O'Connor Greg; Rurawhe AdrianGREG O'CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): The Prime Minister's statement—I remember some days ago now when the Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern stood up and outlined just what this Government has achieved. But more importantly we understand that there is a long-term impact of failing to act and what that previous speaker has outlined has just simply been a listing of all the failures of the previous Government. What I intend to do is just talk about one other manifest failure which is now appearing in our statistics today. Of course during this we'll talk about the problems with not doing the maintenance the problems with not paying the bills because that's essentially where we arrive at today. We're doing wages catch-up we're doing school maintenance—these are all the things that were ignored. Everyone here who either rents or owns a house knows that if you don't do the maintenance and if you don't pay the bills someone eventually has to. What we're doing is paying the bills. We're doing the maintenance and at the same time reducing unemployment and prison numbers and of course the national debt has come down. But what I'd like to focus on is something that the members opposite are very keen on bringing up: gang numbers. The seeds of the situation we arrive at today were sown in about 2010 when the Rebels motorcycle gang arrived in New Zealand. It was recognised at the time because the then Minister of Police Judith Collins issued a press statement saying Aussie crime gangs are not welcome into New Zealand. We're going to crush them. We're going to bring them down. We'll make sure that we do away with them." Well the very next year police numbers were dropped by 150. Now if you want an example of talk but not action you'll never get a better example. What actually happened with that Rebels gang is they not only arrived here but they thrived either through generic growth—and they patched over the Tribesmen. What they did do is they changed the whole of the culture of gangs in New Zealand. We'd had gangs in New Zealand. They've come belatedly. We hadn't had the mass immigration and ghettoisation that they'd had in most big cities in the world especially in Australia. It was only when we got mass urbanisation in the 1960s and 1970s that we really ended up with a gang problem in New Zealand. But the big difference we had in New Zealand from Australia and the reason our gangs never were really able to establish was we didn't really have the corruption problems that they had there. I see that members opposite are very keen on going to Australia now to look for solutions for our problem here. Well they are looking in very much the wrong place because what's actually happened in Australia because of—I see someone here spouting raptor as being talked as a—Marja Lubeck: Strike Force Raptor. GREG O'CONNOR: Strike Force Raptor is going to be the solution to all our ills in New Zealand! Well that is something that's taken out of New South Wales where essentially after the Wood royal commission into corruption they stopped policing their gangs. They stopped policing their organised crime because they didn't want the police officers to actually be put in situations where they may end up being corrupted again. So their gangs got way out of control. That was why they got big enough and started looking to expand and why we ended up with the Rebels in New Zealand and why in Australia any strategy which has been imposed or brought in over there is quite irrelevant in New Zealand. So be very wary of anyone who comes back waving a piece of paper—a bit like Neville Chamberlain—with "Peace in our time. This is what we're going to do to fix this situation." It simply will not occur. In the time left to me what I would say is that we now have a situation which is a clear result because as a result of the Rebels arriving the local gangs embarked on a recruiting exercise in—about 2013 or 2014 which has now continued to today. So once again we have an absolute problem in New Zealand whose roots were sown around about 2010-11 and any opportunity to cut it off by the fact that we cut police numbers at the time was—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! The member's time has expired. Marja Lubeck—five minutes."