Estimates Debate — Police

The debate on the Police portfolio—the first call goes to the chairperson of the Justice Committee, Ginny Andersen.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. Thank you very much for the opportunity to briefly run through what the Justice Committee heard in relation to Vote Police during the Estimates session. Members heard a very good range of views and heard from the Commissioner of Police as well as the Minister of Police in relation to a range of issues. One of the main issues that was raised was in relation to gang crime and what the Government is currently doing in relation to countering some of the issues in the organised crime space. It was interesting for members to hear, from both sides of the House, what Operation Tauwhiro had set out to achieve from within baseline and how that as a pilot project would be continuing to be utilised to keep a check on organised crime and to restrain assets, firearms, illicitly gained items, as well as illicit drugs.

The Minister, when she spoke, highlighted the operation of Operation Tauwhiro and indicated how much had been seized over that project. There were 650 firearms seized over that period of time and also just shy of $3.5 million of cash, and also a significant amount of methamphetamine seized. Police told us that as a result of that successful pilot scheme, they would be extending the operation, particularly against the use of firearms for violence. They explained that the operation has been prioritised throughout the organisation as this had shaped the work of several different business groups.

The second main area that the committee heard about during the Estimates was Te Pae Oranga, which is an initiative that has gained funding through the recent Budget. We heard that the commitment for $70 million in the operating for Te Pae Oranga will enable 14 additional panels to be put forward across the country. We’re pleased to see that the programme had been given—it was actually $76 million, to be exact, in Budget 2021, and in that we heard about how the extra funding will be spent and where the value would be gained. It was also a question about what the role is of that in terms of intervening at the early stage, the benefits. The Police Commissioner spoke in terms of reconciliation and acknowledging where the root of some of those initial offending had happened, to make sure it got people on the right path and a different pathway to just prison, which can often be the case in some instances.

The third area that we heard about was seizing cash and assets from organised crime, and in particular the way it was termed was hitting them in the pocket, because that’s where it hurts the most. In terms of what that was, the committee heard about how there’s a switch in onus, how in the past if police were wanting to confiscate or restrain items that were potentially got through ill-gotten gains, then the onus was always on the police or the investigating authority to prove that that had been gained in an illegal way, and that’s often quite difficult to do. So what new provision we’ll make under the Government is that the onus is on the individual who’s got the item to prove that they obtained that through a legal means, and so that makes the ability to restrain, seize, those illegal items far easier for police to do.

Also, I’d just like to conclude by saying I was really heartened to hear how Police are continuing to improve efforts in reflecting our community by improving the diversity we have within the New Zealand Police. Police are tracking very well, and I’m interested to hear more from the Minister, if she’d like to explain how we will continue to move forward over the coming years to make sure that the police on the front line are able to engage and connect into communities from a wide range of backgrounds, to make sure we’re equipped in the areas of language and cultural expertise to make sure that police are working with communities and alongside and making those relationships that will last.

We heard a range of other operations, including Operation Trojan Shield, but in relation to the activity, we were very interested to hear how that ongoing activity, particularly in relation to organised crime, was tracking well. The committee had a robust and good discussion, and I encourage other members to contribute to the debate, but in general, I would like to hear from the Minister in particular around the ongoing areas where we’d like to see an improving of diversity in terms of New Zealand Police.

Will the Minister acknowledge that there is systemic racism in the police force, rather than just unconscious bias? Why are the police refusing to agree to an inquest into the death of Shargin Stephens, who was shot by police? Is there a specific programme focused on the rise of white supremacist violence, and, if so, why is it not known and have an identifiable name, like Operation Tauwhiro? How much funding has been committed to internal programmes focused on eliminating racism and bias in the police, and to programmes focused on Te Tiriti education, decolonisation, and inclusivity training?

Thank you, Minister. Minister, I see in the answers to Estimates questions that were asked that $23.5 million has been allocated for an effective administration of the arms regulatory system “for meeting Police’s obligations in regard to implementing recent legislative changes to the Arms Act and the ongoing improvement programme designed to meet public safety objectives and be a more effective regulator”. My question, Minister, is: when we are seeing extensive delays in renewing and new applications for firearm licences, where we have now thousands of people waiting over 12 months, my question comes down to, with the worsening inconsistencies that we’re seeing in administration, where is that $23.5 million being spent, is it going towards those licensed firearm owners who are now caught up in the changes of the regulatory system, and will we, in fact, see that money being used to establish the promised independent firearms administration authority? Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair, for the opportunity to take a call in this debate. My question is to the Minister, regarding the increased gang violence we’re seeing on our streets across New Zealand. This subject was raised in the select committee and the question was put then to the Minister: when will the promised legislation that this Government promised on 11 May 2021, three months ago, to introduce firearm prohibition orders, be introduced to this Parliament? The supplementary question to that: has the legislation even been drafted yet, because there have been 66 gang-related firearm incidences that the police have reported since the Minister made that announcement, but we still haven’t seen any legislation?

Thank you, Madam Chair, and I thank the members for their questions. The member from the ACT Party, I’m just getting that information, because it’s quite specific, so I will be back to you with that. Firstly, can I thank the chair of the committee, and can I thank the committee for all the work that they do. It’s not an easy area of work, but I know that the committee works tirelessly and diligently around that.

Can I first come to the member from Te Paati Māori. I think we’ve had some conversations about this in the past. The issue of the impacts on our most vulnerable communities in terms of the interaction that they have with the police—I have never, and I will never, term that in the way that the member has characterised it. The reason for that is that the police are going through a significant process of culture change at the moment, evidenced by being very clear that they want to be the face of Aotearoa New Zealand. When you come to the graduation—I hope you will take that offer up from us to come to a police graduation—you will see that police are increasingly reflecting back to us who we are as a nation.

At one of the graduations I went to—in fact, the very first graduation—more than 50 percent of graduates were woman. There were something like in the region of 13 different languages spoken, and what that speaks to is actually being reflective of our nation. If we are in situations where we are faced with some of the most difficult times, do we not want to be supported or engaging with people who are like us and who understand us? So there is definitely a lot of work that the police can do to shift who it is that they stop, how they make the decisions around charging, for example, and that is a piece of work that they’re going through at the moment. I support wholeheartedly that work, because there is no doubt that our Māori and Pacific are much more likely to be arrested and charged, and there is something that we have to do about that disproportionate rate.

There is also something in the fact that Māori and Pacific tend to be more victimised as well. So while I will not characterise it as racism, what I will say is there are processes within the police that disadvantage Māori and Pacific. There are probably people with some attitude within the police that need some changing, and I know that the police are working on that.

To come to the matter of the $23.5 million, I’ve had the breakdown of that. It’s a new allocation of funding. We are in the process of building the ring-fenced entity within the police. We’re building the team up as we speak, moving from casual to full-time permanent staff. Resources also allow for the development of a business case to establish a firearms registry, which will come into force in June of 2023. I do want to say that if there is one thing that we can do in terms of safety of our communities, it’s having the arms register in place, knowing who is licensed, being very clear about the weapons that they have. Actually having an understanding of how many weapons are in our community, I think, is one of the most important—perhaps the single most important—safety aspects that we can get to, and also making sure that those who sell firearms are very clear about the controls that need to go in place around that: that we secure them properly, that we are very clear about, you know, currently why someone would need to have several weapons.

I will come back to Mr Brown’s question that he keeps—

💬 Simeon Brown: It’s a very good question.

Well, it’s an important question to police. Madam Chair, I’m going to seek another call if that is OK with you.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): In six seconds, you can.

Thank you. I shall do that. There’s no doubt that gangs—[Bell rung] Madam Chair?

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Hon Poto Williams.

Thank you—have a huge impact on our communities, and that’s why I completely support the work that the police are doing, particularly around Operation Tauwhiro. If there’s one thing that Jarrod Gilbert talked about, it was the ability to really get hard and fast with gangs and disrupt the violence and the impact of gangs. Operation Tauwhiro has been successful, and the member—the chair of the committee, actually—talked about what we had reported at the Estimates at select committee, and I just want to update the committee of the whole House that since the start of Operation Tauwhiro, we’ve seized 855 firearms, $4.87 million cash, seized 30 kilograms of meth, and arrested 744 people. That’s on top of the work that’s happening in organised crime work.

💬 Simeon Brown: No, good stuff—good start—but how’s the FPO legislation going?

The firearm prohibition orders will be introduced by the end of the year, and that is part of the suite of measures to disrupt the gangs.

One of the most important things around disrupting gangs, though, is around the proof of assets. The Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act amendment was introduced by the Minister of Justice, and what that speaks to is ensuring that they have to prove where those assets have come from. As the chair described it, that is actually how we will hit the gangs where it hurts the most, and that’s in the pocket. We are talking about an economy that we can disrupt, and we are also talking about taking the ability to recruit our young people into the gangs by use of enticement, which actually has proven to be very successful. None of us want to have our people in the gangs, so anything we can do to disrupt that is really, really important.

But along that journey, too, we have to look at opportunities to help people to exit from the gangs. This is not something that the police do alone. They do a great job in terms of having alternative resolution pathways, such as Te Pae Oranga, which we have increased the support for by the tune of $70 million. Now, that’s a programme that’s endorsed. In fact, the patron of that is Kingi Tūheitia.

💬 Simeon Brown: Forty percent failed to turn up.

He is so—

💬 Ginny Andersen: Cheap seats.

Yeah. He’s—

💬 Simeon Brown: It’s true. It’s in the paperwork.

Excuse me, actually you shouldn’t be speaking across the Chamber to each other. That is definitely for—

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Would the Minister care to continue with her speech?

Yes, thank you, I will. I would actually like to continue with my speech without disruption from that member, who just keeps barracking. I’m just happy to stand here and respond in that way if that’s how you want to use your time, but you could also use your time—

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): If the Minister could leave the Chair out of the debate.

Thank you.

Members, the committee is suspended for the dinner break—normally a very popular announcement—and will resume at 7 o’clock.

Sitting suspended from 6.02 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Members, the House is in committee on the Appropriation (2021/22 Estimates) Bill. Before the dinner break, we were considering Vote Police and I call Nicole McKee.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Minister, for answering the question that I posed before the dinner break. But I’m going to come back to that question, the $23.5 million that’s been allocated for the effective administration of the arms regulatory system. There were a couple of comments made by you, Minister, about licensed firearm owners and also dealers—those that need to be taught how to make their business work more legally and effectively. And I find that statement discourteous at the least to those that have been abiding by the law. There’s 250,000 of them, and decreasing, that have actually been taught how to buy and sell firearms as part of the process for receiving a firearms licence.

Further to that, Minister, you mentioned about registration and how it will keep New Zealand safe. So one of my questions, Minister, is: with the $23.5 million allocation, how much of that is going to go to the implementation of the registry? And further to that, how is it going to help police to identify firearms that they find in illegal possession of people that have no serial numbers on them, which are required for an effective registration to take place, especially when the police themselves had noted in a reply to an Official Information Act request that 50 percent of seized firearms they receive do not have any serial numbers on them at all.

And if I may, Minister, one more question: with the answers to Estimates questions on firearms prohibition orders (FPOs), there is a building fund of $12 million that has been put aside for those FPOs. You have indicated that it will occur before the end of this year, but we are wondering whether or not you can share some information on what those FPOs will be like, especially seeing as there’s been a budget that has been allocated to it. And my last question, Minister, relates back to: when will an independent firearms authority be set up to effectively administer arms legislation and probably spending that $23.5 million in a better way? Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I thank the member for her question. Perhaps if I could start with the firearms prohibition orders (FPOs) first. The intention for the FPOs—we will introduce legislation before the end of the year but the expectation of this Government has been really clear that we want to ensure that violent gangs, you know, and other criminals can’t use firearms to threaten and intimidate. Now, what we will do is the FPOs will prohibit high-risk people from accessing or being around or using firearms. So it will apply to the most serious offenders. The court will consider the person who is subject to an FPO as part of their sentencing following a conviction for a serious offence, and the qualifying offences for FPOs are serious firearms offences that would disqualify somebody from holding a firearms licence, serious violent offences as defined in section 86A of the Sentencing Act, the offence of participation in an organised criminal group, and also terrorism-related offences. So that is what is the intention of the FPO.

With regards to licensing and the broader discussion around the registry, we are in the process of building that at the moment. It will take about two years before we are ready to actually have a fully implemented registry system. So that is a process that’s already started. We’ve started to recruit people to start the implementation of that. I do have an arms advisory group that is supporting some of the work that we are doing. Cabinet hasn’t finalised the decisions on that so we’re still working through that process. We’re really clear. We want to get that right. The intention of the register is for us really to draw a line in the sand in terms of our knowledge of where firearms are in the community going forward, because we know that it’s very difficult—you know, we’ve got 30 years of not having a register to catch up. This is for us, being really clear—we want to draw a line in the sand. We want to start from this point forward having really good information about who owns firearms, how they’re being used, and, you know, where they are. So I hope that gives you a sense about the direction of travel. It will take us a couple of years to put that in place. And we’re working through that at the moment.

💬 Nicole McKee: Firearms authority?

Now, I apologise, but I haven’t managed to write down the—

💬 Hon Members: Firearms authority.

—the apology? Sorry, would that—

💬 Hon Members: Firearms authority.

The firearms authority—let me get some more information on that and come back to you on that one.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just following on from those comments, it does seem strange to us on this side of House that the firearms prohibition order (FPO) legislation that the Minister’s proposing there will be putting it in place for people who commit offences—they have to commit an offence—and I’d like the Minister to clarify this: someone will have to commit an offence, and then at sentencing they will be able to have an FPO put in place, rather than what the National Party is proposing, which is actually looking at people in the community who are already at risk of causing harm, and trying to prevent harm from actually taking place into the future. So I’d appreciate the Minister’s comments on that point, if that’s the distinction that this proposed legislation—whenever it does actually come to the House—will have.

The next question I’d like to talk about is the safety of our front-line officers, and it’s been in the media significantly in recent times, with police being shot at or firearms being presented at them. There was an interview which the Minister undertook on Newstalk ZB where she said, “I’m talking about the communities that I represent … the Māori and Pacific communities who told me, loud and clear, the general arming of police and particularly the armed response teams ARTs are a real concern to them.”

Now, the question I put to the Minister is one that many thousands of front-line officers have been asking. Firstly, to the Minister, do you stand by that comment? Secondly, who do you represent as Minister of Police? Because I put it to you that many police don’t feel represented by you as the Minister of Police, including many Māori and Pacific police officers who are working day in and day out on the front line trying to keep our community safe. The final part to that question is: is the Government considering widening the role of the armed offenders squad (AOS) or are the Police—I guess it’s an operational decision at the end of the day—considering widening the role of the AOS, which will, effectively, introduce armed response teams but simply under a different name or in a different way? I would like some clarity on those issues, thank you.

Firstly, can I say that my absolute commitment is to the safety of our police. They go out there every single day to keep their community safe—to keep our community safe. I’ve made it very clear that their safety is my utmost concern.

Just in regards of: who do I represent? I represent the interests of keeping our police safe. I represent keeping our community safe. I represent Māori and Pasifika who are disproportionately impacted by decisions that we take as a community, but also that are disproportionately impacted by all the negative statistics. I represent the people of Christchurch East. I represent people who want to see this country do better for its people. All of those people I represent.

Now, I’m really clear that when I went to—

💬 Simeon Brown: Do you represent New Zealand? What about New Zealanders?

Madam Chair, if I could just ask that member—I found it incredibly annoying to try and answer his questions with the constant chatter that he—and look, it’s entirely over to him. I’ve got approximately two or three minutes left to answer questions. He can use that time by interrupting me or not, that’s entirely over to him, and I’m just asking him a little bit of respect to be able to answer these questions, if that would be OK.

💬 Hon Todd McClay: People want the answers, not your excuses.

As I say again, it’s a little bit like an episode of The Muppet Show in here, with Waldorf and Stanley. So if you could just allow that—

💬 Hon Todd McClay: Say that to the victims. Take it seriously for the victims. How about that?

If the member would just please give me a moment to—

💬 Hon Todd McClay: Do your job. You get a really big salary, do your job. Stop making excuses.

I’m very clear, that when I was challenged by the kaumātua at Matt Hunt’s memorial service that I am their whaea and I must keep them safe; that is my utmost responsibility, and I will do so.

Minister Williams, I saw that there was an appropriation that’s been put aside for a firearms investigation team, also known as FIT, and I, of course, have some concerns that that team is looking to investigate licensed firearm owners—and a big emphasis on them. I’m hoping that I’m incorrect on that, and am looking for some clarity as to what that appropriation means for the firearms investigation team, please.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Well, I note that the Minister spent a lot of time reprimanding me, but she didn’t answer the question, which was “Are police working on expanding the role of the armed offenders squad to, effectively, introduce armed response teams?”, because, I tell you what, the people listening don’t care whether the Minister and I have a disagreement. The people listening and the police officers out there want to know what this Government is doing to keep them safe and keep the community safe. And the Minister has failed to answer the question—rather, trying to create some sort of pathetic name-calling in the House, which I think’s unacceptable. So I’d like an answer to that question when the Minister next takes a call.

The other topic I’d like to raise here in the House is around the number of police officers on the front line and on the beat. And I note that the number of police officers has fallen from 10,244 in March to 10,117 today as attrition creeps up and the number of graduates has stalled as the college was closed for six weeks. The question I have is: what is the Government doing to fill this gap in the short term to ensure that they are able to keep police on the beat? Also noting that there are 210 officers currently in managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ), serving at our MIQ facilities. And the other question I’d like to ask around that is: what is the future of police being at MIQ, given the fact that our police on the front line are feeling the strain of the fact that they are finding it challenging with the increased violence and the increased callouts in a number of areas? And is it Government policy to continue with this in the longer term? I’d appreciate some comments from the Minister on that.

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