The latest Minister of Police Ginny Andersen is no more than a very lightweight ‘smart-arse’ politician.
My wife has a penchant for watching Question(able) Time in the House. I happened to be in the wrong room at the wrong time and caught the Minister trying to evade giving proper answers to questions from National’s Mark Mitchell. Now here’s chalk and cheese if ever you saw it. Both have been involved with the Police. Ginny Andersen sat at a desk while Mark Mitchell was at the coal face. Boy, does it show.
Initially, she tried every trick in the book. Having been pulled up by the Speaker at least a couple of times she reverted to giving answers deemed acceptable. In truth, they were ‘smart-arse’ answers batting away Mitchell’s serious questions about the upsurge in crime and how it is that we are all supposed to feel safer.
Anderson of course has no answers because its her party’s insistence on being soft on crime that is the main driver of the increase. All she has in her arsenal is to bang on about 1800 extra police personnel.
We all know it’s not 1800 if you subtract the numbers who have left and we’re supposed to believe the minister, that the Force is the largest it has ever been at 10,700 front-line police.
One News reported on June 1 that, according to Ginny Andersen, Police numbers are up 21% on 2017 and there is now one officer for 480 people compared to 544 in 2017. I checked the number of Police in 2017 to find there were 10,549 sworn members. That would make it precisely 151 more officers now. So an increase of 151 on 10,549 would be an increase of around 1.5%. I hope she and her colleague Michael Wood are never given the Finance portfolio. These numbers just don’t add up.
The current number is one the 2017 government hoped to achieve in 2020 but failed. On One News Andersen said, “What we’ve achieved today is the biggest ever government commitment to an increase in Police numbers in history and we’re proud to stand alongside them to celebrate this historic achievement.” 151 more Officers is a historic achievement? For them who have achieved virtually nothing, I suppose it is.
Her numerically laughable historic increase “follows a decade of National Party cuts that left Police underfunded and under resourced”. I then found a press release from the Beehive dated 21 November 2019 that says the figure of 1800 has been met with 1825 new Police deployed over the country since 2017.
Proof, if it was needed, that this government spouts whatever they think you need to hear. We are not safer, as is evidenced by the amount of crime reported this last weekend. The new reporting app must be just about burnt out.
- Police investigate possible shooting in Manukau
- 12-year-old covered in blood after assault outside Auckland McDonald’s
- One hour, two ram raids, two businesses burgled in Rotorua
- Auckland gun crime, Police probe to see if two shootings linked
- Car stolen after home invasion, 80 minute Police pursuit ends in crash
- Opotiki ‘disorder incident’ involving gangs led to homicide investigation
- One person injured in Christchurch stabbing
- One person shot in Northland, Police investigating
Instead of giving juvenile answers to serious questions, egged on by her colleagues I might add, Ginny Andersen needs to get her act together and start taking her ministerial role seriously.
Telling us we are all safer when patently we are not, she is simply creating her own YEAH RIGHT! billboard.