Policing Amendment Bill

Committee of the whole House

Thank you, Mr Chair. I’m just interested in the commencement, initially. In the course of the select committee proceedings, we were alerted to the existence of this document, which is a document produced by Gemtech for the New Zealand Police, which is Managing Privacy Practice Project. I refer to it because it goes directly to whether or not the Police are, or will be, ready for the commencement of this bill in the near future, in particular around the storage and deletion of unnecessary photographs, because, obviously, if photographs are taken and they’re not necessary, they should be deleted.

What this document did was it actually went and interviewed a whole lot of officers, and it determined that progress was being made but, essentially, there was a long way to go. For example, it observed that participants were using various methods for sharing photographs, such as emails or group chats, and that it was taking too long to upload photographs to the central database and keeping them on their devices. Of course, we know that the Police still have difficulties with officers not being good custodians of the information on their phone. They should take a photo, then message it off to the office via email or whatever, and they should immediately delete it from their phone, but they simply don’t.

The document has a summary of recommendations, and I’d be interested in knowing whether these have been done, because it strikes me that until this is done, Police are not ready to start having the authority to take photographs. Recommendation 1.2 was to “Update the Police Instructions and … training modules” to give “more clarity”. Item 1.4 was “Consider making the use of digital notebooks mandatory.” The reason, I understand, for that is that digital notebooks are part of the wider Police system, unlike an iPhone—which is the other thing they use. If you put it on the digital notebook, you’ve, essentially, done everything and you can get rid of the original recording—also stopping the practice of sharing OnDuty screenshots; that’s in recommendation 1.5. In recommendation 1.13: “Review the timeframes for deleting photographs/videos and provide clearer, more realistic timeframes”. Also, in 1.15: “Explore options for deleting photographs of members of the public from group chats [such as] iMessage and Microsoft Teams.”

Of course, that’s another issue. You might take a photograph of one person, which is relevant, but it’s got a whole lot of other information in it, which is not relevant. We were very interested—this was not part of the evidence until we asked Police to provide it to us, and it showed, at least when it was produced, that there was a lot of work to be done. As I recall, when we were in committee, we asked, “Are all the offending photographs, particularly of young people, deleted?”, and the answer appears to be, if I remember rightly, that they weren’t.

It strikes me that there’s some systemic things to do, such as the use of digital notebooks, but also there’s some work to do within Police so that they understand that you can’t just take photos and leave them on your phone—there’s a threshold for taking your photo, and there’s a requirement to delete it from your phone once it’s being stored in the appropriate place and properly curated. I’d be interested in the Minister’s observations on whether those requirements have been met.

Committee of the whole House

Look, in my experience, certainly this term, the Police have been very, very good in implementing and operationalising legislation. They’ve got multiple digital systems to store information, images, and sounds. Police apply multiple layers of security and governance controls across this information environment. They continue to strengthen information management practices across the organisation, and Police will implement, with the bill, updated Police instructions, guidance, training, and improvements to the existing IT systems and/or relevant operational controls, such as refreshed audit and quality assurance.

Committee of the whole House

Thank you very much, Mr Chair. I find there’s a challenge with the names of amendment bills, or pieces of legislation in general, where they are extremely bland and innocuous and don’t really give any information about the character of the amendment before us. This is probably one of the more glaring examples of this. It’s simply called the “Policing Amendment Bill”—it doesn’t inform the public or legislators in any way about what the actual purpose of the amendment is.

I note that, in the legislative statement for the third reading, we have two very simple and specific things articulated in the overview of the bill; two principal objectives: “to provide a clear statutory basis for Police collection and recording of information, including for intelligence purposes.”; and, secondly: “to expand Police’s temporary road closure powers to include a broader range of areas, and to provide Police with the necessary powers to deter and enforce non compliance …” It seems to me—and this is in no way to be clever about it—I simply think that the bill could have a clearer title.

I realised that we can’t be too wordy in these things, but I propose that it be called the “Policing (Sound and Image Recording and Road Closure) Amendment Bill”, because those are the key components of what the purpose of the amendment is. It would much more greatly indicate, to those seeking out the point in the legislative process where these changes were made, if the bill had a title that drew people’s attention to “sound and image recording and road closure”. I propose, Minister, whether you would consider it—I’m happy to draw it up as a formal amendment; I haven’t yet done that—that the bill name be changed to “Policing (Sound and Image Recording and Road Closure) Amendment Bill”. Thank you,

Committee of the whole House

Look, I might be able to address Steve Abel’s issue, along with the Hon Dr Duncan Webb’s, in relation to—just addressing the tabled amendment that’s been put in by Duncan Webb to amend the title to “Policing (Information Collection Powers) Amendment Act 2026”. I wouldn’t support either of those amendments. This bill amends the Policing Act. This would create a new stand-alone Act that would not address Part 2.

Committee of the whole House

Thank you, Mr Chair. I just had a couple of questions around the commencement as well. We see a relatively complex commencement clause here, where, originally, we had Part 1 coming in the month after Royal assent, but then we had a change to “six months” at select committee. If I recall correctly, I think that was because of some of the concerns around the Police being ready for this change and having the right IT systems and all of the additional support that might be needed. I do recall, I think, even in this committee stage, we’ve talked about, because so many of the decisions are operational—that there might be a need for guidance as well.

I know Dr Webb has talked about the concern that we do share around the IT systems being ready, but the additional question I wanted to ask was: will the guidance be ready in six months’ time? And, of course, we have an even more complex section than just “six months”, because, if there are any parts that are not in force, they’ll come into force, I think, on the second anniversary—so, two years after Royal assent, as well. It’s a relatively complex process for this coming into force, and it does, really, beg the question whether things are ready for that to happen. I know that we’ve had a few controversies around IT systems recently.

The other thing that I think is slightly complex for the Police at the moment is that we did have the Crimes Amendment Act recently pass, which does provide for a new infringement regime around theft. That is a new infringement regime that will have to be supported by the Police as well. I know that some of these are Ministry of Justice, and I’m not sure if they’re all policing procurements, but I just wanted to know: are you comfortable that there is sufficient time for enough guidance to be offered to Police? In fact, especially with the road-user charges, there might be some community guidance as well—sorry, not the road-user charges. In Part 2, that’s in terms of temporary closures, there might need to be some public education around that, too.

I suppose it’s just a general concern that we’ve had a lot of assurances that the Police will be ready and that the systems are in place, but when we’ve asked for information, we haven’t seen separate corroborating evidence that they are ready. Because we know that there are so many other pulls on Police time and resources, like the theft infringement regime, I think there’s a genuine concern that, if this was supported, there might be aspects of this, especially in relation to the data collection part of it—and certainly that was a concern of the Privacy Commissioner—that may be slightly mitigated by that. I appreciate that the Minister can only give us assurances, but I think that one option would be to have a longer period of time to make sure that they were in place, or some kind of catch-all clause where, if the Police system wasn’t sufficiently at the standard needed to hold this information, because a lot of it will be private information—some of it will have children’s information as well. I mean, that’s something we haven’t really discussed at committee stage, but we did have some concerns around the Police capturing of photographic information being around children. There will be some legitimate reasons to have that, but it does just emphasise the point that we do need those systems to be in place, and it’s good to have the assurances, but I’m not 100 percent convinced there won’t be some issues in the future around the Police not being 100 percent ready for that.

That’s just, you know, honestly the impression we have from that, and that is relevant to the commencement, so any further information the Minister would like to share would be helpful.

Committee of the whole House

Firstly, with new legislation like this, I think that police are quite good at looking at every available channel to be able to signal that to the public, and, of course, they do an enormous amount of work and preparation in making sure the staff are well trained and understand the new legislation and how it applies in law.

In relation to the six months, that was quite simply to enable consultation with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner and the Children’s Commissioner in developing the operational guidance around how to implement that legislation, and, in terms of Part 2, to get the new infringement system in place in relation to boy racers.

Committee of the whole House

I move, That debate on this question now close.

A party vote was called for on the question, That debate on this question now close.

Ayes 67

New Zealand National 48; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.

Noes 31

New Zealand Labour 21; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 9; Kapa-Kingi.

Motion agreed to.

CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that Dr Duncan Webb’s tabled amendment to clause 1 be agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.

Ayes 31

New Zealand Labour 21; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 9; Kapa-Kingi.

Noes 67

New Zealand National 48; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.

Amendment not agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That clause 1 be agreed to.

Ayes 67

New Zealand National 48; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.

Noes 31

New Zealand Labour 21; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 9; Kapa-Kingi.

Clause 1 agreed to.

CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that the Minister’s amendments set out on Amendment Paper 668 be agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendments be agreed to.

Ayes 67

New Zealand National 48; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.

Noes 31

New Zealand Labour 21; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 9; Kapa-Kingi.

Amendments agreed to.

CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): The Hon Ginny Andersen’s tabled amendment to clause 2 is out of order as being inconsistent with a previous decision of the committee.

A party vote was called for on the question, That clause 2 as amended be agreed to. to.

Ayes 67

New Zealand National 48; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.

Noes 31

New Zealand Labour 21; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 9; Kapa-Kingi.

Clause 2 as amended agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That clause 3 be agreed to.

Ayes 67

New Zealand National 48; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.

Noes 31

New Zealand Labour 21; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 9; Kapa-Kingi.

Clause 3 agreed to.

Bill to be reported with amendment.

House resumed.

CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): Madam Speaker, the committee has considered the Policing Amendment Bill and reports it with amendment. I move, That the report be adopted.

Motion agreed to.

Report adopted.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): This bill is set down for third reading immediately.

Legislative Statement