Labour police spokesperson George Hawkins said today that a full Commission of Inquiry was required to investigate the Incis police computer system following IBM's withdrawal from the project.

"The police have spent well over $100 million on Incis. All they got was stage one of Incis - a glorified email system. What began life as a bit of a mongrel has turned out to be one dead mutt.

"This National government cannot wash its hands of this.

"Successive police ministers have spent the last five years assuring the public that the Incis project was a success. John Luxton was the police minister who sought and was granted cabinet approval. Earlier this year, the Prime Minister herself announced that the system was up and running.

"A Commission of Inquiry should be immediately convened to look into the whole issue of how the police and the government got involved in such a grandiose Greenfield computer project that, right from the start, sceptics said was seriously flawed.

"Computers are not going to go away - in fact, quite the reverse. With the growing computerisation of many government departments, it is crucial that lessons are learnt and actions are taken to prevent such gross wastage of taxpayer funding in the future," Mr Hawkins said.

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