Borrows Chester: Budget Debate 
Borrows Chester: Budget Debate 
[Volume:639;Page:9657] 
CHESTER BORROWS (National—Whanganui) 
: 
 What a surprise to hear that member Rick Barker—a Minister in Cabinet who came along here and ranted for 7 minutes managed to mention the Budget twice but never once spoke about any of the three votes he is responsible for! He is the Minister for Courts but never once mentioned how he will go about recovering fines or paying back reparation to victims. What an absolute disgrace! He could not even tell us what page Vote Courts is on in his own Government’s Budget. 
I rise to talk about how this Budget offers very very little in the area of the causes the investigation the prevention and the resolution of crime. This Budget does mention two things though. It talks about an enhancement in funding in two areas—one is around recruits and that is a really interesting subject to have a look at. Prior to the last election the Government decided there was no need for further staff numbers within the police at all. As the Prime Minister said anyone who was talking about increasing the number of police recruits in the thousands was not on the same planet. Of course once the Government found out that National was interested in doing that and New Zealand First was interested in doing that—what do you know—it promised us 250 more community cops. Well we are yet to see those community cops and by the look of it—from the people who are making contact through the website or the 0800 NEW COPS phone number—the Government will not get to see them either. 
The other enhancement with anything to do with the police in the Budget is an enhancement of funding for the Police Complaints Authority. That authority has been telling us for at least the last 2 years that it has been seeking more and more funding because it is finding it difficult to do its job without it. Finally the Government has been forced to listen to the authority. 
When we look at the causes of crime we have to acknowledge that young people get involved in crime for the same reasons they get involved with gangs: there is a lack of engagement with their families there is a lack of engagement with their education and there is a dependency on drugs and alcohol. This is a Government that came into this House in 1999 and again in 2002 pledging to deal with the problem of youth crime. We found of course that it did not work. The Government had a strategy that was called the Youth Offending Strategy. The Government sank $12 million into it but it found that it did not work. In fact youth crime plateaued or went up slightly and violent youth crime went up by nearly half—by 44 percent. What do you know—after that the Government did not promise to deal with youth crime at the last election because it knew it could not tackle it. 
This Government came to office in 1999 promising to deal with burglaries and what happened? The rate of burglaries went up. The Government did not deal with these burglaries and—what do you know—last election it did not even talk about burglaries because it knew it could not hang on to that promise. 
The Government took the police’s focus off gangs. If we look for instance at the city of Wanganui which I have the privilege to represent we see that in 1996 the police concentrated on gangs. That was the focus of their strategy. Crime went down and trended down for almost all of the following 6 years—because the police kept their feet on the throats of the gangs. The focus was taken off gangs from about 2002 and we started looking at things like traffic quotas and—what do you know—gangs reared their ugly heads again. The Black Power gang which had disappeared out of Wanganui came back into Wanganui because it had found a fertile hunting ground for new recruits. 
We look for instance at the situation with education and the disengagement in education. Labour came in promising it would set up and run a truancy register. It has promised that every year it has been in since 1999. But what we have now is the appalling situation where we have 45000 students in our little country away from school every week and no one can tell us who they are where they are or where they should be—and nobody cares. Is it not interesting how quiet it has got in the last couple of minutes? Another promise we noticed which has been the hallmark of Labour’s education policy is that in year 1 there was to be a ratio of one teacher to 15 children—1:15. The Government has worked hard on that it has advertised it heavily and now we find within the Budget that it hopes to make it a ratio of 1:18. 
Another hallmark of youth offending and involvement in gangs is disengagement with the family. I was really interested to notice in the newspaper yesterday a quote from the National Collective of Independent Women’s Refuges. These people are supposedly friends of the Labour Party: the women’s refuges include the very same people the Minister for Social Development and Employment gave provider status to after taking it away from other organisations. So what did they have to say about this Budget? They said: “We are devastated there was nothing in the budget bid for Refuge especially after all the work that we have done in conjunction with Child Youth and Family and other agencies of the Ministry of Social Development … We feel that we have been used and abused and I guess that is reflective of the work we do. We shouldn’t be surprised but we are.” 
The women’s refuge in Wanganui recently picked up the Te Rito contract which is between Child Youth and Family the police and Women’s Refuge. Strangely enough the contract was taken off an organisation in Wanganui called the Whanganui Living Without Violence Trust. I notice that the Minister for Social Development and Employment pricked his ears up then—and he should. The Whanganui Living Without Violence Trust was the organisation that took all the Pol 400s—those are the family violence forms the police fill in whenever there is a family violence incident—collated them and then approached the victims of family violence. They supported them and put them in touch with various other helping agencies and organisations. They looked after the counselling of families and that was the role they had. 
Darren Hughes 
: It was Government money and Bill English says there’s too much Government spending. 
CHESTER BORROWS 
: Yes hang on Darren it is coming. Between Child Youth and Family and the police it was decided to take that contract away from that trust without any discussion or negotiation. Its representatives were not even in the room when the decision was made. However representatives from the women’s refuge were. That contract was given to the women’s refuge because the Government wanted to pay the Women’s Refuge about an extra million bucks or so a year. That is the reason Labour has given for giving nothing further to the Women’s Refuge in this Budget. 
But the Whanganui Living Without Violence Trust is an interesting case in point because that Minister for Social Development and Employment sitting over there gave the contract to the trust to provide training to Work and Income staff in dealing with people who have been exposed to family violence. The trust had a contract for doing that and—what do you know—they were paid for it. The trouble was they had not delivered any of the training. They asked when the training was to be held and they were told that it was not needed any more. So what happened? They got in touch with their local member of Parliament. I wrote to the Minister and asked what the story was and where it was going to. The next thing they knew a letter arrived saying to disregard anything that had been said in the past and that the trust was wanted to provide the training to Work and Income. They did and—what do you know—they were paid for that again as well. 
And this is just an indication of how effective this Government is in looking after money for those people at the bottom of the tree—those people who are relying on this Government to be able to turn it on for them. It is all very well to give us all that pie-in-the-sky stuff. For instance the previous speaker got up and stood for 8 to 10 minutes without even mentioning the Budget that he as part of Cabinet is so proud of. 
Another interesting thing is that the shafting of Women’s Refuge came in a year when family violence is higher than it has ever been before. Family violence went up by about 1500 between 1999—when this Government came to power—and 2000. The following year it went up by 2000. In 2002 it was up an extra thousand on top of that. In 2004 it was up another hundred or so. In 2005 it was up by 1500 and in 2006 it was up by another 2000. So in the homes of this country we have just over 10000 family violence incidents a year that were not occurring in 1999—and this Government says it puts families first. This Government will crow for instance about Working for Families packages but it will not give an extra dollar to agencies that are working damned hard for families. 
Also we find that this Government funds about 70 percent of the cost of the provision of services that it expects private providers to be able to turn on for it. These are organisations that have to campaign and lobby for money. They have to get money to top up the Government’s bill by contacting Pelorus Trust and other pokie machine operators around the country. It is time that this Government started paying its bills. It is interesting to note that when Labour members want to talk about the history of these things for their good ideas they go back to 1972 and forget completely about the period from 1984 to 1990. What this Government forgets and what we will remind it about time and time again is that in 14 of the last 23 years it has been in Government it has done sweet Fanny Adams.