Look, maybe I'm being naïve, but I'm not that stressed at the news that 3 people were allowed to start police college without passing the fitness test. Were you?

I mean, it seems to be more important to just have police officers and more police officers walking the beat and providing a reassuring presence than it is to be absolutely sure that they can do a vertical jump and run 2.5 km in 12 odd minutes.

I don't know - when was the last time you saw Bobby sprinting 2ks down the road and jumping over a wall to catch somebody, right?

Doesn't seem like it's all that frequently happening in modern policing - certainly in cities.

But it doesn't mean we haven't got a problem. We've got a problem here.

The problem is that the Government is still pretending that it can pump out 500 new police officers by November 27. That's not gonna happen.

I mean, they are trying absolutely everything to be able to meet their target. They've bumped up the number of training spots they've got at the police college from 80 to 100, they're opening a new college in Auckland sometime this year. They're now suspected of having waved in three unfit coppers just to make up the numbers.

But we know that 500 coppers by November 27 is not going to happen because we've had a whole bunch of evidence. The numbers are not keeping pace in order to be able to get to 500.

The officials have warned the Government in the briefing papers that it's not going to be able to do it until midway through next year. And Mark Mitchell admitted last year that they weren't going to be able to do it, and then he got told off by Winston.

So now he's gone back, he's gone back to pretending that he can do it - but he's using some weasel words. He just says the number is aspirational.

Well, aspirational is a politician's word. That's a clue in and of itself.

Look, I think, to be honest, that the Government itself just needs to be honest here. If it's not gonna make the number, surely it's better to be honest now and say you're not going to make the number than it is to keep on pretending and then miss the target in November, which is inevitably gonna happen.

And surely it's worse for the police to be busted doing this, waving 3 unfit people through, even if it's fine that they do it.

Being busted doing it is not a good look, and if that is what we now suspect they're doing in order to meet the 500, that's a very bad look - isn't it?

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Financial Empowerment, with Hilary Hendershott – TPW 171