After years of criticising the Government on law and order, National have embarrassed themselves by conceding they have no new ideas and instead copied Labour’s Police policy announced three weeks ago, Labour Police spokesperson Ginny Andersen says.

“Labour in Government has backed our Police since day one. We’ve increased constabulary numbers by 1800, meaning that every district in the country has seen more Police,” Ginny Andersen said.

“Earlier this month in Hamilton I announced we would go further, funding 300 additional Police officers over four years, delivering the largest Police service in history.

“Today, Christopher Luxon and Mark Mitchell proved why the public cannot trust National on law and order, because they’re unable to come up with their own policing policy – instead just hitting copy and paste on ours.

“It adds to Mitchell’s embarrassing record on rolling out law and order policies, including zero specific retail crime policies, boot camps for young offenders, which have an 80% failure rate and banning gang patches – another tried and failed policy of the past.

“Mitchell is completely scrambling and realising on day one of voting that beating his chest and repeating headline-grabbing slogans won’t actually reduce crime.

“Given imitation is the greatest form of flattery, I would typically be delighted that National has not only copied our policy but copied the costings that go with them. But frankly, it’s just embarrassing and a disservice to New Zealanders.

“We know that the best way to crack down on crime in our communities is to back our Police to hold offenders to account and break the cycle of crime. Labour is the only party with a proven track record of backing the Police, unlike the previous National Government, which closed Police stations and froze the Police budget.

“Mark Mitchell has also demonstrated a hugely problematic misunderstanding of how Policing in New Zealand works. He says he wants to do away with the ‘policing by consent’, a long-held Policing philosophy used in many countries including New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Ireland and the United Kingdom. The alternative is fear-based policing by force and the loss of trust in the community.

"Mark Mitchell's attempt to pretend a constitutional principle first established in the 1820s is a policy of Labour's is staggering misinformation.

“National have finally realised that their failed policies just won’t cut it for New Zealanders. They should go further and adopt all of Labour’s law and order policies if they are serious about protecting our communities and breaking the cycle of crime,” Ginny Andersen said.

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