Ryall Tony: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers 
Ryall Tony: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers 
[Volume:624;Page:19517] 
3.  
Hon TONY RYALL (National—Bay Of Plenty) 
 to the  
Minister of Police 
: How many cases are awaiting allocation in police districts and how many involve sexual offending? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS (Minister of Police) 
: 
 I am advised that apart from the files in the Counties-Manakau district 610 other files across remaining districts remain unassigned. I am further advised that of those three have been identified as rape cases two of which are historic. Inquires have commenced in each of these three cases. 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: Will the Minister give an absolute assurance that there has been no attempt to assign a whole lot of files in the last couple of days because of Beehive pressure? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: What I can say is that far more files are being assigned than would have been assigned if National had carried out its cuts—540 staff and millions of dollars in funding. The police are doing a good job in New Zealand. 
Hon Richard Prebble 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I am actually interested in the Minister’s answer and apart from the first three words even though I had my ear as close to the speaker as I could get it I did not hear a single word that the Minister said. Outrageous as it may be I would still like to hear it. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I thank the member for his support in this matter. Would the Minister please repeat the answer for the benefit of the House. If anyone interrupts this time that person will be leaving the Chamber. 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: I can tell the House that there are far more files being attended to than would have been the case— 
Gerry Brownlee 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. There are two things. Firstly for the Minister to say or speculate that something might have happened or might not have happened had he not been part of the Cabinet is unacceptable and well outside the Standing Orders and you could see that quite clearly. Secondly he was asked whether he can give a guarantee. If he can he should give it; if he cannot he should say no. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: The member should finish his answer and not be interrupted before he has had an opportunity to say everything he wants to say in response to the supplementary question. Would the Minister please continue with his answer. 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: There are far more files being attended to than would have been the case— 
Gerry Brownlee 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. We are not going to sit here and tolerate a Minister speculating about what might have happened if he had not been in Cabinet. What he is doing is covering up his own incompetence. We want a simple answer from him. He owes it to the House. He either gives a guarantee on the supplementary question he has been asked or he says: “No I can’t give it.” in which case we will know that Helen Clark has climbed all over him and made the police get rid of some of these appalling statistics. 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: Madam Speaker I suggest to you that the first part of that point of order was itself totally out of order. It is out of order for a member of this House to get up and say: “We will not tolerate certain things happening.” Anybody in this House tolerates whatever you rule to be in order. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: Standing Order 370(2)(b) is very clear. It states that a reply to any question must not contain “arguments inferences imputations epithets or ironical expressions”. George Hawkins’ answer about what might have occurred or might not have occurred is quite clearly a breach of the Standing Order and members on this side of the House will disrupt the House if you do not enforce the Standing Orders. 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: Madam Speaker that last point is repeating this attempt to bully you in terms of the nature of your rulings. It is totally out of order for members to state that they will not tolerate your rulings and that they will take the law into their own hands in this House. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Ruling on the point of order I say that the Minister of course should address the question but there is no reason in the course of addressing that supplementary question that the Minister cannot speculate on any matter. Of course members cannot stipulate what answer a Minister should be giving. Would the Minister please repeat the answer. 
John Carter 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. The problem that we now have is that if Ministers are allowed to speculate at length on particular issues that they might want to raise in the House. That limits us as the people who are raising the questions because we have to put our questions down in written form or if we are allowed to speculate in questions then the ruling you have made is quite appropriate. But what you are telling us is that it is all right for the Minister to speculate but that it is not all right for the Opposition who are asking the questions to speculate. It has to be the rule either one way or the other but you cannot allow one side to speculate without the other side being allowed to do so. 
Hon Richard Prebble 
: You have ruled—and I appreciate that because I wanted to hear the answer—that the House must listen in silence. Speakers have traditionally then said that that puts a responsibility on the person who is speaking not to speak provocatively. Why I was interested was—probably everyone has forgotten now—that the actual question the Minister was being asked was basically: “Have the police force suddenly reallocated a whole lot of files and if they did can he give an assurance that there was no influence by the Government?” There was no question asking: “Would you like to compare your wonderful performance with that of the terrible National Party?” He was not asked that question. He was asked: “Have the police suddenly reallocated a whole lot of files and if they have could he give us an assurance that it was not the result of political pressure?” That is the question that the House would like to hear the answer to. 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: I think Mr Prebble is absolutely right. If you have asked the Minister to give an answer with the House in silence then it is incumbent upon the Minister to be less provocative than might otherwise be the case. In response to the point raised by Mr Carter I point out that we long ago removed the ban on asking hypothetical questions and I am afraid that it therefore does work both sides now. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Yes it does and that is what I was going to rule—that that is precisely the position. Of course Ministers must address the question but in doing so they can in fact speculate as much as they like on it as long as it is relevant to the question that was asked. Would the Minister now please address the question. 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: It is the police that allocate and assign files not the Minister and of course the police are doing far better now than ever before. 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: Can the Minister give an assurance that there has been no pressure or attempt to shift hundreds maybe thousands of files from one pile to another? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: Files are assigned by the local police commander and of course they will carry on doing that. I can say for the Counties-Manukau area that help is on the way. 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: Which advice from the National Party is the Minister going to take: the advice today that he should not interfere in police activities at the operational level or the advice up to this point that he should? 
Madam SPEAKER 
: That is not a question that the Minister should address. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: On the assurance that George Hawkins just gave that help is on the way I seek leave for him to make his valedictory speech now. 
Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: That is not a valid point of order. 
Simon Power 
: He sought leave. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: A member cannot seek leave for another person. I am sorry; I should have made that obvious. 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: What are the number of unassigned cases in each police district and when was this data collected? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: In Northland there were eight; North Shore/Waitakere 266; Auckland City 410; Counties-Manukau 1134; Bay of Plenty 16; Waikato nil; eastern 7; central nil; Wellington 100; Tasman six; Canterbury 96; and Southland nil and that was as of today’s date. 
Hon Richard Prebble 
: Is the Minister of Police telling the House that he is not aware of the fact which I know as a former Minister of Police that since Rodney Hide raised the question of unallocated cases on Tuesday a large number—hundreds in fact some have told me it is thousands—of cases that were unallocated as of Tuesday have now been dumped on detectives’ desks and in fact there is no chance of those cases actually being able to be investigated by those over-worked detectives? If he is aware that that is actually the situation does he not think that he has a duty to this House to tell us and the country that that is the situation and to do something about it? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: I am not telling the member that. The police allocate and assign the files according to their workloads— 
Hon Richard Prebble 
: That is not right. 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: No that member is not right and he was not a very successful Minister of Police. Crime went up when he was the Minister. 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. It appeared to me that the Minister of Police was quoting from an official police document which he pledged would be made available to me as soon as he had received that information. It has not yet and I would ask him to table that document. 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: That is quite a tricky point of order because firstly when a Minister reads out a list of numbers in police districts it is I think stretching the point to say that that is “quoting” from an official document at that point. Secondly the member cannot require the Minister to table it unless he has quoted from it. Thirdly I am sure the Minister is happy to make the document in terms of the numbers available to the member. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: If the Minister was quoting from an official document in answer to a supplementary question he does not have to table that document. 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: What if he wasn’t? 
Madam SPEAKER 
: If he was. 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: At the end of the question I am quite prepared to table the information but I may need it later on to answer any further supplementary questions. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Are there any more supplementary questions? Therefore leave is sought to table that document. 
Hon Member 
: He doesn’t need leave. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: The ruling is that supplementary information that Ministers have with them are not official documents so therefore the member does need to seek leave. 
Document by leave laid on the Table of the House.