Nash vows budget rise for police
The quality and number of police recruits will increase, the number of female police officers will rise and how much they all get paid is also up for review.
That’s the initial promises from Labour’s Police Minister Stuart Nash who says the coalition deal signed with NZ First sets out an ‘‘aspirational target’’ for increased police numbers that they plan to meet.
‘‘The money is there, it’s part of the coalition agreement that was signed between NZ First and Labour. It is an aspirational target – I don’t doubt that.
‘‘But we need to do this, we have a police force that has been underfunded now for nine years and it shows,’’ he said.
Under a National-led government the plan was to increase the number of frontline police officers by 880 over four years while the Labour-NZ First coalition commitment is for an increase of 1800 over three years.
‘‘So they had a moderate plan, we have a really ambitious plan,’’ he said.
Nash said policing had changed a lot in the last 20 years and one thing that would not happen with future recruitment was a dropping of the standards.
‘‘The police do have a goal of increasing gender equity in the police force. Policing today is different to how it was 20 years ago, which is different from what it was 40 years ago.
‘‘The latest graduates from police college – something like 40 per cent of them had university degrees – so the nature of people entering police is changing, which is fantastic, but we’re absolutely going to say that we’re not going to drop the quality of recruits – in fact they’re probably going to increase,’’ Nash said.
Asked whether police should be paid more as an incentive to join the police force, Nash said ‘‘we need to have a look at that’’.
He refused to answer further questions about what that meant or what a pay review would look like, saying he couldn’t be late for his first caucus meeting.
Nash said both NZ First and Labour campaigned strongly on community policing and organised crime and both those areas would be the focus under the coalition.
‘‘If you look at the latest workplace survey, you’ve got a highly committed group of men and women who do a great job of keeping our communities safe – yet 60 per cent of them say they’re not delivering on the promises they make to their communities.
‘‘They’re really good people who know they’re not doing the job of meeting the expectations of their communities,’’ he said.
Police Commissioner Mike Bush and Nash have already met and would set out a plan in the new year around how they would shift their focus to different areas under a new Government.