Policing (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill

I rise to take a call on the Policing (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill. Before I begin my contribution, I do want to acknowledge the Hon Phil Goff, who worked on the Law and Order Committee and did a huge piece of work in getting this piece of legislation to the House. I want to acknowledge his significant contribution to this Parliament and to our country, and I wish him all the best in his future governance of the city of Auckland. May you go well, Phil Goff, and we will miss your contribution to this House and to our party greatly.

This bill is of particular interest to me as I have the Labour shadow portfolio of the community and voluntary sector, with particular regard to the demands upon that sector with regard to vetting staff and volunteers who may engage in a range of activities, particularly with regard to working with vulnerable populations such as children or the elderly. This is a piece of legislation that I have contributed Supplementary Order Paper 97 to in order to amend some of the deficiencies that I see within this piece of legislation.

I guess that one of the most significant areas of contention that we in Labour and other members of the Opposition have around this is about the definition of what a “demand service” is. When I was able to sit in on the Law and Order Committee and hear some of the submissions, that was very much at the heart of the contention around this particular piece of legislation—what is, in fact, a “demand service”? There were lots of discussions about the public good versus private benefit.

I can recall having conversations with members about what we might define as private benefit, and one of the things that I found interesting was that with regard to people who work in the NGO sector and in the community and voluntary sector, generally speaking, they are in that business—whether they are being paid for doing that work or not—because of their desire to better society. In fact, what they are doing is actually in the public good, so it struck me as very odd that people who are wanting to improve conditions for children, for the elderly, and for the people who are the most marginalised in our society should actually be required to pay to be vetted to work in these particular services. What they are doing is not defined as being in the public good, but is actually defined as being of private benefit because they may be paid to do this work, and that is at the heart of our argument—the deliberation between private benefit and public good.

Some of the examples that came to the select committee that I heard were around, for example, search and rescue. Could search and rescue services be determined to be in the public interest? Well, I guess if you were the family member of somebody who was out on a boat that had not returned, then you would be thinking it was definitely in the public interest to ensure the safety of people out on the water. But another example that we were given was about the police providing security at airports. We would all assume that that is most definitely for the public good, but the examples that we were given could be defined as having a private benefit because people receive a salary or a wage to do this particular piece of work.

Then we came to look at that in the context of what might be required under Government legislation. For example, under the Vulnerable Children Act there are members of particular workforces who are required to have police vetting. Police vetting is seen as the first screen to ensure that your workforce is fit to do that particular piece of work. So with regard to working with vulnerable populations such as the elderly, or children—in particular, with regard to the Vulnerable Children Act—it would be seen as imperative that you would want to do everything you could as an employer, or as a Government, or as a provider of services to ensure that your workforce is safe. Police vetting is seen as the first mechanism in a suite of other types of mechanisms to ensure that your workforce is safe.

So in that regard my argument, and the argument that members of the Opposition had, is that it is actually in the public good to ensure that the workforce working with children is safe, as required under the Vulnerable Children Act, and therefore you should not be charged to vet your workforce. It should be something that is a core police service. Are we talking about ensuring that our workforce is safe to work in these areas, or are we talking about—and this is very much an argument that the Opposition has put up—the inability to fund our police services appropriately, so we go to low-hanging fruit and say that, actually, the vetting of staff and volunteers who work in the sector looking after children or looking after older people is an easy opportunity for us to recover some costs with regard to the work that the police do?

I know that when this particular bill first came to the attention of this House it was discussed in regard to being able to recover the costs of police to attend to things like sports fixtures or concerts where there is actually a promoter, for example, who is making a profit and that the cost to police those particular events could be recovered by this particular mechanism. I would suggest that that, actually, is an appropriate idea with regard to this. If someone is going to make a substantial amount of money and use the police force as a means of security at a public event like that, then it would be appropriate to recover the costs of the police to attend that particular event. We think that that is entirely appropriate.

However, when the bill actually did make it to the House and, subsequently, to the select committee we discovered that, actually, it was not about that at all. It was actually about charging community organisations—organisations that are largely funded by a Government contract anyway—to vet their staff. In effect, what we are doing, rather than funding the police appropriately to do the work, is taking money from another Government department to fund the police to do this work. It is literally a transfer of Government funding from one agency to another, and that is completely inappropriate in the context of what we are trying to achieve here, really, which is to ensure that the police have all the resources that they need to complete their work.

In that regard I proposed Supplementary Order Paper 97 to ensure that registered charities could be exempt from any charges. I know that at the time the legislation came up the community sector was quite hot about this particular topic and it lobbied support parties to the Government very heavily about ensuring that it could remain exempt from this particular charge, and that is right because in terms of the argument that I have presented with regard to public good versus private benefit, community groups and registered charities should be exempt from the police vetting charges.

I am pleased to say that the community pressure that went on those support parties actually paid out. We know that registered charities will, through regulation, be exempt from having to pay that, and that is as it should be because, at the end of the day, demand services, as defined as private benefit versus public good, should not impact upon those people who are trying to ensure that our society is better.

I would like to take this opportunity to speak to the Policing (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill on behalf of New Zealand First, but before I do that I would like to acknowledge the contribution that has been made by the Hon Phil Goff to this House, and in particular to the Law and Order Committee, which I have had the privilege of being a core member of with Phil Goff. I also wish him good luck for his future endeavour, which is the role of the Mayor of Auckland City.

So, coming to this bill, policing has always been the basic function and duty of a Government. Ever since there have been democratic governments formed, policing has been the basic responsibility of a Government, and the cost is recovered, basically, from the general taxes that the public pay. However, this bill, according to us, is double-dipping and we cannot support it. It makes me angry to know that after this bill is passed, citizens will have to pay twice to get a basic service. They will have to pay through their taxes, and in addition to that they will have to pay for the basic functions of policing, which could be when getting a Ministry of Justice clearance or background checks. So this will be borne by schools, this will be borne by the voluntary organisations, and this will be borne by the charitable organisations. They should not have to bear the burden of basic policing function.

It is the duty of the Government to provide protection for its citizens, and the police have already been funded for that. They have been funded through general taxes. We think that this double-dipping is unfair, and we cannot support this bill. Thank you.

I rise to take a short call for the Greens on the Policing (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill in the Committee stage. We are opposing this piece of legislation. I remember when it was first introduced, so hot on the tail of the vulnerable children’s legislation having passed and the requirement having been introduced into legislation at that time for increased police vetting for people working with children in our community. And then, “nek minnit”, we got this piece of legislation that was saying community organisations would need to pay, and sports recreation—a whole range of organisations would now have to pay to get that vetting done. It is a testament to the community organising and the organising by certain members in this Chamber whom I am looking at, at the moment, that an amendment we have been promised will now be made into regulation so that charities will not have to pay for that, but I do think it is important to remind people of the process that happened.

We are still, even with that exemption that we have been promised in regulation, opposed to this piece of legislation, because although the rationale that has been put forward for it is that there is some kind of private benefit to be gained from the vetting of people, we argue that the primary benefit is public safety. If the purpose is vetting to approve somebody’s safety for doing a job, then the ultimate benefit has got to be, surely, safety. We believe, therefore, that that should be a core police function and should not able to be put out and charged for, and that increasing the complexity of the systems within the police and charging the public for functions like this will actually have a detrimental impact on the entire organisation of the police. That is not something that we can support.

There was almost universal rejection by submitters of the proposition that charges for demand services should be applied to police vetting of individuals who may be working in a paid or voluntary capacity, and we have seen that exemption for charities. We are concerned at the scope of this, and although the initial fees have been set at a low level, there is almost always creep in these matters, and it could well end up—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. The time has come for me to report progress.

Progress reported.

Report adopted.

The House adjourned at 9.56 p.m.