📋 Expanding police surveillance and recording powers

Authorises police to film and audio-record people in public places, and on private property whenever they're "lawfully present", for purposes including an undefined "intelligence" category and a catch-all for "any other lawful purpose tied to Police activities". This reaffirms the position police believed they already had, before the Supreme Court's Tamiefuna v R [2025] NZSC 40 decision found otherwise. Also expands powers to close public areas to pedestrians and traffic, and to compel identification.

Critics - the Free Speech Union among them - flagged that the bill places no limits on how long collected information can be kept, and includes no audit or oversight requirements.

This follows a recurring pattern: the Video Camera Surveillance (Temporary Measures) Act 2011 and the Search and Surveillance Act 2012 (also tagged here) likewise expanded police surveillance powers - the 2011 Act specifically to reverse a Supreme Court ruling (Hamed v R) that found existing covert surveillance practice unlawful, much as this 2026 bill responds to Tamiefuna v R.