Goff Phil: Policing (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGoff Phil: Policing (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 04 November 2014. Volume:701;Page:521. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill):The Labour Party will vote for the first reading of this bill with some rather strong reservations. We believe it should go to a select committee. It should be subject at the select committee to public submissions and very close analysis of what it involves.When I first picked up this bill I thought I would probably be quite supportive of its content because I thought that there are clearly things where police services are required and cost recovery might be justifiable. If Mick Jagger is coming to sing at Westpac Stadium and they are making millions of dollars out of it and we are providing police services it is profit making—yes I have no problem with that. They should meet some of the cost of policing a commercial and profit-making arrangement. When I read the Police Association’s submission it used that same example or it could have used a professional sporting event because that is also about making money. But when I pick up this bill I find that it is not about that at all.This bill sets out in its explanatory note that at present—at present—the only service being proposed for cost recovery is the police vetting service. As I read that out I looked at Kelvin Davis because he is a teacher. Do you know what the largest organisation is that uses the services of police vetting? It is the Teachers Council. There was that experiment back in the 1990s when the National Government decided that actually teachers and people who work at schools did not need to be vetted. It was a disaster. It was an absolute disaster and the Government had to bring vetting back.What is really important about this is that the Minister of Police is telling us that this is not a core function of the police. You know I picked up the Policing Act 2008 and what are the functions of the police? They include maintaining public safety crime prevention and community support and reassurance. I would have thought that the police role—and it is mandatory under a 2001 piece of legislation—of vetting people for their suitability for looking after our most vulnerable citizens our kids in the classroom at schools and at preschool met the primary functions of the police which is maintaining public safety ensuring crime prevention and community support and reassurance.Another of the organisations that this is going to relate to is Child Youth and Family. I would have thought that vetting people working in Child Youth and Family—for the benefit not only of children but in particular vulnerable children—was a core function. I would have thought that our many charities and all of those groups that take on volunteers to work for the public good who are not paid but who are subject to mandatory vetting would be excluded.Mike Sabin: The benefit is right across; that’s right.Hon PHIL GOFF: But I find from reading the papers Mr Sabin that that is not intended. Maybe some of the volunteer groups are but certainly not the largest groups that might use it—the Teachers Council and Child Youth and Family. And who are the beneficiaries of those services? Are the beneficiaries people who make money out of it? No the beneficiaries are our kids. So whom is the Government intending to charge for that vetting service? Will it charge the teachers? Will it charge the social workers? Will it charge the schools? Will it come down to the parents of those kids who are being protected having to pay? Does this not look like simply another form of hidden taxation? Lower the tax rates on the very wealthy cut the top tax rates and sneak in taxes where they can be hidden away.You know I have great respect for the role of the police I want the police to carry out their functions and I do not want them as a rule to be a cost recovery organisation. The police are there for the public good and where the goal is the public good there should be no charging. What we expected was a bill that said that we will charge the entertainment industry and we will charge the big professional sporting organisations but we get a bill that is going to charge our kids our teachers our schools and our social workers. I am not in favour of that. Keeping our kids safe preventing crime and assuring the public that those who work with our children are fit and proper people to do so are core functions of the police that should not be about cost recovery. It is not profit making; it is public good and that is the way that it should be.I have given some more thought as to why we have got this bill before us. Yes this was something that was considered in the review leading up to the Policing Act 2008. It was something that the Labour Government decided not to do and with very good reason. Why is the Government trying to do it now?Mike Sabin: What was it? What was the reason?Hon PHIL GOFF: The reason is set out actually in the public consultation document that was about the cost recovery of policing services. This is what it says: “The allocation of resources across competing services is finely balanced. The future sustainability of Police services depends on there being room for improvements or investment in new areas requiring additional Police resources; … Ultimately cost recovery provides an opportunity to free up some Police resources and better ensure funding is focussed on [other] areas”.We have this bill before the House because for 6 years this National Government has cut the funding for our police force in real terms—in real terms. I went to the Parliamentary Library and asked it whether it could give me the real level of funding in 2010 and the real level of funding this year and to tell me how much extra the Government has invested in policing. Do you know what the answer was? It was not anything extra; the Government had cut the police budget in real terms by $114 million—a $114 million cut to the police budget.So what has that forced the police to do? Well they have closed community police stations have they not? Let us list them around my area—St Lukes Mount Albert and Blockhouse Bay. They did not have the courage to say that they were cutting the Mount Roskill police station but they did cut it. It was temporarily closed for 2½ years before they had the courage to admit that it was closed to the public. They have delayed recruiting police officers so the actual number of serving police officers fell last year—it fell. We had a smaller number of police officers than the minimum level of police officers that should be out there on the front line.Of course in this Budget we saw cuts in core operating expenditure. What were those cuts? They were for $40 million in the Budget this year—$40 million this year alone. What were the areas cut? Crime prevention—$3.5 million was taken out of that. For investigations $7 million was taken from that. And for primary response—and you would think that was really important. How many of us have had constituents complain that when they were burgled they rang up the police and the police said: “Yeah we’ll get to it eventually. Don’t touch anything because we’ll eventually fingerprint it. Don’t replace the broken sliding door—I know it’s the middle of winter but we’ll get there eventually.”? Well do we blame the police officer? No we do not blame the police officer because $7 million was cut out of primary response for the police this year. Road policing—and we are meant to really put that on a pedestal—was cut by $10 million.This has had a dramatic impact. The police have been placed in the position now where they are being told by this Government that there will be no increase in real terms to forget the fact that policing is a fundamental responsibility of the New Zealand Government and that the Government wants them to go out and get money from the people they provide services to. And where will they start? They will start with schoolkids. Yes that is the sort of Government we really want is it not?Carmel Sepuloni: And the social workers.Hon PHIL GOFF: And the social workers. If we are going to have cost recovery let us put it in the right place. Let us put it on the commercial profit-making organisations. Let us not put it on those core functions that we expect as of right the police to provide the public with.