Manukau City hopes to open the Kawakawa Bay/Clevedon Road within the next few weeks for limited periods. Although the Council has built a walking track behind the slip through a farm on Turei Hill, residents have been advised to use it only during daylight hours for safety reasons. This is no good for residents who are on shift work, in fact the entire situation is unacceptable.

These residents want action on this and they want it now.

I have been advised that Council can use emergency powers to bring down the rest of the unstable land rather than waiting for nature to take its course. I will be formally following up this suggestion with the Council to see if this is legally possible. I'm simply unconvinced that we should expect the residents of Kawakawa Bay to wait for more heavy rain to do the job.

The current situation is crippling the residents of Kawakawa Bay and I totally sympathise with their frustrations.

I, together with Papakura Mayor Calum Penrose, recently met with officials from Child Youth and Family at my Electorate office. This is to follow up on my request for CYF to put in place a project whereby CYF make itself available with Police to take children off the streets at night and get them, either home or to a safe house. Such a project has been trialled in Hamilton and has been successful. This was a positive meeting and you can be assured that I will be following up the positive response with a call for action.

I was pleased to attend and speak at the official opening of a new community centre, Awhi Community Wraparound Project, at the Smith Street Netball Courts in Papakura recently. This was a joint project involving Council, local businesses, community people and Police working together. This area is a challenging area in Papakura and the combined effort of all shows to me the wonderful caring side of Papakura. This is valuable work being done in the community and I commend all who are involved.

I have written to the Commissioner of Police requesting extra police resourcing for Papakura. As I explained to the Commissioner I have previously requested such resourcing from District Commander Steve Shortland and the Minister of Police. I have petitioned Parliament but still there seems no action from the Police headquarters.

I have asked the Commissioner to make time available to meet with myself and Mayor Calum Penrose in the near future to discuss this. We'd be happy to show him around.

After 6 years as your local MP, I'm becoming heartily sick of Papakura being fobbed off. Papakura is a great community, full of people who care and who contribute as volunteers. Papakura supports our local Police. That goodwill is being sorely tested by Papakura being continually ignored by the Wellington bureaucracy. It's time for HQ to change.

Constituents will be shocked at yet another death of a Police Officer in the performance of his duty. Sergeant Don Wilkinson is dead and another Police Officer is seriously injured in hospital. We now average a murder a week. At the same time, Police are expected to comply with Politically correct madness coming from nanny state and human rights experts. How about some human rights for decent law abiding people? When was the last time we heard rights and responsibilities in the same sentence from these same experts?