Clendon David; Borrows ChesterDAVID CLENDON (Green): I am pleased to take a call in this debate on the Prime Minister's statement and in due course we look forward to supporting the amended motion put by the Leader of the Opposition. I am a member of the Law and Order Committee and I routinely sit as well on the Justice and Electoral Committee so I was looking in the PM's statement for issues pertaining to justice and law and order. I have to say that anybody looking for some new vision in his speech or anybody looking for some innovation or looking for some positive change would have been sorely disappointed and indeed they would have been equally disappointed with the speeches we have heard from the Minister of Corrections and just now from the Minister of Justice because unfortunately there is not a hint that this Government understands how to deliver justice or how to make our communities safe.One positive inclusion in the statement of course was the increase in funding for police—the commitment to put in another 800 front-line officers and around 300 support staff. That is a good and long-overdue thing. It is interesting that only weeks ago the Government was still in denial about the fact that the police were overstretched and under-resourced which anybody who has been listening has known for at least the last 18 months since we started hearing directly from front-line officers that they were understaffed and overstretched and could not get a day off and could not meet reasonable public expectations about service delivery because they were being asked to do too much with too little. So this extra funding for police is not a generous move; it is simply playing catch up. It is over the next 4 years so for at least the next couple of years the police will continue to be working under enormous stress and under enormous pressure and it is by no means an insightful or a visionary move by this Government. Call me cynical but I suspect that had this not been an election year the police would have had to make do for quite a bit longer yet.So we are pleased the police are getting more resource. That is a necessary step but it is by no means sufficient to genuinely make our communities safer which is what this Government proposes to do. The police have a particular mandate and a particular skill set and there are things they can do but there are many things that contribute to safe communities that the police cannot do.We heard earlier from the Hon Annette King direct quotes from people working at the front line in our mental health services—words like broken" and "crisis"—and again anybody who is listening understands that that is the state of mental health services in New Zealand. The police are spending a lot of time picking up the debris—the human debris—from the failure to manage and to provide an adequate mental health service in the community. That is the part of the jigsaw that is missing. We have had a little bit of support for police which is a good thing but absolutely nothing from this Government to even acknowledge or confess that the mental health service is under-resourced or that drug and alcohol treatment—most people seeking treatment for drug and alcohol problems in the community are put on waiting lists and in the meantime very often they end up offending. Those are the people going through the revolving door in and out of prison for drug-related offences burglaries and the like. There was not a word in this statement about more support in that area either. So this Government is doing very little to actually serve and make our communities safe.We heard—and I quote directly—"Investment in modern infrastructure is a priority for the Government." and its members talk proudly about transport schools hospitals defence and housing. Oddly enough they did not mention the $2.5 billion that they have committed to basically keeping more people in jail for longer—expanding capacity in our prison system. Perhaps that is something to do with the fact that our Prime Minister a couple of years ago called prisons a moral and fiscal failure—and what a great shame he did not stand by that very true and accurate statement. Prisons are a moral and fiscal failure and will continue to be and it defies belief that we are spending an extra $2.5 billion on top of an annual budget of about $1.6 billion to $1.7 billion to perpetuate failure and to perpetuate crime and offending because that is what our prisons do. This so-called social investment approach from this Government allegedly spending money now to improve lives for the better and to reduce future costs—spending more money on prisons and locking people away is about as far removed from a genuinely social investment approach as one could possibly imagine.This Government is failing. We will have to wait a few months and a change of Government before we see genuine progress and change.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: A 5-minute call on behalf of the Green Party—Marama Davidson."