Protection for First Responders and Prison Officers Bill

I move, That the Protection for First Responders and Prison Officers Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Justice Committee to consider the bill.

Firstly, I’d like to start my speech by reading from a few different articles and reading out some statistics that will, hopefully, for the members in the House or the parties in the House and the people who are watching, highlight the very real daily struggles that our first responders—in most part, our police officers, our ambulance paramedics, prison officers, and our firemen and women—face every day. I truly believe that people, for the most part, underestimate the scale of the problem when it comes to assaults and, in particular, serious assaults against our first responders when they’re in the line of duty. Hopefully, when I read out these stories from these first responders, the articles from the representatives of those first responders, and some of the facts and the statistics, it will clearly highlight the reasoning behind the genesis of this bill and tabling it in this House.

“Auckland paramedic Dylan Schwartz has been working in Mt Roskill for four years and patient abuse is a daily reality for him. While treating patients St John ambulance staff have been relying on police for help as their own lives get put in danger. In 2017 paramedics asked for police assistance for more than 12,000 incidents … The highest number of police callouts was in December 2017 with paramedics needing police assistance in [over 1,200 different] cases … These calls included situations where ambulances were hit with bottles, drunk patients coming out of their homes swinging broken bottles, and patients becoming violent and refusing transportation … There had been times when Schwartz questioned why he became a paramedic because of the abuse he and his fellow paramedics regularly experienced … Chief executive Peter Bradley said the number of times paramedics had been abused was ‘appalling and should be deeply concerning to the New Zealand public … Our people are there to help, and they cannot help you if they are having to defend themselves.’ ”

Abuse and assaults on ambulance officers just for the first seven months of this year: more than 1,600 crew abuse and assault incidents have been reported. This is an average of 53 cases of crew abuse and assault recorded every single week in this country, and those are just the cases that have been reported. In the 2017 calendar year, the abuse and assaults for the ambulance officers and crews numbered over 2,500. In May, a south Auckland ambulance officer was punched in the face by a bystander of a synthetic drug overdose patient she was treating. In August, an ambulance officer who had recently given birth as a surrogate was the victim of assault on the first day of her return to work from maternity leave. She and her partner were shoved and kicked to the ground, and that was in Nelson.

Assaults on police officers: from 1998 to 2017, serious assaults on police have increased by 244 percent. In the last two years, serious assaults on police increased by over 20 percent—from 526 to over 630. Last year, assaults on police totalled over 1,600—an average of five every single day. The serious assaults averaged more than two a day.

In regards to our prisons and corrections officers: over the past 10 years, there have been 220 serious assaults on our prison officers. This is a growing problem. It’s a growing concern and totally and utterly unacceptable. We cannot keep doing what we’ve been doing to try and stop these assaults from occurring. Clearly, it is not working. We cannot keep excusing and ignoring the people who commit these crimes. We need to get the respect back for the people who wear a uniform.

The New Zealand Police Association president, earlier this year, put out a press release, and he was talking specifically about the increase in the numbers of serious assaults on police officers. He says that “Assault on a police officer carries a maximum jail sentence of three years. Assault with reckless disregard is five years, and intent to cause grievous bodily harm is 10 years—neither of these offences record that it was committed against an officer.”

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 10 p.m.