Dunne Peter: Urgent Debates — Police 111 System—Review 
Dunne Peter: Urgent Debates — Police 111 System—Review 
[Volume:625;Page:20468] 
Hon PETER DUNNE (Leader—United Future) 
: 
 I welcome the report on the 111 system that has been released today by the independent review team. However I regret that such a report was necessary and I do not believe that it goes far enough. 
Earlier this year I raised some 17 cases where the 111 system had failed. This report and other reports into those circumstances prove conclusively that the failures were not just casual but systemic. I regret the fact that families around New Zealand are suffering anguish and loss today because of those failures. I hope this report and presumably the implementation of the recommendations that flow from it will in some small small way provide those families with some solace in their suffering. 
One of the things a community has a right to feel is a sense of safety and a sense that those charged with the promotion and protection of community safety are able to carry out the tasks required of them in a way that engenders public confidence. It saddens me greatly that the events of the last few months with regard to the 111 system coming on top of a perception that the police have been more interested in speeding motorists than in community safety have engendered a climate where for the first time I suspect in many generations—probably since the crisis over corruption in the 1950s—public confidence in our police force is diminishing. 
When one hears talk about failure to respond or lack of confidence it is worth recalling that it is a very short step from there to people deciding to take the law into their own hands and that is the start of the path towards anarchy. In that regard I think this report does not quite go far enough. Let me amplify that point a little. There is a useful recommendation early on that some form of monitoring or overview of the 111 system needs to be established to give the public a sense of confidence. I think that is good. But then one looks at the recommendation as to who that overview panel ought to be: the commissioner and senior police staff. I say nothing against the commissioner but I make this point: in this climate today there will not be a restoration of public confidence in the police while they are seen to be trying to do it all themselves. I believe that the panel that has been proposed requires independent participation—someone outside the police being involved—in order to give the assurance that all is well. Because at the moment sadly the climate we are in is that when the police give the OK there is not the level of public acceptance of it that there used to be. I think that is a very sad state of affairs and does need to be addressed in resolving these issues. 
It seems to me that some of the other matters that the report gives rise to also miss the major point. I have read the section regarding the training and performance of the communications centre staff. I think some useful recommendations are made and some of them have been drawn out in the debate this afternoon. But the real issue surely is the type of people being recruited to work in police communications centres to provide that necessary service. I am not satisfied from the recommendations that that issue is being addressed properly. Throughout this saga I heard constant reports from people that the way in which staff were recruited was haphazard and that a lot of the people who came to communications centres were referrals from Work and Income New Zealand—people with indifferent work records or experiences—and when I look at these recommendations I do not see anything that seeks to address that point. Without that matter being addressed there is a danger that frankly to coin a phrase the deckchairs around the  
Titanic 
 control room are being reorganised. People are being a little bit better trained but the fundamental problem is not going away. 
Previous speakers have made reference to communications centre staff having difficulty identifying geographic locations to their manner on the telephone and to the time taken to ask the critical questions. None of those issues are likely to be resolved if recruitment of personnel continues to be from the same source and quarter that it was from before and the danger then becomes that we are merely perpetuating an ongoing problem. 
Yes there are wider issues. Members have talked about numbers of police staff—sworn personnel available to do the job. That is important. I think we ought to be moving to have 8750 sworn police staff in this country. There are issues relating to the range of services. While I think work does need to be done to decouple traffic enforcement from general policing work I am not naive enough to think that simply doing that somehow makes the 111 system work better as was suggested by an earlier speaker. 
The New Zealand public needs to be assured that when the need is there to dial 111 the call will be dealt with expeditiously and sensitively and an appropriate response will be provided. This set of recommendations arises from a collective sense of failure of any of those things having been able to be achieved. Sadly there have been the awful tragic high-profile cases like the Asher and Bentley cases where the system failed completely. They are exceptions but there are many many other cases where people have not quite received the response they thought they deserved where units have been dispatched inappropriately or not at all and where the right questions simply have not been asked. 
This report demonstrates in the totality of its recommendations a system that is in serious crisis. We can wallow in that tragedy in this House all we like and we can point the finger all we like but the reality of doing that without action that delivers on achieving improvements is that the person who rings 111 this evening tomorrow or next week has no fresh assurance that anything has changed. It is great sport for politicians on the eve of an election to bag the 111 system and to criticise the police and the Minister. The real challenge for the Government and for other parties in this House is what happens to give effect to these recommendations to ensure that we do not again find ourselves in a position where our emergency response service which ought to be the thing that works most effectively and gives the public the most assurance of confidence looks so rickety so ramshackle and so otherwise utterly incompetent. 
The challenge arising from this report is to put in place the mechanisms the policies the funding and the staff that will deal with that and then—maybe then—the public might start to have its confidence restored in the ability of our police service to provide for safety and security in our communities. A community that does not have that confidence is one that is teetering very much on the brink of the abyss. All of us have a responsibility to ensure we do what we can to pull back from that and to ensure that our police are worthy of and capable of public confidence for the duties that they perform. This report is a timely reminder in that respect.