Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (National—Pakuranga) : I am delighted to be able to take a second call on the issue of transport and to focus specifically on the issue of roading.

Last night I was disappointed to be up so late, then I suddenly realised that it was only getting on towards 10 o’clock and there would still be a good drive time audience listening to me in Auckland because people would still be on their way home from work. They will just be getting out of the central business district right now at 8.05 p.m., so to the loving and adoring audience that I have in the drive time I will tell some really good facts about things.

The question I asked of the Hon Pete Hodgson who was in the chair last night—to which we did not get any satisfactory answers—was how it could be possible for Transfund, the funding agency, to finish the financial year in question with $230 million surplus unspent, when no one can deny that there is an enormous list of roading projects that are desperately needed. The Minister did not answer, so I answered the question for him.

The answer lay across the Chamber in the form of the Greens. The way in which the Land Transport Management Act and Transfund have to work has been in the total control of the Greens. The worst of the Greens now is a man called Joel Cayford, who is running the Auckland Regional Land Transport Committee. He was one down the Alliance list from Keith Locke, and members of this Parliament can make their own judgment as to what a person is like when that person is one down on the list from Keith Locke.

He is now saying that State Highway 20, which is the connection that takes the main artery from the Māngere Bridge through to the Māngere airport—when it is supposed to carry on through Roskill into Avondale and join the north-western motorway—is off the schedule, that it is gone. It is not in the 10-year schedule. I found that fascinating because the Minister had said the week before, on 18 March, in reply to a question for written answer: “I am advised by Transit that State Highway 20 project through Avondale is scheduled to begin in 2010.” I am quite good at numbers and I worked it out. It is 2005 now and 2010 is in 5 years’ time. [Interruption] Dover Samuels is good with numbers. He has agreed with me. He is No. 10 on the list. I thought how can it not be in the 10-year plan. I suddenly looked at the regional land transport committee’s announcement as to why it has been taken out, because it was there originally. Do members know what Mr Joel Cayford said? He said they were advised by Transit that there was not a hope in hell of doing this within the 10 years, getting it started within 10 years, even though the written answers in the House, 5 days before, said it was going to start in 5 years. So we have to start asking what is going on here. I want the drive time audience in Auckland to know that we are talking of waiting at least 10 years before that road—which is desperately needed—is started. I want to hear from any of the Auckland members in this debate if they do not think the road is desperately needed. I tell the members that it is desperately needed. The human body would not function if it had arteries that did not join up. Vehicles come zooming out of the airport, down the big State Highway 20 spur, join on to it, hit the Māngere Bridge, and suddenly there is chaos and the traffic has stopped because there is a set of traffic lights up ahead at Hillsborough Road, because State Highway 20 is all finished. The Minister was unable to answer, but the answer was very clear.

Then the next thing I thought about the Land Transport Management Act, which had so much promise when it came through the House, was that the one thing it promised was private-sector participation. So I asked the Minister about that. OK, it was a great idea. I think it was a neat idea. How many private sector roads have been built, or even started to be built, or for which the contract has even been let—even one Build, Own, Operate, and Transfer operation? Let us see. Were there any? Again, the answer is no. So we have the Minister and his funding agency, with a $230 million surplus unspent, and the answer was really that they could not spend it because the Land Transport Management Act had made it so inflexible. Auckland is grinding to an absolute halt, as are many other parts of the country: the Bay of Plenty, the Waikato. Certainly Centennial Highway into Wellington is killing people at an unrealistic rate. State Highway 2 through Maramarua is now known as “Death Alley”.

I want to know why we are going to have another 5c increase now, but in the last financial year, the year in question—the review we are reviewing—the Government could not spend even $230 million. Let me tell Dover Samuels—because he probably does not know—how much money is normally spent on new roading each year. The answer is about $400 million. Of the $1.4 billion in the National Land Transport Programme, about $400 million is for new roads. The rest is for maintenance and subsidising public transport. There is about $400 million for new roads. Here was $230 million, well over half of what should be spent on new roads each year, unspent. I want to know from the Minister in the chair, David Cunliffe, why that occurred in that financial year.

• Report noted.

Hon TONY RYALL (National—Bay Of Plenty) : While Parliament sits tonight the police face the most major crisis of public confidence that they have faced, certainly in the last 5 years. These matters were raised this year under financial review, and the Government ignored them. Since the beginning of October we have seen a never-ending series of scandals and bad administration within the New Zealand Police 111 service, which this Minister of Police has overseen.

These very basic questions need to be answered by the Minister. How many extra staff did the police ask for, for the 111 control centres? We do not want to know how many the Minister thinks they asked for; we want to know how many they did ask for. We want to know why this Minister has never asked what happened to the staff numbers in the three 111 emergency call centres throughout this country. Since the month before Iraena Asher disappeared, the number of call takers in the 111 centres dropped, and it has dropped every month since. That is appalling. Can this Minister take a call and explain why, under his stewardship of the police portfolio, we have the outrageous situation where members of the public think they dial 111 for a taxi, and think they need to dial 111 and scream to get some action? Why do they now have to dial 111 five times to report a drunken driver? The Government and the 111 system are unable to cope.

This Minister’s stewardship is a failure. It is a failure because he is charged with being Minister of Police to secure the resources necessary for the police to provide the service that the people of New Zealand expect. It is clear that he has failed to do that. Day after day we see him stand in Parliament and tell the country that he has secured the resources and that the police are adequately staffed. Yet television has now shown the Commissioner of Police finally abandoning the Minister’s mantra, and saying that, yes, he has asked for more police and, yes, he needs more police. It is quite clear that the Government has ignored the commissioner’s requests, and the consequences are being visited upon ordinary New Zealanders.

This Minister of Police has stood in the House and said that women are more concerned about traffic tickets than they are about violent crime. This Minister says that New Zealand women are more concerned about speeding than they are about violent crime and being bashed in their homes. This man does not deserve to have the stewardship that the financial review would indicate. Right to the heart of this debate is the resourcing of the communication centres, which this House has raised time and time again. We have raised concerns not only about the police management of the 111 calls and the resourcing of the communication centres but also about simple issues like the training and supervision of call takers, and the response times not meeting their targets.

What people do not realise—or maybe they do—is that in most regions of New Zealand it is taking longer and longer for the police to respond to 111 crises. In fact, the television news today reported that the police are chronically understaffed. That is asserting in people’s minds—

Hon Paul Swain: What happened to the 540 police you were going to cut?

Hon TONY RYALL: This is the Minister of Corrections, whose appalling maladministration of expenditure of his department will be shown in the next few days. Mr Mark nods because he knows exactly what we will be talking about next week. I reckon that instead of talking about the scandals in the police, they will be talking about what that Minister knew about spending in his department, and the consequences that that has had.

RON MARK (NZ First) : It is such a shame that the Committee sees fit to allocate only 5 minutes of debate per speaker to this issue, because never before in the history of this country can we look to a time when the law enforcement officers, the men and women of our police force, have been under such intense pressure. Why is that? The answers are all here, in this report. It is an unprecedented report—and this is a committee report, not an Opposition report—because it highlights the failings of the police, under the administration of this Minister.

Let us remind ourselves of who this Minister of Police is. This Minister, the Hon George Hawkins, is the man who stood up and criticised people like John Banks when he was the Minister of Police. This Minister criticised Jack Elder when he was the Minister of Police.He promised the nation for 9 years that under his stewardship things would be better. With Mike Moore he promised a national crime commission, yet this month he categorically ruled out any such commission. Why? Because he knows that this Government will not commit the resources that the police need. Right now, the great tragedy is that law enforcement officers up and down this country are being tarred with Labour’s brush.

Labour’s policy of not resourcing the police commensurate with the levels of real crime—not recorded crime, but real crime—is now going to be legendary. Labour has failed to commit, and its assurances to the public that never before have the police had more resources, and more men, fall on deaf ears when sane, thinking, common-sense New Zealanders point out the following facts to this Minister. Never before have we had a greater population. Never before have we had a greater influx of immigrants, who bring with them their own peculiarities in terms of language barriers, which the police have to deal with, and never before have we seen such a historic focus on revenue-gathering, by concentrating on roads and on the quota ticketing of nanas trying to go to church on High Street, Rangiora, on a Sunday morning. But, of course, it is this Minister’s focus to ticket High Street, Rangiora, because there are lots of recidivist boy racers on that street—not! What it is all about is money.

The real problem lies in the fact that when reports such as this—the report from the Commissioner of Police to the Minister of Police on issues relating to policing in the Auckland area, dated 21 November 2002—tell this Minister that the 111 system is about to fall over, and tell this Minister that 100 extra police are needed at the coalface to respond to 111 calls, and tell this Minister that it is all going to fail, he does nothing—or does he? Is not the real unspoken story here that this Minister does talk to his Prime Minister. Is not the real unspoken story here that this Minister does talk to his Prime Minister and does talk to the Deputy Prime Minister—but is not part of that other little clique of Labour, the Cosgrove-Tamihere clique, that the sisterhood does not listen to?

Dr Richard Worth: And Dover.

RON MARK: And Dover Samuels. Now he is smiling, because he knows I have hit the real point. The sisterhood does not listen to him, and that explains a comment that he made at a meeting in Auckland to a group of people. I will not quote what he said, but he made it very clear to that group of his very close friends that his own Prime Minister does not listen to him, that the sisterhood closes ranks, and that when he goes forward to ask for resources he gets kicked into touch because he is not one of the favoured few. Well, the downstream consequences of that—[Interruption]; I tell Mr Darren what’s-his-name, that young fellow from somewhere—are that the public are paying for the price of this Minister’s inability to get the resources needed and highlighted in this report.

Darren Hughes: He got a million dollars.

RON MARK: I tell Mr Darren Hughes that he should not talk to the public; he should talk to Iraena Asher’s parents. We know we have hit a sore point when the junior Government whip has to chip in and rebut. He knows—and he will hear about it on the hustings during the coming election—that in this report, and even in the second report, the Commissioner of Police and the deputy commissioner both say, in their own language—not in the language of New Zealand First or the National Party—that they are under-resourced, understaffed, and underfunded. This Government is responsible personally for the Iraena Asher disaster. This Government is responsible personally for the failure of the 111 system, because it was told in 2001 that the system would fall over—and it has.

RODNEY HIDE (Leader—ACT) : These are the words of the Hon George Hawkins on 2 March 2005: “The Labour-led Government has focused on creating safer communities so that people can live without fear of being a victim of crime.” That is the spin. On the same day, he continued: “Police Commissioner Rob Robinson has been given the resources to do the job.” That is what the Minister of Police said, but what do we find out? We find that we could throw a stone from his electorate office and hit a block of stores, which, actually, are not untypical in New Zealand, right now, where neighbours just walk in off the street, get what they want for the week, and walk out.

Ron Mark: Don’t pay.

RODNEY HIDE: They do not pay; they steal it. The neighbours of George Hawkins’ electorate office have given up ringing the police—and that is why the crime rate is down. Those who do ring the police receive this letter. I want to read it for members. It is from Sergeant Fogarty, a hard-working, frontline police officer. He wrote to the dairy owner in that block of shops and said: “Due to the sheer volume of complaints and limited resources, I am left with no alternative other than to record and file this matter.” That letter was about a perpetrator of multiple crimes. The police have identified him, they know where he lives, and they know what he looks like. The crime happened within a stone’s throw of George Hawkins’ office. The questions for George Hawkins are these: how come he did not know, and how come he is feeding the public this horse manure? When this issue first arose George Hawkins said it was an operational matter, and he would not comment. He hid behind Michael Cullen when going into Cabinet. Helen Clark’s response, which was typical of her—and is why this country, under her, has been nicknamed “Helengrad”—was that the sergeant’s letter was “ill-advised”. Why? Because the hard-working sergeant was telling the truth.

Ron Mark: The truth!

RODNEY HIDE: Yes, the truth. George Hawkins did not stand up for the police. Why? Because he holds his tenuous position because of the grace of Helen Clark. So the Minister of Police—he shakes his head and agrees—turned round and said he agreed with Helen Clark that Sergeant Fogarty’s letter was ill-advised, leaving us in no doubt that he considers the police to be incompetent and that they have the resources. Well, the police fight back against rubbish like that, and so they should. They came out and told us that in George Hawkins’ patch, there are 1,167 unallocated cases, a fact that George Hawkins found out only yesterday.

I want to tell people what those unallocated cases are. The dairy owner’s case is not unallocated; it is just filed. An unallocated case is one where someone makes a complaint and it is a serious offence, or there is a good chance of catching the person—and that is why the police want to allocate an officer to it. In the dairy owner’s case, an officer was not even allocated—the case was just filed. So these are cases the police want to chase up, because they know they will catch a perpetrator.

I will tell George Hawkins and New Zealand the policy that will get the crime rate down. The policy is zero tolerance. There should be a policy of zero tolerance for crime, and if that Minister wants to fight crime, he should not allow the lawlessness that is occurring in his own backyard. And if the police need more resources he should supply them. The streets of New Zealand should be actively policed; the homes of New Zealand should be actively policed; and the places of work should be actively policed. Perpetrators of crime should be pulled up, no matter how small the crime. If someone steals a bottle of Coke, the police should be there. They should not be saying that that does not matter because it is just a bottle of Coke, because the next week, or the week after, the criminal learns to take a gun. What we have found is that, on George Hawkins’ patch, nine rape cases did not have an investigating officer assigned to them. But George Hawkins says speeding is more important. I say this to Mr Hawkins: there were 5,000 tickets issued 4 years ago in the Counties-Manukau Police District; there are now 17,000.

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Leader of the House) : I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. I notice the increasing tendency of members to carry on talking after the bell has been rung. Mr Ryall had the call, and he had the courtesy, perhaps, to hold back, but he had the right to start his speech at that point.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): Would the member please take note that when the bell goes he is to sit down.

Hon TONY RYALL (National—Bay Of Plenty) : Part of this financial review process involves various select committees hearing evidence from Government departments and the Audit Office, in respect of the performance of Government departments. As a result of those select committee considerations, reports are prepared that are tabled in the House. I would like the Minister of Police to take a call and tell us whether he actually read the 2003-04 financial review of the New Zealand Police.

I ask that question because there are some very important features of this report that the Minister needs to be aware of, as the comments that are of concern in those reports were unanimous comments. Even the Government members of the Law and Order Committee endorsed the comments that the committee made about the Minister’s department and the handling of the 111 system.

I would like the Minister to take a call. It is important, because those members are the people in the Labour Party who influenced those who ranked the Minister in the list-ranking procedure. [Interruption] I do not think that is a laughing matter. The Minister may think it is a laughing matter, but I did not think his ranking was suitable. I thought No. 25 was a completely unwarranted position for the Minister of Police—completely unwarranted. No. 35 might have been better.

But I wonder whether the Minister did read this report, which was agreed to by Labour members of the committee. It states: “We are concerned that these statistics show that the communication centres may not be sufficiently resourced, or may not be deploying resources appropriately, to manage within target performance times the volume of calls being directed to them.” Another comment was also agreed to by the Labour members: “We have previously raised concerns with the police about staffing pressures at the Southern Communication Centre in particular, but were assured that the number of staff at the time was adequate.” I paraphrase the next statement: On the basis of past experience, some of us remain unconvinced that the Southern Communication Centre is adequately staffed. The report states further that: “Some of us are also concerned about the alleged difficulty encountered by some 111 callers in convincing communication staff that they are in genuine need of urgent help.” Those comments were all made in a report that members of the Minister’s party agreed to. Georgina Beyer, Martin Gallagher, Ann Hartley—

Ron Mark: Mahara Okeroa.

Hon TONY RYALL:—and Mahara Okeroa were all members of the select committee that agreed to those comments. They also made the point that they were disappointed with the various response times.

So I ask the Minister of Police to take a call and say whether he read that report, because the report—if he had read it—could have saved him a lot of grief. If he had read it, he would have seen that his own colleagues were saying that real alarm bells were ringing about his performance in securing resources for the 111 system, in order to provide decent public safety.

It is a major issue. I know that it must be an embarrassment to the Minister to have to come to this Chamber, day in and day out, and make excuses for his non-performance and for the fact that he never asks the basic questions—questions like: “Well, if there are these many unallocated files in this district, how many are there in other areas of New Zealand?”. Was that question asked? It does not appear to have been. We have never heard basic questions like: “Are we maintaining the number of staff that we need in the 111 centres?” and “Are we maintaining the number of staff that we had before Iraena Asher disappeared?”. They are basic questions that a Minister of Police should ask, but we have never heard them from this Minister of Police.

Therefore, we end up with a report, a financial review, that I can directly refer to in this debate, which states that: “… statistics show that the communication centres may not be sufficiently resourced …”. We know that the outcome of the review must be that the Commissioner of Police is brought in. We know that that must be the outcome, because we know that the Minister was told by the commissioner that there were insufficient resources in the 111 centre to maintain the sort of standard that the public expect from the New Zealand Police.

I ask, then, that the Minister take a call to explain his stewardship of this portfolio and his handling of the police request for additional 111 resources. Those requests will see the light of day in the course of this debate.

Hon GEORGE HAWKINS (Minister of Police) : It is very funny that National Party members have forgotten what it was like when they were in power—when Tony Ryall was a member of a Cabinet that aimed to take out $45 million and up to 540 jobs from the police. That is what he was on about. He voted in that way. He went for the Martin report, and now he wants to forget that. Well, we will not let him forget. In the end Tony Ryall was a part of that, and now he tries to pretend that it is all different.

I remind Tony Ryall, and I remind Greg O’Connor from the Police Association, of what police cars were like under the previous National Government, when the police up north had trouble in getting a warrant of fitness. They could not get a warrant of fitness for their cars, but they had to drive them around. We had police cars that had coat-hangers for aerials under National. That is what National supplied. In the end, National really let the country down. In one year it spent only $4.5 million on police cars, whereas we are spending around $30 million per year. National used to spend around $720,000 per year on new buildings. Over the last 3 or 4 years of the previous National Government, $720,000 to $740,000 a year was spent on new buildings. This Government is spending over $70 million in 5 years. Greg O’Connor and Tony Ryall forget about that, and Rodney Hide never knew about it.

Darren Hughes: Rodney Hide’s a joke.

Hon GEORGE HAWKINS: Well, some people call him a joke. I think that he needs to be reminded of exactly what things were like.

The police used to receive just over $800 million from the National Government; they now receive over $1 billion a year. This Government has made sure that the police are resourced far better than they were before. National was going to take away 540 jobs. How many new jobs have we put in? We have put in over 1,000 new police jobs, and that has made a huge difference to policing. How many files would be unallocated in Counties-Manukau if National had had its way and got rid of 540 jobs?

Rodney Hide: How would the member know?

Hon GEORGE HAWKINS: There he is—Rodney Hide, who thinks that the dairy owner is right next to my electorate office. I am sorry, but it was the wrong electorate. Rodney Hide got it wrong. Rodney Hide and Mr Garner from TV3 are so close together, but what Mr Garner forgets is that Rodney Hide will not be here after the next election. Rodney Hide will be gone. He will be one of those people who will be living in a safer community because the Labour Government has made it safer. And it does not matter how much National Party members squawk. When National was in power, there were 96,000 burglaries a year; now, the rate is under 60,000. This is a good Government. It has resourced the police, and there are fewer burglaries. Then those members grizzle that the roads are being properly policed for the first time. We are making sure that the police are out on the roads, and that they are seen there.

Dr Richard Worth: And the traffic cars!

Hon GEORGE HAWKINS: Yes, we have traffic cars out there. National members should go and tell the parents of the four kids who lost their lives on the weekend that we have enough traffic cars.

I have to say that we have moved more for the police than any other party has in recent years—far more. Everyone else but National knows that.

Hon Tony Ryall: Enjoy the last couple of months.

Hon GEORGE HAWKINS: Well, I will enjoy it, because I know that we are doing a good job, and that that member will enjoy sitting on the Opposition benches for a long, long while. Mr Ryall will be over there, sitting on the Opposition benches, because people will remember what it was like under him—a former Minister of Justice who wanted police jobs to be cut. He wanted to lose police jobs, and in the end people knew that he was not up to it.

Hon RICK BARKER (Minister for Courts) : This debate on the New Zealand Police has been very interesting and also very sad. The sad part about this debate is the lengths that a number of Opposition MPs will go to in order to attack the credibility and standing of the New Zealand police force, simply for their own political gain. The police regularly publish statistics. No one has ever doubted them before, until the statistics showed a very promising story that everybody should have celebrated. We all should have celebrated the fall in crime in New Zealand. We all should have said that it was good news. Instead, what we heard from the Opposition parties was that the statistics were a lie—that the police had somehow fiddled the books to make things look good. What the Opposition parties were, in actual fact, saying was that the New Zealand police were telling lies to the public. Those parties were saying that for their own political ends. They were prepared to sacrifice the reputation of the New Zealand police force for their own political ends.

I say that the facts stack up for the police, for the truth, and for the good work that this Government has done. It is a simple fact that burglary is now down to about 57,500 offences a year, a drop of almost 40,000. The Opposition claims that that is not true. But the point is that if one is to claim insurance—as most people who are burgled do—one has to report the crime to the police. The insurance company will not pay out unless one does. So there is a very compelling reason for people to front up and say that they have been burgled. The fact is that 40,000 fewer burglaries a year have occurred. There is a good reason for part of that decline, which is that this Government has put an enormous amount of effort into reducing the level of unemployment. When people have jobs, and are working and getting an income, they will be less inclined to get involved in crime. The only person who does not believe that there is a connection between crime and unemployment is the former leader of the National Party. Everybody else says that unemployment and poverty lead to crime. We have reduced poverty, reduced unemployment, and put a huge amount of resources into the police.

It is a fact that when I was an Opposition MP the police cars at Hastings had all done over 250,000 kilometres. They were all clapped out; there was not a decent one amongst them. George Hawkins, as the Minister of Police, has upgraded the fleet. It is a fact that when I was an Opposition MP the local police did not have enough radio telephones and did not have good batteries—they were all failing. It is now a fact that the local police all have good equipment. There is no question about that. It is a fact that the local police station had torn carpet—it was a shambles. It is now a fact that the station is well equipped. It is also a fact that the number of people on the police payroll has gone from 8,767 to 9,847. That is over 1,000 extra staff. Ron Mark says that there is a growing population, and that is true. But the rate of increase in the New Zealand police force has been vastly greater than any population growth—over 1,000 extra staff. The Opposition does not want to hear that. The fact is that the number of cases being cleared by the police—successfully prosecuted—has gone up dramatically. So crime is down, the resolution rate is up, and everybody in New Zealand should celebrate that. The only people who do not want to celebrate the good news are members of the Opposition parties.

The fact is that we have invested more in forensic technology, DNA testing, etc. We now have some of the best equipment and best profiles in the world. We are doing an outstanding job. The Opposition should say that that is good, that the Minister of Police has done an outstanding job, that they support him for doing that, and that they support the police force. But of course it will not. The Opposition wants to wreck the reputation of the New Zealand police force for its own venal political ends. That is the truth of it. The other fact is—[Interruption] Mr Jones can say “Ooh” all he likes, as if he has seen a ghost, but he should go to the books and look at the financial records. He will see that in the last 4 years of the previous National Government, it spent under $1 million a year on capital works for the police, whereas in the last 5 years this Government has spent $73 million. There is no question about it; the police force was undercapitalised. George Hawkins has gone to the Cabinet table and argued for more money for the police, and he has won the argument every time. The police have more resources, better equipment, better police stations, more staff, more technology, and more of everything. Anything that the police wanted, they got more of—there was no question about it. Over 1,000 more staff have been taken on in 5 years. That is an increase in staff numbers of 200 per annum. No other organisation has gone up in that way.

• Report noted.

MARTIN GALLAGHER (Labour—Hamilton West) : As a member of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee, it gives me enormous pleasure and pride to say that I have visited Waiōuru in the last year on a special field visit by the committee, seen the wonderful men and women there, and witnessed the wonderful way they work. It was very clear to me that, in terms of the New Zealand Defence Force and our armed services under this Government, it is all good news. I compliment the men and women of the armed services for the tremendous work they do for this country. If ever a force, a group of men and women, should unite this Parliament in giving praise, it is the wonderful men and women of our defence forces. I want to compliment and, again, say how impressed I was with the leadership—with the heads of the armed forces, but also with the Minister leading them. Under this Government we have seen some real gains in defence.

Here are just some of the achievements this term. We are building a modern defence force that has appropriate structures to best fit New Zealand’s needs, that ensures accountability, and that is open to new technological and conceptual advances, cultural changes, and modern ideas. What a contrast that is to what we inherited at the end of the 1990s.

Darren Hughes: Tragic years.

MARTIN GALLAGHER: Yes, we had 9 tragic years, frankly, and, with due respect, in their hearts members of the Opposition know it. They allowed the defence forces in this country to run down. Members of New Zealand First will certainly not disagree with that. I know that in their hearts they totally agree with the point I have made on that.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich): I am sorry to interrupt the member, but the time for this debate has expired.

• Reports noted.