Locke Keith: Police Complaints Authority (Commission of Inquiry into Police Conduct) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Locke Keith: Police Complaints Authority (Commission of Inquiry into Police Conduct) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:617;Page:12931] 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 The Greens will be supporting this bill as we did through its previous stages. It has been an interesting bill. In one sense in the way it has proceeded we have seen MMP in action particularly with Stephen Franks’ amendment last night to clause 6. I think we want to learn something from that. Even though we come from quite different philosophical bases—certainly the Green Party and the ACT party are philosophically very far apart—we should always look closely at each other’s amendments because sometimes we may actually agree with them. That was the case with various parties in this House when they looked at Mr Franks’ amendment to see whether it had any particular problems. 
We looked at whether it would restrain the commission and in reading it closely we found that it would not. The amendment clearly stated: “may be achieved without materially prejudicing the Commission’s ability to ascertain and report the truth”. So the commission still has control of its own destiny still can expose what it wants but it is advised by the rest of the amendment to keep the Police Complaints Authority material confidential particularly information that might identify individuals. So the amendment was a good example of the MMP process. 
At the start the Government was a little reluctant to go along with the amendment thinking it would constrain the commission and that was the argument it outlined. But it was good to see that at the end of the Committee stage the Government came to the party. Whether that was because it genuinely was convinced by Mr Franks’ amendment or just does not like losing a vote in the House I have yet to determine. But I will give it the benefit of the doubt that it agreed with the amendment finally. 
Mr Franks said there was a problem of the new watchdog this commission of inquiry looking at another watchdog the Police Complaints Authority. That is the situation. It is problematic that people have such little confidence in the Police Complaints Authority particularly in what it was doing back in the period 1986 and beyond. The heart of the problem is that the Police Complaints Authority relies a bit too much on police officers for its investigatory capacity and in a small town like Rotorua it may be that—and the commission has yet to determine what the real situation was—the police officer doing the investigations and forwarding the analysis to the authority had too close a relationship with the people he was investigating and was not necessarily coming to independent conclusions. Whether or not that is true that is the import of some of the newspaper coverage. I will leave it to the commission to work out what the real truth of the situation is. 
I agree with Mr Franks too that the more transparent the commission of inquiry can be the better. That way people will have faith in the outcome of the inquiry. We do not want everything to be heard in secret sessions and people to end up thinking that justice was not done particularly in respect of those people who are alleged to have suffered sexual abuse—if it did in fact take place. 
I think there is a need for the Police Complaints Authority to keep some of its information secret. One reason which I have talked about previously is that we want to encourage people to come forward to the authority including whistle-blowers in the police force itself. Other officers who do not like what is going on might be a bit scared to have that known amongst their fellow officers because of the consequences that may ensue from their in a sense narking on their fellow officers. A bit of protection is needed to encourage fellow police officers to inform on bad apples in the police force so that we can have a truly non-corrupt and non-biased force. 
The other category of people we want to protect is the complainants. Again sometimes in small towns or in difficult situations—as is the case with some of the people the commission will be investigating—young people people who are feeling under a bit of pressure from those who are more senior to them or the police in the district or whatever need to be protected to enable them to come forward to the Police Complaints Authority in the future. I think a certain degree of secrecy is required for that. We will deal further with those sorts of things in the new version of the Police Complaints Authority proposed in the Independent Police Complaints Authority Amendment Bill which will be coming before us in more detail after the commission of inquiry report. It is currently in the House but has been moved down the Order Paper because of this commission of inquiry. 
Some complainants point to a problem in terms of a lack of information available about the proceedings of the Police Complaints Authority. Although it is right to keep the identity of certain complainants secret the proceedings of the authority itself are sometimes a bit too secretive or a bit too non-transparent—much more so than the proceedings of other complaint systems in other professions such as the medical profession. In those professions there is an ability to bring in name suppression particularly if the complaints are frivolous and there is a presumption of openness in a lot of the proceedings. With the Police Complaints Authority the presumption tends to be the opposite—that of secrecy. We have had examples of that. I have heard of examples of complainants being a bit dissatisfied with the results of a Police Complaints Authority inquiry in that all they have are a few lines to read giving the result and all the rest is done in secret. They do not believe that justice has been done for them and they cannot see evidence that justice has been done because everything has been done in too much secrecy. Somebody might complain of having been beaten up and claim to have a couple of witnesses but in the end the police officer’s word is taken and the complainant feels that it is all wrong. If the proceedings had been a little more open he or she would have got the whole picture and perhaps be more satisfied with the decision. 
One of the sections in Mr Franks’ amendment in relation to the commission is relevant to the Police Complaints Authority too I think. His amendment to clause 6 that adds new subsection 32(2C)—and which is now in the bill because it has been accepted—states: “(2C) Steps or restrictions referred to ... may be waived with the informed consent of any person to whom this Act extends the benefit of confidentiality in respect of any matter ...”. I think that could perhaps be applied more in relation to Police Complaints Authority proceedings. If the complainant in a case says: “I want it all to be open. I am quite happy for my information and identity to be known. I just want justice.” then perhaps the proceedings of the Police Complaints Authority could be more open than they are at the present time. Sure some of the police officers might be a bit upset that their names become known but in order to have a non-corrupt and non-biased police force I think we have to move more in the direction of openness in that respect and the Greens will go in that direction. 
I conclude by saying we do support this bill. It will help make us more confident in the operations of the police force and hopefully the Police Complaints Authority.