Williams PotoPOTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): We have not been supportive of this bill from the outset and I want to spend my contribution talking about the problems that we have had with the Policing (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill.Firstly it is within the name of the bill itself—it is about cost recovery for policing services. It is our firm view that the vetting of people who are going to work with vulnerable populations is probably a core service of the police and as such the police should be adequately funded to do so. We believe that the police have been underfunded in many areas and this is one area where we believe funding should have been applied. It comes down to the argument about what is a demand service". During some of the Law and Order Committee submissions and hearings that I was able to sit in on there were many discussions about demand service and about what might be termed a private benefit or a direct benefit to an individual or organisation. We discussed this a lot.One of the arguments that we put forward is that in terms of Government requirements for such organisations as are funded by Government where they may be working with vulnerable populations such as children or the elderly it is a requirement of those Government contracts that staff are vetted. Our argument further is that we feel that police vetting is like the first line of defence in ensuring that you have a safe and an appropriate workforce in place to work with those vulnerable populations. It is our view that given we are now required in some of our services to meet the legislative requirements of Acts such as the Vulnerable Children Act for example—where the protection of children is paramount but where the provision of services to those children is reliant on a safe workforce—where a workforce must be vetted it is in fact actually in the public interest. It should not be determined as a private benefit under the definition of this particular bill. That has been our strong argument all along. Vetting is the first line of defence to ensure that we have a safe workforce to work with our children.This legislation also seems a little inconsistent with some of the other legislation that ensures we work safely with our children. I want to refer to the sex offenders register and also back to the Vulnerable Children Act where we are on the one hand saying very clearly that we want to protect our children from terrible harm but on the other hand we are actually making it a cost to an individual for us to be sure that they are safe to work with those children. We think there are some inconsistencies there.With regard to the regulations that Minister Collins has referred to there were three Supplementary Order Papers that were presented to the House to exempt the fees for police vetting for registered charities for early childhood education and for registered teachers. We notice that this legislation will now by Order in Council make regulations to exempt fees or set different kinds of fees. The Hon Peter Dunne has taken some role in staking a claim that he was responsible for ensuring that this went ahead. Well I have to say that Peter Dunne was not the prime mover and shaker of that; it was actually the dozens and dozens and dozens of organisations that have volunteers and that are registered charities which were very very clear in their submissions to the select committee and also very clear to the Minister as well. They ensured that he clearly got the message that he should support them in this regard and ensure that they could be exempt from charges under this legislation. I am pleased to say that that is going ahead. We are very glad for that but it was actually a result of some very strong lobbying by the community and voluntary sector that that regulation was brought within the legislation.This bill will pass. We are sad that our concerns with regard to ensuring that the police are funded appropriately have not been heard. We are also sad that this does actually lead us down the slippery slope of being able to charge for other activities within the police range of activities. We do not think that is appropriate. The police are there primarily to serve and to protect. We know they do a great job and they need to be resourced to do that as well as they can. We are disappointed that this legislation may lead to other opportunities to recover costs. During the process with the select committee some of the arguments that were made by my colleagues from Labour and the Greens were about what types of activities those may be and whether we are setting ourselves up to have a police force that may support those people who can afford to pay for it. That is not a good look in this country.This bill will pass. We are disappointed that our arguments have not been heard in that regard but I am very supportive of the fact that charities will now have an opportunity to have those fees waived. We will keep a close eye on this particular piece of legislation to ensure that the costs do not escalate from what the Minister has set at $8.50 per vet. We will keep a close eye on that because we hope that what does not happen is what has happened in other jurisdictions where the costs have escalated into the range of $50 a head. We will not be supporting this bill."