Outcry on police cuts ‘surprises’ Tapsell

Press, 27 June 1989, Page 1

Outcry on police cuts ‘surprises’ Tapsell

By

PETER LUKE

in Wellington

The Minister of Police, Mr Tapsell, has conceded that he should not have been overseas when police cuts were announced — but that he. was taken by surprise at the outcry the cuts caused.

Mr Tapsell arrived home on Sunday to face criticism over the cutting of 267 police staff announced last week. That criticism continued yesterday when the Prime Minister, Mr Lange, said he had asked Mr Tapsell last Wednesday to cut short his trip.

At a press conference yesterday afternoon, Mr Tapsell said Mr Lange had asked him to come home, after telling him the cuts had become a big public concern. Mr Tapsell said travel problems meant that the earliest he could have arrived home was on Saturday, one day early, so he

continued with his original schedule.

• The day' before he left New Zealand he had discussed the need to make savings cuts with the Commissioner of Police, Mr John Jamieson. At that meeting it was agreed to cancel training intakes, although this decision was announced in Mr Tapsell’s absence.

“In retrospect I think it might have been wiser had I actually made the announcement myself and explained the reasons for it and the ways in which it might have been implemented,” The subsequent announcement that staff numbers would be cut followed this decision. Based on his expecting public acceptance of the training cut, Mr Tapsell had not envisaged the public’s concern.

“In retrospect it is unfortunate that I was out of the country when this happened.”

Mr Tapsell was in the United States from where he told reporters in telephone interviews that he had urged the Cabinet not to make the police subject to the general rule that departments would absorb inflation and GST rises.

He said yesterday that every Minister argued for increased funding for their departments but that he had not disagreed with this or any Cabinet decision after it had been made.

“In the event Cabinet decided — and I think rightly — that the cuts should apply across the board.”

Mr Tapsell defended the fourweek length of his trip, saying it was only a few days longer than the average Ministerial trip. He had to leave earlier than first planned to visit a forest machinery exhibition in Sweden and had travelled outside main : centres to visit forestry projects.