King Annette: Policing (Storage of Youth Identifying Particulars) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
King Annette: Policing (Storage of Youth Identifying Particulars) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee 
[Sitting date: 16 August 2011. Volume:675;Page:20864. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour) 
: 
 I would have expected cooperation by Parliament on the Policing (Storage of Youth Identifying Particulars) Amendment Bill because an inadvertent error was made at the time the original bill was passed. It was not something that was decided on by Parliament. In fact it was an unintended error made by Parliament by all parties in the House. I can say that because all parties got to sit around the table to discuss the original legislation over many many months and to go over its every detail. In fact it is probably the only legislation I can think of where that has happened. As Heather Roy pointed out when she spoke on the bill all parties were involved and were pleased to be involved in trying to get the best legislation we could.  
I accept the comments made earlier by Charles Chauvel—not in this debate but he has said them before—that we need to look at how errors are made and try to minimise them. But the Minister of Police has pointed out that the original bill went through a very long process which involved the Maori Party and the Green Party which was consulted on by the wider public including Maori and which went to our best legal brains. Yet at the end of the day we still found two inadvertent errors in it. I think that is because we are human. We do not know everything and sometimes errors are made. That is why I would have expected cooperation on this bill and I would have expected it under urgency. 
I think Lianne Dalziel set out very clearly why we need to pass this legislation under urgency. I can say that Lianne Dalziel is a person who looks very carefully at all legislation looks very carefully at human rights issues and gives very good advice on it all. She could see that there was a need for us to do this under urgency. I am not in favour of taking urgency on bills that are not urgent and the Government has taken a whipping on that from other parties in this House. But let us face up to it: when an issue requires urgency we expect the best cooperation possible on it. 
I too was very surprised by the comments made by Rahui Katene from the Maori Party. I could not detect a conspiracy in this bill. I was surprised that the Maori Party had had it for 10 days and then said it was a conspiracy. The member said it came “under plain cover”. I presume that when the bill was given to the Maori Party the party was told the name of the bill what was in the bill and what it did so for the member to come to this House and say that it was a conspiracy that it came “under plain cover” and that she did not know anything about it seems to me to be a great surprise and in contradiction to what the Minister of Police herself said. 
Rahui Katene went on to say that there were better and bigger things to do on this day in New Zealand. Of course some people would think there are better and bigger things to do every day in New Zealand than to be in this Parliament. But I actually think that this change is an important change that needs to be made. When we get to the Committee stage the Minister will have an opportunity to outline in greater detail why the matter was discovered in October last year and what process took place then before it came before this Parliament at this time. I think that people will look forward to that explanation; I am sure there will be one. I think it is an important thing to have. There are already people off today at the tangi for Sir Paul Reeves. There will be people going to different functions. But we are paid to do a job here as well and that is what we are doing.  
There appears to be a bit of information missing for some members. We are talking about the retention of information about young people who have been before the court and had a charge proved against them. We are not talking about the innocent young person who has not done anything; we are talking about a young person who has been before the Youth Court had a charge proved against them and been subjected to a finding or an order by the Youth Court. Those findings which we can go into later when we get to that clause are set out in the Children Young Persons and Their Families Act. They can be many and varied. They can include for example situations where restitution has been required to be paid to the victim of a crime. So we are not talking about some idea that we will pick up young Maori or Pacific people off the street and hold their information when they have done nothing. We are talking about young people who have been before the Youth Court have had a charge proved against them and have been subject to a finding.  
Rahui Katene 
: And we know who the police are picking up who they are charging. 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: I would be interested to know why the member who is interjecting now would not think it appropriate to hold that information.  
I think that Chris Hipkins gave an extremely good example. Young people in Upper Hutt—and this has happened in my own electorate and I am sure it has happened in many other people’s electorates—have gone out and etched on the windows of businesses within the business community. That cannot be rubbed off. They have ruined entire plate glass windows with the etching which costs businesses thousands of dollars. Those young people have been detected they have been picked up they have appeared before the Youth Court a finding has been made and an order has been given. 
When that order was given under the old Act the police could retain the photographs and fingerprints of those young people because they had offended. The next time they did it there was the ability to ensure that the right person was charged with the crime committed. So I cannot for the life of me understand why we would not want to continue to hold that information.  
There is a very important point here: Keith Locke said: “What price justice?”. I say to Keith Locke: “What price justice also for the victims?”—for the victims who were subjected to a young person destroying their property at the cost of thousands of dollars. That young person has had a charge proved by the Youth Court and the police want to hold the information about that young person who has offended. In many areas it is to help them if they reoffend or to ensure there is justice for those who have been injured in the committing of that offence. I cannot see what is so wrong in doing that. That is what we did for decades. The Policing Act 1958 was a 50-year-old Act but when we finally rewrote it 50 years after its enactment we forgot or overlooked the need to carry over those clauses. 
I also thought it was a red herring from the Maori Party to say that the issue we needed to discuss was about obtaining personal information. This bill has nothing to do with obtaining information. I am certainly happy to debate that issue at a later date and I also have views on how we obtain information and what information we obtain. But that is not what this bill is about. This bill is about the retention of impersonal information about a young person who has offended and who has already appeared before the Youth Court. 
Keith Locke in his contribution to the first reading also asked “What would be one or two appeals?”. Well Keith Locke would not have any idea how many appeals there would be if we did not take urgency on this bill today. He said the cost would be some figure like maybe $6 million. Well I can tell the House that I would rather spend $6 million on helping young people and on putting in place support for young people than on wasting the time of the court and wasting the time of the police to rehear a case in which the Youth Court has already made a finding on a young person but whose case is reopened on a technicality. You see there is a cost to justice but there are two sides to that—many sides in fact: the cost to police time the cost to court time and the cost to the victims who were offended against. Sometimes I think it is important to try to weigh up all of them and look at where the balance is.  
We on this side of the House believe that it was not intended that we did not carry through those clauses. The matter was never raised by the Greens in those discussions; it was never raised by the Maori Party in 2 years of consultation. It was an error and it is an error that we ought to correct today as soon as possible. I think as Chris Hipkins has said that it is in the interests of young people to do the best we can once they have appeared before the Youth Court to give them an opportunity when an order is made that is diverting them away from the District Court and from a major crime— 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member; her time has expired.