Secondhand Dealers and Pawnbrokers (Electronic Records) Amendment Bill

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak on this bill in the name of Andrew Bayly, the Secondhand Dealers and Pawnbrokers (Electronic Records) Amendment Bill. What this bill intends to do, just to remind those members, is it seeks to amend the 2004 piece of legislation, the Secondhand Dealers and Pawnbrokers Act, to require licensed pawnbrokers, second-hand dealers, and also internet auction providers such as TradeMe to keep a supply of records in an electronically readable format which is able to be used for police computers and able to be used for law enforcement to track and trace stolen goods. While this change is aimed at making it much easier for police to do their jobs in order to hold those accountable who have taken items unlawfully and attempted to sell them, this is also a bit of an issue there where there is good intent—I guess the words are right. There is good intent, but Labour is not supporting this bill at first reading due to the concerns about the number of unintended consequences relating, in particular, to compliance costs.

That is where it is interesting. We often have members opposite complaining about compliance costs and the ongoing cost to small-business owners, particularly in a post-COVID environment, where there are a number of difficulties for small businesses right across New Zealand. So some of the issues raised with this good idea come to the implementation and how small businesses would be expected or forced to change accounting methods in order to adapt to this requirement to change into an electronic system. So, while Labour backs police to keep our community safe and—this is evident from the $450 million that has been invested in front-line policing services and our increasing our front-line response to up to 14,000 police—while we support investing in law enforcement and our justice system, we do not see this as able to be done in a way that is effective in achieving its intended outcome.

So the bill’s general policy statement has a couple of problems. It’s at this point I’d like to unpick some of the issues to look at how in the future we might be able to address some of the problems this bill has raised. How a business is expected to be forced to change its accounting methods is critical, but given the vast majority of those small businesses—and everyone will have one in their electorate: a corner store that sells second-hand goods, or is a pawnbroker and takes goods from people and sells them on their behalf. The accounting methods in those stores will be hugely variant, depending on where you go in the country and depending on the size of the business, and quite often those businesses are owner-operated. They are small-business people who are often semi-retired, or running a shop and able to run—and the ones in my electorate I can think of don’t even use EFTPOS, in some instances. So wanting to introduce a nationally standardised, electronically monitored system of tracking and tracing second-hand goods is admirable in its ambitions, but in its practicality is questionable.

These general compliance costs are exacerbated by the specific way that the bill is actually worded in regards to its record-keeping requirements. The bill’s wording requires that the electronic record—and I quote—is “electronically readable and usable by Police computers”. That’s where it’s quite unclear what it’s trying to do. Is it trying to talk to the National Intelligence Application, which is the national database that police use for intelligence, or is it for other purposes? So it is quite unclear what is intended by those “electronically readable and usable by Police computers” words in the general policy statement.

Secondly, I would like to point out the issue with the wording of this requirement—that it may prevent small businesses from using some basic, off-the-shelf, and, no doubt, probably far more affordable record-keeping software, because it may not be easily readable by those police computers. A lot of those small-business owners are using products that are able to be either downloaded for a small fee or purchased from a local electronic store, so the question is about how small businesses would be able to use this without forcing more expensive solutions that have compliance cost implications for those small-business owners. Although police currently have a Serial Number Automated Checker, which is known as SNAC—and that is in Counties Manukau—this is a system that’s not yet been rolled out nationally, more widely through New Zealand. So it’s difficult to know exactly what the requirements would be of the wording in the bill in order for these businesses around the country to come on board and to leave the door open—sometimes these situations would have unforeseen or unintended consequences.

Similarly, there are also some concerns on this side of the House in relation to the requirements of the penalties in this regime and how they would be implemented, and how implementing those penalties would have an impact upon small businesses. The way the bill is currently worded is that if police change their systems, or have a new requirement for what is specified in the bill, for the information to be usable by police and police computers, businesses affected by these regulations would have to immediately update their systems or potentially be subject to an offence, which is specified to up to $10,000 as a fine. The word is “Police usable”, and how that would have an impact directly upon small-business owners again is unclear in this instance. That sort of clarity would really need to be spelt out to the letter in order to make sure small-business owners are clear on what is actually required of them to comply with the law. This may, again, have unforeseen circumstances and very immediate costs on them, and that kind of cost could be seen as punishing them with a fine and drive a small business out of existence if they’re not complying. So that, again, has really caused a significant level of doubt in terms of how the practical implementation of this bill would operate.

We also have some concerns about how the police themselves would operate in this. They would need to update all computer systems around the country, and would face, potentially, quite significant costs to do so and roll out a nationally compliant system across New Zealand. This problem is exacerbated by the bill’s three-month commencement date. Having to roll out a nationally compliant system in just three months is practicably not achievable, as it would take a significant amount of work to get that under way.

We think it’s likely that regulated traders would transition gradually towards digital record-keeping, and that we should encourage that to happen. But, given the advantages, we support police engaging, as appropriate, to improve how they would engage with businesses, as they have done, as I’ve mentioned, in Counties Manukau. It was developed with the Serial Number Automated Checker system that’s under way there.

We do not believe that the blunt instrument of this bill is the best way to go about dealing with the problem that has quite rightly been identified by Andrew Bayly in this member’s bill. What this bill does is try to address the entire situation in one go, and really bites off more than it can swallow. So while the bill has got good intentions, we think that systems in place already need to be explored further, and we need to give far greater consideration to the implications and the unintended consequences for small-business owners to make sure that those changes can be put in place into small businesses before there’s a legislative requirement with hefty penalties trucking on down the road with three months for implementation.

In general, I would like to conclude by saying that, yes, our police do a fantastic job at working around the clock to make sure that stolen items are rightly returned to their owners when that is needed to be done and that there are good systems in place of checking when items have been provided to second-hand dealers. We would like to commend the member on the good intent of his bill, but the solution proposed has unintended consequences and is not practically deliverable to meet the problem which he has identified. So I wish to state that we will not be supporting this bill further. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. This is, as has already been said, a very practical bill, and it seeks to address a very discrete issue, which is to provide a national standardised electronic way of monitoring second-hand dealers and second-hand goods being sold and bought, which I believe police have sought. As has already been said as well, Counties Manukau police are already electronising their approach to this; we just don’t have the dealers doing it in the same way, and certainly not in a standardised way. Most pawnbrokers and dealers, including those that operate online, like on TradeMe, do so currently by way of keeping handwritten records, which are really difficult to access and certainly not something that in real time would alert authorities to the receipt of lost or stolen goods that are on another record being sought by their rightful owners. So this would, in principle and in practice, make that process more practically applicable and more accessible and more efficient.

For those reasons, the Green Party will support the bill. We do have certain concerns around the enforcement mechanisms and the enforcement being such a high fine. So we will be looking closely at what happens at the committee stage and how the practical implementation processes come into place, and we will be raising concerns about the way that ordinarily in our system of justice things like fines operate to persecute or prejudice certain communities. We will be looking at the way that those fines are both going to be regulated, made effective, and also the level of fines, which are quite high, and so would in practice undermine the ability of certain small-business owners to operate. We, again, know that, in terms of being targeted for both compliance with regulations and in terms of criminalisation, often it will be the lower socioeconomic Māori and Pacific communities that things get applied, and we will be looking at whether or not we can work to ensure that the practical intention of this bill, which is to electronically monitor the sale of goods that may be lost or stolen, and the practical impact at the other end are not disproportionate.

I do note that it will be applicable to things like TradeMe, and I think we’re a bit late in actually regulating online spaces when it comes to the sale and purchase of goods, in terms of the ethics. Something of an issue that’s been brought up to us, as the Green Party, has been, for example, the way that animals that are traded on TradeMe are treated, and animal welfare issues. But there’s a plethora of other issues in terms of both ethics and trading, the way that our tax system is applied, and the way that traders are regulated or monitored in those spaces, that we haven’t really engaged with as lawmakers. So this is one of the steps that will bring us closer to acknowledging that online spaces are like real spaces and require us to apply a values-based system, and also that actually electronic records are something that we are going to move towards in order to know these things and to regulate for the greater good. So this is another step towards that.

Given that the bill is of such a discrete purpose and effect, I won’t say much more on it, but we will be watching it closely in terms of its enforcement mechanism. But at this point we see this as being a small change that’s practical and has the potential to work well, so we do commend it to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise and take a short call on this bill today and to give some context about why me and my Labour colleagues oppose this bill. I’ll deal with that in three parts. The first thing I want to talk about is whether this change will, in fact, make it easier for police to do their jobs and police burglaries effectively; secondly, I’d like to just touch on—since this bill has drawn on the Counties Manukau example—some things which would be effective ways and are effective ways to assist the police in doing this very important work; and the third thing I’ll talk about is enforcement and the fine of $10,000, as my colleague from the Green Party has spoken about.

But on this first point of whether this bill would, in fact, make it easier for police to carry out this very important work of recovering and policing stolen goods and making sure that there is not profit being made from a trade in second-hand goods which are stolen, I’d first like to make the point that the bill does draw on the Counties Manukau example. As an MP from Manurewa and as someone who takes a real interest in the good work of the police in South Auckland, I have met with our local police about these issues, and it is something that our community is very concerned with. So I take my hat off to the police for the good work that they do here.

It is a Labour Government that has invested $450 million into the police force and has a growing police force not only in South Auckland but around the country. We’ve already met a target of increasing the police workforce by 1,800 people and are on track to meet the target of 1,800 new police front-line officers over the next five years.

Whether this bill will make it easier for that police force to police burglaries is a question which, I think, resoundingly is a no. That is because the requirements in this bill for businesses to update their systems will instantly face a fine of $10,000 actually takes us back a step for those businesses who, in the Counties Manukau area at least, are working very collaboratively and constructively with police to put in place a range of systems over a long period of time to deal with these issues.

Our local police in Manurewa have been engaging with certain areas in our town centres—that’s the Manurewa strip, the Manukau town centre, and the Clendon shops, which all have a high preponderance of second-hand dealers. What they are finding there is traditional, old-fashioned, beat cop - style policing, where these police are showing their faces at these businesses and are creating relationships which are enduring. That is what is having an effect in building trust with those businesses and allowing police to trial initiatives like the Serial Number Automated Checker, which the chair of the Justice Committee, Ginny Andersen, has spoken about as being an effective method. It would be walked back if this Parliament were to introduce a method of, essentially, requiring the police to issue instantaneous $10,000 fines to these businesses, where they have been building up these kinds of relationships over a long period of time, and I wouldn’t want to see that for the South Auckland police who have been involved in that work, or around the country, where these relationships are coming to bear.

Quickly, on my second point of what would make it easier for the police to be able to do this job around the country, it does come back to that point about trust, about those old-fashioned policing methods of establishing those relationships within our communities, which is going to make the difference here. It is about our police on the ground being able to have the conversations with second-hand dealers about where they are sourcing their goods from and also within the community of business owners who all know each other, at least in South Auckland, about who is following best practice and who isn’t, and the police being able to gather that information. It is also policies and programmes like the Manurewa police’s programme of leadership within Manurewa High School—a great programme where over many, many years, they have established a trusting relationship with school leaders at a high school level, and that filters out into the community to build those trusting relationships that are so important here.

Very briefly, on the question of enforcement, a $10,000 fine for these businesses whose customers are some of the most marginalised and some of the poorest people in our society, who are going to second-hand dealers in the first place, will simply shut these businesses down. It will make it impossible for those people to access the kinds of goods and the services for finance that they are accessing here, and I wouldn’t want to see that. That’s why I oppose this bill.

I stand to speak on the Secondhand Dealers and Pawnbrokers (Electronic Records) Amendment Bill. I’d like to begin by commending the member Andrew Bayly for his good intent with this bill in its drafting. When I looked at the New Zealand Police website on dealer requirements for second-hand dealers, pawnbrokers, and scrap metal merchants, I saw that there’s actually quite extensive legal requirements needed in order for them to operate. They have to make sure that they gather names and addresses, verify the identity of the people that they purchase from, identify what’s been purchased, write down the serial numbers and identifying marks when it sold. All of this information is already being collected or it should be.

But when we looked at the programs that they’re wanting to implement, which is SNAC, or the Serial Number Automated Checker, of course that’s for the businesses in order for them to be able to put what they’re already collecting into a regime where police would be able to read it easily. I wonder whether it’s got something to do with the SNAP program as well, or the Serial Number Action Partnership, and that’s where people can go on to the New Zealand Police website and actually input their assets with their serial numbers and descriptions in there so should they be burgled or their house burns down, they can access that information, including serial numbers, for insurance purposes or for police purposes easily, anywhere, at any time.

So I do wonder whether or not there are actually police wanting to marry these two programs up, SNAC and SNAP, to make them a lot more effective. The change that’s suggested is actually in line with the purpose of the principal legislation and it aims to provide the “architecture for better Police interventions to recover stolen goods.” When you have a program that’s shown over a two-year period to resolve 99 burglaries and recover 177 stolen items, then you can pretty much suggest that that trial in Counties Manukau actually worked.

But we do question at what cost will this be to businesses. The 24 dealers were the trialists in Counties Manukau and 400 second-hand or scrap metal dealers are expected to be just in the Auckland area alone. Nationwide, I expect the potential number of businesses that could be affected by this would run to the thousands. It looks like that this program will actually help police to solve crime. I mean, it’s a program specifically designed to make the job of the police easier, faster, and more accurate. However, I ask again: at what cost to the businesses? There will be a requirement that the businesses who do not have computers will now have to invest in one, so that’s an added expense. I ask whether or not the businesses will have to pay for the program to be implemented into their work space, and is an internet connection necessary in order for it to work? Remembering that not every town in this country actually has access to the internet, will every dealer in the country be able to ensure that they have the equipment required to implement this program within a three-month period, and, if so, who will do the national training on its use and can they do it within that three-month period? Then, who, literally, actually pays for this? The system will mean that the dealers are out of pocket both for the purchase they have made from sellers and potentially for the program implementation itself as well as, I expect, its continued upgrade.

Police are the beneficiaries of this information and the cost savings for investigations and saving less time actually runs in their court. ACT’s highlighted just a few of the concerns around this bill, but we do support it to the select committee stage, and the reason for that is because the questions that we’ve just posed and that other parties have posed should actually be answered by the people that this would be affected by. I think that they deserve the chance, especially when we’ve had such a good trial in Counties Manukau, to actually be able to say, “Yes, we want to be a part of this.”, or not. It’s actually letting the people have a voice.

I said at the beginning of this speech that the change is in line with the purpose of the principal legislation. On that basis, we think this should go to select committee stage so we can hear from the second-hand dealers, from the pawnbrokers, and from the scrap metal merchants, and in that regard, we do support this bill.

I rise and, unfortunately, I am unable to support this bill. I suppose timing is, as they say, everything, and the time for this bill has not come, for the reasons outlined by my colleagues Ms Andersen and Ms Williams already.

I did a little digging and I went back and I discovered that the original Act here seems to have been—because, somewhat appropriately, this is a second-hand bill in more ways than one. The original bill is the Pawnbrokers Bill of 1908. Now, this was updated by the Labour Government of 2004, and in that case the review and the update was more than overdue. If I can just point your attention to one item, one of the things that that bill brought forward by the then Labour justice Minister Phil Goff did was to update the list of things that have to be held on to for a period before they are considered safe to sell. Under the previous Act, it was furs, suits, and gramophones, and it was felt at that time that some items such as compact discs, computers, and DVD players might be more appropriately on the list. In that case, it was a change whose time had come. In this case, it is not, because the compliance costs it will put on our small businesses, who are already trying and struggling, are too high.

So when I look at my own little town and I think of a little village that’s attached to the northern outskirts called Hikurangi, which is one of my favourite second-hand shopping expeditions, and I think of the small, literally mum and dad businesses that are running up there—Village Vintage Treasure, should you be up that way, is an excellent place to go to. The compliance costs on them were this bill to come into effect are beyond what I think could be borne, not to mention the smaller businesses around there which deal in goods which are necessary to my small and impoverished community. The compliance costs to buy a computer system—possibly not the right system for their budgets, because they will have to comply with police—the unforgiving timescale of three months to implement, and then the serious penalty of up to $10k for failing to comply means that any time the police change, my little business in Hikurangi is going to have to change too. It is also unforgiving for the police, who are going to have to roll out a standard system across the country nationally—again, within a very tight time frame. It is expensive. It is unrealistic.

More practical is to wait for the right time for a bill such as this, to allow small businesses to move into the digital age at their own pace, and we are giving them, in this Government, assistance to do so. I would point you to the Digital Boost Program announced in the Budget, which is going to help them get there. There is money there for 50,000 small businesses and microbusinesses to upskill in digital systems. They will then have to afford their systems. It’s going to take time. We are hugely behind our police and trying to support them in every way we can to do the incredibly difficult and huge job that they have before them—$450 million in investment is not a small business. We have given them the biggest workforce they have ever had: a 14,000 police workforce. I have spoken to my local police hui regarding crime, and they say that, yes, they are as well-resourced as they have ever been. That includes two community police officers in little Hikurangi, to the community’s great relief, where they are finding that—just as my colleague Ms Arena Williams said—the fact of just regular coppers on the beat there is making all the difference to crime in their community.

Mr Bayly’s bill is early. It is too early. It is going to impose burdens on people who are already on margins that are too tight. We need to allow these businesses to survive, to learn, and to go on when they are ready to adopt digital systems to thrive, as we all hope they will. In this Government, we’re giving them assistance to do that, but the time is not now for this bill, and therefore I cannot commend it to the House.

Order! The member’s time has expired.

Kia orana, Mr Speaker. I rise to speak on this bill in the name of Andrew Bayly, the Secondhand Dealers and Pawnbrokers (Electronic Records) Amendment Bill. We’ve heard from other colleagues in the House today that the purpose of this bill is to require licensed pawnbrokers, second-hand dealers, and other regulated traders like internet auction providers to keep and supply records in an electronically readable format which is then to be used by police computers. The intent is to make it easier for police to locate stolen goods as well as to find the thieves who unlawfully took the goods in the first place.

Like others on this side of the House, I also support the intent of this legislation. The intent is honourable and it is to make it easier for police to locate these stolen goods, but I have, as my colleagues have also outlined, a number of concerns as to the unintended consequences relating to a few areas.

The first area is compliance costs by regulated traders that they would face, compliance costs to the police, and also a lack of clarity in the bill. For these reasons I cannot support this bill. However, as stated, I’m generally supportive of its intent, which is to support the police. I think it’s important to note that on this side of the House, we have supported the police in meaningful ways. We’ve invested $450 million in the police and we’ve seen the largest police workforce of all time, and this was also mentioned by my colleague Arena Williams, the MP for beautiful Manurewa, in her speech.

This bill will try and support the police by codifying an existing practice which the police are currently undertaking voluntarily with apparent success. So I ask then, where is the need for this legislation? In relation to my concerns about clarity, the meaning of records that are electronically readable by police computers is not, to me, clear. I fear it may be a step too far for some owners of small businesses, and also difficult, due to the lack of clarity, for them to comply with. The Serial Number Automated Checker—which is quite cutely, I thought, named SNAC—is not a system rolled out by the police throughout New Zealand, so it’s really difficult to understand what the effect or the implications of a nationwide roll-out would be, but undoubtedly it would likely mean additional costs for our police, and this, in my view, would be exacerbated by the bill’s three-month commencement, which is a very short time frame to ensure compliance. This very short time frame is coupled with a very high fine of up to $10,000 for non-compliance. To me, this does not appear to be something that would easily be implemented by many small businesses.

Interestingly, and as has been noted by other members in this House, this bill would, I think, impose significant costs to businesses, including small businesses and sole traders. In fact, small businesses could also face a change and additional cost if the police were suddenly to update their electronic record-keeping system. So if the police changed their system, this would automatically mean, according to this legislation, that the small businesses and sole traders would also need to update their systems. It is not outlined in the bill a delayed time frame if such a thing were to occur, and it could, as I’ve stated before, result in a large fine if there was non-compliance. So these are some questions on this side of the House that we are left with, having read through Mr Bayly’s bill.

This does not mean that we do not support digitisation of records, but, in our experience, small traders and second-hand dealers, if they are willing to do this and it is something that they have the capacity to do, will already be doing this. So we see no need to force small businesses to mandatorily digitise in this way at this stage. As has been mentioned previously, there is already extensive duties on second-hand dealers and pawnbrokers, and a quick Google search will show you the responsibilities that currently exist for them. There’s also, as my colleague Emily Henderson mentioned, a Digital Boost programme to assist businesses who wish to update their digital capability. So there is work under way, but I do not see a need for this particular bill at this particular time for something that already seems to be happening at the moment.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, I’ve listened with much interest to the arguments put forward by the Government members, who are clearly not going to support the bill. I do acknowledge ACT for their support. Look, I think the reasons put forward—

💬 Hon Member: What about the Green Party?

I’m sorry; I acknowledge the Greens as well. Thank you. I do acknowledge the Greens for their support. But the reasons put forward by the Government members, I would say to you are somewhat spurious. What is happening in the market at the moment is that if you want to get rid of stolen goods, one option is that you use second-hand dealers to pass those goods on. I’m not saying, and I want to be very clear—I’m not implying that all second-hand dealers knowingly trade in stolen goods. They do have certain protections that have just been noted. There are a lot of rules and regulations around it. But none the less, there are very clear examples of this happening regularly by certain individuals.

This whole initiative was at the request of the police. This is not Andrew Bayly dreaming up something that might need to be done. It came out of a meeting back in 2016 between myself and the Hon Judith Collins talking to our local police. They were the ones who brought to our attention this issue, and namely there is one particular issue that they highlighted. At the moment, as someone has noted before, second-hand dealers are required to keep a list of all goods that come in and who has furnished those goods, effectively who they’ve bought those goods from.

What happens now is that a policeman has to drive over to that second-hand dealer—so the time incurred in driving a valuable police car—sit down and record by hand what those transactions have been. That is a ridiculous, time-wasting exercise that the police quite rightly brought to our attention. I heard the Government Ministers going on about $450 million spent on helping the front-line police force. This is one of the easiest ways to take policemen and policewomen doing the most mundane jobs and actually getting them out, catching the criminals. Because what that officer will have to do is write down all the names and addresses, go back and then electronically enter them into a police system, and by co-locating and putting that into a database, they could then work out who’s trading goods.

What the police were telling us is there are many, many examples of individuals who might be trading across every month up to $20,000 by going around various second-hand dealers and just trading a small amount. But when you looked at it across a big region, you actually worked out that there were significant traders and in effect they were the outlet for crime. So it was the police who said, “This is a waste of time. Can you help us stop wasting our time?”

The Counties Manukau police had gone to the extent of having a very smart IT person who worked out and created this new platform called Serial Number Automated Checker (SNAC). So the issue, and what the bill is about, is not about imposing more costs on second-hand dealers, because all it now requires of them is to provide the records in an electronic form; it could be by a camera, could be by email, whatever the case might be. It is not imposing a significant, higher amount of compliance costs on second-hand dealers. What it’s saying is: please furnish the information in some form of electronic means. And the SNAC system is capable of being able to take various forms of electronic data and put it in, and immediately it goes into a system that means you can start tracking these criminals. That is the purpose of this.

The second point I’d say to the Government members is that the police actually helped me create the legislation, the proposed piece of legislation. I’ve heard a number of people say it’s unclear. Well, I think that’s a bit of a reflection on the way you perceive the police, because the police helped draft this bill.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, and it’s a pleasure to talk on the Secondhand Dealers and Pawnbrokers (Electronic Records) Amendment Bill. Can I acknowledge the member who just spoke for that history and also the work that he has undertaken in terms of bringing this to the House. I want to acknowledge the work of the New Zealand Police just looking at what they had done in Counties Manukau. I know, and the member will agree with me, that this hasn’t been rolled out across New Zealand—I’m thinking of the Serial Number Automated Checker (SNAC) technology. In talking to our district police service here in Wellington, which covers up to the Wairarapa, the system’s not in place that is in Counties Manukau and I think Waikato also has it. But I think it’s also good to hear too that clarity around small business because, as it stands—we’ve heard my colleagues talk about this previously, but there are those unintended consequences around the small business compliance. And maybe if there was clarity around how that compliance would have played out—and I want to mirror some of the detail my ACT member in Rongotai talked about in terms of those essentials around equipment, internet cost, training—if those things had been clearer in the bill, I think maybe there could have been a different view here on the Government banks.

However, that’s not the case and what we are seeing here is that, as it stands, the compliance is unclear in terms of what those small businesses would have to do. I’m also not convinced that the police wouldn’t get the system and put it in place and then impose some sort of cost or charging or regime—it’s a better word—on to small businesses of varying sorts to say, “This is now the system, this would be the cost, and this would be maybe it’s annually, maybe it’s a template of some sort, but those costs—and then the possible accusations that we are doing this rather than being on the front line.” These are just some of the stories that fall into the unintended consequences. Despite the police having a “prevention first” mantra, there could also be an accusation that the compliance costs are such, where we have sworn and non-sworn police officers in the office administering a system which small businesses, those second-hand dealers who I have spoken to have said, “Look, if it was, say, to come for free, if we were going to be supported, given training over a longer period of time than the three months, maybe that would be something that we would look into.” But there was a fear that something that was introduced would look good initially but over time would then cost, would add to that, and to sum it up, the compliance costs or the cost of administering such a system over time.

The good news is I can say that all of them had—and I wouldn’t just call them handwritten notes, that would not be accurate, it would be inaccurate, but they had their own systems and when shown them I thought, “Wow, they can quickly get that information to police.” and many of them already do. We are making the assumption here that they don’t have a relationship with the police service within their districts. The ones that I spoke to do. They have very good relationships. They are often “wise enough”—that’s a good term—to alert the police up front to suspects that have come to mind. And they collaborate internally as a sector to say, “Actually, we believe that something just does not feel right.” So I wouldn’t underestimate those dealers who are already on to this in their own way.

But look, those are the concerns from the front line. You’ve heard from some of my colleagues about just that clarity. Someone mentioned that voluntary code. I know in other parts of enforcement—I’m thinking wheel-clamping here—there was a code there put in place. This one seems to work. But as I’ve distinguished amongst the different districts within the police, in Counties Manukau and Waikato, they’ve got SNAC. In other parts, things seem to be—

Order! The member’s time has expired.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to take a short call on the member’s bill this evening, the Secondhand Dealers and Pawnbrokers (Electronic Records) Amendment Bill, and I have listened both in my office and in the House tonight to the whole debate. I’ve actually enjoyed hearing the local examples from the member who’s just resumed his seat, Paul Eagle, but also from my colleague Arena Williams, who, of course, is in South Auckland, an area that has been the focus of some of the discussion tonight. I also enjoyed the contribution from Dr Emily Henderson. Of course, she is my neighbouring electorate, and I am very familiar with the store to which she was referring.

As I was preparing for this debate this evening, I was thinking about the huge number of second-hand dealers that we have across Northland. I myself actually really enjoy, what we call, hokohoko shopping, or second-hand shopping—a very keen shopper there. I think about a number of the hokohoko shops that I would go into and my real assumption would be—and it is an assumption, because I haven’t had the time to actually go in and check, but from the way that it’s all set up, the people who are running it, my guess would be—that they aren’t electronic. So you’ve already heard tonight, Mr Bayly, the reasons why Labour won’t be supporting your bill—this one; you got support on the last one, but in terms of this one—and it really is that concern that we have for the additional cost that it could impose on to our small businesses. Like I said, there is a hokohoko shop in every community I can think of with a little township in Northland, and I do worry that this could impose extra costs on them to modernise their systems, which I just don’t think many of them necessarily are. And while, during COVID, I was really pleased to see the support we were giving small businesses to try and digitise, to click and collect, and accommodate all of those, I’m not too sure how many of our hokohoko shops have actually used that opportunity for their business. It would be something interesting to see.

I think what I am struggling with, in terms of the bill, is using the blunt instrument of the law to try and achieve better systems and working relationships between the dealers and the police. So I do acknowledge the member when he said that he didn’t just dream up this idea; that it was something that he had talked about in consultation with the Police—

💬 Andrew Bayly: No, they asked for it.

Sorry—that they asked for it, and that they thought that this was something that could help them do that job better, but my simple response to that is that might be the case for the New Zealand Police, but it’s going to be at the cost of our small businesses in our communities. That’s the bit that I struggle with, because they would argue that they are paying taxes into our system and we are making decisions around the funding of the police and other things to be able to provide these services. I do think that the law is unclear about what exactly would meet the requirements of the Act, in terms of which electronic system and one that can be used by the police. So that system could continually change, and they might be required to continually update the software that they have and all of those costs that are associated with that.

You did mention that it could be something as simple as taking a photo and supplying it electronically. I don’t know that we need to have that in law to require them to do that, and a possible penalty of $10,000 if they don’t comply with that, when that could be a simple request from the police and voluntarily, cooperatively that is something that they could do. So my concern is that to achieve the outcome that you’re seeking using the blunt tool of the law and a $10,000 fine for our small businesses, I think, is unjustified and something that I would find hard to go back into all of my small communities with their hokohoko shops and say that we really need you to do this in order for us to try and address this crime.

Just finally, in concluding this, I do think about those who I have known all my life growing up, and the member who said that they know who some of these people are and they work closely with the police—I would believe that’s the same case in many of our communities too. Kia ora.

Andrew Bayly in reply.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s obviously not going to be the double today, but I am very appreciative for the support I had on my first bill. This bill, unfortunately, we haven’t been able to work collaboratively on, which has been unfortunate. Because I’ve tried to work with the Minister of Police on this a couple of times, but just literally haven’t been able to get to a stage where—some of the comments that have been said today are just patently wrong. Not because I suggest the members are saying things that are incorrect for malicious reasons, just simply because they are wrong, because they don’t have a great enough understanding of what’s in this bill.

What the bill seeks to do is to require second-hand dealers to provide the data they already capture in a machine-readable form to the police. That’s all it requires. The issues around penalties and this stuff we could have beaten out in select committee, but that is simply all it requires. That was at the request of the police; it is not me dreaming it up.

The reason why they requested, as I said before, and I’m just talking in reference to the MP for Northland, Willow-Jean Prime, who just spoke previously. The very issue that she talked about—the wide-ranging number of second-hand dealers around Northland—is the issue why the police want this in place. Because simply to travel across Northland, going into each one of those and having a policeman not only driving there but sitting down and taking all the notes and spending an hour or half an hour, whatever it is, and then going back to the office and putting it into the Serial Number Automated Checker as a system is incredibly time-consuming.

So the first thing is you talked about cost—cost to the business person. The cost to the business person is absolutely minor, because all it requires is a machine-readable form—they are already collecting the information. But the second cost that I find staggering that no one seems to take into account is the cost to the police, because they have to do this. Because if you want to get rid of stolen goods, one of the best ways to do it is to put it through a second-hand dealer. The second-hand dealer might be totally unsuspecting, because in many cases what we heard, and there have been hundreds of prosecutions now, is that they are very smart. They’ll go into a whole range of them across all of Northland and sell a small amount in each one of them, but it is only when you see the totality of what they are doing that police start to work out what’s going on.

But also it helps in the recovery of those stolen goods. All it comes back to is getting data regularly, quickly, easily, so that we have front-line officers catching the crims, not spending time driving around in the car and writing bits of information on a piece of paper and then going back to the office and entering it. So why on earth, even with all the money the Government talks about putting into police—this is one of the easiest ways to make sure there are more front-line services.

The third thing is you talk about the cost to the business owner, but what about the cost not only to the police but to the people who have had their goods stolen, who have suffered the crime? They’re the people who have lost their mementos, their housing, stuff that in many cases is precious to them. These are the bits that are taken to these second-hand dealers and sold. It’s not the only way they get rid of it, but it’s an important avenue for crime. So what about the cost to them and to society in general for not allowing the police the right to be able to get data that’s already collected in a machine-readable form? I just don’t accept the proposition about compliance costs. There is a cost to the police. There is a cost to the individuals who have lost those items. There is a cost to society in general. This is an easy way of dealing with that.

The other thing I heard about the legislation—as I said before, the police helped me draft the legislation. When we were in Government, I had police people working alongside me to prepare this bill, so the claim that I heard from the former police policy adviser Ginny Andersen I think was totally incorrect, and I’m surprised that she said that.

The issue of penalties could have been easily dealt with in the select committee, and the roll-out time—again, it’s an easy stroke of the pen—could have been delayed in terms of commencement date. Those are simple issues, but the simple fact is Labour is choosing not to support the police to do their job more easily.