Bishop ChrisCHRIS BISHOP (National—Hutt South): Thank you very much Madam Chair. I'm surprised that member Darroch Ball managed to get to five minutes to be honest with all the Government's doing in terms of the appropriation because this Government is—[Interruption] They are doing some things and what they're doing is cutting successful and innovative programmes.I want to get to that in my remarks on the Estimates but I firstly want to start with the Vote Police appropriation about—well it claims to be for 1800 new police over the next three years and that's the big coalition commitment between New Zealand First—Darroch Ball's party—and Labour that will add 1800 front-line police. Well we had the interesting experience in the Justice Committee of the Minister of Police Stuart Nash turning up and actually admitting to the committee that despite his press release trumpeting $298.8 million in additional operational expenditure over the next four years this was not enough to deliver the 1800 police over three years. We had this comical exchange with Mr Nash where he said Well I'm going to go back to Mr Robertson and I'm going to have to ask for more money. I don't exactly know how much more but I'll have to go and get some more." So the Minister in his own words admits that not enough money has been appropriated. I might just add in passing that the $298.8 million over four years is a considerable increase on Labour's pre-election estimates of $40 million being required for their promises around extra police—or it was $40 million on one occasion then it turned into $80 million and I think there was $140 million thrown in there at some point. It's certainly not $298.8 million. So as with many other things the Labour Party have proved that they can't count. But then we get to the point about how long it will take for these police to be delivered. Minister Stuart Nash is fond of saying "We're striving to do it within three years." Well that's all well and good except we know that he received official advice from his officials about phasing the extra police in over five years not three years. We had this again very comical exchange in the select committee in which Stuart Nash the Minister of Police openly admitted to the committee that he hadn't even read that advice. Members opposite may disagree but on this side of the House we just find that extraordinary. Frankly it is treating the Parliament with contempt. It is treating the public with contempt. Look members opposite and members on this side of the House will disagree with official advice. Any Government is entitled to disagree with official advice put by its officials. The advice is contestable. Ministers are perfectly entitled to do different things but at the very least I do not think it is unreasonable for the public to expect Ministers to read advice. I've worked in a Minister's office. I know there's a lot of paperwork. I know it's a tough job. I know that Stuart Nash is the Minister of Fisheries as well as the Minister of Police but at the very least I think members—on this side of the House certainly—think it is perfectly reasonable to expect Ministers to read advice. But we had this extraordinary situation of Stuart Nash saying "I didn't even read it. Paid it no attention. Didn't even read it." I just find that remarkable. So that deals with the 1800 new police. I also want to talk about the highly regrettable funding cuts to the mental health and police co-response pilot which has been highlighted in the public—Hon Shane Jones: Fake news fake news—making it up making it up. CHRIS BISHOP: —over the last couple of weeks. Again we asked—well he's saying "Back it up." Well the backing it up—it's in the Minister's own written Estimates answers Mr Jones. We asked Mr Nash through the Estimates process what the status of the programme was and the answer came back: "It doesn't exist any more." It's gone. The money—I think the exact phrase was "The funding has been reallocated to other priorities." An $8 million programme instituted by the previous Government—it hadn't quite got off the ground yet. It was due to start in a couple of months. In September it was due to start. It was universally supported by everyone in the sector. There's not a mental health worker out there or a police officer who wouldn't say that this is a fantastic initiative. In fact we had this extraordinary situation of the Minister sitting next to the Commissioner of Police and the police commissioner in the Estimates hearing said "Oh I'm actually very hopeful it will continue." But no no this Government knows best. Stuart Nash and David Clark have decided that $8 million which frankly the Government has spent in the 30 seconds I've just spent talking about this issue—they've decided that the money can be reallocated better to fees-free education for middle-class kids to go to university for free or something like that. So frankly the cutting of this programme is a disgrace. The fact that the decision to cut it has been universally panned should make the Government pause and reflect and reinstitute it. I haven't even covered the cutting of very important targets around 24/7 police stations or around attending burglaries within 48 hours—98 percent of them within 48 hours. All of these programmes and all of these important targets have been cut by this disgraceful Government."