funding. I'd like someone—I know that Greg's probably going to take a call—to stand and actually tell us what the real funding for this policy is going to be. The other really important issue that he raises is around standards and this is one that I personally am very worried about. It is the lowering of standards. He raised just one simple standard that may be removed and that's the requirement to be a proficient swimmer or to be confident in the water. In my experience in the history of the police service a lot of the bravery awards that have been handed out relate specifically normally to police officers turning up to a scene where a vehicle has gone into a river and the occupants are trapped or someone for whatever reason has got into difficulty in a rip. Police officers will often respond to that. They're the first responders they're the first ones there and they have to have a basic ability to be able to actually enter the water and recover and bring that person back to safety.If we're talking about starting to remove standards and remove those requirements I'm going to be the first one to stand up and say that I'm deeply concerned about that. If Greg's taking a call then I'd like you to talk to that and give us some comfort around the fact that there's not going to be a reduction in standards—they are important—and how much the policy is actually going to cost. These are fundamentally very important things.I just want to very quickly acknowledge the staff in the justice sector. It's huge—70 percent of them are front-line workers. They do a tremendous job. I know this through personal experience when I was the Associate Minister of Justice. We were having these terrible dairy robberies and assaults. We went out and did public meetings and I felt fully supported with officials—as high as the deputy secretary—in those meetings to hear what the genuine concerns were and then to develop a very robust set of policies and how we were going to address those. I am going to run out of time but I was going to talk about our young serious offenders policy that we rolled out just before the last election. It was going to take some serious steps towards addressing what was a serious issue overall. Youth crime has reduced. But we did have those 150 young people that were committing top-end violent-type crimes. We had a very good policy in place to deal with that. I'd like to know whereabouts that's going. Thank you Mr Chairman.