Urgent Debates — Police 111 System—Review

I welcome the report on the 111 system that has been released today by the independent review team. However, I regret that such a report was necessary, and I do not believe that it goes far enough.

Earlier this year I raised some 17 cases where the 111 system had failed. This report, and other reports into those circumstances, prove conclusively that the failures were not just casual but systemic. I regret the fact that families around New Zealand are suffering anguish and loss today because of those failures. I hope this report, and presumably the implementation of the recommendations that flow from it, will in some small, small way provide those families with some solace in their suffering.

One of the things a community has a right to feel is a sense of safety, and a sense that those charged with the promotion and protection of community safety are able to carry out the tasks required of them in a way that engenders public confidence. It saddens me greatly that the events of the last few months with regard to the 111 system, coming on top of a perception that the police have been more interested in speeding motorists than in community safety, have engendered a climate where for the first time, I suspect, in many generations—probably since the crisis over corruption in the 1950s—public confidence in our police force is diminishing.

When one hears talk about failure to respond or lack of confidence, it is worth recalling that it is a very short step from there to people deciding to take the law into their own hands, and that is the start of the path towards anarchy. In that regard I think this report does not quite go far enough. Let me amplify that point a little. There is a useful recommendation early on that some form of monitoring or overview of the 111 system needs to be established to give the public a sense of confidence. I think that is good. But then one looks at the recommendation as to who that overview panel ought to be: the commissioner and senior police staff. I say nothing against the commissioner, but I make this point: in this climate today, there will not be a restoration of public confidence in the police while they are seen to be trying to do it all themselves. I believe that the panel that has been proposed requires independent participation—someone outside the police being involved—in order to give the assurance that all is well. Because at the moment, sadly, the climate we are in is that when the police give the OK, there is not the level of public acceptance of it that there used to be. I think that is a very sad state of affairs, and does need to be addressed in resolving these issues.

It seems to me that some of the other matters that the report gives rise to also miss the major point. I have read the section regarding the training and performance of the communications centre staff. I think some useful recommendations are made, and some of them have been drawn out in the debate this afternoon. But the real issue, surely, is the type of people being recruited to work in police communications centres to provide that necessary service. I am not satisfied from the recommendations that that issue is being addressed properly. Throughout this saga I heard constant reports from people that the way in which staff were recruited was haphazard and that a lot of the people who came to communications centres were referrals from Work and Income New Zealand—people with indifferent work records or experiences—and when I look at these recommendations, I do not see anything that seeks to address that point. Without that matter being addressed, there is a danger that frankly, to coin a phrase, the deckchairs around the Titanic control room are being reorganised. People are being a little bit better trained, but the fundamental problem is not going away.

Previous speakers have made reference to communications centre staff having difficulty identifying geographic locations, to their manner on the telephone, and to the time taken to ask the critical questions. None of those issues are likely to be resolved if recruitment of personnel continues to be from the same source and quarter that it was from before, and the danger then becomes that we are merely perpetuating an ongoing problem.

Yes, there are wider issues. Members have talked about numbers of police staff—sworn personnel available to do the job. That is important. I think we ought to be moving to have 8,750 sworn police staff in this country. There are issues relating to the range of services. While I think work does need to be done to decouple traffic enforcement from general policing work, I am not naive enough to think that simply doing that somehow makes the 111 system work better, as was suggested by an earlier speaker.

The New Zealand public needs to be assured that when the need is there to dial 111, the call will be dealt with expeditiously and sensitively, and an appropriate response will be provided. This set of recommendations arises from a collective sense of failure of any of those things having been able to be achieved. Sadly, there have been the awful, tragic, high-profile cases like the Asher and Bentley cases, where the system failed completely. They are exceptions, but there are many, many other cases where people have not quite received the response they thought they deserved, where units have been dispatched inappropriately or not at all, and where the right questions simply have not been asked.

This report demonstrates in the totality of its recommendations a system that is in serious crisis. We can wallow in that tragedy in this House all we like and we can point the finger all we like, but the reality of doing that, without action that delivers on achieving improvements, is that the person who rings 111 this evening, tomorrow, or next week has no fresh assurance that anything has changed. It is great sport for politicians on the eve of an election to bag the 111 system, and to criticise the police and the Minister. The real challenge for the Government and for other parties in this House is what happens to give effect to these recommendations to ensure that we do not again find ourselves in a position where our emergency response service, which ought to be the thing that works most effectively and gives the public the most assurance of confidence, looks so rickety, so ramshackle, and so otherwise utterly incompetent.

The challenge arising from this report is to put in place the mechanisms, the policies, the funding, and the staff that will deal with that, and then—maybe then—the public might start to have its confidence restored in the ability of our police service to provide for safety and security in our communities. A community that does not have that confidence is one that is teetering very much on the brink of the abyss. All of us have a responsibility to ensure we do what we can to pull back from that and to ensure that our police are worthy of and capable of public confidence for the duties that they perform. This report is a timely reminder in that respect.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Do you, as the Speaker, have the authority to direct the Minister whose department is being debated to be present in the House to debate? Because Mr Hawkins should be here.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Clem Simich): No, that is not a point of order.

I want to say right at the very beginning that what is important about this debate is the lack of faith the people of New Zealand have in George Hawkins as Minister of Police. As a consequence, they have a lack of faith and trust in the Labour Government—Helen Clark, her Minister, the other Ministers on the Government benches, and the members of the Labour Government—to solve this problem. The public has absolutely no faith in them, at all. [Interruption] People like David Benson-Pope, who is interjecting, should accept that they have as much responsibility to make sure that this is put right as George Hawkins does. He will be caned, just as George Hawkins will be, if he keeps on parroting away about an issue that he should be as responsible for as the Minister is.

The Minister of Police, George Hawkins, is an absolute disgrace as a Minister of the Crown. The way he is administering his portfolio is an absolute disgrace. He has been an abject failure ever since he took hold of the reins of the police and, quite honestly, he has become more and more incompetent as the days go by. He has proven to be incompetent. The members on the Government benches who all have their heads down and who were not here to back the Minister when he was speaking because they were ashamed of him, are now showing that by their body language. They know they are wrong. They know they have an incompetent Minister of Police. They know the way the Government is administering the police has been a failure. They know it is not working. They know that New Zealanders have lost faith in the police because of the way in which the Government administers the police. [Interruption]

David Benson-Pope is parroting on. Phil Goff, who is sitting there smiling away as though the world is rosy, knows that he is just as responsible as George Hawkins, because they are the Government. They know that this has happened under their watch. They know that George Hawkins is a broken man because of his worries around police, yet they allow him to carry on administering the police. They know that the police have lost trust, faith, and the ability to believe that their Minister will help them deliver what they would like to give New Zealand—a competent police force.

I know from speaking with the police that they are as worried as every citizen of this nation about what is happening to them and about their inability to deliver for the community they serve. We know that George Hawkins has failed. The Government knows that George Hawkins has failed. George Hawkins, as Minister of Police, has failed the people of this country. The Government does not even support him on its party list. He is ranked so low that he actually pulled out of the list and has taken the chance that he might hold his seat at the next election. But the Labour Government sure is not backing him.

The good thing is that after the next election Labour will not be in Government. Labour knows that George Hawkins knows he will not be part of the executive anyway, come what may. This Government is showing that it has no faith in him to lead the police force out of its problems. The Government does not even believe in George Hawkins. His colleagues do not believe in him. Most important, the police do not believe in him. And, sadly, the citizens of this nation do not believe in him.

We have wonderful people serving in our police force, men and women. They are dedicated people giving of themselves for this nation, for the force they believe in, and for the citizens of New Zealand. But, sadly, they are starting to lose their way. They are losing their way because they know they are not getting the guidance, the support, and the help they need from the Minister of Police, George Hawkins—and, indeed, from the Prime Minister, Helen Clark. They know that whenever they need support it is not forthcoming as it used to be.

We once had a police force that was second to none in the world. It had great people, was a great organisation, and used to stand up and serve the community whenever it was needed. We cannot say the same thing today, because Prime Minister Helen Clark, George Hawkins, Minister of Police, and this Labour Cabinet have let us down. They have let the police down and they have let the country down. They know it, and they should be doing something about it. They are letting this incompetent, bumbling fool carry on in his position as Minister of Police. It is an absolute disgrace. Quite honestly, it is an indictment on the Government members as citizens of this country that they allow this to continue. Each and every one of them is responsible for the situation and will be held to account at the election, on the election platforms.

One thing that seriously worries me is the public attitude now. Particularly in rural areas, but not just in rural areas, we are getting to the stage where, because of lack of faith in the police, members of the public are saying more and more that they will have to defend themselves. I remind this House of the case of Paul McIntyre, a farmer who decided, after having been burgled numerous times, to defend his own property. He decided to do so because he knew that if he rang the police they would not have the resources and would not be there to back him as he needed to be. So he took a decision to defend himself. Mr McIntyre has spent the last 2 years and some months defending his right to protect his castle—to protect his property—and to protect himself and his family. It is a sad day when a citizen of this nation has to stand up and defend himself in isolation, then gets bagged by the likes of Phil Goff, the Minister of Justice, when all he wanted was to look after himself, his family, and his property. This Government has put this country in such a predicament that Paul McIntyre had to take that action.

And believe me, mark my words—I am glad this will be recorded in Hansard—this is not an isolated incident. It will happen again while this administration—Prime Minister Helen Clark, George Hawkins, and the likes of Phil Goff, David Benson-Pope, and others—is allowed to be in control of this country and our police resources. While this is the case we will continue to see reports such as this coming out to tell us how badly run these organisations are.

It is not just the police and the 111 system. We are seeing it right across the board. We are seeing it in education, with the debacle about all the qualifications.

💬 Stephen Franks: In health.

We are seeing it constantly in health, with more and more people on longer and longer waiting lists not getting the service they need. We see it in welfare, where people need more and more support and are not getting their needs addressed. We see it in defence. We have great people in our defence force—absolutely outstanding New Zealand citizens—but they are sadly let down by an administration that does not believe in defending New Zealand at all and has taken us into an isolationist mode from a defence perspective.

💬 Stephen Franks: In corrections.

We see it in corrections, in the economy, in biosecurities—the list goes on and on. It is all because we have an incompetent Government, fronted in this case by an incompetent Minister supported by an incompetent Prime Minister. Indeed, the only thing we can really say the police have managed to do, because they have had to, is investigate the Prime Minister. It is a disgrace on her and a disgrace on this country that we have a Prime Minister who comes under the scrutiny of the police.

In closing, I sincerely hope that this Minister, these Ministers, and this Government will seriously consider this report, because it is an indictment on them, on their governance, and on the Minister. If he actually were somebody of credibility in this nation who took his role seriously and really believed in his job as Minister of Police, he would do the one credible thing left to him and step down as Minister of Police. There are precedents for it. One hopes that George Hawkins, at least, will take the step others have taken when they have made mistakes and proven to be incompetent: stepping down. That now is George Hawkins’ only remedy.

That member got one clap, which was all he deserved. I heard John Carter apologising all weekend on Radio New Zealand for the appalling job the previous National Government had done in running down our Defence Force. But when he got up in the House today did John Carter, a senior member of the National Government in the 1990s, say one word about what National was doing to the police force at the end of its term in Government? Before that we heard Tony Ryall, the Minister of Justice in the last National Government. Those members sat in the National caucus, and Tony Ryall sat around the Cabinet table with his National colleagues, planning to cut our police force numbers by 540. Under the National Party’s plans, 540 police jobs were to be cut. Fortunately that National Government was turfed out of office and never had the chance to do so, but that is what it intended to do.

George Hawkins, the Minister of Police since December 1999, has increased the number of police staff by more than 1,000. We have record numbers of police staff in this country. George Hawkins has increased the annual budget for the police by $200 million. That is $200 million a year more being spent on our police force. We can see it in the record. The police force is now resolving a higher percentage of crime than ever before. In 9 years the previous National Government had run down the resolution rate to a paltry 35 to 36 percent of crime. That rate is already up to 44 percent, and is climbing. The police are doing their job; they are locking away more crooks. That is why four new prisons are being built, and why there are more convictions than ever before. We have a resourced police force and tough legislation that it can use properly. That is why the crime rate today is the lowest it has been in 23 years. The crime rate came down last year by 8 percent.

💬 Stephen Franks: No one believes it.

Stephen Franks grins like a Cheshire cat and says that he does not believe that the crime rate has come down, but he believed it when it went up. He used to parade the crime figures around all the time. We use the crime figures compiled by the same organisation as previously, the police, using the same method of collecting the statistics. Of course the crime rate is down. The violent crime rate is down. National Party members, in an act of absolute hypocrisy, come here to the House to talk about crime. National presided over the highest increases in crime rates in the 1990s and the highest increases ever in this country in the rate of violent crime.

Let me say one other thing to the members of the Opposition, who knock the police for doing their job of making our roads safer. Last year we had the lowest rate of road accidents in New Zealand for decades. But 400 people still died on the roads. Ten times the number of murder victims died on the roads in this country, because people were drink-driving and speeding. Clearly it has to be a function of our police force, alongside fighting crime, to make sure that our road toll comes down and that there are fewer victims—fewer families deprived of their kids, and fewer kids deprived of their mum or dad through being killed in road accidents.

I say, with regard to the 111 system, that it is vitally important that when New Zealanders are facing an emergency and pick up the phone and dial 111, they get a satisfactory response. That is absolutely critical. This report is quite blunt about the shortcomings in the current system. But I give credit to the Commissioner of Police. He has taken responsibility on the chin for that. He has said that it is his job—that the problem is an operational one. That is what this report is about. It is not predominantly about resourcing; it is about operational matters. Stephen Franks has read it; he talked about it before. He knows that of the 61 recommendations, about 59 relate to operational matters, not resourcing. The Commissioner of Police has recognised that there is a problem. There are 460,000 111 calls every year, and it is not surprising that some of those go astray. It is not good enough for the police to get it 95 percent right; it is not good enough for them to get it 99 percent right. We need to be sure that every time there is a genuine emergency and a 111 call is put through, the police respond effectively and efficiently, and a squad car turns up to the site of that emergency. This report sets out a blueprint of what needs to be done. I said before that most of the recommendations are about operational matters, which are purely within the jurisdiction of the Commissioner of Police. We have the tradition in this country of constabulary independence.

The one point the report makes on resourcing states: “While extra staff was frequently raised as a solution, and sometimes the only solution to the CCSC problems, the Panel does not believe staff numbers … to be the only issue. There is inherent capability potential in the existing staff base and developing this potential needs to be a primary focus.” But the issue does require some extra resources. Our Minister of Police came to the House in February, and in reply to a parliamentary question said that a review was going on, and that if the commissioner needed more resources, we would make sure that he got them. The Minister of Police has been as good as his word. He brought the issue to Cabinet 2 weeks ago, he took it up with the Minister of Finance, and he came away with an extra $45.5 million to be spent on putting this operation right and on capital expenditure. This Minister of Police has been a success. He has delivered for the police in that regard.

A wide range of other things need to happen. But just in case those who are listening on the radio to the Opposition spokespeople think that the report was uniformly black, I say that it was not. It talked about the good things in the way our system is running, about the committed staff and management, and about a communications technology that it described in the words “world class”. It talked about the commissioner already being on to the problem and starting to put the solution in place, and it made the point, which should be obvious to everyone in this House, that these problems are not unique. Overseas police forces have had similar performance issues with regard to their communications and emergency response, but the report stated that we can achieve best practice in this country, and that the problems are readily solvable. I believe that they can and will be solved, and I congratulate the commissioner on getting on to the task of addressing them.

In the last few minutes I will talk about those problems. They are problems of demand and service delivery. They are problems of leadership within the police force, the command centre, and the communications centres. They are about training and supervision, and about new technology. In respect of new technology, 1.6 million phone calls come through the centres each year, most of which are not priority calls. In fact, Telecom has said that 68 percent of 111 calls should not be made, and that there needs to be another channel for non-urgent calls. It is talking about an 0800 311 311 number. I hope that that is something the commissioner gets on and does now, because if the system were not clogged up with calls that are not urgent, and that sometimes are simply hoax calls, then it would work better. The report talks about the need for additional radio channels, particularly in my city of Auckland. Four new channels will be made available there. We are piloting an automatic vehicle location system—the commissioner is on to that, and progress is being made. A new rural liaison officer scheme has been set up, because people in rural areas did not feel that they were getting the service they needed. I am in favour of that. A new community reference panel has been set up, so that the stakeholders are involved in how the system is being organised. That will guarantee good service delivery. We also have leadership in terms of a national communications centre advisory board. The report talks about training. Although we have the people, they need to be well trained. We need to have rostering systems so that at times of peak demand, the people are there to answer the calls.

Those points have been made by the review group, and they are points that the commissioner has responded to. He is committed to ensuring that a solution is put in place and that we have the sort of best-practice system that the review team states this country is capable of achieving. I congratulate George Hawkins on getting the resources, and I look forward to the commissioner getting on and doing the operational work that he is committed to doing.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.