ACT Party's deputy leader has lashed out at Labour, saying the party doesn't deserve to govern after its youth justice policy announcement the Opposition dubs "rushed".
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins announced on Tuesday the Government would build two new youth justice units for up to 30 of the highest-needs youth.
It also wants to change the law to allow broader search powers to prevent contraband, implement changes for better family group conferences - along with more resources - and if a young person is involved in a ram raid or smash and grab, they will now be automatically referred to a family group conference.
But the Government's announcement had no key details about how long the units would take to build, how much it would cost or even which youths would be sent to the new facilities.
ACT's deputy leader Brooke van Velden told AM Early on Wednesday the policy from the Government was rushed.
"I think this policy announcement from Labour shows why they deserve to be gone in 87 days," she said.
"People have been saying they don't feel safe on the streets for years under this Government and only a few days before the election, they try and walk out a watered-down, uncosted policy."
Crime is set to be a hot topic in the lead-up to October's election. ACT has previously rolled out its alternative budget, where it announced it wanted to build 200 new youth justice beds.
National, meanwhile, has announced a string of law and order policies over the past year - including sending serious youth offenders to military academies and banning gang insignia in public places.
It also wanted to make gang membership an explicit aggravating factor in the Sentencing Act, regardless of whether the crime is related to the offender's gang activity or not.
Labour announced other new measures on Monday, including a new offence for anyone posting crimes on social media and also any adults rewarding or encouraging children to commit crimes would be a new aggravating factor in sentencing.
Van Velden told AM Early host Michael O'Keeffe it feels like Labour has finally realised Kiwis "don't feel safe" and are now rushing out law and order policies.
"They've got a whole bunch of crime policies coming out this week. It feels like it's all being rushed because they finally realised people don't feel safe," she said.
"Well, guess what? People haven't felt safe for years and they should have been listening.
"They say they want to put in some more Oranga Tamariki youth facility beds. Where's the money for it? How many kids will it be for? What's the time frame? There are no details. This has been rushed [and] Kiwis deserve better. It's disgraceful and it's shameful and they deserve to be gone."
Minister of Children Kelvin Davis told AM on Wednesday the current youth justice facilities are about 25 years old and haven't had any investment in them.
Davis compared this to Australia where they update and improve their facilities about every 10 years.
He said a business case will be developed to work out the exact cost of these two units as well as the model care that would be used in the facilities.
"We need to make sure the model of care and physical design are complementary to each other," Davis said.
He told AM that 17 and 18-year-olds who are allowed into these youth justice facilities have higher needs and need a different level of care.
"At the moment, if a young person is sent by a judge into a youth justice facility there is just one model of care, there is no continuum of care," he said.
"I believe that is wrong. Young people have different needs and some will be higher than others so we need to make sure the model of care meets the high needs that some young people are presenting.
"We need to make sure we meet their needs in the way that they're cared for but also the facilities are designed to meet their needs as well.
"Like I say, in Australia, they have designed facilities every year and every year the design gets different and better, so we need to make sure we do things right because what we don't want is for these young people to go on to re-offend and then to make the leap into corrections."
Watch the full interview with Brooke van Velden in the video above.
