Policing (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill

on behalf of the Minister of Police: I move, That the Policing (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Law and Order Committee to consider the bill. This bill amends the Policing Act 2008 to enable cost recovery for certain police services.

The New Zealand Police provides a wide range of services to the general public, and to public and private sector agencies and organisations in a variety of locations and settings. Most of the services that police provide are core statutory functions and are for the benefit of the general public. Examples of such services include responding to calls for assistance, and conducting criminal investigations and prosecutions. These services are provided for society’s general benefit. The provision of such core policing services will not be affected by this bill. However, some services delivered by police, although still important and highly valued by the public, provide a significant degree of private benefit to individuals or particular groups, and it is appropriate to shift the cost of funding at least some of these services from the general taxpayer to the specific beneficiaries of these services.

In many overseas jurisdictions, such demand services already attract a fee to cover the cost of providing this service. For example, all police services in all Australian jurisdictions currently apply a cost recovery regime for certain policing services. The New Zealand Police is one of the few police services that do not have legislation that explicitly allows for some degree of cost recovery. Cost recovery will enable police to meet the cost of increases in demand for certain services, thereby avoiding placing additional strain on the public purse or shifting resources towards those services at the expense of core front-line police activities. It will also safeguard the delivery of these services by ensuring their future sustainability.

The public clearly understands this strategy, and during the initial public consultation undertaken by police in 2013, two-thirds of submitters agreed that it is appropriate for police to have the ability to recover costs in some instances. This response is consistent with the public feedback that the previous Labour-led Government received during its consultation in 2006-07, during its review of the Police Act. At that time 75 percent of respondents from the general public supported cost recovery being applied in some situations.

This bill, firstly, sets out the types of police services that may be the subject of cost recovery. These are demand services as defined in the bill. Secondly, the bill sets out the criteria on which cost recovery is to be based. These broadly relate to justifiability, equity, efficiency, and transparency. Thirdly, the bill sets out consultation provisions; fourthly, methods of cost recovery; fifthly, the provision of exemptions and waivers of any prescribed fees or charges; and, finally, amendments to the Act to provide that regulations may be made by Order in Council, on the recommendation of the Minister of Police, prescribing fees and charges for demand services.

As set out in the bill, a “demand service” is defined as a service that is requested by, and is of direct benefit to, an individual or organisation, although there may also be an indirect benefit to the public as a whole. Police vetting is listed as an example of a demand service. For avoidance of doubt, certain core police functions are excluded from the definition. Prior to recommending regulations to prescribe a fee for any particular service, the Minister of Police must be satisfied that the service is a demand service, that the service and principles are consistent with the specified criteria that have been drawn from Treasury’s and the Auditor-General’s guidelines for setting charges in the public sector, and that due consultation has been undertaken with the affected parties.

Following the passage of this bill, it is intended to introduce policing regulations to enable cost recovery for the police vetting service, along with a charging regime for that service. At present the police vetting service is the only demand service being proposed for cost recovery. Police undertake the vetting of employees and volunteers for approved public sector and private sector agencies involved in a variety of public interaction activities such as education, community services, caregiving, and other health services. The vetting service provides employers with relevant background information on potential employees that may have a bearing on the suitability of an individual to work in a particular environment, interact with potentially vulnerable people, or handle sensitive information. In 2013 there were around 457,700 requests to use the police vetting service, and the demand is steadily rising.

A number of recent national and international developments have put increasing pressure on the police vetting service. For example, the introduction of mandatory safety checks for paid members of the children’s workforce, as set out in the Vulnerable Children Act 2014; the proposed agreement with Australia for the sharing of criminal history information on individuals for employment vetting purposes; and the potential vetting of individuals from New Zealand who are seeking employment in the United Kingdom, Canada, or the United States. So the proposed regulations would allow police to charge for these individual vets so as to recoup the costs involved. This will help safeguard the delivery of the vetting service and ensure its future sustainability in the face of that increasing demand, and it will also incentivise efficiencies by both police and the users of the service.

So users of the police vetting service will be asked to pay a small fee for something they have previously received for free. The vetting service fee will be around $7 per check. The equivalent fees in the Australian jurisdictions are considerably higher. For example, it costs A$52 for a national police check from the New South Wales Police Force, and in South Australia the fee is A$56.50 for a national police certificate, which details an individual’s offending history. It is expected that most organisations will be able to absorb the vetting service costs with little impact on the volume or quality of their services. Many organisations could pass these costs on to the individuals who derive a private benefit from the end result. However, for those organisations that cannot meet the costs incurred, provision has been made in the bill for fees to be waived in some cases. We are anticipating that this would be done in accordance with publicly available guidelines, and that, for example, fees could be waived for some volunteers in specific situations. The guidelines would be reviewed after 18 months of operation.

I am proposing that the bill not be enacted before June 2015, and that regulations setting out fees for police vetting would not come into force before July 2015. I am also signalling that there will need to be an amendment to the land transport regulations when the policing regulations are made. This is so the vetting fee for the checks that police undertake for the New Zealand Transport Agency, currently set at $28.20, is aligned with other vetting fees.

In summary, enabling police to recover the costs of certain police services will improve the way police resources are used, enhance service delivery, and provide better value for money. I believe there is a strong case for cost recovery for services where the benefit primarily accrues to individuals and private organisations rather than to the public as a whole. I commend this bill to the House.

The Labour Party will vote for the first reading of this bill with some rather strong reservations. We believe it should go to a select committee. It should be subject at the select committee to public submissions and very close analysis of what it involves.

When I first picked up this bill I thought I would probably be quite supportive of its content, because I thought that there are clearly things where police services are required and cost recovery might be justifiable. If Mick Jagger is coming to sing at Westpac Stadium and they are making millions of dollars out of it and we are providing police services, it is profit making—yes, I have no problem with that. They should meet some of the cost of policing a commercial and profit-making arrangement. When I read the Police Association’s submission, it used that same example, or it could have used a professional sporting event, because that is also about making money. But when I pick up this bill I find that it is not about that at all.

This bill sets out in its explanatory note that at present—at present—the only service being proposed for cost recovery is the police vetting service. As I read that out, I looked at Kelvin Davis because he is a teacher. Do you know what the largest organisation is that uses the services of police vetting? It is the Teachers Council. There was that experiment back in the 1990s when the National Government decided that, actually, teachers and people who work at schools did not need to be vetted. It was a disaster. It was an absolute disaster, and the Government had to bring vetting back.

What is really important about this is that the Minister of Police is telling us that this is not a core function of the police. You know, I picked up the Policing Act 2008, and what are the functions of the police? They include maintaining public safety, crime prevention, and community support and reassurance. I would have thought that the police role—and it is mandatory under a 2001 piece of legislation—of vetting people for their suitability for looking after our most vulnerable citizens, our kids, in the classroom, at schools, and at preschool met the primary functions of the police, which is maintaining public safety, ensuring crime prevention, and community support and reassurance.

Another of the organisations that this is going to relate to is Child, Youth and Family. I would have thought that vetting people working in Child, Youth and Family—for the benefit not only of children but, in particular, vulnerable children—was a core function. I would have thought that our many charities and all of those groups that take on volunteers to work for the public good, who are not paid, but who are subject to mandatory vetting, would be excluded.

💬 Mike Sabin: The benefit is right across; that’s right.

But I find from reading the papers, Mr Sabin, that that is not intended. Maybe some of the volunteer groups are but certainly not the largest groups that might use it—the Teachers Council and Child, Youth and Family. And who are the beneficiaries of those services? Are the beneficiaries people who make money out of it? No, the beneficiaries are our kids. So whom is the Government intending to charge for that vetting service? Will it charge the teachers? Will it charge the social workers? Will it charge the schools? Will it come down to the parents of those kids who are being protected having to pay? Does this not look like simply another form of hidden taxation? Lower the tax rates on the very wealthy, cut the top tax rates, and sneak in taxes where they can be hidden away.

You know, I have great respect for the role of the police, I want the police to carry out their functions, and I do not want them, as a rule, to be a cost recovery organisation. The police are there for the public good, and where the goal is the public good, there should be no charging. What we expected was a bill that said that we will charge the entertainment industry and we will charge the big professional sporting organisations, but we get a bill that is going to charge our kids, our teachers, our schools, and our social workers. I am not in favour of that. Keeping our kids safe, preventing crime, and assuring the public that those who work with our children are fit and proper people to do so are core functions of the police that should not be about cost recovery. It is not profit making; it is public good, and that is the way that it should be.

I have given some more thought as to why we have got this bill before us. Yes, this was something that was considered in the review leading up to the Policing Act 2008. It was something that the Labour Government decided not to do, and with very good reason. Why is the Government trying to do it now?

💬 Mike Sabin: What was it? What was the reason?

The reason is set out, actually, in the public consultation document that was about the cost recovery of policing services. This is what it says: “The allocation of resources across competing services is finely balanced. The future sustainability of Police services depends on there being room for improvements or investment in new areas requiring additional Police resources; … Ultimately, cost recovery provides an opportunity to free up some Police resources and better ensure funding is focussed on [other] areas”.

We have this bill before the House because for 6 years this National Government has cut the funding for our police force in real terms—in real terms. I went to the Parliamentary Library and asked it whether it could give me the real level of funding in 2010 and the real level of funding this year, and to tell me how much extra the Government has invested in policing. Do you know what the answer was? It was not anything extra; the Government had cut the police budget in real terms by $114 million—a $114 million cut to the police budget.

So what has that forced the police to do? Well, they have closed community police stations, have they not? Let us list them around my area—St Lukes, Mount Albert, and Blockhouse Bay. They did not have the courage to say that they were cutting the Mount Roskill police station, but they did cut it. It was temporarily closed for 2½ years before they had the courage to admit that it was closed to the public. They have delayed recruiting police officers, so the actual number of serving police officers fell last year—it fell. We had a smaller number of police officers than the minimum level of police officers that should be out there on the front line.

Of course, in this Budget, we saw cuts in core operating expenditure. What were those cuts? They were for $40 million in the Budget this year—$40 million this year alone. What were the areas cut? Crime prevention—$3.5 million was taken out of that. For investigations, $7 million was taken from that. And for primary response—and you would think that was really important. How many of us have had constituents complain that when they were burgled they rang up the police and the police said: “Yeah, we’ll get to it eventually. Don’t touch anything because we’ll eventually fingerprint it. Don’t replace the broken sliding door—I know it’s the middle of winter, but we’ll get there eventually.”? Well, do we blame the police officer? No, we do not blame the police officer, because $7 million was cut out of primary response for the police this year. Road policing—and we are meant to really put that on a pedestal—was cut by $10 million.

This has had a dramatic impact. The police have been placed in the position now where they are being told by this Government that there will be no increase in real terms, to forget the fact that policing is a fundamental responsibility of the New Zealand Government, and that the Government wants them to go out and get money from the people they provide services to. And where will they start? They will start with schoolkids. Yes, that is the sort of Government we really want, is it not?

💬 Carmel Sepuloni: And the social workers.

And the social workers. If we are going to have cost recovery, let us put it in the right place. Let us put it on the commercial profit-making organisations. Let us not put it on those core functions that we expect, as of right, the police to provide the public with.

I agree with the Hon Phil Goff on the last points that he made. It is certainly very explicit, from what I can see, that the cost recovery that is under discussion and relates specifically to this bill deals with a direct benefit to a particular individual or organisation. If Mr Goff is seriously suggesting that $7 per police vetting for the narrow field of people who would fit the definition of the private individual getting a greater benefit than the public good—the $7 for clipping that ticket—is somehow the police’s only way to recover this massive hole in the budget that he seems to think there is, then I think that is slightly delusional.

The reality is that this is about cost recovery; it is not about profit making. It is about recovering costs where the police are providing a service to an individual or organisation that goes above and beyond the interests of the wider public. I am sure that a very important part of the focus of the select committee process, and the submissions, will be to see exactly where it is that various stakeholders see that that line sits.

I think it is very clear, certainly from this National Government’s perspective. It is very important that the police provide the services they do. Once upon a time it was called a police force, was it not? Now it is a police service, or what have you. The world moves on; it is a different place.

This is not about changing the way the police go about doing business; it is about saying that where there are individuals who will accrue a personal benefit, or where there is an individual who will essentially benefit, without the public enjoying that wider benefit in terms of police time and police resources, then, possibly, there should be some recovery of that cost—at a very, very minimal cost. It is important to note that we are one of the very few—I have not dug far enough to find out whether there are any other jurisdictions that do not actually have any form of cost recovery, but it is actually very commonplace. It goes a lot further than what has just been suggested here in terms of cost recovery for police vetting.

So it is important, I think, to understand that there is a greater use of police resources and a greater use of police time, and that there are constraints, therefore, on other services that the police can provide to the wider public as a result of doing police vetting. It is about getting a balance that ensures that if there are costs associated with that, and the individual or the organisation gets a private benefit that is over and above or usurps the greater public good, then there is an opportunity for the police to recover some of those costs and, arguably, to put those funds back into more effective public services and into the better delivery of better public services.

As the Minister mentioned, the Policing Act currently does not specifically enable this to happen. Obviously, it has been looked at, some time before. It is very much about recovering costs. I would suggest that it is about only just recovering costs. You will get no complaints from me about the fact that it has been a very, very tough time for public sector organisations such as the New Zealand Police to work through a global financial crisis and the problems that we have had financially as a nation with the Canterbury earthquakes. Everyone has had to cut their cloth to fit, and it has been a very challenging time. One thing I will say is that we can dish out a huge bouquet to the police in the sense that what they have done is entirely change their focus far more so to a prevention focus. They have been far better resourced in terms of their equipment and tools of the job, if you like, to be able to get out there and actually put more effective man hours on the street.

The way we are policing today is not the same way we were doing it 10, 15, or 20 years ago. I anticipate that that will continue to evolve, for a number of reasons. It is not a case that there is just a blank cheque that can be written out. The balance, of course, is always ensuring that the public are protected and that we have a sinking lid on the amount of crime. The reality is that we are in a position where we have a 35-year low in crime rates. We can get a little bit cynical about statistics from time to time, but the reality is that if you look at the morale of the police and you look at the public satisfaction, they are both good. They are both saying that the police, in very, very tough times, are doing a very, very good job. Sure, in a perfect world we would have resourced them with more, we would do more and be able to achieve more and there would not be any crime, but the reality is that that is not the world we live in, and it is important that we are always looking to strike the appropriate balance that does not compromise the greater good for the public. I believe that this bill provides an opportunity for us to ask that question and get that balance right, when it comes to police vetting. I commend the bill to the House.

I will start on the Policing (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill at the conclusion of the regulatory impact statement, which says: “Currently, Police is unable to charge for most of the functions designated under the Policing Act 2008.”, except in certain circumstances, such as the recovery of licensing fees for firearms. This means that the New Zealand Police has limited or no control over demand-driven services and is unable to expand its resources to meet expanding demand. Well, it just seems strange to me—if there is expanding demand, then there should be an expanding budget to go with that expanding demand. As my colleague Phil Goff has said, the police budget has actually been cut. In fact, in Budget 2014 the police received significant cuts. The output expenses for police were reduced from $1.503 billion to $1.461 billion—that is over $40 million in cuts this year. These cuts are putting real strain on the police force.

I have just heard Mike Sabin say that morale in the police force is up there. The reality is that under National the average number of police resignations per month has skyrocketed compared with under Labour, increasing from 14.2 resignations a month in 2009 to 50.7—50.7—police resignations a month in 2013. To claim that morale in the police force is actually on the rise is a misnomer. Up in the north, I have family in the police, I have friends in the police—in fact, I have been contacted by policemen who are concerned about their jobs, and, in fact, their stations will be closed, as Phil Goff mentioned. They have rung me—obviously, they do not want to be named—to say that they are really concerned about small police stations such as the one in Kawakawa, where I was born and bred, and are worried about their jobs.

The budget cuts are one of the big drivers of the strain on police. Those cuts, as Phil Goff has said, reduce their core operating expenditure—for example, $3.5 million was cut from general crime prevention, $7 million was cut from investigations, and $7 million was cut from primary responses. As Phil Goff said, the old ranchslider has been broken into, but because the police are under strain and so many officers are resigning every month, there are fewer of them to go out and do those investigations in a timely manner. There is also another cut of $10 million to road policing. These are the core functions of the police that are being put at risk as a result of those cuts.

But the Minister was right—there is some public appetite for the recouping of some costs. I will just go through a few of them. Of the 102 submitters who responded to the question of whether the police should be able to recover the costs of certain services, 66 percent broadly supported the proposal. A large number of these submitters commented that cost recovery would be appropriate in certain or limited situations where the services are not core police functions, and where the benefit is to only an individual user or private organisation. So of the 35 submitters who were mostly opposed to the police introducing cost recovery for certain services, some were concerned that it could set a precedent for a range of police services being user-pays, and that the charging could not be applied appropriately to public policing.

One of the things we are a bit concerned about is this thin end of the wedge towards privatising our police force. Another issue raised by some of those opposed to the police recovering costs was the possibility of a cost recovery regime leading to inequitable treatment of paying customers versus non-paying customers. We would hate to see the situation in New Zealand where the protection of the police came at a price, and where the level of police service received by people such as my constituents in Te Tai Tokerau, who do not have a lot of money, would be different from those who do have a bit of money behind them.

As has already been raised today, the New Zealand Teachers Council was one organisation that did not support this proposal. It said: “A vital part of the education safety path for children is the mandatory requirement in the Act that the council carry out Police vets for those applying to be registered as teachers … to assist in determining whether an applicant ‘is of good character and fit to be a teacher’ …”.

As a former principal myself we police-vetted all staff, not just teachers—librarians, caretakers, office people—because we wanted to make sure that everybody was fit to work with children. The Teachers Council says there should be no charge for police vetting for teachers because “Police vetting has a significant public benefit in accordance with the principles for exemption in the original consultation document; Police vetting is part of the primary functions of the police and in no way an ‘additional service’; The Council is not a profit-generating company or organisation and the cost of vets would fall directly on teachers or schools;” or on the council itself.

There was an equation somewhere in the notes that said there are about 450,000 police vets carried out in any given year. Basically, $7.70 would be the cost per police vet. That is fine to say now that it is $7.70, but who is to say that in years to come it will not become $27.70 or $50.70 and that it will not start to cost about the same as what we hear it does over in Australia? The Teachers Council said there are “few, if any, further efficiencies to be generated in the Police vetting system for teachers and charging will not reduce demand or costs incurred;”. That is a great point—just because we charge to recover costs for police vetting, it does not mean we are going to reduce the number of police vets needed.

The Teachers Council is opposed to any proposal that would make the council subject to cost recovery for a process that a statute requires it to undertake. So here is the statute that says it must vet all teachers—it is the statute that says that—and now they are saying that the council has to pay for it. Again, as has been mentioned today, where are those costs going to fall? Are they going to fall on schools? We know that schools are underfunded as they are. We know that schools struggle with money as it is, and here we are, placing another cost on them. So there are 40,000 police vets a year through the Teachers Council. That is an average of more than 3,300 per month—about 13 percent of the number of vets made each year. So 13 percent of any police vetting comes through the Teachers Council and schools wanting to have staff police vetted.

I agree with the Teachers Council that this is actually part of the core function of the police, in terms of maintaining public safety. Under section 9 of the Policing Act 2008 one of the core functions is maintaining public safety. This is actually about maintaining the safety of the most vulnerable in our society—that is, our young people who are in schools. It is about crime prevention as well, because if we can stop people with dubious histories of offending against children, then we are actually preventing crime as well.

We support this bill going to the select committee. I think there is a lot of debate that needs to be had around the bill, there are a lot of questions that need to be asked, and organisations need to submit and have their voices heard, but the Labour Party does support this bill going to the select committee. Kia ora.

Thank you for the opportunity to contribute to the first reading of the Policing (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill. The previous speaker, Kelvin Davis, mentioned policemen resigning. I know two policemen who resigned from the police force but who are still contributing to society, and they are part of the National Party caucus: Mike Sabin and Mark Mitchell. They are representing their constituencies very well. They are very good electorate MPs and are contributing to this Parliament.

The police want to ensure that their resources are carefully prioritised to focus more on victims, preventing crime, and delivering a sustainable, efficient, and high-quality service to all New Zealanders. This bill will help the police recover some costs and prioritise that. With this, I commend this bill to the House.

This Policing (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill purports to enable cost recovery for certain police services. Most of those services, of course, are currently provided through baseline funding—essentially, Vote Police each year funds the activities of the police force throughout New Zealand, with one or two well-known and historically stable exceptions such as firearms licensing and the like. The Greens absolutely believe that we need to retain that model—that we fund the police adequately to do their job, which is a difficult job and a complex set of tasks. We think there is no place for user-pays in funding policing in New Zealand.

This bill absolutely sets the police force on the road to user-pays. It establishes a model where at any point by Order in Council the Minister of Police can make regulations to extend the range of services for which a charge will be applied. Inevitably, those charges will broaden. Although they have suggested that the initial charge—$7, as I think has been mentioned—would be relatively low, nevertheless that will inevitably increase over time. In any case, we think that is too much to impose on organisations, particularly those that are charged with the care of children—schools, early childhood centres. This sort of charge will have an impact on those organisations. Although we are told that there will be opportunities for exemptions, for those organisations to apply to be excused from the charge, that in itself imposes charges on small community-based organisations. We see no place for user-pays by stealth, because that is what we believe this bill is. It is, as in the phrase already used by my Labour colleague Kelvin Davis, thin end of the wedge stuff. It is very much the first little step on the way towards charging people for policing services, and we want no part of that.

The point has been made that the police have suffered budget cuts, to the extent that their budgets have either been stable or slightly diminished over the years. Their costs have gone up. The police have responded very well. They have responded positively heroically to the cuts to their budgets. They have found efficiencies, they have invested in new technologies, and they have invested in new tactics and very good strategies to reduce their costs and to get maximum productivity out of their officers, out of their force, and out of their equipment. But there is a point beyond which there is nothing left to be cut. There is no fat left in the system. I believe the police are actually past that point, where they are actually suffering from the fact that they are being funded inadequately. This idea of charging for some services is not a satisfactory or an acceptable solution to that.

The proposition in the general policy statement is interesting. Some of the sort of tortured, convoluted logic that is offered to us in the explanatory note almost reads like a Neo-liberal Economics 101 tutorial, desperately trying to justify the imposition of these charges on the basis of private good versus public good. It does not stand up to even the least scrutiny, like the idea that somehow a person must pay for a form of a licence to operate if they want to work with children, for example, by paying this fee to have them vetted by police to ensure they are right and proper people to be working in an environment where there are children. The proposition, we are told, is that that moves the cost away from general taxation to specific users or beneficiaries. I would argue that we are all beneficiaries when we ensure that our children are not exposed to people who may behave inappropriately, who may not be safe with those children. To suggest that the private good overrides the public good in that simply is not a sustainable argument.

We are told there will be efficiency in consumption—quoting from the explanatory note: “demand that is not strictly necessary, but which occurs due to a zero nominal price, should be eliminated.” The proposition embedded in that is that people are going along to get individuals vetted just for a bit of fun, just because they can, and it does not cost anything. That is nonsense. People do not go and get police vetting of individuals lightly.

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

Before the break I was making the point that this is simply user-pays by stealth. This is an attempt to introduce the mechanism that will enable charging of core public services—in this case, policing—in a way that starts off looking quite minimal, quite benign, but in fact, inevitably, it will increase, it will expand, and it is simply the wrong model to be funding our police force. The proposition in the explanatory note, as I was mentioning before the break, is the notion of efficiency in consumption—the proposition that demand is not strictly necessary but occurs because there is no charge, effectively. It is proposing that people are getting these vettings done for reasons that are not significant or real—that they are simply doing it because it is free. I simply do not accept that proposition.

Regarding efficiency in production, we are told that “… users facing a nominal price will demand high-quality services from Police. This … will drive Police to be innovative and seek production efficiencies:”. I believe that every one of our hard-working, diligent police officers, from the newest recruit up to the commissioner, should be offended by that comment. It suggests that our police will work a little bit harder, a little bit more efficiently, because they are clipping the ticket, because there is an actual fee involved. I absolutely reject that and I do believe that it is almost a slur. Police officers could quite rightly be offended by that proposition that they will work harder and smarter and more effectively because there is going to be a $7 invoice attached to their action. That is nonsense. I have great confidence in our police force. There are occasional falls from grace, and that is unfortunate, but for the most part they do their job very well and they work very hard. The idea that they will do a little bit better because they can hand somebody a $7 invoice is simply offensive.

Similarly, the notion that charging for these services, which allegedly benefit individuals—but, as I have already made the point, in fact there is significantly more public benefit in, for example, vetting people before they work with children than there is individual benefit. We are told, nevertheless, that this will free up resources for the delivery of front-line and preventative services. I cannot see where vetting is not a preventative service. It is in the nature of vetting that you ensure that these people who are going to work with children are appropriate people to be trusted with the care and custody of children. How is that anything but a preventative service? I think this justification we are offered has tried so hard to justify something that ought not to happen that they have had to go to these extreme lengths and offer this very convoluted logic, as I have said.

In May, when the press release came out from the then Minister of Police, we were told that a fee of around $5 to $7 had been proposed. Already, before it is even in place, we have gone to the top of that range—$7. I think there is an indication there that charging will only increase. More significantly, we are told that this is about cost recovery. The changes, we are told, will allow the police to recover about $2.2 million a year. That is not an insignificant amount of money, but put it against the overall police budget—and I am relying on my memory here—I believe it is about $1.5 billion a year that we spend on policing. To suggest that this relative drop in the bucket, that this whole piece of legislation enabling charging, is about clawing back $2.2 million out of a $1.5 billion budget is, I think, nonsense. It is simply user-pays by stealth. It is just the opening up—the softening up, in a sense—of the New Zealand public to accept that “Oh, yes, if you want a service from the police force, you are obliged to pay for it.” That is a road that the Greens are certainly not interested in going down.

The point was made earlier that some organisations will be exempt from vetting charges. I guess if they plead hardship or some other concern, they will be heard and the volunteers working for them will be excused this charge. What about the transaction costs that involves? Again, what is the actual net benefit to the police out of this claimed $2.2 million? Take away the costs involved in gathering that money in the day-to-day management of transactions and that $2.2 million will disappear very quickly, or a large chunk of it will. The cost that it imposes on NGOs, which typically are supported by philanthropic funding, often by Government grants, creates this money-go-round where these organisations simply will be put at cost. Thank you.

I am pleased to rise on behalf of New Zealand First and on behalf of my colleague Ron Mark to take a call on this Policing (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill. New Zealand First will be supporting this bill going to the Law and Order Committee, but that should not be taken as an indication that our support will be continued beyond the select committee process. New Zealand First holds a number of reasonably serious concerns regarding the potential repercussions of this bill. We are keen to see these examined by the select committee and to hear public submissions because we believe that the public in general and those associated with the police in particular will share many of those same concerns.

The bill’s general policy statement notes that “most services are funded out of Police’s baseline funding and no fee or charge is attached to their provision.” This is as we believe things should generally be in a free and fair society where the rule of law is upheld by the police force in cooperation with the people, who are taxed most handsomely in exchange for the provision of such services. The immediate issue, of course, is that as we all know the police budget—their baseline funding, as the general policy statement puts it—has been flat for 5 consecutive years now. In the last Budget the police suffered an actual cut in baseline funding of some $40 million. So when inflation and increased operating costs are taken into account, police have been being squeezed harder and harder over the past 5 years, and many officers, both in the ranks and up into quite senior levels of management, have commented with increasing frequency and, indeed, stridency that the thin blue line is now stretched about as thin as it can go before something breaks.

So although New Zealand First welcomes the proposition that police may be enabled to access something in the way of quite desperately needed additional resourcing, the obvious question is why the Government does not simply increase the funding available to police in line with calls being made by the Police Association, community groups, NGOs, justice advocates, Opposition parties, and, indeed it would appear, everyone apart from the Government itself, rather than formulate yet another user-pays law such as this bill. Notwithstanding that vetting services are the first to be included, because they are only the first, it is our belief and concern that such a regime may have some unintended and potentially quite serious consequences as far as the policing of law and order issues in New Zealand is concerned.

The general policy statement states that this amendment to the Policing Act 2008 will “help Police achieve … efficiency in production: users facing a nominal price will demand high-quality services from Police. This transparency around costs will drive Police to be innovative and seek production efficiencies:”. What does “innovative” mean in this context? Does it mean that police will be driven to seek new ways in which to enforce the law? Will they, as several previous Governments have in the past, be driven to make up the law as they go along? The general policy statement goes on to say: “resources directed to priority areas: cost recovery for services that benefit individuals frees up resources for the delivery of front-line and preventative services across the whole community.”

This proposition, like altogether too much of this Government’s legislation through the term of the 50th Parliament, is simply back to front. Police numbers are too low as it is. We have too few front-line cops in this country. Per capita, relative to other comparable nations, New Zealand is under-policed. Back-office staff numbers have been reduced. Front-line cops are doing paperwork that should be someone else’s responsibility, and here we are proposing to contract them out for paid private policing work as well. This bill will not free up resources for the delivery of front-line and preventative services across the whole community. It will stretch resources even further and make them all the more scant and all the more scarce and all the more sought after.

Too few police will be required to do even more under this bill. I ask whether it will lead senior police management, knowing the force is strapped for cash, to prioritise paying jobs over non-paying ones. The demand service, which this bill empowers the police to carry out and to charge for, is defined in new section 79B(2): “For the purposes of this section, demand service means a service that—(a) constitutes policing; and (b) is provided only on the request of an individual or organisation; and (c) is provided to the individual or organisation requesting it for the direct benefit of a particular person or organisation (even though there may be indirect benefit to the public as a whole).” To my mind, that defines an activity that may quite legitimately be regarded by police as a function that may be afforded a degree of priority, especially when operational reality being what it is means there is very genuinely needed cash flow to be had.

New Zealand First has no fundamental issue with the police being allowed to recover excess or additional costs incurred through providing necessary law enforcement and public safety services required as a predictable result of social activities that have been organised by commercial interests for profit, but we do not want to see the police become a de facto private security company, offering and supplying services for money to paying customers at the expense of ordinary, necessary public safety and security police activities for the purposes of maintaining public order and the rule of law. There is a threat that this very situation may be an unintended consequence of this bill becoming law. We do not want to see that. We very much do want to see this matter thrashed out in the select committee and in the light of public submissions.

There are some other concerns. New Zealand First has some other concerns relating to the methods of cost recovery that the police may employ with regard to charges levied under this bill, and the matter of exemptions, waivers, and refunds. Who will be charged with administering this new user-pays service? Will the police be employing additional clerical staff in order to facilitate this new function? Will those associated costs be able to be recovered as well, or will they come from that already overstretched police budget? If a service is able to be determined as a demand service for which fees are payable, under what circumstances would it be necessary to provide exemptions, waivers, or refunds of those fees, for which the taxpayer will then presumably pick up the tab?

In closing, New Zealand First believes that increasing the police baseline budget to somewhere nearer what it should be and to what is actually necessary and recruiting more front-line officers would prove a far more effective and elegant solution than this proposed new user-pays service, with all its failed neo-liberal economic connotations. New Zealand First will support this bill going to the select committee, but not necessarily beyond it at this stage. We look forward to the concerns we have raised being addressed.

I am very happy to stand and speak in support of the Policing (Cost Recovery Amendment Bill), which is in the name of the Hon Michael Woodhouse. I think this is a fairly straightforward bill, so therefore I will make just a couple of very short points. There is a difference between an activity that is for public service and a commercial activity that is for private profit and, therefore, should be a private cost. For instance, an entity may own an early childhood education centre that does have a statutory requirement for police vetting of employees. Though that centre may provide a service to families in their particular area, it is also a business that is there to earn a private profit. Therefore, should not the business cost around that entity be met by the business as a cost to them and a service that is provided to them by the police be met in such a manner? So I believe that this is a very sensible bill. I think that such an example like that illustrates the rationality of it, so I am very happy to commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

I rise to take a short call in this, the first reading of the Policing (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill. The Green Party opposes this bill. We have been told that the core police services are there to benefit society and therefore should be provided by baseline funding, and the example the Minister gave was front-line services. But this bill is proposing that where benefit primarily accrues to individuals or private organisations rather than society as a whole, police should be able to recover costs, yet, as has already been pointed out in the debate, this bill does not consider cost recovery in all situations that could be described in that way—for example, commercial use of police, say, for large concerts or sports events, where there may, I suggest, be massive profits to be made. This bill applies primarily to police vetting. Police undertake vetting mostly in situations relating to education, community services, health services, and public services. The Teachers Council is the biggest organisation using police vetting. The regulatory impact statement has recognised that there has been increased demand on these services, and, indeed, the Minister noted that in 2013, 457,000 requests were put into the police for police vetting. That demand is still rising, yet there has been no increase in the police budget to allow them to do this work. In fact, the Government has cut the police budget by $114 million in real terms since 2009.

We have heard from the Government side of the House tonight that this is not about raising money for the police; it is just about cost recovery. Well, I think that is playing with words, really. This job was, up till this point, considered a core function of the police and a service to the public so that we could all have a feeling of safety when we accessed services where we might be vulnerable or our children might be vulnerable. In fact, the core reason that there has been increased demand for this service is the Vulnerable Children Act imposing mandatory vetting. I would like to just read out the purpose of the section that applies to the safety checks from the Vulnerable Children Act, which says: “The purpose of this Part is to reduce the risk of harm to children by requiring people employed or engaged in work that involves regular or overnight contact with children to be safety checked.” How—how—is that more a private good than a public good? The Government, on one hand, through the most significant piece of legislation that went through Parliament last term, said that this is mandatory because this is essential to public safety. Now here we are only a few months later in this House and the Government is saying this is not a public good; this is a private benefit, and let us charge for it. It does not make sense.

The Minister has characterised the plan as charging a small fee for something that previously had been free. The Government is saying it is around $7 per check and that most organisations would be easily able to absorb that. Well, the Teachers Council does about 40,000 vets a year, so that is a cost of around $300,000 a year—$300,000 a year being transferred from our schools to the police. Has the Government not heard of the old adage “A stitch in time”? Our children would be better off if we invested in these mechanisms to protect them before something goes wrong. Although crime is supposedly going down—except for domestic violence and sexual violence, which are crimes quite relevant to this topic—the Government is moving funding from community services that provide protection and from our schools into policing. It makes no sense, and the Greens are proud to oppose this bill.

I felt compelled to make a brief contribution to this debate after hearing Jonathan Young’s contribution. In the 30 seconds or so that he spoke, he could not have been wrong in more ways. The entire 30 seconds were just completely wrong.

💬 Kris Faafoi: Concentrated.

It was concentrated wrongness. The issue that Jonathan Young spoke about was cost recovery in the case of early childhood teachers. The first thing that he was wrong about is that not all early childhood centres—in fact, the minority—are profit-making businesses. The vast bulk of early childhood services are community-based. They are run by kindergartens or they are run by community organisations and they do not make any money, so he was wrong in that regard.

The second and more important thing is that the organisations do not pay teacher registration fees; individual teachers pay the registration fees. So if the police are going to start cost recovery for police vetting for the purposes of teacher registration, that is not a transfer of cost on to an early childhood centre or even a school; it is a transfer of cost to every individual teacher in the country. Every individual teacher in the country will now have to pay more money to get police vetting in order to keep their registration up to date.

Teachers are not the only ones. In any profession where police vetting is required and where the employer does not pay the cost of it, this will be a transfer of cost on to ordinary, everyday New Zealanders. There are a multitude of voluntary organisations that require police vetting because there might be children or vulnerable people involved in that organisation. It is right that we ask those community organisations to have that system in place because it ensures the safety of children and young people, and that is what the police are there for. It is absolutely legitimate for us to say to the people working in those environments: “You should be police-vetted.” It is for their safety as well as for the safety of the people who are in their care or in their charge. Transferring that cost in the case of voluntary organisations will probably result in some people just saying: “This is too difficult. I’ve got other ways that I can spend my time.”

In the case of teachers and the other professions where police vetting is required, it is a direct increase in costs. I have to say to the Government members that if they do not think they are going to end up paying for this one way or the other, they have got another think coming. The teachers, quite rightly, will come back to the Government in their next round of collective employment agreement negotiations and say: “Actually, the cost of us maintaining our teacher registration has gone up and we want the Crown to cover that by way of a salary increase.” That would be a perfectly legitimate thing for them to ask for. Otherwise they are going to be going backwards. They are going to be getting less money, cash in hand, for doing the same work. It would be a pay cut. It would be perfectly legitimate for them to say: “We want the Crown to cover this.” So the Crown is going to cover it, one way or the other. This is actually very short-sighted.

Labour is supporting the bill’s referral to the Law and Order Committee because there are some instances where we think cost recovery might be justified. In the case of major events, for example, where there are significant policing implications, where there is a cost to the police for what is primarily a profit-making event or function, there might be some legitimate reasons for going to those organisers and saying: “We want you to contribute to the cost of doing that.” That is legitimate.

The part where people have to be police-vetted for the purposes of their job or for community involvement, or whatever, is simply unfair. That is a step too far. If that is not addressed through the select committee process, I think it is very unlikely that Labour would continue to support this bill through, because it is the beginning of introducing user-pays policing. I do not see how that can possibly be justifiable or sustainable in the long term for this country.

I certainly will not be supporting right the way through the process a bill that transfers the cost of police vetting for something like teaching from the police, where it exists at the moment—and therefore the Crown, by extension—to the individual teachers. I think that would be manifestly unjust. I think it would inevitably result in teachers—I am using teachers as an example, but there is a multitude of other professions that would be covered by this as well—very legitimately seeking to come back to the Government to ask for that cost to be covered in other ways. Otherwise what the Government is doing is it is increasing the cost to hard-working New Zealanders and it is basically taking the cost away from the Government. That is not sustainable, and it is just not fair.

This is an interesting opportunity to speak on the Policing (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill, for reasons I shall go into shortly. Before doing so, I must mention the fact that before dinner we were speaking on the Organised Crime and Anti-corruption Legislation Bill, which I guess has got something to do with the police as well, but at that time, of course, the great race was on. You will be pleased to know, Mr Deputy Speaker, that a horse from our very own district ran third in that race. It was a pretty good effort by the Rangitīkei-Wanganui contingent. Anyway, that is my piece on the Melbourne Cup. It was very locally trained, in the Turakina valley.

💬 Kris Faafoi: Did you get a collect?

No, but I did win the sweep.

I move back to the bill. I am, I guess, in the position of almost having some kind of an interest in this. I am chairman of the New Zealand Special Olympics, which will be one of the bigger users of this service in New Zealand. We, like many other voluntary organisations, vet check all of our volunteers, coaches, drivers, and everyone else—a significant number of people. This proposal has been around for quite some time, and, I guess, for voluntary organisations it is going to be an interesting debate. Contrary to what the previous speaker said, we do not do what the Government tells us to do; we do what is right, and I think that most voluntary organisations do what is right in this respect. Their policies are designed to ask for these kinds of checks, whether they are police checks or whatever kinds of checks they are. Their policies are designed to ask for those types of checks. They do it for exactly the reason that Chris Hipkins mentioned—that is, to protect the people who are in need of protection. In the Special Olympics’ case, of course, it is our athletes who are seriously in need of protection.

The debate for us and for this House is: what is the best way to deal with this? There is clearly a lot of commercial interest in this very same issue. There are going to be some conflicting submissions as we go through this process. There are the voluntary organisations, which make their own choice to ask for these vet checks, and then there are all those other organisations that use it commercially. So it is an interesting debate, and I think that on that point it will be interesting to see where it gets to. I certainly have no problem recommending that this bill go to the next stage in the process. Thank you.

It is a pleasure to speak to the first reading of the Policing (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill. I am drawing on a couple of documents that have been helpfully supplied to us by the police, to try to make sense of what is actually going on here. The first one is a helpful document from the police website, entitled: “Cost Recovery—Frequently asked questions”. It asks a pretty simple question in terms of this bill: “What is cost recovery, and why is Police considering it?”. The first two bullet points that it lists, in terms of its four key objectives, are: “To reduce demand for ‘over and above’ Police services …”, and: “To self-fund any increase in demand for any ‘over and above’ Police services;”.

I would like to concentrate on that phrase “over and above”. The question that we on this side of the House have been consistently asking is: when has it become “over and above” police services to check the backgrounds of people whom we are going to put in positions of trust in our communities? Many instances have been raised around teachers and also people who are working in our early childhood centres. Mr McKelvie just mentioned an organisation, the Special Olympics, which police-vets its volunteers, the people who help it with its activities. I think he mentioned drivers. There was an organisation that I met with locally this morning, a women’s refuge, which I also understand would police-vet its volunteers and its staff. To think that the police vetting and the checking of the background of the people who work in these high-trust situations in our communities is “over and above” what the police are expected to do is a bit of a concern in this House. This is why we do support this bill going to the select committee to get some more scrutiny as to what it considers the police consider “over and above” and reasonable to charge for.

I think Kelvin Davis and Chris Hipkins have made a good point about the Teachers Council, which is concerned about not just the number of people who will now face increased costs in order to get their police vet checks but also the fact that this may have a negative effect on checking out the backgrounds of people who work in our communities. We are concerned about that.

We are also concerned at what might really be the motivation behind this introduction of cost recovery. Helpfully, the third bullet point in this “Frequently asked questions” document, supplied by the police, is: “To offset increasing financial pressures on Vote Police;”. We know that over the last 4 years the Government has talked tough in terms of what it will do on law and order, but it has not necessarily backed that up with the resourcing that it has given the police. We are concerned that this may be a move that may creep out further than just simple police vetting, to try to take more pressure off what the Government has done in taking money and resources away from our police force.

We do realise that it is probably fair enough to debate whether we have some events or some functions of the police charged for, because some companies and some individuals are making a lot of money out of some of the activities where our police are keeping the peace, or where we know there are potentially going to be big problems—whether they be things like music concerts, or the Sevens here in Wellington—and where we know there is going to be a big police presence. Someone is making a hell of a lot of money out of it. There may be an argument, in those terms, that getting some cost recovery could be something that we could look into.

But, as I look into one of the documents on the table here, the departmental disclosure statement, I see that on page 6 or 7 there are a couple of Government departments that have been consulted, which gives me concern around the likes of some cultural events, and which I think we need to think about in terms of what added costs it may bring on to the organisers of such events. In box 3.2 it says that Te Puni Kōkiri was consulted on the draft Cabinet paper and policy approvals for the bill and the draft bill was sought from it. Then, if we flick over the page, to page 8 of the departmental disclosure, in box 3.6 it also says that the Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs was also consulted.

We will support this bill at the first reading. I think that the select committee will be a really good opportunity to have people from the community, from different ethnic communities, who may face increased charges when they are looking at holding major cultural events. I am thinking in my own patch maybe something like Creekfest, but also in Auckland where the bulk of the Pacific community is, something like the Pasifika Festival would be something where there would be quite a large police presence. It is a community event, but would that event fall into the category where in the future it may get asked for a charge to have a police presence? It is a great opportunity to showcase some of our Pasifika police officers. I know that they have used it as an opportunity to do that—to put a positive message with policing. But I think that if the organisers of that event were looking at facing increased charges for having that police presence, then that would be of concern to them because it would be a sizable increased cost.

The other thing that I think has been raised in this House is that we do not want to get to the stage where we are opening up charging or cost recovery by the police to have them chasing events. The nightmare scenario I could think of is where we have authorised police officers doing the event control and maybe having a sprinkling of sworn officers there to supervise it, and, therefore, the police would see that as an opportunity to go out and cost recover and charge the organisers of events a fee to make sure that there is a police presence there. That would be a step too far and I think the select committee will be the opportunity for us to ask those kinds of questions and, hopefully, get some assurances from the Government that that is not—we hope—the road that it is intending to go down.

I must say—and it is a serious point I am trying to make—when I am hearing that the likes of Te Puni Kōkiri and also the Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs have been consulted on that, I think that is a concern that I certainly do have in terms of those cultural events getting charged a fee for having a police presence.

Again, a major concern on this side of the House does come back to what is driving this. Is this another cost-cutting measure, or “pushing of costs to others” measure, by the Government that is happening? We have seen, I think, around about $40 million taken out of the police budget at the last Budget—

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: How much?

$40 million. That is having, obviously, serious front-line effects at a time when, although I praise the job that the police are doing—they are doing a very good job under very difficult circumstances—over time, over the last 5, 5½, 6 years since this Government took over, they have been asked to do much more with much, much less. We have seen the strain that that is putting on front-line officers. I believe that resignations from the police in terms of sworn officers have gone from an average of about 14 per month to somewhere close to 50 per month in recent times.

I think we have to start asking some serious questions about what is going on with the police and the budgets, as we are at the point now where we are getting quite a lot of resignations. There may be something else behind that, and not just simply budgetary pressures. Maybe it is that some officers who have served for a long time have been asked to move on, but I would hate that it would just be cost-cutting measures right across the board that are putting a huge strain on police resources.

As we have said many times, this bill does have Labour’s support to the select committee. We will be asking some serious questions around the kinds of functions that the police think are over and above. We have some concerns obviously around some of these sensitive positions in our community where there will be increased costs. We do think there is an argument for events where there could be some charging, but again that does come with some caveats. So, we will support this and look forward to seeing more out of the submissions from the select committee.

I commend the Policing (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill to the House.