Estimates Debate — Justice Sector

Members, I understand that responsible Ministers are available to speak to the Vote in the justice sector. The question is that Vote Attorney-General, Vote Corrections, Vote Courts, Vote Justice, Vote Parliamentary Counsel, Vote Police, and Vote Serious Fraud stand part of the Schedules.

Thank you, Mr Chair, and happy to take a call on our Estimates debate for Corrections, Justice, and Police. As the chair of the Justice Committee, can I acknowledge the work of the Ministers that appeared before our Justice Committee. It felt like it was almost like a game of two halves—it was pre-COVID and, obviously, post-COVID. So I want to acknowledge the Ministers and absolutely the officials, corrections officers, and police officers around the country who responded in such a timely and urgent manner, not only to keep our prison population safe but to keep our community safe. I do want to acknowledge the work of the Ministers.

In terms of justice, I want to acknowledge the work that the Minister’s doing, particularly around family violence. It was reported to our Justice Committee that services—of course, the pressures not just during lockdown but in general, the concerns around keeping families safe, and the work of the Minister in this Estimates in terms of increasing budgets for family violence services. I want to acknowledge the work that the Minister is doing in that regard, and also the work that he’s doing for Māori responses around family violence services.

We also heard in select committee the reforms of the Family Court and the $62 million investment from the COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund, enabling responses, effectively, to decrease backlog, as we understand courts weren’t sitting, so it’s important to acknowledge that. I do want to also drop in here under justice—although we understand that customs itself is a separate portfolio, but their $187 million towards Customs to ensure our borders were safe. So I just want to acknowledge that in terms of the justice portfolio.

In terms of police, we definitely heard—and I want to commend the Minister of Police in the active work of our police officers around the country in responding to COVID. No one had a blueprint, but I do know that police were very responsive to communities, and I want to especially acknowledge the work of iwi through the leadership of the Minister, but also officers throughout the country working actively with communities during COVID and keeping us safe. I want to also highlight the 2,000 prison officers in that portfolio. It will be interesting to hear when the Minister takes the chair around the firearms buy-back that the committee heard about, the plan around addressing organised crime, and looking forward to hearing from the Minister around his presentation to the Justice Committee.

But in the time I’ve got left, I really want to talk about Corrections, because the Minister of Corrections is in the seat, and want to acknowledge the commitment to reducing prison numbers, particularly in the strategy Hōkai Rangi, which the Minister oversees, which is an absolute commitment to reducing our prison numbers. I was fortunate enough to attend the Hawke’s Bay Regional Prison with the Minister just the other day, and to engage directly with inmates, and to hear their own stories of Hōkai Rangi and the services that Corrections engages in with inmates and their whānau—so it’s part of not only Corrections but Whānau Ora—to ensure when our inmates leave our prisons, they don’t return. So I’m really keen for the Minister to touch on Hōkai Rangi, because it is a revolutionary strategy aimed at working with all inmates through a Māori lens. We saw that firsthand engagement directly, like I said, with inmates at the Hawke’s Bay Regional Prison. So I want to commend the Minister for his commitment to reducing our population, for hearing firsthand from inmates the short change that they’re feeling since Hōkai Rangi has come into practice.

So we heard that as the Justice Committee. Of course, questions were asked by members, but all in all the Estimates that were presented in corrections and in police and in justice did send a clear message that we were having Ministers responding to COVID in a timely way, but also ensuring our communities were safe, that our borders were safe, and that the COVID response Budget that we are debating here is responsible for keeping our community and our country safe, but also with an eye to the recovery and the rebuild. Those were some of the contributions that we heard in the Justice Committee, and I’m keen to participate further in this debate. Kia ora.

Thank you, Mr Chair, for the opportunity to take a call in this debate in regards to the Estimates for Vote Corrections. I do just want to start by acknowledging Corrections for the work that they did during COVID-19 to keep our prisons safe from the virus, and I do acknowledge the effort that they went to—a very challenging time for the staff, the inmates, and also for all parties involved during a pandemic. I know I’m of the view that they’ve done a very good job at doing that. My understanding was there was only one particular person who had the virus and their reason for being in prison was the fact that they weren’t willing to take a test at the border, and that’s why they were put in there until they actually took the test.

I do want to just raise to the committee the issue of the community service sentences, and this was raised during the Estimates with the Minister of Corrections. I’ve asked the Minister a number of questions about this during question time in the House, and the issue was that the Epidemic Preparedness (Epidemic Management—COVID-19—Parole Act 2002 and Sentencing Act 2002) Notice 2020 gave powers to Corrections to, essentially, allow Corrections to provide two options to those who are on community service sentences. One was to remit hours—and we’ve seen over 138,000 hours remitted from community service sentences—or to extend the time frame in which those people could do their time or do the sentence that they were sentenced for for community service. The Minister has backed up the decision to remit hours rather than extend the period by which those hours should be completed within.

Of course, on this side of the House, everyone understands hours couldn’t have been completed during the lockdown, but the question does need to be asked as to why in no single instance—and I ask the Minister to explain to the committee—were community service hours or the time period under which offenders had to complete those community services hours not extended. He’s told the committee—he’s said that he has an expectation that hours will be completed, that sentences will be completed. But under his watch, over 138,000 hours of community service sentences have been remitted for approximately 5,500 people sentenced to a community service sentence. Now, that does not rub up the right way with New Zealanders who did it tough during lockdown, did the right thing, and at the same time people serving these sentences were, essentially, let off a portion of their sentences—a substantial portion of their sentences: up to 48 hours or one-third of their sentence—a significant portion of their sentence.

The question also needs to be asked as to why this continued during level 1. While New Zealanders were going back to work to get their businesses up and running, getting back into work, social distancing requirements were no longer required, bubbles were no longer required, Corrections still remitted hours for a number of offenders. The question needs to be asked and I ask the Minister if he could explain that to the committee.

Thank you, Mr Chair, and, first of all, I’d like to join with the member in congratulating Corrections for the way they handled the response to the COVID. He was correct. There was just one person who was in a prison who tested positive for COVID and that person did come from the border. The process, the procedures that Corrections put in place to make sure that all incoming prisoners were kept separate from the rest of the prison population and the use of personal protective equipment by staff, made sure that we didn’t have what we saw in prisons overseas—and that was outbreaks and, in some cases, deaths in prisons. So I’d just like to congratulate all of the corrections officers for the fantastic job they did as a part of the team of 5 million keeping us safe.

I’ll answer the second part of the question around why under level 1 there were some people who didn’t have their—sorry, I’ll just say 37 people had their community work hours remitted under level 1 and that was simply because some organisations took some time to get back up and running once we got into level 1. We also, and I’ve answered it in the House at question time, too, with this, when the member has been asking questions about the hours—extending the hours would have disadvantaged some individuals for something that was outside of their control. It would have created a backlog of hours for community corrections to manage and with the associated health and safety risks, so, quite frankly, it was just in the best interests.

We’ve got to remember that the people who he’s talking about, he’s saying that their sentences—well, look, they were given community hours and over half of those 5,000 people, their community hours were given for traffic offences and not paying fines. We’re not talking here about hardened criminals or people who were in prison. We’re talking about people in the community. Now, they did break the law. There’s no getting around that. But also COVID created conditions outside of their ability to manage and we just think that it was best for Corrections to be able to manage those hours in the way they did.

I find that answer incredibly enlightening as to the Minister of Correction’s actual approach to sentences and crime, because he makes the excuse that they’re all just on light sentences. I ask the Minister to guarantee to the committee that of those 5,500 none of them were actually convicted for anything more serious than some sort of traffic infringement or a fine because I find that answer to be a little bit inexplicable. And I hope that he can give the committee that assurance that those were the only offences.

Also, I just when to ask the Minister about the contract with the modular build programme with Decmil, which has—we were told at the Estimates hearing $143 million has been spent to date, but there are currently no facilities of that modular build programme or the 900-odd cells currently operational. I ask the Minister to update the committee on the programme. Is it still $143 million? Has that gone up? Is it more? How much money has been spent on that contract so far? And are any of those modular build cells—have they been or are they currently operational? What’s the status of them and what is the status of the work being done to ensure that they do get completed? And the Minister and his officials told the committee that some of the cells were in different states. Some of them simply needed to be, essentially, fitted out; others were in various states of completeness. And I ask the Minister to also explain to the committee what the anticipated cost of completing the modular build programme is going to be for taxpayers, in addition to the $143 million which has so far been spent on the contract.

Well, I’ve got a call on this to a sort of related topic then, as the Minister of Corrections wasn’t that quick to his feet. Having visited Auckland prison last year and had a conversation with corrections officers about the challenges of managing those most dangerous of offenders, if we’re hoping to break a cycle of offenders returning—repeat offending and returning—to prison, then I’m sure the Minister would agree that education would play a very big part in it and, of course, there are all manner of education services available to inmates in that and other prisons. But one of the challenges that we were told about were influences within the prison with so many offenders either arriving with gang affiliations or, if just necessary for their personal survival, forming them very quickly and the pressures that come from within not to participate—not to participate with any of those programmes. As a result, there’s a real risk that the education that would help those offenders to perhaps have other chances and choices once they are released are not being undertaken. So what work, if any, are Corrections planning or is he planning to improve the uptake, particularly in higher maximum security environments, to actually give prisoners the skills and abilities to have other choices when they get released?

I’d just like to take a short call just to ask the Minister of Corrections, given that when he came before the select committee, a core part of the ongoing work of Corrections is based on a strategy which my colleague Meka Whaitiri touched on, which is called Hōkai Rangi, which underpins all of the work that Corrections is doing to work towards the rehabilitation of Māori prisoners in order that they don’t return to prison. But how that actually works and the importance of that as being a deep piece of work that, as I say, underpins all of what Corrections is doing—it might be useful for the Minister to really talk about some of the actual instances where that is actually proving to demonstrate its worth, and, again, because behind that sits a strategy to reduce the number of prisoners and to reduce reoffending.

Thank you, Mr Chair. Look, I’ll try and address some of the issues raised by the last three speakers. First of all, I’ll start off with the Hōkai Rangi strategy. Hōkai Rangi was the result of there being no Māori strategy whatsoever for Corrections. So we started to write one, and in the end we realised that the Māori strategy needs to become the whole strategy for Corrections, and forms the basis for the work that we’re doing to try to safely reduce the prison population.

Now, might I say that as of last week, I think the prison population was 9,263—that’s some 1,100 to 1,200 down on what it was when I became the Minister, when it was at 10,400. The prison population continued to go up for the next five or six months, and in March of 2018 it peaked at 10,820. So what we’ve seen from 10,400, when I became the Minister, is a 12 percent reduction in the prison population, and since it peaked in March of 2018, a 15 percent reduction in the prison population.

Now, that’s really important when we look at the question around the modular build. So Decmil weren’t completing the job to the standard and on time as we expected with the modular builds, so that contract was ended. What would have happened is that regardless of who is in Government, whether it was us or the previous Government, those buildings would not have been completed. The prison projections from 2017 said at this very moment that the prison population is expected to be 12,800. There’s no way that the previous Government, if they had allowed that prison population to continue on that trajectory, would have been able to house prisoners. We’re talking about not just double-bunking but triple- and maybe quadruple-bunking. Instead, because we have safely reduced the prison population, we don’t have that pressure on the Government to actually get this done, so we’re able now to take the time to make sure that it is done and it is done properly.

In the next two quarters, we’re expecting a modular build of 244, and in the next quarter, a modular build of 122 beds to come online. We hope that that’s going to happen, but, of course, as you know, in any sort of project, there are delays. We’ve actually got the prison population to the stage where there is enough capacity for us to close down some units and do maintenance on them. We’ve reduced the number of movements around the prison network because there isn’t the pressure to find spaces for prisoners. What we’ve done is actually saved the Government considerable amounts of money.

In terms of the question around gangs, we do have a gang strategy—it’s a five-year strategy aligned to the whole-of-Government action plan on gangs. The aim is to contain the negative influence of gang members in the custodial environment, to disrupt the efforts and capabilities of gang members under our management to organise and commit crime from within prisons and in the community, and to reduce the reoffending rates of gang members and the harm caused by gangs in prisons and the community.

Hōkai Rangi—also alongside of it is our Māori Pathways, and we know many Māori gang members happen to be Māori, and the work that we’re doing in the Māori Pathways, working alongside prisoners, their whānau, hapū, and communities, as well as bringing in folk from Whānau Ora to work alongside—all of that is, in time, going to continue to reduce the prison population safely. Thank you, Mr Chair.

My comments are probably best directed to the Minister of Justice, but I understand I can speak about this under this appropriation. I am interested to know what work in the appropriations is being carried out relating to a decision of the Cabinet Social Wellbeing Committee back in March, where the committee agreed in principle to a comprehensive review of national electoral law, subject to reporting back to the committee, around scope and processes for the review and the financial implications. I note, in the Cabinet committee paper, it talked about how resourcing for agencies to deal with issues relating to funding for their activities and reducing or raising awareness of foreign interference risks will be taken into account when determining agency resources. Presumably, that has happened under this particular Estimates of appropriation.

I note that when the Minister was preparing this report, which is a response to the Justice Committee’s inquiry into the general election and foreign interference, that particular inquiry did receive advice from the director-general of intelligence and security. The director-general, in talking about electoral issues and possible areas for Government to consider, when it comes to funding of reviews, indicated that whilst political donations are legally sanctioned as a form of participation in New Zealand politics, the Security Intelligence Service has become concerned when some aspect of the donation is obscured or is channelled in a way that prevents scrutiny of the origin of the donation.

So what I want to ask the Minister, and what I want to raise as an issue, is what work is being done to tackle more fully the issues raised by the Justice Committee, the issues raised by the director-general of intelligence and security, and the issues raised by academics like Canterbury University Professor Anne-Marie Brady, who all are pointing to the fact that we do have significant foreign interference risks in this country and the fact that our political donations regime is not scrutinised enough in the media. I asked the Minister again if he has concerns about these types of donations. In the media was an Inner Mongolia donation: $150,000 that came from a company owned by a non - English-speaking individual, an Inner Mongolian. The $150,000 came to a political party, and, on the surface of that, there’s no real connection with New Zealand money. Journalists looked into it. They found that there were significant connections back to the Chinese Communist Party, and that donation, for all intents and purposes, was a foreign donation, but it slipped through the cracks.

I have before me here 60,000-odd line items of donations that are from the National Party. It was given to me in error. I call it a leak. It’s the type of information that only party secretaries and chief financial officers and auditors tend to see. It’s line-by-line individual information. It’s the very information that people complained about in the inquiry that is not public enough.

Earlier today, I was threatened with injunctive action if I attempted to table this in the Parliament. I think the lawyers making those threats probably should go across to the Victoria University law school and take a paper on the 1688 Bill of Rights, for Parliament and free speech in the Parliament, because if members of Parliament want to speak about information that they’ve been leaked or provided, albeit in error, they’re able to. But I was asked, extremely seriously, not to release this information, because it is—every single line—items of donations from the National Party for the past couple of years.

But what it shows in there, and why I think the Minister needs to tell the committee more about what he’s doing, is that when we have, in documents like this, where you can see—and in here there’s hundreds of thousands of dollars linked to the National Party’s Chinese group. When we have information here where we see donations like the Inner Mongolia donation, where we see backdoor loopholes where foreign money can enter this country by way of a company and then go to a political party and, for all intents and purposes, is foreign donations, are we going to be serious about cleaning this up? There are more investigations out there. Good on them. I accept there are questions I’m having to answer through a system as well.

But there is serious information here. I’m not going to table this. I’ll take the high road. I don’t like threats of legal injunctions. I do have free speech in this Parliament, but I’ll take the high road in this particular case. But when will the Government do more about this issue?

I know that this is an opportunity for the committee to examine the Estimates and to be debating those in this Chamber. But, nevertheless, the member has raised some serious issues. Let me just see if I can, kind of, rapidly chop through them.

First of all, as a consequence of the Justice Committee’s inquiry into the previous general election, some changes were made to our electoral law, particularly in relation to foreign donations. So we now prohibit foreign donations. We have put in place a number of measures that party general secretaries have to comply with. So, really, the onus is on them.

In terms of the very beginning of that member’s contribution, he referred to the commitments publicly made by myself on behalf of my party, and that is that if we’re in a position to do so following the election, we intend to conduct a ground-up review of our electoral laws, the Electoral Act 1993, with a view to rewriting that law to make it consistent with expectations and obligations that we would expect in the 21st century. I expect that a very early issue that will be dealt with is our donations regime and the transparency regime we have around donations to political parties. So that is a political commitment. It’s not a Government decision, but that is a matter that no doubt will be debated through the election campaign. It will be a question that voters can consider when they’re casting their vote.

On the issue of compliance with the law at the moment, the Electoral Commission has the preliminary role of evaluating complaints about breaches of the law. They set a very low threshold before they refer the matter to the police, and the police can then decide whether they investigate or they refer it to the Serious Fraud Office. It’s not for me or for this House, because of the relationship of comity with other branches of Government, to cut across investigations. I make no comment on any extant investigation.

I do make this comment: that the law as it is at the moment allows donations to be made to political parties. There is a threshold over which donations must be disclosed and reported and then concomitantly, under that threshold, there is no obligation to disclose or report. It would be unfortunate if those making donations below the threshold, on the understanding that there was no obligation to disclose, then had that donation disclosed against the spirit of the legislation. Equally, I think the concern that the member is raising is that there are those who seek to circumvent or to obfuscate the requirements of the legislation and, in effect, defeat the spirit of it that way. Both, in my view, are equally culpable and we shouldn’t allow either to happen. But it’s for that reason, and I think growing public concern about our donations regime and the transparency regime that we currently have in our law, that has driven the need for a proper full ground-up review of our electoral law to see that it meets modern standards.

The member has 54 seconds remaining in this debate, so we’ll count down from—and I’ll call Jami-Lee Ross.

Thank you. I thank the Minister of Justice for his contribution. I am curious to know whether the Minister and his Government genuinely believe that $15,000 is reasonable, given the questions that are out there in the public. I want to ask whether he genuinely believes it is right that foreign donors can utilise companies in New Zealand to make donations to political parties. I also will note—and the Minister did make a point around people who have made donations in good faith. Yes, I do have all that information here. Yes, I was threatened earlier this morning with court action. They can’t touch what happens in the Parliament, regardless. But there is significant financial and private information in here. So I won’t go further and attempt to table it or even read it out in another form. But I will say there’s a lot of questions in here, people need to know the truth, and we need to reform our donation regime—[Time expired]

Thank you, Mr Chair. Just a question for the Minister of Justice. Is he considering or undertaking any policy work with the ministry vis-à-vis potential public risks around the proliferation of bizarre conspiracy theories about the creation of the COVID-19 virus or the dangers of 5G wireless technologies?

Can I just respond to the residual comments made by the member Jami-Lee Ross and say, look, I do share with him the concern about people using companies as a way of defeating the scrutiny that is otherwise provided for in the Electoral Act, and those are issues that ought to be properly examined and debated, and full, thorough public consultation as we go through reviewing the Electoral Act.

To Brett Hudson’s question, I’m probably not wearing the correct hat for the question that he raises, because it does come up in other portfolios of mine, except to say I think we are all concerned in general terms when it comes to general elections, because we know how susceptible or vulnerable they are to manipulation through putting out, as he would describe them, and I agree with him, bizarre conspiracy theories. We saw in the aftermath of the lockdown this sudden rash of arsons against cellphone towers. There are some people who believe in weird things. I heard a radio report this morning about somebody who claims to be an expert on the transmission of vitamins through 5G or Bluetooth, I think, technology. Some people actually believe this stuff.

What is worrying is when there is an organised effort, usually run from offshore, to get these ideas up through social media, because there are some people who, for whatever reason, in their own capacity to believe or incapacity to disbelieve, buy into these sorts of things and can create undue anxiety. So perhaps I can put it this way: I can assure the member that there are quarters of Government where this matter is getting attention.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I’ll move, if we can, to the gang challenges in New Zealand, thinking specifically about areas of policy around dealing with what has been not only a very large increase in gang numbers, which have grown about 34 percent over the last three years, but one that is set against a backdrop of increasing tensions and violence, often involving firearms.

So, very keen to understand what the Ministry of Justice might be looking at in terms of matters of dealing with those that are committing those crimes and how perhaps they should be treated upon conviction. But also, and this might hark back to a degree with what we called the Social Investment Agency, what they’re looking at in terms of helping to prevent people choosing that lifestyle in the first place. This might also have some linkage to a recent police report which warns about the potential for an increased, almost by accident, criminal element resulting from the economic consequences of the COVID-19 response, seeing more people who had never shown, never exhibited, any sort of criminal tendencies or behaviours—through circumstances that they might see as need, potentially seeing that as, for them, maybe the only avenue or an easy avenue in some respects to deal with the straitened circumstances they find themselves in.

But what we have seen in the last couple of years, particularly in the last year, as relates to violence, including violence with firearms, is a worrying trend, a very clear trend, to these increased gang numbers, resulting in more actual violence, principally between gang members and associates but also spilling over to the public environment and placing at risk general members of the public.

So, very keen to hear what the ministry might be thinking of in terms of preventative policies, but also what aspects of current legislation, particularly around maybe sentencing or particular offences, might warrant change to deal with the very real problems that we’re facing.

Thank you, Mr Chairman. I thank the member for his question, and some of that question might be better directed to my colleague the Minister of Police, who will be taking the chair very, very soon. But can I just say that we share the concerns that the member expresses about the increased number of gang members and the increased gang presence in some communities. We know that a lot of that is driven off the back of the deportees from Australia, some of whom are deported because they have criminal convictions. Many are deported just because they are regarded by Australia as not of good character or somehow compromising—I think the words are “compromising the health of the community of Australia”. But that has been a real factor in the growth of gang members and the numbers of gang members in New Zealand. I agree with him: there has been heightened tension in some communities as a consequence, and it is also true that a lot of that tension is inter-gang tension. But the reality is, once it’s in the community, we cannot underestimate the real risk that innocent parties get caught in the metaphorical crossfire, if indeed not the literal crossfire.

In terms of the ministry, we’ve been working very closely with the police on looking at the recovery of proceeds of crime legislation to make sure that we’re able to intervene early enough. It’s all very well once crimes have been committed by organised criminal elements, but if we know that there are preparatory steps and planning steps where we might intervene earlier, then we would like to be able to do so

In terms of prevention, I think the member is absolutely right: there is a risk through periods of economic uncertainty or economic decline or downturn that those who meet hardship, as a consequence, can be driven into illegal activity. It’s difficult to quantify that in any circumstance, but a core part of the work that the Government across the board is doing—the police and other agencies—is to make sure that we are across those individuals, those households, indeed, those communities where there is a heightened risk of this sort of activity so that we can prevent that where possible.

Really, the most important preventive measure will be the investment the Government makes in incentivising job creation, working with the business community to create the opportunity for them to invest in new business activity and innovations, and those things are going to generate new jobs. We are definitely continuing to do that. We do that through our infrastructure investment plans, through the Provincial Growth Fund, through other initiatives that the Government has embarked on both before the outbreak of the pandemic and since.

Thank you, Mr Chair. As this Estimates hearing represents something of a wrap-up of the last three years, please indulge me for a moment to acknowledge the other members of the Justice Committee and various officials, some of whom are with us today, as well as the Minister in the chair, the Hon Andrew Little. And I just wish to say that I’ve enjoyed various interactions that we’ve had throughout the three-year term, including and especially—he said, seguing into the topic that he wishes to cover—in relation to courts, which is the portfolio that I hold on my side of the aisle. The Minister in the chair is, of course, the Minister of Justice as well.

But in the courts space, I would like to highlight that I would be grateful for some responses to a number of questions that I’ve got, particularly around reforms that may or may not be possible within the period covered by the Estimates, in particular addressing the considerable backlog of cases that we have in both the civil and criminal realms. I do acknowledge that these are longstanding issues; they’re systemic. So I don’t wish to imply that there is anything particular within the last Estimates period that has brought us to this point, with the exception obviously, of COVID-19 exacerbating existing issues.

But, nevertheless, with all that aside, I do want to ask the Minister: please, can he advise whether he and his ministry are looking at initiatives that would increase safety, time, and cost efficiency in relation to reducing in-person appearances needed in court, some of which were brought to attention, more particularly in relation to public health, during the COVID inquiry—if there’s anything going forward that’s being progressed since we last discussed that subject.

I thank the member for his questions and, yes, the Government knows there is a backlog of casework, and that’s why recently we announced an additional package to take on more judges, more staff, more prosecuting personnel, and the police, and others so that we can start to chomp through that backlog. We know that with jury trials having been suspended until next week there’ll be a backlog of jury trials to have to pick up. Fortunately, the judge-alone trials have been able to be—or some of have been able to be undertaken—on an accelerated basis.

In terms of anything we’ve learnt from the lockdown period in relation to safety, timeliness, and efficiency of appearances—look, there’s been a lot of use of audio-visual link (AVL) and that will continue, and I expect that will grow. But we also have to be aware of the, if you like, virtually constitutional requirement of the right of a defendant to appear in court physically. I think judges are very alert to that. The New Zealand Bill of Rights Act says that it is a right that defendants have. Judges are making it increasingly clear that they expect it, at the very least, for first appearances that a person appears in court. But there’s always a set of balancing factors to weigh up about what justifies an in-person appearance or an AVL appearance, and we’ll continue a programme of making sure that whatever it is, it enables the judiciary to dispose of their case workload in the most effective and efficient means possible.

Thank you. Does the Minister have a view on proposals that have been made from various quarters that the courts should be sitting outside the hours that they currently do, both within the ordinary working week at the moment but also, potentially, weekends to clear the backlog?

I can say that I have a personal view that I think we should be trying to maximise the amount of flexibility by which the courts operate. I mean, it’s not unusual in overseas jurisdictions for there to be night courts, for example. I know our judiciary have experimented with those sorts of initiatives. I think the more we can do to accommodate particularly people in work, who we want to keep in work, because that’s a very important factor in even those who do stray occasionally and offend and cause harm—to get them back on the straight and narrow—that if they’ve got a job they stay in a job, and particularly I think for younger men who’ve got apprenticeships or are in the early stages of their working life; the more we can do to keep them in work, the better chance we have of getting them off some bad habits.

So the more we can ensure that our courts accommodate people’s working lives the better. It has been tried; I’d like to see more of it. I am convinced that we have in our present Chief District Court Judge somebody who is committed to making sure that the courts, to the extent they haven’t before—and it would be wrong to say they haven’t before, but to the extent that they haven’t been able to do more before—see themselves as truly public servants, serving their communities, by making appearances in court an easier thing to do rather than a more difficult thing to do.

I understand the Minister of Police will now come to the Table.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I have several questions for the Minister, if I may, and I’d like to begin with an item of clarification. It was reported several weeks ago by New Zealand Police that they would not be taking in more recruits, I think, for at least until the end of this year, maybe a little bit beyond that. I’d just like the Minister to (1) clarify if that is going to have any impact on the number of recruits trained and graduating prior to the end of this year, or is it simply closing down a pipeline of future intakes? So pretty keen to understand: will there be any fewer recruits or graduation ceremonies for the remainder of this year than was planned before that decision was taken? And to what extent have the appropriations driven that decision? So was there not a sufficient increase in an element of the police appropriation to afford them to continue to the same degree that they had been training?

On a similar vein about the Budget: is the Minister disappointed that the overall increase to the police appropriation is about 3.2 percent? Inflation’s running at 2.5, so if we take into account the very worthy increase in expenditure for road safety, many other items of the police business are either treading water with no increase or, actually, in real terms, are going slightly backwards at least, and to the extent that has an impact on why the integrated service response—while being funded in its current form in two locations for a bit longer, it is not in its full form being rolled out wider. I appreciate the police don’t carry all of that expense, but they are not just participants. I know that certainly in Christchurch they take on a lot of the coordinative aspects, and therefore there is expense involved in that.

Similarly, now we are three years in, mental health nurses in custody suites—National piloted it, this Government took that funding away, but now it’s just coming back as a pilot. Why is the money not there to roll that out broader already? Similarly, co-response: National piloted that; it went away. I understand Wellington police, out of operational budget, are piloting again here locally, so where’s the money in the Budget and why is that not there to expand that now instead of going through another set of pilots, which could be seen as navel-gazing by some?

Thank you. There are three questions there I’ll answer quickly. In the last two Budgets there’s been $558 million actually allocated to family harm and sexual violence. Of that, police have received $65 million—so a substantial increase to help fight family harm and sexual violence.

The first point that the member made about the reducing of police numbers: attrition in the police service is running at the moment at about 2.1 percent. Police came to me and said, “Our numbers are way up; what should we do?” And I said, “There is no way we are stopping the training of policemen and policewomen.” So I went to the Minister of Finance, we got more money, training is continuing all the way through, so there is no slowdown in the recruitment of police officers. The second question—I can’t remember what that was.

💬 Brett Hudson: That’s a very good question. What was the second question? It was about—oh, it was the general statement that the total increase is 3.2 percent but inflation’s high.

Yeah, sure. So a significant amount of money was given to the New Zealand Police service in Budget 2018 and 2019 that is still out there being spent at the moment. So keep in mind the money that we got in 2020 was on top of the money that was already allocated in the previous two years. So we are spending a significant amount of money on the New Zealand Police: 2,200 recruits gone through training college. The member knows the number: 1,253 more police on our front line since we came into Government.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I must get an updated number from the Minister through a written question, because at 1 June it was 1,104. But we like to see—increases are good.

I’m just seguing now into—because of the remaining time that we’re going to have for this—the major concern around the proliferation of not just gang numbers but the escalating tensions and offences being committed, particularly violent offences being committed, particularly those involving firearms. The gangs said last year in the middle of the buy-back that they weren’t going to participate. Police have acknowledged several times in various hearings that they didn’t anticipate that the gangs would. So I would like to know what are they going to do to actually give the police the resources to get out there, proactively get these firearms out of the hands of gang members, not just when they do drug busts, but get out there quickly.

Organised crime gang units are being set up around the country. We are dedicating 700 of those 1,800 police to organised crime squads. We are going very, very hard. If you read the media, there’s about a bust once every two weeks at the moment, and we’re taking assets and firearms off gang members in record numbers.

So I thank the Minister for that—

Sorry to interrupt the member, but it has come time for me to report progress.

Debate interrupted.

House resumed.

The Chairperson reported progress on the Appropriation (2020/21 Estimates) Bill.

Report adopted.

The House adjourned at 12.56 p.m. (Wednesday)