Policing (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Policing (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill be now read a third time. This bill amends the Policing Act 2008 to enable cost recovery for certain policing services that fall within the definition of a “demand service”. The New Zealand Police is one of the few police services worldwide that does not have legislation that explicitly allows for some degree of cost recovery.

Cost recovery is common for many public sector agencies in New Zealand, both at local and central government level. For example, the Ministry for Primary Industries has a system in place to recover the costs of providing for food safety, fisheries, and biosecurity services, and the Department of Internal Affairs charges fees for the provision of New Zealand passports. Providing for cost recovery in the Policing Act, through regulations, will enable the Police to substantially meet the costs associated with certain policing services. This will avoid placing additional strain on taxpayer funds or shifting resources towards those services at the expense of other policing services. It will also safeguard the delivery of these services by ensuring that funding is specifically ring-fenced for them.

Under this bill, the Minister of Police can recommend regulations prescribing fees or charges for certain policing services. The service must be a demand service. The fee or charge must be consistent with certain cost-recovery criteria, and everything reasonable must have been done to consult persons and organisations affected. A demand service is a policing service requested by an individual organisation that is of direct benefit to that individual organisation, even though there may also be some indirect benefit to the public. It does not include responding to 111 calls. It does not include conducting criminal investigations, nor the prosecuting of criminal offences.

The bill does not list the specific policing services that costs can be recovered for, other than the provision of vetting services by the Police. This is the only policing service currently being considered for cost recovery. Following the passage of this bill, it is intended to introduce regulations to enable cost recovery for the police-vetting service. The regulations will set a fixed fee of $8.50 per vetting request, to cover the actual and reasonable costs of the police-vetting service. Regulations will also provide for a range of fee waivers, including for agencies making 20 vetting requests or fewer per year and for registered charities. Fees may also be waived for agencies facing extreme hardship and in cases where there are exceptional circumstances.

I would like to acknowledge, at this stage, the support of our support parties—the Māori Party, United Future, and the ACT Party, and particularly note their submissions relating to registered charities.

In conclusion, the Policing (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill enables the Police to recover the costs of certain policing services that come within the definition of a demand service as set out in the bill. This will help the Police ensure that resources are not diverted from front-line services. Cost recovery by public sector agencies in New Zealand already occurs, and leads to better allocation of taxpayer resources. I believe there is a strong case for this to include cost recovery for policing services where the service is of direct benefit to individuals or organisations. I commend this bill to the House.

We have not been supportive of this bill, from the outset, and I want to spend my contribution talking about the problems that we have had with the Policing (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill.

Firstly, it is within the name of the bill itself—it is about cost recovery for policing services. It is our firm view that the vetting of people who are going to work with vulnerable populations is probably a core service of the police, and as such the police should be adequately funded to do so. We believe that the police have been underfunded in many areas, and this is one area where, we believe, funding should have been applied. It comes down to the argument about what is a “demand service”. During some of the Law and Order Committee submissions and hearings that I was able to sit in on, there were many discussions about demand service and about what might be termed a private benefit or a direct benefit to an individual or organisation. We discussed this a lot.

One of the arguments that we put forward is that in terms of Government requirements for such organisations as are funded by Government, where they may be working with vulnerable populations such as children or the elderly, it is a requirement of those Government contracts that staff are vetted. Our argument, further, is that we feel that police vetting is like the first line of defence in ensuring that you have a safe and an appropriate workforce in place to work with those vulnerable populations. It is our view that, given we are now required in some of our services to meet the legislative requirements of Acts such as the Vulnerable Children Act, for example—where the protection of children is paramount, but where the provision of services to those children is reliant on a safe workforce—where a workforce must be vetted, it is, in fact, actually in the public interest. It should not be determined as a private benefit under the definition of this particular bill. That has been our strong argument all along. Vetting is the first line of defence to ensure that we have a safe workforce to work with our children.

This legislation also seems a little inconsistent with some of the other legislation that ensures we work safely with our children. I want to refer to the sex offenders register and also back to the Vulnerable Children Act, where we are, on the one hand, saying very clearly that we want to protect our children from terrible harm, but, on the other hand, we are actually making it a cost to an individual for us to be sure that they are safe to work with those children. We think there are some inconsistencies there.

With regard to the regulations that Minister Collins has referred to, there were three Supplementary Order Papers that were presented to the House to exempt the fees for police vetting for registered charities, for early childhood education, and for registered teachers. We notice that this legislation will now, by Order in Council, make regulations to exempt fees or set different kinds of fees. The Hon Peter Dunne has taken some role in staking a claim that he was responsible for ensuring that this went ahead. Well, I have to say that Peter Dunne was not the prime mover and shaker of that; it was actually the dozens and dozens and dozens of organisations that have volunteers and that are registered charities, which were very, very clear in their submissions to the select committee and also very clear to the Minister, as well. They ensured that he clearly got the message that he should support them in this regard and ensure that they could be exempt from charges under this legislation. I am pleased to say that that is going ahead. We are very glad for that, but it was actually a result of some very strong lobbying by the community and voluntary sector that that regulation was brought within the legislation.

This bill will pass. We are sad that our concerns with regard to ensuring that the police are funded appropriately have not been heard. We are also sad that this does actually lead us down the slippery slope of being able to charge for other activities within the police range of activities. We do not think that is appropriate. The police are there primarily to serve and to protect. We know they do a great job, and they need to be resourced to do that as well as they can. We are disappointed that this legislation may lead to other opportunities to recover costs. During the process with the select committee, some of the arguments that were made by my colleagues from Labour and the Greens were about what types of activities those may be, and whether we are setting ourselves up to have a police force that may support those people who can afford to pay for it. That is not a good look in this country.

This bill will pass. We are disappointed that our arguments have not been heard in that regard, but I am very supportive of the fact that charities will now have an opportunity to have those fees waived. We will keep a close eye on this particular piece of legislation to ensure that the costs do not escalate from what the Minister has set, at $8.50 per vet. We will keep a close eye on that because we hope that what does not happen is what has happened in other jurisdictions, where the costs have escalated into the range of $50 a head. We will not be supporting this bill.

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity to stand to support the final stages of the Policing (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill. The purpose of the bill is to amend the Policing Act 2008. At present the Policing Act does not explicitly enable Police to charge users for its services. This bill amends the Policing Act 2008 to provide Police with the ability to recover its costs for providing certain services. Here I would like to acknowledge the New Zealand Police for the services it provides us. Because of it we feel safe in our homes and in our community. This is important because the work Police does is to ensure that people are safe, and the vetting service is one of those areas. It ensures the people who are working with the vulnerable or children are vetted before they go into that service.

This bill is the result of a consultation paper that was released in December 2012, which attracted 147 submissions. Detailed consultation was done, and thus this bill was formulated and its provisions were made. During the Law and Order Committee process there were a lot of detailed discussions with members and submitters, and I would like to acknowledge all the members of the Law and Order Committee, as well as the submitters who participated in the process to ensure that this bill is a fine bill and will help the people.

Some of the Police services, such as the vetting service, provide a direct benefit to people, and that is why a nominal fee is being proposed to be charged for providing the vetting service. The select committee also clarified the “demand service”. What are the demand services? That was not very clear, but in the select committee process we did some work and ensured that “demand service” was clarified. I would like to point out a few things. Providing a request for an individual or an organisation or directly benefiting a person or an organisation, although there may be an indirect benefit to the public as a whole—this was not clear when the bill was introduced, but during the select committee process it was clarified that the “demand service” should be clarified further so that there was no confusion.

As the bill was introduced, the Minister had the authority to provide for exemptions and waivers of the refund of the fees, but in the select committee process, as the discussion happened, we felt that that the Minister should not be the person involved in this exemption process. Rather, the Commissioner of Police should be allowed, once the regulations are made, if there is a requirement for the exemption. It is now clarified that the Commissioner of Police, in accordance with the regulations, can provide for exemptions and waivers of the fees.

This bill also provides that, when the cost is to be fixed, the Minister should ensure that the stakeholders are consulted before any changes are brought into this regulation. So the bill is a very close bill, and there are clear indications what Ministers and the commissioner can do and cannot do. I hope this will go a long way. As the Minister mentioned, the minimum charge for the vetting service of $8.50 is a very nominal charge, and we hope that that will help, because there are other regulations that require that vetting should be done for people who work with the vulnerable and children. With these words, I commend the bill to the House.

I do not disagree with the member who has just resumed his seat, Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi, that it is very important that vetting should be done for people working in our communities who are in positions of responsibility, whether it be over the elderly or the young. The big debate around this piece of legislation—and I think it is accurate to say it has spluttered its way through the legislative process—has been what, at the first instance, this piece of legislation proposed to do, what it was sold to do, and what it is actually going to achieve.

When this piece of legislation was introduced in November 2014, after the Government came into power in that election, it was proposed that for events put on by concert promoters and people holding sports events where there would have to be an extra police presence to control crowds, etc.—and I think on this side of the House we agreed to it somewhat—there would be an element of charging out by police. There was extra expense for providing extra policing at those types of events, and therefore some cost recovery would be necessary. Under that guise the Labour Party supported this piece of legislation to the Law and Order Committee.

Unbeknownst to us, it was not the likes of event promoters and sporting promoters who were going to be targeted. Under the legislation as it stands, it is the likes of community organisations—charities and organisations within our communities, like schools and early childhood education providers—that will now have to bear the brunt of the cost of the police vetting. The argument is that it is a demand service and there is a private benefit to those organisations that the people who work with them are police-vetted. I would argue that there is a general public benefit for making sure that the people who work in those positions within those organisations are good people and safe people, as they work with some of our most vulnerable citizens.

The other point I want to make about this piece of legislation is I think we are working on it with old information that does not necessarily tell the picture as it is. The regulatory impact statement, which, I believe, was authored in October 2013, quotes figures that the Government is still using now as a basis for the overall cost of the vetting service. I will just double-check this and get it right. Yes—back in October 2013 the police said that the vetting service cost to the police was $2.2 million, which, in the big scheme of things, I think that the taxpayer can wear. At that stage, the proposed fee for a police vetting check was, I understand, $5. That is where they came up with the figure of $2.2 million, because, apparently, back in October 2013 there were half a million police vetting checks processed every year.

Also in that document from back in October 2013 it says: “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.” In English, it is saying there is going to be more demand—more than half a million—and therefore the price of the vetting service will have to increase. At the Committee stage of this piece of legislation, I said to the Minister of Police, who was in the chair, that back in 2014 the nominal fee was $5, and that the regulatory impact statement said that things might change. I said that it has been 3 years since this regulatory impact statement was produced, and I asked whether the Government had any new figures on what the cost to the end-user will be. We have been waiting for some time for the potential impact. It makes a big difference when we are talking about half a million, and potentially more, police-vetting checks over a year period. Then we got the new figure, which we have never heard before, of $8.50.

So for at least 12 months we have been wanting to know exactly what the impost would be for the likes of charities and schools in our communities—what they were going to be charged for these police vetting checks. For a long time—2 or 3 years now—they have been working on the assumption of $5, but, after a simple question to the Minister, all of sudden we came up with a figure of $8.50, which, obviously, is going to increase the charge or the cost to the likes of those schools and those charities and those organisations. So we have got the $8.50 charge, which has gone up considerably from $5.

We have also got the figure of half a million vettings, which this has all been based on, and I still do not think we have got an accurate figure from the Government about how many vetting checks are being done. If it was half a million back in October 2013 and the Government’s own regulatory impact statement says that demand is going to increase, what is the number? Has it gone from half a million to three-quarters of a million? It does matter if your price has gone up by $3.50 from the figure that was first mooted.

By my maths, if we are basing it on half a million vetting checks—which is the old figure—and the new figure of $8.50, up from $5, the police cost for the vetting service has gone from $2.2 million per year in October 2013 to $4.25 million in October 2016, which has meant that the cost of police-vetting checks has almost doubled in the time since this piece of legislation was first mooted and the problem was looked at—to now. That, I think, is of major concern for those people out there who are paying for these police-vetting checks. The likes of schools may have to go through quite a few police vetting checks every year, and an increase of $3.50 might not sound like a lot to the Government, but $8.50 over quite a few checks—and we have got that number of half a million—is quite a lot of money to the people out in the community.

Let us not forget what this is really about. It is about community organisations trying to do good in their communities, not the likes of sports promoters or concert promoters, as was first mooted at the very outset of this piece of legislation. I think this has spluttered through Parliament. The information that it is all based on is patchy at best, because we have been operating on $5 for 3 years, and then all of a sudden it is $8.50. We have been operating on half a million, so perhaps someone on the Government benches—in the 5-minute call that they will take on this piece of legislation, which they are obviously very proud of—will tell us exactly what the figures are, how much revenue they are bringing in because of this, and whether that does cover the costs or whether they are making a little bit extra on the side.

I do not know what is going on within the police vetting system if the costs have doubled in the last 3 years. Have the volumes increased that much? Have they really increased from half a million to—what? What has an increase in price meant, from $5 back in 2013 to now, when it has gone to $8.50? It is taking money out of the likes of early childhood centres, it is taking money out of the likes of schools, and it is taking money out of the likes of people who are working with the most vulnerable people in our community. I am not saying this work should not be done. I think police should, in some cases, try to look to recover costs from people, but not necessarily these kinds of organisations in our community.

I would really appreciate it if someone on the other side of the House updated us with the best information that they have got. How many police-vetting checks are happening now? That half a million number that they were spouting about back in 2013 must have gone up, because the Government’s own regulatory impact statement back then said the demand would increase. How long will $8.50 for a police vetting check stay at $8.50?

My colleague Poto Williams has been very concerned about the price rising to the likes of $50, which it has got to in Australia, and I think, with the price increase that we have seen in a short time from $5 to $8.50, that is a valid concern to have. Could someone from the other side of the House tell us exactly what the situation is, how much money they are bringing in, and how many police vetting checks there will be in the next 2 to 3 years so that we can get an idea of what is going on here? I think that charities, organisations, and the likes of schools in our communities would quite like to know what they are up for to make sure that the people in their organisations are safe people to work within them.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak on the Policing (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill, and I thank the previous member, Kris Faafoi, very much for the questions that he has asked. Can I just bring some clarity to his questions. The figures that we have are that in the 2014-15 year there were 512,048 police-vet checks, and that was an increase of around about 7 percent. He does ask the question about who shall pay for this, and the member mentioned schools and charities.

Cabinet has now agreed to regulations that provide a range of fee waivers, and this was a subject of great discussion in the Law and Order Committee as we looked at this bill. Agencies or schools making up to 20 vetting requests per year will not be required to pay. Registered charities will be exempt from the fee. Fees may also be waived for agencies facing extreme hardship or in cases where there are exceptional circumstances. So can I say to the member’s concerns that all of those concerns have been considered by Cabinet, and it has released regulations around that, which is what we wanted as a committee—to understand that.

Can I also say that when we discussed this in the committee, I cannot actually ever recall a $5 amount being discussed. Maybe I missed that meeting, but it was always around about $7.92—that is the figure that comes to my mind. However, you may correct me on that in terms of your own research. However, $8.50 represents an actual and reasonable cost for a police-vetting fee.

Can I say that this has all come about because of the Vulnerable Children Act 2014, which Labour supported. In fact, this whole House, with the exception of the Greens and the Mana party, at that particular time, supported that bill. It required police vetting, especially for those who were working with vulnerable situations and children.

💬 Jacinda Ardern: Did it say they’d have to pay for it? Did it say they’d have to pay for it? Did it say that?

No, that bill did not say that, but what this House agreed to, with the exception of the Green Party—and I understand that Ms Logie spoke on that bill at that point in time and was unhappy that there was not a greater element addressing family violence in the bill. She must be thrilled with what the Hon Amy Adams is doing with the reforms that she is bringing to this Parliament.

💬 Kris Faafoi: Talk about this bill.

What happened in this bill—it was not just the decision of this Parliament but it was the pressure and the expectations of this nation that we address this issue when it came to child abuse and violence in our communities. This Parliament passed that bill.

What this bill does is it enables the agency that is going to vet those people working with vulnerable people and children to be able to recover its costs, up to around about $3 million—resources that, in spending on this process, not only can be reallocated to building a very complete and sustainable and efficient vetting process but can enable the existing resources of the Police to be better dedicated to the frontline work that it does.

I am very happy to stand and speak in support of this bill. Thank you.

This is a very unfortunate bill. The Greens, like our Labour colleagues, have opposed it from the beginning and will continue to do so. Fundamentally, this bill threatens—and I used that word advisedly—to change the relationship between New Zealanders and our police force in an adverse way. It is the thin edge of the wedge of commercialising the services that police provide for us.

We are told that, specifically, this vetting charge is in response to what is perceived to be a private benefit; I do not accept that argument for a moment. If our wonderful police officers around Northland continue to do their jobs well, and get on the streets and keep the rascals on their toes, then it is less likely my house will be burgled, and that is a direct private benefit to me.

There is a much greater public good in having a peaceful and a safe community. The private benefit that accrues to me and to all of us individually—we already pay for that; it is called tax. I know some of our friends on the National ranks might think tax is actually a four-letter word, but I think paying for public sector services through tax is a pretty robust model, and I am very happy to see that continue. I think that to isolate a single State agency like Police for a single amount in a little bit of a private sector, market-driven sort of approach is a very unfortunate and backward approach.

The introduction to the bill talks about the need to “alleviate strain on police resources”. There is no question that Police resources are extremely stretched and under pressure. Effectively, it has gone on a flat budget. Its income has been flat for some 7 to 8 years. The calculation given to us was that, between 2010 and about last year, the Police had something like a $90 million cut in real terms. At the last Budget it got a small extra amount to pay a long-overdue, quite modest pay increase, which was welcomed but, again, I stress it was probably overdue in terms of maintaining morale within the Police. At best, you could see this bill as a short-term, stop-gap measure to try to drive a little bit more money into the coffers, to try to enable the police to do their job.

The fact is that the police have found efficiencies through technology and through changing the way they manage their human and other resources, but the fact is there is a limit to how much and how far you can squeeze or stretch a dollar. This bill, as I say, could be seen as a stop-gap measure—just a short-term grab for a little bit more income—but, more cynically, I think that in the longer term it is setting up a situation where charging for police services will become more commonplace.

We have started out with this business of vetting, and I do follow Mr Faafoi’s commentary about the cost. I distinctly remember at the Law and Order Committee that the figure of $7 was the figure we were working to. We were told quite recently at the second reading by the Minister of Police that, actually, it will be $8.50. That is a 20 percent increase before the bill has even escaped from the House. And, following Mr Faafoi’s comments, if it was talked about as $5, that is actually a 70 percent increase since it was first proposed. How much further do we go? Internationally, a figure of $50 is not uncommon.

OK, even if it is $8.50 or it doubles to 15 or 16 bucks, that will not hurt any of us in this House if we choose to undertake a vetting process for whatever reason, but we have got to remember that the people who are going to actually apply to be vetted are often in the community voluntary sector. It is all very well to give an agency a waiver, but one should also consider the level of bureaucracy and cost in administering those waivers.

But do we really want to punish people—members of the community who put their hand up to give back to their community by assisting at a local early childhood facility, or by working in a hospice as a volunteer? Anywhere people are working with vulnerable members of the public—that is where they will be hit. You get a person on a low income or a fixed income—if they choose to work in one or two different agencies, perhaps at an early childhood centre and at a school, or whatever it might be, they will need to get a vet for each of those functions. They will have to go through the process each time they want to offer service. So we are actually putting a financial penalty on people who want to contribute their time to community well-being.

I think that is a very perverse message to give members of the public: “Thank you for your contribution; now here is the bill.” And is that not a roundabout way—it is a money-go-round, effectively. It is taking money out of the pockets of members of the public who are wanting to do the right thing—wanting to contribute their time—and handing that to the police.

We should remind ourselves that, actually, the numbers involved are relatively small in the scheme of things. If you look at the overall Police budget, the few millions of dollars that this might raise are actually very small beer. As I have said, weigh that against the precedent it sets—that we are going to have a commercial relationship with our police force rather than one built on trust and built on a shared commitment to a safe community. It is a very unfortunate and a very slippery slope we are heading down, I believe.

Following the select committee, I made the point in our minority report on the bill that we did anticipate that the cost would go up over time. I think we did not anticipate it would go up quite as quickly and quite so much—as I say, at least 20 percent before the bill has even escaped the House. At the moment, the target of this bill is the vetting of people who want to work with vulnerable people, but I guess the message to other organisations and to other community sectors is: be afraid—for example, with sports. Yes, police do routinely turn up at sporting events, be they large or small. Is the sporting sector the next to be in the crosshairs and to have extra cost imposed on it? Again, it is an area with a lot of public benefit as well as private benefit.

Mr Faafoi does make a fair point that, yes, when there is a significant sporting event at the Cake Tin, or anywhere else, that does impose cost on the police force. And there is an argument that says: “Yes, maybe they should be able to clip the promoter’s ticket.” But then how far do you go with that? If you have a major sporting event, your expectation is that you will also get more traffic on the road on a given afternoon or evening. Do you send for cost recovery for the extra road policing that would be required? Do you add the cost of the likelihood that there will be a few more people partying up in Courtenay Place in the unlikely event that the Hurricanes have a win at the Cake Tin, for example? Where do you draw those boundaries?

Is it not better to simply bring the boundaries right back to where they belong and to say: “We will resource the police properly through Vote Police. That is where its income comes from and it will disperse that operationally in the way that it sees fit.” We do not see any positive future in the idea of a commercial relationship.

The other area I would point to that does, undoubtedly, impose significant financial cost on police is in search and rescue. We live in a beautiful country. It is also a country that takes no prisoners. If people are a little bit careless in the outdoors—in the mountains and out on boats—then the likelihood is that they can come to grief, occasionally through carelessness and, just as often, simply through unexpected or unpredictable weather events, or whatever it might be.

Do we really want to see a situation where New Zealanders, or indeed our tourists—our visitors—are discouraged from engaging with our beautiful outdoor environments for fear that if they get lost or require some assistance they are going to be looking down the barrel of a significant bill from their friendly local boys and girls in blue? I think that would be a very unfortunate outcome, but it is a very predictable one because search and rescue does not come cheaply. It takes a great deal of cost and police time to administer, involving their own officers to organise volunteers in civil defence and the like, and I think that it would be a likely target if we go down this road of charging for police service.

I will not labour the point, except simply to say that we think this bill is ill-conceived, it is the wrong model, and we continue to oppose it. Thank you.

Policing is, and always has been, the core responsibility of the State. The citizens have the right to feel safe in their homes and in their businesses. Indeed, as a First World, progressive country, we all have the right to demand that our streets are also safe. New Zealanders pay their taxes to enable the State to fulfil that responsibility. As much as it is the responsibility of the State to keep its citizens safe, it is also the responsibility of the citizens to pay their taxes fairly, equitably, and honestly. New Zealanders are reputed to be very honest, by far, in fulfilling their duties towards the State, and therefore they have the right to expect that the State also reciprocates in the same manner.

During its proceedings, the Law and Order Committee heard a large number of submissions from private citizens, from NGOs, and from community organisations. Almost all of them were very, very concerned that this legislation, after being passed, will cause them to incur extra costs as far as their vetting requests are concerned. Let us take the latest figure that has been thrown around for vetting, which is $8.50. Now, we also have been told that about half a million requests are received annually by the police. So, by those calculations, it works out to $4.25 million that the police will generate out of this process, whereas the cost that has been told to us for the vetting process is only $2.2 million at this stage. This actually means that this is not cost recovery—it is shameless profiteering. It is profiteering when the Government spends only $2.2 million for vetting and it is likely to recover $4.25 million. This is not cost recovery; it is profiteering.

New Zealand First believes that keeping our communities safe through policing is the core responsibility of the State, and police vetting is inseparable from basic policing. The police force and the services it provides are funded from tax revenue, and we believe that it should stay that way. New Zealand First believes that taxpayers should not have to pay for a vetting service with a separate fee. We believe that police should carry out vetting as part of their core policing work. We also believe that this bill will provide the impetus for police to start charging for the services they currently provide as core business, such as attending to emergencies, family violence incidents, property crime, or child abuse incidents. We are strongly against this.

The Vulnerable Children Act 2014 requires standard screening and vetting of all central government and Government-funded contractors who are working with children. This will be a voluntary regime for businesses, NGOs, and voluntary organisations, but will be reviewed in 2 years. It is going to set a bad precedent. At the moment, we are saying that only $8.50 will be charged, but there is nothing in this legislation to stop the police from increasing these charges. It has actually come up from $5 to begin with, to $8.50, and this bill has not even been passed yet. So we have a suspicion that this will very quickly rise to a very high figure, such as $50 or even more. That is the concern that all the submitters had, and that is the concern that we have got.

Powers are vested with the Commissioner of Police as to what exemptions he or she can make for the organisations that will not be charged fees for vetting services. That of itself actually makes this legislation very ambiguous, and there are grey areas left there. Equally, the commissioner will later on have the power to increase the cost, because there will not be any parliamentary debate on that. That will be a matter of regulation, and the police commissioner will be able to increase the rates of police-vetting charges. That means that, depending on what he or she likes, the police commissioner will be able to actually charge the organisation what they wish to and will be able to exempt those organisations as they feel fit. That is not a very fair distribution of the revenue that is intended to be collected. Paying for the service will increase compliance costs, which will have a negative impact on the operational budgets of schools, particularly small schools. New Zealand First will not support this bill. Thank you.

The Policing (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill seems to have attracted a little bit of controversy this afternoon in its third reading, and yet what I see from this bill is that it changes a piece of legislation that previously, under the 2000 legislation, did not explicitly enable police to charge users for any of their services. This bill corrects that. It amends the Policing Act with an intention of providing police with the ability to recover the cost of providing certain policing services, such as police vetting.

I do know that my colleague Jonathan Young answered a Labour member who seemed unaware of what was in the bill—which was a bit disturbing, given that he was sitting on the Law and Order Committee—very well. But the point, I think, is worth resaying, which is that a number of recent national and international developments have put increasing pressure on police-vetting services, and this includes the introduction of mandatory checks for the children’s workforce, which is required by National’s Vulnerable Children Act 2014. Can one argue that that is a worthy advancement in legislation? Police vetting is becoming increasingly common and increasingly necessary, and part of employment.

The point was made, also by the Labour member, that schools and charities would be required to fund police vetting. However, I do see that the select committee has done its job very well, and Cabinet has now agreed that the regulations will provide for a range of fee waivers, including for agencies or schools making 20 vetting requests or fewer per year. They will not be required to pay, nor will registered charities—they will also be exempt from the fee. It is a shame that the Labour member who raised it had perhaps not read what was in the papers, but there you are. The fees may also be waived for agencies facing extreme hardship, and in cases where there are exceptional circumstances.

This is a good bill. I am pleased to see it at its third reading. I am very pleased to make a small contribution, and I do commend it to the House.

Jan Logie.

💬 Jacqui Dean: Be nice.

Under instruction from the National Party member Jacqui Dean to be nice, I will do what I can. I rise to add the Green Party’s opposition to this, the Policing (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill at its third reading. I really want to just speak to the context of this bill first up.

I have at least growing concern about the state of our core social infrastructure in New Zealand—a concern that it is not keeping up with population growth or changing social mores or need. We are seeing this very clearly in the health sector, we are seeing it at the breaking point in our social sector, and we are hearing this from the police. I take a word of caution from one editorial in the paper today saying that the Opposition always talks about problems in policing coming up to an election and how the police never have enough resource. That being said, I do think it is important to note that there has been a $90 million cut in real terms to the Police budget at a time when we are expecting more from it in terms of police vetting for vulnerable children, in terms of response to sexual violence, and in terms of response to domestic violence. It has been suffering a real-term funding cut. So it goes to the core of this Government’s approach, which is that it seems to be prioritising reducing Government over ensuring that our society works—ensuring that the vision that it bandies around all over the place is actually able to be delivered by us.

I think this is another example of that, because we have had the Vulnerable Children’s Act bring in this increased need for vetting. We have heard that mentioned again and again from National members across the way, which, to me, shows a gaping flaw in the logic behind this bill. Government members are saying they are bringing in this cost recovery for vetting because it is a private benefit, not a social good. The entire argument of the Vulnerable Children’s Act was that that vetting provides a public good. You cannot have it both ways. It does not make sense. So this bill goes right to the heart of that.

Also, I think this whole area exposes this Government’s lack of planning and how it does not seem to see things in a joined up way. We had the Vulnerable Children’s Act and increased requirements for vetting. There was going to be a consequent pressure on the police to be able to respond to that. I understand that there has been—and we have heard it from the Government—an increased demand for vetting. A no-brainer: it was going to happen. That has meant that the waiting time to get vettings through the police has gone up from an average of 6.3 days in 2013 to 21.7 days in 2015 because of that increased demand created by legislation, because this House said that there was a public good in that.

The Government should have seen that coming; everyone else saw that coming. Yet it did not put in the resources to be able to deliver the intent of the legislation. So are the Government members now, soon after and on the back of that, putting in legislation, and scrambling around to be able to address the damage that has been caused by them not thinking that through in the first place. The Government is putting the cost on to the rest of society while it has been actually collecting our taxes to be able to deliver our social services and our social intent, and yet it is not doing it. So it really does need to be called out on that.

I think it is worth saying that I heard at a Social Services Committee meeting this week from somebody in a tertiary institution who was saying that the vetting has, in the way that it has not been resourced, had a real impact on them. They are having backlogs of over 3 weeks to be able to get staff members vetted, and on top of that our tertiary institutions are now going to be charged costs, when they should be using that money for education.

Tēnā tātou katoa. Labour values the thousands of volunteers around this country, who contribute thousands of hours to community organisations up and down this country. Often, those very organisations that these volunteers work for are the only organisations in many of those communities—they are often vulnerable communities, whether they are based rurally or are urban-based—and Labour acknowledges and values their role. Labour also values the hard work our police force does. When we take Government next year, we are going to ensure that our police force is adequately funded.

To this bill here, the Policing (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill—I understand that the Government is also committed to ensuring that it will reduce obstacles for volunteers contributing time to community organisations, but this bill puts all that at risk. In fact, when I read the bill, it has a kind of hide-and-seek feel about it. The “seek” is that this bill is intended to recover costs around vetting services, but it hides the fact that it can also, perhaps down the track when we pass this legislation, recover costs for what are called “other services”. I note that in the report to the Justice and Electoral Committee, officials could not provide any exhaustive list to committee members on what those other services are likely to be. My point is, does this potentially open up to abuse the charging for other services that police may feel they have been inadequately resourced by this Government to cover? That is a question that maybe the Government members can get up and respond to.

The other “feel” I have with this bill is that it feels incomplete. It is not only open to inventing new services to charge for in order to recover costs, but it clearly did not, at the initial reading, talk about or give a list of the criteria for those exemptions. I will come back to that because I know that Mr Young did explain Cabinet’s decision, made on Monday.

I just want to acknowledge the submitters who came in front of the Justice and Electoral Committee. Can I just quickly list them: the New Zealand Public Service Association, the Citizens Advice Bureau New Zealand, the Plunket Society, and, of course, the National Council of Women of New Zealand, which also had issues with this bill that it clearly articulated to the select committee around confusion and around unnecessarily disadvantaging certain communities and organisations that it represents.

But it is that statement around cost recovery versus the potential for this bill to enable the police to actually generate income—that is what it can potentially become. The extensions to the statutory powers given to the New Zealand Police do not just limit it to charging for vetting services, which we would support, but actually open the potential to look at generating income through other means. I have a problem with the lack of closing that potential question mark and ensuring that if we are opening the police up to charging for other services, we actually define that. We should not leave it so open.

I want to go quickly now to the comment that Mr Young mentioned, around Cabinet agreeing to the waivers that he mentioned around registered charities and organisations facing severe hardship. I guess my concern, when he shared that with the House, was that that is the role, I thought, of the select committee. That is where we debate fixing up legislation. I want to acknowledge the Opposition members who suggested writing criteria, which Cabinet has obviously taken on board and passed. But then it just begs the question—if we cannot sort out stronger legislation in select committees, and we leave that up to Cabinet decisions, then that questions the value, as I see it from where I sit, of the role of the select committees.

Labour will not be supporting this bill. Kia ora.

Before I start making a few remarks just clarifying some of the statements that the previous Labour and Green members have made, I just want to make a comment that I think what is actually quite concerning is the lack of understanding by the Opposition of what this piece of legislation actually seeks to achieve. This is about police vetting and recovering costs from a number of services whereby increased demand is taking up a more disproportionate amount of police time. The Opposition members are insinuating, or scaremongering, that police services, core activities of police front-line services, have the potential of being charged under this legislation. That is absolutely incorrect. That is categorically wrong.

The functions performed by the police around police vetting are performed by back-office staff not front-line sworn officers, of which there are almost 9,000 out on the streets. It is simply incorrect to insinuate that the Police is going to be establishing itself as some form of money-hungry organisation. What this seeks to achieve, actually, is to give greater certainty to all those organisations that require police vetting as part of their core activities—there were over 500,000 police-vets undertaken last year—given the increased prevalence and increased need for greater scrutiny of people operating in the presence of vulnerable children and vulnerable New Zealanders, in order to give more people certainty of getting those vettings undertaken in a comprehensive nature and at a speedy pace in order to deliver for those organisations so they can undertake their core business.

Actually, one of the other things that have been left out of these discussions today so far by the Opposition is the fact that our police is one of the only forces in States in the OECD that we compare ourselves with that does not have some form of cost recovery service. If you look at New South Wales police, the Queensland police, or any of the others, their cost recovery services are at a disproportionately higher rate than what we are proposing. Our $8.50 per police-vet fee, which Cabinet agreed to—under the regulations; not the legislation, which is the role of the select committee—is far less than what the States that we compare ourselves with are undertaking. So thank you for the opportunity to speak on this bill. We obviously support it, and we support the police in their efforts across the country.

The services of our police are crucial in New Zealand. It is a public service paid for by all of us as taxpayers, and police vetting is a public good that should continue to be funded by taxpayers. This bill, the Policing (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill, proposes amending the Policing Act 2008 to allow police to be able to recover the costs of certain services they defined as “demand services”.

An example that the bill gives of a demand service is the provision of vetting services. I agree with the previous Labour speaker, Meka Whaitiri, who said that Labour really values our volunteers. We have thousands and thousands of people who volunteer across New Zealand and there are so many services that this current Government no longer funds that our volunteers have stepped up to provide. What will this bill, after it has passed, have as an effect on many of these volunteers? What this bill says is that they will be charged to go and get the police vetting service before they can provide the voluntary services that they do not charge for.

The Opposition parties put through Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs)—three in particular: one from my colleague Poto Williams; another from another colleague of mine from Labour Chris Hipkins; and another from the Green Party, from David Clendon. All of these SOPs were to ensure that various groups do not have to pay for these vetting services. However, this current Government did not agree to those SOPS, and so the Labour Party members do not support this particular bill.

This is a National Government that has—[Interruption]

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! I apologise for interrupting the member, but there is a degree of rudeness occurring. Members can sit down or go to the lobby, but not continue conversations like that.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. This is a National Government that has increasingly grown arrogant and out of touch. It is ignoring the really big issues that are facing the majority of New Zealanders: the housing crisis; the rising inequality; cuts to police services, health, and education. This is a Government that has talked about the $1.8 billion surplus, but it does not actually talk about the Government’s rising debt—it has risen 600 percent during the watch of this current Government, since 2008. Instead, the Prime Minister has talked about how he wants to deliver $3 billion in tax cuts. Now is not the time to be talking about tax cuts—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): That’s right!

—ha, ha—not when we are experiencing huge cuts to the police.

National has stretched our police to the point where the Police Association president described it as being at crisis point. Crime is on the rise again, resolution rates are falling, and police are overstretched. That is why Labour will fund 1,000 more police—extra police—to stop crime rates from rising and to take the pressure off our hard-working policemen and women.

This particular bill is a shonky attempt to cover up financial and operational gaps. This current Government, instead of actually just funding a core public service, which is our police, to do their job well, including vetting of our volunteers and vetting of others—it should actually just fund that. What it is doing instead is it is cutting frontline police in real terms, which has meant that the police do not have the numbers of staff that they need to do their jobs safely and well. Instead of addressing this issue, they want to get the cost from the public, from our volunteers, so that the police can be funded in that way, and we do not agree with that.

At the Law and Order Committee there were so many submissions to the select committee that strongly rejected this particular bill. Most of those who made oral submissions to the select committee—who represented a cross-section of charitable and non-profit organisations providing valuable community services and voluntary services in New Zealand—are against this bill. They are against the fact that they should be paying the police for vetting. For the safety of our children—our vulnerable children—we need our police.

You know, earlier on this year, about 2 or 3 months ago, the new Mayor in Auckland, His Worship Phil Goff, and I convened a meeting when he was still the MP for Mt Roskill. We invited the police to come to this meeting in South Auckland. The reason why we convened this meeting was that we have so many dairies, so many service stations, so many of our small businesses in South Auckland that have been experiencing robbery and physical assaults, mainly because a lot of these folks were stealing cigarettes, liquor, and various other items like that. The feedback that we got from the hundreds who attended this meeting, from the small-business owners, was that they themselves do not feel safe. When they actually reach out to the police, the time that it takes our police force to come to assist them is a very long time, and as for the resolution of crime for these small-business owners—many of them do not even hear back from the police.

Robberies have risen tremendously—by over 13 percent. Attacks on individuals—assaults—have gone up 9 percent, and it saddens me to hear that in my electorate in Counties Manukau assaults have gone up 27 percent. We need our police to be funded well enough so that they are able to do well the job that they do, and we need them to continue to be able to do things including vetting of our volunteers.

The growing violence does not affect just small-business owners; we also heard at this public meeting a lot of people telling us—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! I am going to interrupt the member now. I have been indicating to her that she should speak to the bill. The member can make passing reference to other matters, not passing reference to the bill.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. Vetting, as I said earlier on, is a core service for the benefit of the public. The public have a right to know that their children going off to schools and off to kindies are not surrounded by convicted paedophiles, and those are the sorts of things that the police in terms of their vetting process actually do. We do not agree with this user-pays system, which police will expect our volunteers and our members of the public to use.

Can this current Government guarantee in this particular bill that in future other core crime prevention services would not also suddenly be revealed by re-evaluation as purely a private good and not a public good? We do not think that this particular bill guarantees that. The Government should stop standing by while the Police continue to be underfunded and under-resourced. This Government should allocate the resources that are needed to prevent crime and to stop crime rates rising. Labour has promised 1,000 more police in our first term in Government to crack down on crimes and to make our communities safer, and Labour strongly opposes this bill.

Thank you very much.

I rise to take a very short call in support of the Policing (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill in its third reading. In response to the previous contribution, by Jenny Salesa, I want to say that this bill is focused on police efforts. It is about delivering Better Public Services, because what we are doing is we are increasing the Police budget and putting a focus on front-line measures.

We are expecting police to carry out their investigations and their prosecutions and not have to focus on that backroom administration, those ancillary functions. They are important but—let us put it plainly—it is backroom staff who are undertaking those roles and, therefore, there needs to be cost recovery as part of that to cover those costs, to enable the benefits to be reaped by individuals and organisations as they make sure that the people whom they are employing to undertake work, to be in positions in their organisations, are fit for purpose. So it is only proper that the cost of that vetting is recovered, and that the police use their resources to focus on core services and front-line work.

This is a Government that has supported the Police and is strong on law and order and justice. That has resulted in new thinking and modernisation in the way policing is done—for example, giving them things like iPhones to free up hours to make sure that they can carry on, as this bill does, to focus on front-line duties and not those backroom roles such as vetting. This bill seeks to make sure that the Police can recover the costs of vetting—and they will do so when this bill is passed—and that is appropriate, to make sure that those administration costs are recovered. So, with that, I support this bill.