KEY POINTS:
One in every two police recruits will have to be sent to South Auckland under National's plan to put 300 new officers into the crime hotspot.
Labour says this will leave the rest of the country saying, "What about us?"
National says that if elected it will recruit an extra 224 officers over the 376 already planned by the end of 2011 - a total of 600.
The party wants the Commissioner of Police to assign 300 of them to frontline duties in the Counties-Manukau district by the end of 2010.
Labour Police Minister Annette King says this cannot be done without taking officers intended for the other 11 police districts.
National would have difficulty getting the extra officers, she said, as recruits agreed on where they would work before joining the police.
"If you say to them, 'You have to be one of the recruits that goes into South Auckland', people will say, 'Hang on, we'll wait, we won't move'."
The best recruits for South Auckland were South Auckland people.
"Taking someone from Southland who has never worked with a large migrant population and telling them that they are going to have to get out and frontline-police in South Auckland is a recipe for disaster."
Ms King said National's costing of $18.5 million a year was wages and recruiting only.
"They haven't costed for uniforms or stab-resistant body armour, or even the handcuffs or the pepper spray. There's no costing on the cars.
"All they've done is the wages - and they haven't included the 4 per cent pay rise we've just given them."
Ms King said the police commissioner should be left to decide where staff should be stationed.
"Politicians don't tell the police how to run their operations. It should be free of political interference."
National's police spokesman, Chester Borrows, said police would become easier to recruit as confidence increased "that they won't be so lonely on the frontline".
Mr Borrows said no positions would be taken from other districts to fill the South Auckland roles.
Manukau City councillor Colleen Brown said she would be grateful for any extra police, but was concerned that they would be inexperienced "raw recruits".
Police Association president Greg O'Connor said he was pleased with the promise of more frontline officers, but "saying where they will go is getting a bit close to the bone in terms of telling the commissioner how to run the police".
He also questioned where the officers would come from: "You don't want to rob Peter to pay Paul."
He said effort needed to be put into retaining experienced officers in South Auckland.
