Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Andrew Hoggard: ACT's Rural Spokesperson on their policy that would increase rural policing

Transcript

Andrew Hoggard: ACT's Rural Spokesperson on their policy that would increase rural policing · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Okay act taking a tougher stance on rural crime. The
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: party wants an extra one hundred thousand police hours a year.
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  Speaker 1: Along with the dedicated rural crime unit. Armed poachers would
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  Speaker 1: face heavier penalties and text to one one one services
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  Speaker 1: would be expanded. It comes as rural crime continues to rise,
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  Speaker 1: with sixty seven percent of farmers now reporting they've been
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  Speaker 1: hit from forty one percent a decade ago. Andrew Hoggart
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  Speaker 1: is at party agricultural spokesperson and he joins me, Now,
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  Speaker 1: good morning, Andrew.
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  Speaker 2: Ow, Good morning, Francesca.
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  Speaker 1: Okay. So, if we want to clock one hundred thousand
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  Speaker 1: extra patrol hours and we want to have a dedicated
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  Speaker 1: rural crime unit, how many more police officers are we
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  Speaker 1: going to need.
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  Speaker 2: We worked out to be somewhere in the range of
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  Speaker 2: about one hundred and eighty two I think was a number.
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  Speaker 2: All could be My memory could be a bit faidy
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  Speaker 2: on that one. Certainly worked at the costs of training, equipping,
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  Speaker 2: we'd looked at around forty to forty five million first year,
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  Speaker 2: and they're thirty to thirty five million each year after,
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  Speaker 2: and so it's about, you know, that's sort of target
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  Speaker 2: we want to move towards and you know, hopefully get
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  Speaker 2: there to just increase that place of posibility in the
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  Speaker 2: rural areas.
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  Speaker 1: Where's that money coming from?
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  Speaker 2: So we'd look to other savings within anywhere within government.
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  Speaker 2: You know, there's plenty of things that if I was
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  Speaker 2: let loose on the entire budget, I could put a
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  Speaker 2: red line through where I think I could find better
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  Speaker 2: use for it doing this sort of stuff that New
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  Speaker 2: Zealanders really care about.
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  Speaker 1: Got any idea at the moment where you put that
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  Speaker 1: red line?
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  Speaker 2: I think I've seen on a regular basis lots of stuff,
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  Speaker 2: But I wouldn't want to comment on that literally that
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  Speaker 2: but coalition negotiations.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, is there enough interest in the recruitment stage to
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  Speaker 1: meet that demand that?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, Look it's certainly been tough. You've seen this year
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  Speaker 2: this team. There's been that target around five hundred and
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  Speaker 2: obviously there's been a lot of competition from Australia for
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  Speaker 2: those police. So I for us, this is a target
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  Speaker 2: we want to move towards, and then I think it's
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  Speaker 2: important that we have that aim of getting there and
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  Speaker 2: t train encourage as many people as we can to
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  Speaker 2: join the police and fill those ranks. I think I've
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  Speaker 2: got a niece that's still quite keen in the next
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  Speaker 2: couple of years to join up. So who knows, excellent.
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  Speaker 1: Andrew, can I ask when it comes to stolen livestock,
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  Speaker 1: how many do people sort of steal at a time?
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  Speaker 1: Is it coss able to track them down or do
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  Speaker 1: they end up in a freezer pretty quickly?
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  Speaker 2: Well, this is pretty one of the challenges there's actually
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  Speaker 2: been in case. This is sort of why I've got
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  Speaker 2: some of these policies in here. And recently some farmers
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  Speaker 2: not too far away from me came to me with
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  Speaker 2: a case of they've lost over one hundred animals, them
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  Speaker 2: and their neighbors to someone who was they thought they trusted,
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  Speaker 2: but was removing the official tags, replacing them with their
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  Speaker 2: own tags and fudging the records, and effectively the punishment
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  Speaker 2: in the end was pretty weak for that person. And
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  Speaker 2: also the system just and that's why we talk about
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  Speaker 2: we want to increase interagency sort of coordination. Just there
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  Speaker 2: wasn't able to be a decent prosecution in the end,
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  Speaker 2: and so we're going to look to improve that system.
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  Speaker 2: So you know, there's these we're all those farmers. We
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  Speaker 2: have to go through this process of recording all these animals,
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  Speaker 2: registering them in the NATE system. But the system doesn't
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  Speaker 2: really it could be a hell of a lot better
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  Speaker 2: in terms of helping us when someone does steal the livestock.
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  Speaker 1: What are the type of penalties for armed poaching that
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  Speaker 1: you'd like to see so.
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  Speaker 2: Well, just genuinely toughening them up at the moment. You know,
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  Speaker 2: we've looked at New South Wales. They have some really
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  Speaker 2: tough penalties there. You know, we've got a situation in
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  Speaker 2: New Zealand where if you were to steal scattle rustling,
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  Speaker 2: it's the maximum prison of seven years, whereas New South
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  Speaker 2: Wales as fourteen years. I would be surprised if there's
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  Speaker 2: been many examples that can like the example I just gave,
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  Speaker 2: I think it's still finalizing in the courts, but nowhere
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  Speaker 2: near seven years. I'm not sure that guy's going to
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  Speaker 2: see the inside of a jail cell. So yeah, it
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  Speaker 2: just does need to be toughened up from where it
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  Speaker 2: is at the moment because it is generally gets sort
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  Speaker 2: of like, oh, Nollie boy, don't you go sneaking on
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  Speaker 2: this land type approach, And we're going to make it
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  Speaker 2: a bit tougher.
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  Speaker 1: Andrew, thanks so much for your time this morning, appreciate it.
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  Speaker 1: That was Andrew Hoggard. They're talking us through the Act
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: Party Policy.
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