Prosser Richard: Policing (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeProsser Richard: Policing (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 04 November 2014. Volume:701;Page:529. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]RICHARD PROSSER (NZ First):I am pleased to rise on behalf of New Zealand First and on behalf of my colleague Ron Mark to take a call on this Policing (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill. New Zealand First will be supporting this bill going to the Law and Order Committee but that should not be taken as an indication that our support will be continued beyond the select committee process. New Zealand First holds a number of reasonably serious concerns regarding the potential repercussions of this bill. We are keen to see these examined by the select committee and to hear public submissions because we believe that the public in general and those associated with the police in particular will share many of those same concerns.The bill’s general policy statement notes that “most services are funded out of Police’s baseline funding and no fee or charge is attached to their provision.” This is as we believe things should generally be in a free and fair society where the rule of law is upheld by the police force in cooperation with the people who are taxed most handsomely in exchange for the provision of such services. The immediate issue of course is that as we all know the police budget—their baseline funding as the general policy statement puts it—has been flat for 5 consecutive years now. In the last Budget the police suffered an actual cut in baseline funding of some $40 million. So when inflation and increased operating costs are taken into account police have been being squeezed harder and harder over the past 5 years and many officers both in the ranks and up into quite senior levels of management have commented with increasing frequency and indeed stridency that the thin blue line is now stretched about as thin as it can go before something breaks.So although New Zealand First welcomes the proposition that police may be enabled to access something in the way of quite desperately needed additional resourcing the obvious question is why the Government does not simply increase the funding available to police in line with calls being made by the Police Association community groups NGOs justice advocates Opposition parties and indeed it would appear everyone apart from the Government itself rather than formulate yet another user-pays law such as this bill. Notwithstanding that vetting services are the first to be included because they are only the first it is our belief and concern that such a regime may have some unintended and potentially quite serious consequences as far as the policing of law and order issues in New Zealand is concerned.The general policy statement states that this amendment to the Policing Act 2008 will “help Police achieve … efficiency in production: users facing a nominal price will demand high-quality services from Police. This transparency around costs will drive Police to be innovative and seek production efficiencies:”. What does “innovative” mean in this context? Does it mean that police will be driven to seek new ways in which to enforce the law? Will they as several previous Governments have in the past be driven to make up the law as they go along? The general policy statement goes on to say: “resources directed to priority areas: cost recovery for services that benefit individuals frees up resources for the delivery of front-line and preventative services across the whole community.”This proposition like altogether too much of this Government’s legislation through the term of the 50th Parliament is simply back to front. Police numbers are too low as it is. We have too few front-line cops in this country. Per capita relative to other comparable nations New Zealand is under-policed. Back-office staff numbers have been reduced. Front-line cops are doing paperwork that should be someone else’s responsibility and here we are proposing to contract them out for paid private policing work as well. This bill will not free up resources for the delivery of front-line and preventative services across the whole community. It will stretch resources even further and make them all the more scant and all the more scarce and all the more sought after.Too few police will be required to do even more under this bill. I ask whether it will lead senior police management knowing the force is strapped for cash to prioritise paying jobs over non-paying ones. The demand service which this bill empowers the police to carry out and to charge for is defined in new section 79B(2): “For the purposes of this section demand service means a service that—(a) constitutes policing; and (b) is provided only on the request of an individual or organisation; and (c) is provided to the individual or organisation requesting it for the direct benefit of a particular person or organisation (even though there may be indirect benefit to the public as a whole).” To my mind that defines an activity that may quite legitimately be regarded by police as a function that may be afforded a degree of priority especially when operational reality being what it is means there is very genuinely needed cash flow to be had.New Zealand First has no fundamental issue with the police being allowed to recover excess or additional costs incurred through providing necessary law enforcement and public safety services required as a predictable result of social activities that have been organised by commercial interests for profit but we do not want to see the police become a de facto private security company offering and supplying services for money to paying customers at the expense of ordinary necessary public safety and security police activities for the purposes of maintaining public order and the rule of law. There is a threat that this very situation may be an unintended consequence of this bill becoming law. We do not want to see that. We very much do want to see this matter thrashed out in the select committee and in the light of public submissions.There are some other concerns. New Zealand First has some other concerns relating to the methods of cost recovery that the police may employ with regard to charges levied under this bill and the matter of exemptions waivers and refunds. Who will be charged with administering this new user-pays service? Will the police be employing additional clerical staff in order to facilitate this new function? Will those associated costs be able to be recovered as well or will they come from that already overstretched police budget? If a service is able to be determined as a demand service for which fees are payable under what circumstances would it be necessary to provide exemptions waivers or refunds of those fees for which the taxpayer will then presumably pick up the tab?In closing New Zealand First believes that increasing the police baseline budget to somewhere nearer what it should be and to what is actually necessary and recruiting more front-line officers would prove a far more effective and elegant solution than this proposed new user-pays service with all its failed neo-liberal economic connotations. New Zealand First will support this bill going to the select committee but not necessarily beyond it at this stage. We look forward to the concerns we have raised being addressed.