Policing (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill

I rise to oppose the provisions of the Policing (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill, and I want to turn particularly to new section 79B(2) in clause 4, Part 1 of the bill, where it defines what a “demand service” is, because this allows the police to charge for what are regarded as demand services. Subsection (2), basically, says that the demand service “(i) constitutes policing; and (ii) is provided only on the request of an individual or organisation; and (iii) is provided to the individual or organisation requesting it and is of direct benefit to that individual or organisation (even though provision of the service may also be of indirect benefit to the public as a whole);”. So that pretty much includes most things that the police do. But then it goes on to specifically exclude: “(i) the response of the Police to calls for service relating to potential offending: (ii) the conduct of criminal investigations: [and] (iii) the prosecution of criminal offences.”

The point I want to make here is that pretty much everything to do with crime prevention could be covered by that definition. Anything that does not involve responding directly to potential criminal offending or criminal offending, or the prosecution or investigation thereof, could be a service that the police would recover costs for. So if a school approaches the police and says “We want you to come into our school and do some crime prevention sessions with our kids.”, the police could charge the school for doing that. That is a basic function of the police, and this legislation would allow them to charge for doing it, because it does not fit within the exclusions that this bill sets forth.

Let us just run through that again. Would the police going into a school to do a crime prevention lesson constitute policing? Yes, it would. Is it provided only on the request of an individual or an organisation? Yes, it would be on the request of the organisation, which is the school that is requesting it. Does it benefit the organisation? Yes, it does benefit the organisation. So it is a service that is a demand service and can, therefore, be charged for.

Would it be covered by the exclusions? Well, is it a response to a call for service relating to potential offending? No, it is not. Is it the conduct of criminal investigation? No, it is not. Is it the prosecution of criminal offences? No, it is not. So it is regarded as a demand service, but it is not covered by the exemption, and, therefore, it could be charged for.

So the question I have is: why would the Government put in place provisions that allow for police crime prevention work to be charged for if those crime prevention services are requested by an individual or an organisation? It seems to me that the whole emphasis of policing strategy for some time now has been around crime prevention. It is much better to prevent crime before it happens, rather than to have to investigate and deal with it afterwards. Why would the Government propose legislation that would allow for a user-pays environment for all of the police’s crime prevention work? By my reading of those provisions in this bill, that is, effectively, what it is doing.

There are no provisions that I can see here that would suggest that a crime prevention programme requested by an individual or an organisation is not to be regarded as something that the police could charge for. I am not saying they would charge for it in the first instance, but why would we create a law that would allow them to do so, when preventing crime and protecting the public must be one of the core responsibilities of the New Zealand Police? So I am strongly opposed to these particular provisions.

I want to turn, then, to the other issue that I have a particular concern about, and that is the police-vetting process. This is probably the most likely police service that we would see charges introduced for if this bill is passed through the House. Let us consider which are the types of organisations that use police vetting—in particular, organisations that deal with young people. I want to start with early childhood centres and then move on to schools. We have some requirements in regulation for early childhood services to have all of those staff who are working with young people and children—babies even—police-vetted before they are allowed to work in those early childhood centres. That is a Government regulatory requirement, and it is a damned good one. It is one that we should continue to uphold.

What this bill would do is it would allow the police to charge for those vetting services that early childhood centres may be requesting. For private early childhood services, there is a private benefit to that, one could argue, but there are community-based services such as kindergartens that receive all of their funding from the Government—or they now receive a little bit of funding from parents, but, predominantly, their funding comes from the Government. So, ultimately, the cost of the police vetting is going to be met by a different branch of Government by, effectively, cutting funding from early childhood services, because it is transferring the cost of a service currently provided by the police on to early childhood services without increasing the funding to early childhood services correspondingly. The same provisions apply to schools. So, in the case of schools, teachers are required to undergo police vetting to renew their teacher registration requirements.

Here is an interesting one: the Government, as part of a collective bargaining round, agreed to cover the teacher registration fees for teachers renewing their practising certificates. Will the Government also cover the police-vetting costs if the police introduce that? It seems to me that it is finding a back-door way to undo a commitment that it has made to cover the cost of teachers renewing their practising certificates. It is a very good provision that we have in our education system—that those people who are working with young people should have a police-vetting certificate.

I then want to turn to another issue around schooling. I have talked about teachers. Schools will have police-vetting requirements for their support staff as well, but what about those volunteers who work with young people? There have been a couple of cases in the media recently around coaches—so parents who coach sports teams—and whether police vetting should be required there. Or if a school wishes to use police vetting for positions that it does not have to vet—at the moment schools do not have to vet parents who volunteer to coach sports teams, but they may choose to do so—under this bill, they would be discouraged from doing so by the cost that could be imposed, and, ultimately, the question then comes back to the very basis on which we fund policing in New Zealand. Is it consistent with the public interest to discourage those individuals and organisations that could benefit from using police vetting in order to protect young people or their clients or their customers? Is it in our best interests as a society to discourage them from doing so by imposing additional charges?

My view is that it is not, so I have put forward Supplementary Order Paper 126, which would specifically exempt schools and early childhood education services from the charges for police vetting, because, ultimately, that is a transfer of costs on to schools and early childhood services. It is not going to improve child safety and student safety, and it is ultimately going to result, I think, in a compromising of that. So I look forward to the Minister’s response to those two issues.

I would like to take the opportunity to respond to some of the questions raised by the member who has resumed his seat, Chris Hipkins, and others. When I first became the Minister of Police, at the end of 2008, one of the areas of risk for the Police was actually the vetting service. The reason for that is that it was so far behind in dealing with the massive requests and demands for vetting that had been made, and doing checks on them, that what we found is that people were waiting months, in many cases, for vetting. We looked at the fact that it was taking so much police time and looked at what we could do about it. Some years later, we now have this bill going through the Committee of the whole House stage. Let us have a look at some of the comments that have been made and concerns raised by Mr Hipkins—he is very concerned about the cost of vetting.

Well, all indications that I have are that the police-vetting fee will be $7 or around $7. I think teachers are actually paid sufficient amounts of money to pay $7 for vetting. Why should this happen? Well, actually, because the requests for vetting have gone up hugely over the last 10 years. We now have police having to deal with more than half a million requests a year. That is a staggering number of requests for vetting. Who is asking for these vetting services? Are they all schools? Are they all teachers? Are they all early childhood education centres? No, they are not. Sometimes, in many cases, with the million New Zealanders living overseas, many of them are overseas employers who are asking for this—people who, in many cases, are in positions of responsibility and who are well paid. I think around $7 is a very reasonable fee. That is the main area that we are talking about here. Yes, there is an opportunity for other areas to be brought in where they are demanded by people and are not actually core police business, but that is not something that can be brought in by the Police itself; it has to go through an Order in Council process and regulation, and, actually, Governments are not keen to do those sorts of things if they believe the public would not agree with it.

Let us have a look at what police actually do for this vetting service. For a start, they might release information about a conviction history, the location of the court where the matter was heard, the date of the offence, the offence itself, and the sentence imposed. They may also release any further information that may not strictly be part of those areas but that is important for someone who is seeking to have themselves vetted. There are occasions when police hold relevant information that they would be unwilling or unable to release. In these instances, a withheld details statement is provided to the agency. All of this work takes a lot of care and a lot of attention, and if police get it wrong, who gets blamed? Who gets blamed? Actually, it is the police. The police get blamed if they get it wrong. Can they afford to let just anybody do this? The answer is no, actually. They need to have people on this work who know what they are doing and who understand how important it is.

Actually, vetting requests at around $7 each, I have got to say, is not that much. If you are, in fact, applying for a job as a teacher or even in early childhood centres, it is not that much, frankly, for the amount of time, the amount of responsibility, and the amount of care that goes into it. I would much rather that the Police was able to charge a very reasonable fee—particularly when compared with any other jurisdiction; as far as I am aware, we are the only comparable jurisdiction that does not charge any vetting fee—to charge something for that, to get some recompense towards being able to resource that area properly, and not to see it simply as a cost on Police and its budget. Some people might not think vetting is important, but I think vetting is important, and the fact that the vetting requests are now well over half a million a year tells me that this is a big area for police, and one they do need to have some extra help with. It is also important for people to just be aware that it does cost money.

I just want to deal with some of Minister Judith Collins’ comments before I get on to a specific part of the bill. She did make the comment that when she became the Minister of Police in 2008, police vetting was one of the most acute pressure points, in terms of the workload, for police. I can understand that. But it has taken 8 years for her Government to get a bill to the Committee stage, to be able deal with that issue. There have been three Ministers of Police since National has come into power, and one of the most acute—apparently acute—issues of demand for the police is still at the Committee stage here in this Parliament.

I do also want to ask some questions of the Minister around the level of the cost for the police vetting. I do not want anyone out in the public to be mistaken: police vetting is a good thing. We want to make sure that anyone who deals with the public, whether it be in a public or private sense, is safe and is not a risk to anyone that they are dealing with. But what we need is some up-to-date information from the Government about the pressure points and the cost. We have heard about some of the demand—I think the Minister said there are half a million police-vettings that the police are currently considering.

I ask for some more information because I want to know how up to date the figure of $7 per police vetting is now. The range of $5 to $7 was first proffered up in a regulatory impact statement that came along with this bill, which was provided by New Zealand Police on 4 October 2013—some 3 years ago. It is interesting to read further into the regulatory impact statement. I think I am channelling the Christchurch Mayor Lianne Dalziel at the moment, who heavily relied on the regulatory impact statements, because New Zealand Police said, in table 2 in part 1 of its regulatory impact, that “The total cost of providing the vetting service is likely to increase over time due to demand for the service and the operational costs of the service provision.”

The situation is that we have got a range of $5 to $7 back in 2013, approximately 3 years ago, when the level of demand was X. We are now told by the Minister that demand has increased to about a half a million police-vetting checks per year. The police have said in this 3-year-old regulatory impact statement that, yes, prices will increase for vetting, because demand will increase. My question—and, I think, the question of those people who submitted to the select committee—is: what is the price? Is $5 to $7 now an obsolete range? Do we now have, because of demand increases, a different price that we should be looking at? That would be of major concern to the people who submitted on this bill.

When this bill was first introduced, we thought that it would be looking at the likes of event operators. If you were to be holding the likes of the Wellington Sevens or the Auckland Nines, where there may be a demand for increased policing because of the numbers of people and because of the potential behaviour at those events, extra police resources would be required. But it is interesting to see who is being focused on here for the first charge that the police are looking at, because it is the likes of charities. It is the likes of the Cancer Society of New Zealand. It is the likes of the Salvation Army. They are the types of community organisations that have come under the microscope, that have asked to be heard at the select committee, and that really want to know what the financial impact of a potential cost around police vetting is going to mean for them.

I think that if we are going to seriously consider this piece of legislation, which will affect their bottom lines, they deserve the most up-to-date estimation of what this bill means to them. If there are half a million police-vetting checks and the upper range is $7, then my maths says that that is about a $3.5 million cost for all those people who are going to be affected by this bill. And if, as the police said 3 years ago, costs will increase, what is that cost now? I think that is a fair enough question to ask. I will ask the Minister to answer that, because I think those entities deserve to know.

I will just take a short call to answer the questions raised by Mr Faafoi. The first is what the most up-to-date figure is, because, of course, I was using the figures from a few years back. With the fact that we are now proposing that police have waivers and exemptions for all organisations with 20 or fewer requests for vetting, and also for all registered charities, the fee is going to be $8.50. It is still less than two commercially purchased cups of coffee for the entire vetting.

I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to take a short call. I understand that my colleague Mahesh Bindra, who sat on the Law and Order Committee through this bill’s hearings, has already spoken, but I guess I need to put on the record, as the police spokesperson for New Zealand First, that we opposed this bill when it was introduced. We have sat through the hearings and heard the evidence and heard the explanations, but we remain opposed to this legislation and we will not be voting in support of it. I guess that for New Zealand First, we see this as the thin edge of the wedge. We are well used to the introduction of user-pays philosophies and principles. They are the hallmarks of Rogernomics and “Ruthanasia”, both economic policies that brought along with them user charges. We see this bill as an extension, a continuance, of that.

I guess the thing that worries us when we look at this definition of what makes a fee chargeable is that it introduces an element of grey. It introduces the issues of ambiguity and of interpretation, and, on that basis, it is better simply not to have the definition at all, actually. If we just said, specifically, “This is the one thing that would be charged for—end of story, no discussion, nothing else.”, then it might well be worthy of further consideration or reconsideration. But the fact that you have a definition that is itself right now open to debate and open to discussion means that it is ambiguous and means that it can be stretched. Who knows what a police administration might decide to stretch that into beyond here—because, of course, it does not come back to Parliament to be re-debated; it just requires an Order in Council. So we can say $8.50 today, but that does not mean it will not be $10 in a year’s time, $15, $20, and, hello, bob’s your uncle—before you know it, it is $50 a shot.

If boards of trustees are required to have police vetting done on all applicants, then the next question is: if this cost is so huge and we are going to compensate the police by charging the applicants, then what provision has been made in the Budget to up the Ministry of Education’s budget by the commensurate amount for every individual applicant for a job in education who might require vetting? Are the boards of trustees going to be compensated for that? We see nothing of that. Therefore, it lends more weight to the suspicion that this is really about user charges.

Here is the bottom line: if it is only half a million—well, bearing in mind that we blew $30 million on a flag-change referendum that nobody wanted, half a million dollars—

💬 Hon Judith Collins: No, it’s not.

Well, the quote that was just given was half a million dollars per annum.

💬 Hon Judith Collins: It’s a half a million vetting requests.

Vetting—OK. So what is the total cost, Minister? Because we would say—New Zealand First’s philosophy would be this: give the money to the Police in its budget. Allow them to go on doing the work they do in crime prevention, law and order, and enforcement, and give them the appropriate resources to do that. Do not levy the costs back out on to the taxpayer, who has already paid the taxes to provide for that one thing that is the Government’s first duty, which is policing and keeping our people safe. The Government’s first duty is the safety of its citizens. The Government’s first duty is the protection of its citizens. That means allocating adequate funding, adequate resources, to the police so that they may do that work that the taxpayers are paying for. To flip it back out again and say “Oh, you’re going to have to pay for this again.”—well, that just does not seem right to us.

So we will oppose this legislation. The ambiguity, the greyness, the fact that it smacks very much of an extension into user-pays, which we do not agree with, tells us that the legislation is actually fraught with problems and should not be proceeding beyond this stage.

I would like to continue from where Ron Mark left off and clarify a few points about what the police are doing. First of all, the police are providing safety to the citizens of New Zealand. That is the paramount duty of the police, and we agree.

Vetting is a totally different thing. Where vetting is provided, it is to make sure that people who are dealing with children—who are dealing with schoolgirls—or taxi drivers, who are dealing with the public every day, are properly vetted so that we can ensure the safety of everyone. I remember that there was a case when somebody changed his name a few times and was working in a school, and he was a sex offender. We want to make sure that these people are not in schools or in childcare centres. We want to ensure that, and $7 or $8 is not too much for us to be asking for.

💬 Kris Faafoi: Oh, for you it might not be.

It is for 2 years—the vetting is valid for 2 years, and if you have to pay $8 or $7 for 2 years, I do not think that is too much. If you are applying for a job, it is a reasonable cost. If you compare it with some of the Australian jurisdictions, they are charging $30 or $50. We are charging just $7, which makes a lot of difference. It is very reasonable, and I think the police will be doing a great job in doing this.

It is very important that we should ensure that the budget that is given to the Police is utilised for what it is supposed to do. It is not for funding someone who is looking for a job or going for some business. They have to pay $7 or $8, and we are funding that from the Police budget—that is not appropriate. I think, Minister Collins, it is very appropriate that you mentioned that these are the provisions.

The police are funding almost $4.2 million every year for vetting at present, which is not the right thing. I think that money should be utilised by the police to resource their own things so that they can maintain better law and order. I think that this is a very good idea and that we should support it.

It is interesting listening to this debate and reflecting on how closely it follows the submissions we heard at the Law and Order Committee. We have heard from Mr Bakshi and others this magic figure of $7, which keeps popping up. At current demand—half a million times $7—that is about $3.5 million that we are arguing about here. In the context of the entire Police budget, that is not a big amount of money.

I do not for one moment believe that, actually, the intention of this bill is to enable a $7 charge on vetting across the board. This is opening the door for wholesale charging for all sorts of police services. The definition in this bill of what constitutes a “demand service” is broad enough and inclusive enough that, in time—think about things like search and rescue, which, arguably, is not about offending, is not about criminal investigations, and is not about prosecuting offences; it is a service provided to New Zealanders and, indeed, guests—visitors—to New Zealand. On occasion, it is a service that is necessary as a result of their own foolishness, but more often it is about people simply venturing into the outdoors. How long will it be before people who are rescued—and there is police involvement—are handed an invoice at the end of that? Is that the New Zealand that we want? I do not really think so.

The Minister of Police and, indeed, other speakers have suggested that $7—well, it is hardly worth fussing about, is it? It is a very small amount of money. So it is, but, in fact, using vetting as the first opportunity to use these new powers to charge for police services is a peculiar choice. It is in line with the old saying that no good deed goes unpunished. We have a large voluntary community sector in New Zealand. We have a lot of people who volunteer their time, their skills, and their experience to work in all sorts of community organisations. Now we are going to say to those people: “Well, thank you for being community-minded and for contributing in some way to a voluntary organisation, and, by the way, we are going to clip the ticket. We are going to charge you for giving up your time.” We must not forget, as well, that one vetting will not cover multiple organisations. If a person happens to volunteer for two or three organisations—working with children, working with elderly people, working in some way with vulnerable people—that ticket will be clipped on each occasion. For older people on fixed incomes, for young people with low incomes, or for students earning but still wanting to do some voluntary work—these are the people who are going to be hit.

It is very peculiar politics, actually, to use vetting as the initial point of entry into this whole brave new world of charging for policing, which is, and ought always to be, a core public service and one which should be resourced properly. We have heard good news from the Minister recently: apparently, we are to get some more police officers. That is to be congratulated. It is 18 months late—it was 2 years ago, even, that most other people recognised, and certainly the New Zealand Police Association did, that the police force was overstretched and under-resourced, and not least of all in rural areas. But this legislation is not the solution to that. I think most New Zealanders would much rather that we have a well-funded and well-resourced taxpayer-funded police force, rather than this privatisation by stealth—using this piece of legislation with this very innocuous little $7 fee as an opening to a point where we will, in future, almost certainly see quite significant charges placed on people.

We heard from the NGOs and we heard from the voluntary sector that this relatively small amount of money—the voluntary service providers are going to be very unwilling to say to their volunteers “By the way, you need to sign the cheque.”, and often, in many cases, they will pick up the cost of this vetting if it does go ahead. The cost will not remain at $7 or $8.50 for long, or at whatever it might be; inevitably, it will go up. So those hard-earned dollars, those hard-won dollars, that the voluntary organisations appeal to philanthropists for and to fund-raising means—all of that—a lot of that money is simply going into this money-go-round to pay an invoice for a service that ought to be funded in the normal way through the Public Service vote.

This legislation is unreasonable, and, as I say, I keep coming back to the point that I do not really understand the politics of it—and Mr Faafoi touched on this. Had the first target been concert promoters or large sports events where there is a commercial interest, you could almost understand that.

I rise on behalf of the Labour Party, along with my colleagues, to oppose the provisions of this bill. If we look at section 79A,“Purpose of this Part”—this is in new Part 4A, inserted by clause 4—I find it ironic that the focus of this bill is to recover costs in respect of the provision of certain policing services. The Government is focused on doing this at a time when we need our police out on the streets on a regular basis—at a time when there is high demand for our police services to be investigating cases of shoplifting and to be turning up to ensure that people are safe. But the whole focus of this bill is about cost recovery.

I also find it ironic that this Government came into power promising tax cuts, and did, in fact, restructure our tax system, and now we are seeing what the end result is. There has been a pattern, and this pattern has been repeated in this particular bill. In section 79B we are not given a whole range of what it is that the police are going to be charging the public for. The only thing that we see is in section 79B(3), where they give an example of vetting services by the police. We do not have any other idea of what other services will be charged to the public.

I have to say I am glad that my colleagues are opposing this. I understand that those who have sat through the select committee process heard that the majority of submitters are also opposed to this bill, and I am glad that we are opposing it. I pay my taxes for the sole purpose of this Government providing these kinds of services for the public good. I do not expect to pay my taxes for our police service and then be asked to pay additional money when I need the services of the police. If you look through Part 1 and Part 2, there is nothing in the bill that makes any reference to safety or community safety. This is all about cost cutting. It is about cost cutting at a time when we should be fully resourcing our police services.

I understand that this Government has underfunded the police service by about $300 million. Vetting is a service that has been done by the police because we require the police to do so. I make reference to table 2 of the regulatory impact statement, which Kris Faafoi spoke to: “we currently have “over 12,000 agencies”, it says, “(with about 6,000 active users) … registered to use the service, and up to 500,000 vets are processed each year.” Why are those vettings required? It is for community safety. It is for the purpose of ensuring that our community is safe. I want to reiterate, with regard to the $7 that the Minister of Police has said is nothing, that $7 may be nothing to somebody earning $250,000 a year, but it is something significant for a community organisation. It is significant to an early childhood centre, for example, that is having to work on the smell of an oily rag to ensure that our young people get a good education, and we give it the responsibility of ensuring that the people who are working with our young people are of a good nature and are safe to be around our children.

We have had an example where the community of Māngere recently raised the fact that we had a child sex offender placed next to the school. That was not safe—that was not safe at all. The Minister and others might say that it was, but it was not. Although the Minister says that $7 does not mean anything, table 2 of the regulatory impact statement also says that “The total cost of providing the vetting service is likely to increase”. We know of the example in Australia where this similar service is being charged at A$50—not NZ$7; A$50. I suspect that the equivalent of that, if it continues to rise, would be somewhere around NZ$80. I do not know what the foreign currency exchange is, but it could be anywhere between NZ$50 and NZ$80.

If I was Pita Paraone, I would actually be worried. Pita Paraone is the chairperson of the Waitangi National Trust, and every Waitangi Day there are about a hundred Māori policemen standing around protecting politicians. If the Government has its way, it could possibly be charging the Waitangi National Trust for those policemen to be there protecting politicians, because if we look at this bill, it says: “For the purposes of this section, demand service”—so, basically, it is a demand that those policemen and women be at Waitangi Day—“(a) means a service that—(i) constitutes policing;”—they are there, policing—“(ii) is provided only on the request of an individual or organisation;”. I am not sure whether it is the Waitangi National Trust that requests those police personnel to be there, or whether it is actually the Government. Is the Government going to end up charging itself to protect itself?

The definition also says it “is provided to the individual or organisation requesting it and is of direct benefit to that individual or organisation (even though provision of the service may also be of indirect benefit to the public as a whole);”. So the public, as a whole, does benefit from having police personnel at Waitangi Day, but the thing is that they are not responding to police calls for service relating to potential offending, they are not conducting criminal investigations, and they are not prosecuting criminal offences. So chances are the Government, if it is the Government that is requesting police to be at Waitangi Day and other events such as that, may actually end up charging itself, which actually sort of negates the cost of charging for service.

The charge is $8.50. Three years ago it was $7; now it is $8.50. Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi actually proved our point when he stood up and said “Oh, in Australia and other jurisdictions, the cost is $50.”, because that is exactly what we are afraid of. That is exactly our point. We were starting off at $7. It is now $8.50. Who knows whether in a couple of years’ time it is not going to be $50?

I was thinking about the school I used to be principal of. We had about 40 staff members including caretakers and other support staff. At $7 per staff member, that comes to only about $280. That is not too bad. That is actually pretty easy for a school to absorb. But then, if the cost of police vetting goes up to $50, that is something like $2,000 that the school needs to find. When I looked today at the amount of money that schools across Tai Tokerau are going to lose because of the changes that Hekia Parata is putting in place, something like 81 percent of the schools across Tai Tokerau are going to be losing funding, and this is just something else that is going to be added on top of those costs. Kōhanga reo—how are they going to afford extra costs? Kōhanga reo are way underfunded, but it is really essential that staff at kōhanga reo are actually police-vetted. You know, we are not opposed to police vetting; we are just opposed to the public having to pay for something that is, essentially, a service that the police should be providing anyway.

But here is a novel idea for the Government. We know, and the Minister knows, that the police have had to absorb $300 million worth of costs over the last 4 years. The novel idea is: why does the Government not actually just fund the police to do the job? As David Clendon said, $3.5 million is not a lot in the scheme of things. Why does the Government not just fund the police to be able to do their job and stop putting it back on to members of the public? Stop putting it back on to New Zealanders to dip into their pockets to do what the Government could just do for itself if it decided that it was going to fund the police to a level that they actually deserve.

Search and rescue—David Clendon raised a really important point there. If people are lost in the bush and they fear that they may be charged for the search and rescue, does that not jeopardise people? Does that not jeopardise their safety if they believe that they may actually be charged for search and rescue to come and look for them? That comes down to the Government actually putting people’s lives in jeopardy.

Just finally—just very briefly—the other important point I would like to make is: what may happen if police are called out to a false alarm? I know now that when fire brigades are called out to false alarms, they charge people. What is in the future? This is the problem. We are worried about what is going to happen in the future in terms of this bill, whether the cost will go from $8.50 up to $50. What is the thin end of the wedge that Ron Mark spoke about? Will police, in the end, start charging for false alarms? If you look again at what I read out earlier: if police went out to a call, it would constitute policing, it would be provided on the request of an individual, and it would be provided to the individual or organisation requesting it. But in respect of the response of the police to calls for service relating to potential offending—yes, potential offending; it is not actual offending—they are not conducting an investigation; they are just turning up and there is nothing to investigate and it is a false alarm and they will not be prosecuting anyone. Will people be charged for false alarm callouts to the police?

There are so many unknowns in this bill. That is the real concern, with, of course, the biggest concern being that the greatest unknown is how much this is actually going to cost individuals in 3, 4, or 10 years’ time. Kia ora.

I move, That the question be now put.

Kia ora. I want to take a short call on the Policing (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill, and I want to start and preface my contribution by saying that legislation that is passed in this House, in my humble opinion, should be very clear, it should be removed of any ambiguity, it should be based on the most recent information and statistics that are available, and where possible—and I think it is a sign on this side of the House—ministerial interference should be at a minimum.

So let us turn to this bill. This is why Labour is not supporting this bill. On reading it, it is not only unclear—and I will reference the particular parts of the bill—it is dated, and, of course, for me it has too much of the Minister in it. I will draw your attention to the first clause, new section 79B, “Policing services that may be subject to cost recovery”, which says: “(1) The Minister may recommend a regulation under section 102A only if the Minister”—only if the Minister—“is satisfied that the policing service in question is a demand service.”

If anyone should know what a demand service is, it would be the Commissioner of Police, surely. Surely the Commissioner of Police would know that, but in this instance, we have “the Minister”. The Minister, in his or her ivory tower, is going to determine what meets the criteria for a demand service. So I would put that down and I would probably want a response from the Minister in the chair.

The second point I make is that it is unclear. Minister Judith Collins got up and shared with this Committee, particularly around new section 79F and the payment of fees. We in this House were led to believe that it was going to be $7 per vetting service, but the Minister responded and said “No, it’s $8.50.”, and other colleagues have actually put up the point: how sustainable is $8.50, and could it go beyond that? So I think that having the Minister in the chair making up decisions like that is not a good process when we are coming to examine particular bills, and that should have been put on a Supplementary Order Paper, in my humble opinion.

The third point that I mention is that it is dated, and this is in response to new section 79G. Others have talked about the figure in the regulatory impact statement, the police—which is 3 years old. You know, it talks about approximately half a million vettings being processed each year. I would like to know whether that figure is the current figure. This Committee should have the most up-to-date vetting numbers per annum, and using figures that are 3 years old does not give this Committee the necessary information to make a decision on this bill, because it is a police cost recovery bill. We should have, in this Committee, the most up-to-date figures that the police are currently having to deal with. This is what I am saying: it is outdated, it is unclear, and the Minister of Police is tampering with it.

The other point that the Minister made when she took the chair was in terms of new section 79G—the exemptions. She mentioned that if you do 20 or fewer vettings per year, you might be exempt. As my colleague Kelvin Davis mentioned, in my electorate we have something called Iron Māori, where we have thousands of people converging on the Pandora Pond in Napier and we have hundreds of volunteers. I can see that this is potentially going to cost what has become an iconic event in my electorate. I have Kahungungu Waitangi Day, where we have thousands of people come there and we have, again, lots of volunteers, and I can see an impact on those organisations. I have Tamararo, which is one of the largest kapa haka in Gisborne, and, of course, this Labour weekend we are going to have Māori rugby league converge on Wainuiōmata. These are just some of the many, many local events that I believe could be impacted if we do not give a clear signal about who is in, who is out, and how much it is going to cost. Kia ora.

I move, That the question be now put.

Everyone who is going for the call has already had a call, and it is some time since we have had a new argument.

Motion agreed to.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 126 in the name of Chris Hipkins to clause 4 be agreed to.

The question now is that Part 1 stand part. Those who are of that opinion will say Aye; of the contrary opinion will say No. The Ayes have it. The question now is that Part—

💬 Carmel Sepuloni: No—party vote. I said: “No, party vote.” Sorry, it was meant to be louder—sorry.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): I think the member does need to be louder.

I would remind members that as well as saying “No” loudly, they need to call for a party vote loudly as well.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 97 in the name of Poto Williams to clause 5 be agreed to.

I will report this bill without amendment presently. Members, we now come to the Māori Purposes Bill. I am now going to seek leave of the Committee to report progress, seek leave to sit again presently, so the Speaker can rule on it. [Interruption] Is there any objection to that? If there was, I would toss them out. That will be agreed.

Progress to be reported presently.

House resumed.

The Chairperson reported the Policing (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill without amendment, and no progress on the Māori Purposes Bill and the Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Amendment Bill.

Report adopted.