Franks Stephen: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
Franks Stephen: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:627;Page:22211] 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) 
: 
 I thought Mr Mark made a very good contribution to this debate in summarising the problems we have with the police but I just want to take a much smaller area which does not usually receive much public consideration but which is very indicative of why no amount of money under the current control is likely to fix the problems. I want to look at the culture of secrecy. Mr Mark also raised this issue this afternoon. We have a Minister of Police who receives $1.5 million for policy advice including advice on answering questions who simply chooses not to answer them. 
 What kind of police force can we expect with a Minister who decides that the rules do not apply to him or just decides that when it is embarrassing he will forget about supplying answers? It is a culture of secrecy where the police are in fact our only defence in court. In our justice system wrongly the public do not have a voice. The victims do not have a voice in court. The only people speaking up for the victims and the public in court are the police prosecutors and the police are headed by a man who does not bother to answer parliamentary questions when they are embarrassing. The police should be fighting bitterly to make sure there is a general expectation in this country that truth will out cheats do not prosper and honesty pays. But they do not. I believe that this is as much a source of grievance to local police—the police on the beat—as it is to us. 
Three high-profile cases at the moment exemplify the tolerance that this Minister has supervised—the tolerance of cover-up that means New Zealanders are simply treated as plebs kept in the dark and have their trust in the justice system not just the police affected by it. 
Ron Mark 
: Helen’s little mushrooms! 
STEPHEN FRANKS 
: Exactly. Wrongdoing is kept under wraps by name suppression; and by the habit of judges—the justice insiders—to decide that they can know all about cases but it will not suit the plebs or them if others know. Name suppression which the police do sometimes oppose is a cancer in the public confidence of the justice system. I have asked this Minister about his attitude on these matters and have not got answers. 
ACT policy is for open courts—to restore the tradition of British justice that prevailed until only 40 years ago. Last week I asked the Minister of Broadcasting about a State-owned enterprise I believed was complicit in a cover-up of a Northland case. It appears to me now that the State-owned enterprise if it is involved has covered its tracks deeply though the Minister of Broadcasting’s answers are ambiguous to say the least. 
But in this case we have a perfect example of the suspicions that emerge about the motives of people in the justice system when we have secrecy. The insiders have their vanity satisfied by knowing all about it. The connections of an accused whose name is suppressed usually end up knowing all about it. Those who want to can find out on the Internet what is going on. We have three cases like this at the moment. We have the sports celebrities whom everyone except Joe Public is not allowed to know unless they go on to the Internet and we have the Northland case—the Whangarei case—where it appears that a contractor to TVNZ has helped persuade the court to allow a cover-up for 9 months. 
There is an arrogance about this in the system and it is an arrogance that is not shared by front-line police who do not like it. It is an arrogance that comes from the insiders feeling that they may be capable of putting aside their previous knowledge and acting objectively but the punters who will perhaps end up on a jury cannot. It is the arrogance that says: “Let’s dispense discretionary privilege of information”—that is the court speaking and the police when they go along with this—“but let’s not let New Zealanders know that justice is being done.” 
These high-profile cases do absolutely nothing for confidence. Veronica Jacomb in the series  
To Catch a Thief  
made a mockery of the public’s interest in that series. The police appear represent the public and represent the victims and then we see the spectacle of virtually the whole of New Zealand with ideas of who it is but a whole series of people having to issue statements purporting to clear themselves. This does not do anything for confidence. This does not do anything for a general belief by the public that the justice system is just serving those who have money to get Queen’s Counsel and those who are rich. 
This leaves us all in a position where we believe that justice is available to or justice can be manipulated by people who have access to power. The Minister of Broadcasting did not choose to resolve this. The Minister of Police—to be fair he has not had the 10-day time allowed to answer the questions I have asked him about police support for any of these cover-ups—will have 10 days to answer questions. He has a budget of $1.49 million to do that. His answers that I received today to four other important questions say just what I expect he will do with this embarrassing question on name suppression. He has told me: “It has not been possible to obtain the information required to enable me to respond to this question by the due date. I undertake to provide the member with a copy of the information once it is available.” My guess is that that information will not be available until well after the election. 
In the Whangarei case name suppression has been extended to 22 September well after the election. In the Whangarei case it cannot be the interests of the accused that have been considered by the court it must be the financial interests of those he is associated with because everyone in Whangarei has a good idea of the nature of the charges and who the accused is—everyone who knows the accused. It cannot be the normal charitable concern about family and close relationships it has to be commercial interests. 
The Minister of Police who could have helped resolve this and who could have been seen as a Minister who was keen to see open justice has set a pattern of cover-up. This is the same Minister of Police who when I first asked about the Te Puke couple Maggie and Peter Bentley told me that the inquiry would look into whether there was lying and would look into why he called it a textbook case. The police told the Bentleys that there were police on hand when they were at least an hour away told the Bentleys that they had called their neighbours when they had called no neighbours and blocked Mrs Bentley with reassuring words that were entirely false. 
The Minister of Police assured me in answers to written and oral questions that that matter was the subject of a police investigation that would later be reported on. I have read the investigation report and it does not touch on those matters. There is no explanation that I have seen of why the Bentleys were lied to or why the Minister then described that as a textbook case. The Minister as the political leader of a police force should have made it his business to insist on an adequate answer to that. He should have made it his business to be setting a model of openness and a pattern that respected truth and when he made a mistake fixing it immediately. 
When I implied in my parliamentary question last week that the Queen’s Counsel in the Whangarei case had been directly supported by TVNZ I made sure as soon as I learnt that that was not the case that that was revealed. What does the Minister of Police charged with statutory duty to uphold the confidence of people in the police do? He goes to ground. He does not answer the questions. With all the hundreds of thousands of dollars—the $1.49 million—that he has at his disposal to answer questions and provide policy advice we get nothing more. I do not think he has even asked for any more. I see in the new initiatives his sum for ministerial policy advice has increased by $13000. There is $13000 extra yet his excuse to me and to Mr Mark of New Zealand First for not answering his questions is lack of time. 
Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.