Estimates Debate — Vote Police

As I speak to the appropriations for Vote Police, people up and down New Zealand will be asking themselves whether they remember a time when the police were held in worse esteem by the people of New Zealand. There is no other. This Parliament is meeting on what may officially be its last day of this session, and we know that every single piece of market research information shows that public confidence in the New Zealand Police has plummeted. New Zealanders no longer believe that this Government’s priority is dealing with crime and drugs; they believe its priority is dealing with revenue gathering.

Up and down the country, communities know that if they dial 111, the chances are that they will not get the level of service they want. The Opposition revealed a few weeks ago that 180,000 phone calls to the police communications centres had gone unanswered. The Opposition has revealed case after case of human tragedy involving the 111 system. Iraena Asher dialled the police when she needed them most and got a taxi. Then we had the folks from Te Puke, Mr and Mrs Bentley. Mrs Bentley dialled 111 when they needed assistance because crazed lunatics with a gun were beating up Mr Bentley. What happened? She was lied to, and the police did not arrive in time. The emergency services were not informed that a gun was involved. It was an absolute catastrophe. Time and time again we hear those kinds of dreadful stories of events taking place under the watch of this Minister of Police, who does not even deign to come down to the House and face accountability for his appalling performance as Minister of Police.

We have never seen a time when New Zealanders have had less confidence in their police force. Let us look at the reason for that. It is because of a complete and utter lack of leadership by this Minister, and because of appalling leadership by the Commissioner of Police. Neither of them has grasped the full extent of the understaffing and the under-resourcing of the New Zealand Police. Right now, New Zealanders know that if they need the police, the policemen and policewomen of New Zealand will do their level best to provide the sort of service they want, but that those people are under incredible staffing pressure. The Opposition revealed a few weeks ago that 1,100 unallocated cases were sitting on the desks of police officers in Counties-Manukau Police District. Do members know what happened then? The police administration picked up the phone and said to every police district in New Zealand that it should quickly move the unallocated files and put them on officers’ desks. The districts were told that it did not matter whether the officers actually dealt with the files, but the administration could say they were allocated. That is why we got the incredible situation—even in my own police district—where when we rang each of the police areas to find out how many files were unallocated and we added them up, the total was about four times what police headquarters said it was.

In Counties-Manukau we had, and still have today, a number of unallocated sexual complaints that the police have not investigated. We found out that in south Auckland nine serious sexual assaults were not being investigated because of police understaffing. Information that will come out in the next 24 hours will highlight to members of this Parliament how bad the understaffing of, for example, the Criminal Investigation Bureau in central Auckland is, and the fact that the police simply have not had the resources they need to keep up. Our police staffing is way below what any New Zealander would expect of the police force, and that is because of this Government’s priorities. This Government has made revenue gathering the priority over crime and drugs in this country. This Government has increased the number of traffic tickets by over 65 percent, when still only one in every nine burglaries is solved and the time it takes the police to respond to priority one calls is getting longer and longer in every police district.

I have a message for the communities of New Zealand: help is on the way. Support for the police will come.

We are here today to discuss the estimates for the new fiscal year. But it is, I have to say, a rather pointless exercise. It is pointless because on the issue of law and order, on the issue of the police, and on the question of whether our communities are safer, feel safer, have confidence in this Government to protect them, have confidence in the Minister of Police to give the police the resources they need, and have confidence in the Commissioner of Police to manage those resources, this Government fails on every count.

It is sad, but I guess in some ways encouraging, that when we go out into the streets, clubs, pubs, and rugby clubs of New Zealand, the New Zealanders we meet say unanimously that this Government has failed them in the area of police. This country will look back on the 111 debacles and say: “How could that ever have happened?”. When New Zealand First looks at the resources allocated by this Government to the police, we see quite clearly that this Government does not understand in any way, shape, or form the problems the police are facing.

The police ask for only three things. They ask for adequate resources—and police numbers within those adequate resources—they ask for the tools to do the job, and they ask that appropriate priorities be accorded. But what do we see? In terms of resources in ratio terms, we have a totally inadequate ratio of police to citizens in this country when compared with other likeminded nations. In terms of money, the money that the Government crows about its having increased in the Budget goes no way to addressing the police’s ability to actually investigate the levels of crime that we are dealing with today. In terms of tools, the police still want some simple tools. They want on-board data systems in their cars, they want body armour, they want stab-proof vests—actually, they want simple things like socks to arrive on time; they do not want to wait 9 weeks to get a pair—and they want legislation like an amendment to the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Act that would enable them to put young men away earlier rather than have them kill themselves on our motorways.

They want the tools to put boy racers away at the earliest stage and not be dealing with them 30, 40, or 50 convictions down the line. They want the tools to deal with people who rack up $70,000, $80,000, or $90,000 worth of fines and thumb their noses at the law. They want priorities, and they do not want the priorities built around traffic policing.

But this Government has none of those things in its policy, and I have to tell the public of New Zealand not to worry about it; after this election, all those issues will be dealt with by New Zealand First. Why this Government insists on passing laws legalising prostitution—or lowering the drinking age, which the previous Government did—and telling the public that the police will enforce the laws, and failing every time in every Budget to deliver to the police the resources to do precisely that, is absolutely beyond me.

We have a crisis in the police force in terms of confidence. We are losing experienced officers, hand over fist, and one of the reasons we lose them is that we have an incompetent Minister of Police who, when he is told that there are problems in the 111 system and is told 2 years in advance by a brave police officer in uniform, he does nothing about it, and the first time the public knows there is a problem is when a young lady goes missing and is never seen again.

Police officers are leaving the force because they are sick of writing out tickets to pump up this Government’s revenue, which is what it is. I ask the Minister, if the speed cameras and the quota ticketing are working, why are so many young men still dying on our roads? They are dying because the policy of issuing quota tickets does not work, because it is catching law-abiding citizens in the main. It is not focusing on or targeting the recidivist offender—the person who should have been taken off the road. How ridiculous it is that a man with 23 convictions for being drunk in charge of a vehicle is still at large. How sad it is that young men who are clocking up $20,000 or $30,000 worth of fines get away with it, only to die on the roads later.

Members are speaking at the moment in connection with the appropriations debate, and it is perhaps interesting to reflect on why we are doing all this. The reason is that the Crown cannot spend money, levy taxes, or raise loans without the authority of Parliament. So, in the course of the parliamentary financial cycle, a number of pieces of legislation are passed through Parliament to provide the support for funding and maintain the system of democracy as we know it here. Appropriations are, of course, made for specific purposes and are grouped into votes. I will follow the previous speaker by speaking about Vote Police, and I do that in the context of the responsibilities I have in the National Party for justice.

The previous speaker has said that we do not feel safe on our streets and in our communities. That is in marked contrast to the position that this Government has taken. The Minister of Police, Mr Hawkins, has made it clear on a number of occasions that he considers the police are fabulously well resourced. I recall him stating on 3 February 2005, in answer to a question in this debating chamber “… the police are well resourced.”, and he was to repeat that line some 12 days later when, in a second answer to a parliamentary question, he stated: “The commissioner and I often talk about resources and he is very pleased with what I get him.” The Minister was again to reaffirm the Government’s position when he stated, in answer to a question asked on 4 May, 3 months later: “I am satisfied that the police are very well resourced under this Government …”. Well, that is absolute nonsense! One need only to look, by way of comparison, at the ratio of population per police officer in countries similar to our own to see that New Zealand is critically starved of front-line police officers.

💬 Darren Hughes: Give us the exact number that National proposes.

I am going to give the exact numbers, by way of comparison, in a number of countries.

Before I do that, though, when we are talking about front-line police—and, as the Government member knows, National has made a commitment to increase the number of front-line police—we need to define exactly what we are talking about. When we are talking about front-line police, we are talking about police officers in police cars and detectives in the front line. These are the ratios. In France, for example, the ratio of population per police officer is 255:1, in Scotland it is 321:1, in England and Wales it is 393:1, in Australia it is 427:1, in the United States of America it is 438:1, in Canada it is 531:1, and in New Zealand it is 554:1. What will happen is that, by including additional sworn police staff in the 2005 Budget, New Zealand’s population to police ratio will decrease from 554:1 to 544:1. Of the countries that I have just used as an example, our percentage is the worst. Yet we have a brave and, some would say, foolish Minister stating that the police are well resourced: “The commissioner and I often talk about resources and he is very pleased with what I get him.” Finally, he stated: “I am satisfied that the police are very well resourced under this Government …”. What a load of nonsense that is! That is why, no doubt, the Police Association is calling for 10,000 sworn officers by 2010.

One of the things that has happened in the context of police funding is that tagged funding has occurred. Government members may be interested to know, if they are wide awake enough to listen, that the tagged funding has done nothing substantial—nothing significant—and nothing at all to increase the numbers of front-line police officers. We have seen increases in tagged funding, so that at Auckland airport the number of police officers has dramatically increased. That is a response to treaty obligations, which New Zealanders have accepted, but it has done nothing to increase the number of front-line police.

National’s pledge is to substantially increase the number of front-line police officers. That we are capable of doing, that we will do, and that we will fund.

I thought Mr Mark made a very good contribution to this debate in summarising the problems we have with the police, but I just want to take a much smaller area, which does not usually receive much public consideration, but which is very indicative of why no amount of money under the current control is likely to fix the problems. I want to look at the culture of secrecy. Mr Mark also raised this issue this afternoon. We have a Minister of Police who receives $1.5 million for policy advice, including advice on answering questions, who simply chooses not to answer them.

What kind of police force can we expect with a Minister who decides that the rules do not apply to him, or just decides that when it is embarrassing he will forget about supplying answers? It is a culture of secrecy where the police are, in fact, our only defence in court. In our justice system, wrongly, the public do not have a voice. The victims do not have a voice in court. The only people speaking up for the victims and the public in court are the police prosecutors, and the police are headed by a man who does not bother to answer parliamentary questions when they are embarrassing. The police should be fighting bitterly to make sure there is a general expectation in this country that truth will out, cheats do not prosper, and honesty pays. But they do not. I believe that this is as much a source of grievance to local police—the police on the beat—as it is to us.

Three high-profile cases at the moment exemplify the tolerance that this Minister has supervised—the tolerance of cover-up that means New Zealanders are simply treated as plebs, kept in the dark, and have their trust in the justice system, not just the police, affected by it.

💬 Ron Mark: Helen’s little mushrooms!

Exactly. Wrongdoing is kept under wraps by name suppression; and by the habit of judges—the justice insiders—to decide that they can know all about cases, but it will not suit the plebs, or them, if others know. Name suppression, which the police do sometimes oppose, is a cancer in the public confidence of the justice system. I have asked this Minister about his attitude on these matters, and have not got answers.

ACT policy is for open courts—to restore the tradition of British justice that prevailed until only 40 years ago. Last week I asked the Minister of Broadcasting about a State-owned enterprise I believed was complicit in a cover-up of a Northland case. It appears to me now that the State-owned enterprise, if it is involved, has covered its tracks deeply, though the Minister of Broadcasting’s answers are ambiguous, to say the least.

But in this case we have a perfect example of the suspicions that emerge about the motives of people in the justice system when we have secrecy. The insiders have their vanity satisfied by knowing all about it. The connections of an accused whose name is suppressed usually end up knowing all about it. Those who want to can find out on the Internet what is going on. We have three cases like this at the moment. We have the sports celebrities, whom everyone except Joe Public is not allowed to know unless they go on to the Internet, and we have the Northland case—the Whangarei case—where it appears that a contractor to TVNZ has helped persuade the court to allow a cover-up for 9 months.

There is an arrogance about this in the system, and it is an arrogance that is not shared by front-line police, who do not like it. It is an arrogance that comes from the insiders feeling that they may be capable of putting aside their previous knowledge and acting objectively, but the punters, who will perhaps end up on a jury, cannot. It is the arrogance that says: “Let’s dispense discretionary privilege of information”—that is the court speaking, and the police when they go along with this—“but let’s not let New Zealanders know that justice is being done.”

These high-profile cases do absolutely nothing for confidence. Veronica Jacomb, in the series To Catch a Thief, made a mockery of the public’s interest in that series. The police appear, represent the public, and represent the victims, and then we see the spectacle of virtually the whole of New Zealand with ideas of who it is, but a whole series of people having to issue statements purporting to clear themselves. This does not do anything for confidence. This does not do anything for a general belief by the public that the justice system is just serving those who have money to get Queen’s Counsel, and those who are rich.

This leaves us all in a position where we believe that justice is available to, or justice can be manipulated by, people who have access to power. The Minister of Broadcasting did not choose to resolve this. The Minister of Police—to be fair he has not had the 10-day time allowed to answer the questions I have asked him about police support for any of these cover-ups—will have 10 days to answer questions. He has a budget of $1.49 million to do that. His answers that I received today to four other important questions say just what I expect he will do with this embarrassing question on name suppression. He has told me: “It has not been possible to obtain the information required to enable me to respond to this question by the due date. I undertake to provide the member with a copy of the information once it is available.” My guess is that that information will not be available until well after the election.

In the Whangarei case, name suppression has been extended to 22 September, well after the election. In the Whangarei case it cannot be the interests of the accused that have been considered by the court, it must be the financial interests of those he is associated with, because everyone in Whangarei has a good idea of the nature of the charges and who the accused is—everyone who knows the accused. It cannot be the normal charitable concern about family and close relationships, it has to be commercial interests.

The Minister of Police, who could have helped resolve this, and who could have been seen as a Minister who was keen to see open justice, has set a pattern of cover-up. This is the same Minister of Police who, when I first asked about the Te Puke couple, Maggie and Peter Bentley, told me that the inquiry would look into whether there was lying, and would look into why he called it a textbook case. The police told the Bentleys that there were police on hand, when they were at least an hour away, told the Bentleys that they had called their neighbours when they had called no neighbours, and blocked Mrs Bentley with reassuring words that were entirely false.

The Minister of Police assured me, in answers to written and oral questions, that that matter was the subject of a police investigation that would later be reported on. I have read the investigation report, and it does not touch on those matters. There is no explanation that I have seen of why the Bentleys were lied to or why the Minister then described that as a textbook case. The Minister, as the political leader of a police force, should have made it his business to insist on an adequate answer to that. He should have made it his business to be setting a model of openness and a pattern that respected truth, and when he made a mistake, fixing it immediately.

When I implied in my parliamentary question last week that the Queen’s Counsel in the Whangarei case had been directly supported by TVNZ, I made sure, as soon as I learnt that that was not the case, that that was revealed. What does the Minister of Police, charged with statutory duty to uphold the confidence of people in the police, do? He goes to ground. He does not answer the questions. With all the hundreds of thousands of dollars—the $1.49 million—that he has at his disposal to answer questions and provide policy advice, we get nothing more. I do not think he has even asked for any more. I see in the new initiatives his sum for ministerial policy advice has increased by $13,000. There is $13,000 extra, yet his excuse to me, and to Mr Mark of New Zealand First, for not answering his questions is lack of time.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.