Delahunty Catherine: Urgent Debates — Roast Busters Case—Independent Police Conduct Authority ReportText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDelahunty Catherine: Urgent Debates — Roast Busters Case—Independent Police Conduct Authority Report[Sitting date: 19 March 2015. Volume:704;Page:2447. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. I read this report in the last 2 hours and I felt sick absolutely sick to my stomach because things are not changing fast enough. When the Minister of Police who gave a very sincere speech talks about whether there is an ambivalent attitude in the police towards sexual assault I would have to say that at 61 I have experienced an ambivalent attitude towards sexual assault everywhere in our society. We cannot label just the police. It is throughout our society and it has not changed. The kind of date rape and assault that I and others experienced as young women is still going on. What we can talk about here is the role of the people in this House. Otherwise if we do not change our leadership on this issue the message to young women today is heartbreaking. The message will break their hearts.The Green Party is calling on the Minister of Police to make change. Eight years after the Bazley review of police culture after the Louise Nicholas case a woman still cannot walk into a police station and claim she has been abused and have confidence that she will be believed. That has got to change. Something is not right in the police force. Three separate reviews now have found the same thing. The police do not always treat complaints by victims of sexual and child abuse seriously. This means the victims are not getting justice and perpetrators are still free to hurt others and I think that a huge focus of the report is on those whom we do not even know about as a result of the failure to interview the young men in these cases.The Green Party is calling on the Minister of Police today to immediately establish an independent task force to implement and enforce change in police culture which is needed to give justice to victims and to prevent further harm. That is the very least that should happen. No more reviews. We have had enough reviews. We need action and we need a task force to implement the changes.We agree with the Independent Police Conduct Authority that it is disturbing that these same themes keep coming up about the police culture and their handling of sexual violence concerning young people and adults. We do not need more reviews. We know that the police know what the issues are and the Independent Police Conduct Authority knows. We all know what the issues are but we need a task force to lead real change. The report of the Independent Police Conduct Authority shows that the police failed to take the complaints of the victims seriously or to take actions to prevent other young women and girls from being abused. There was no responsibility for what could happen. They did not even talk to those young men or to some of them let alone to their parents in a bid to warn them or to encourage them to stop.It is almost inconceivable to us in the Greens that these conversations were not held. It is sickening to think how many other girls and women were abused because police did not do that. I was really shocked to read that the police did not even properly write down the names of these young men and in some cases did not ask for names when a young woman claimed that a boy had abused her. If the police had written down those names they might have noticed a pattern—that this young woman had complained. It is basic policing—check previous police records check other complaints—but the police did not even do that. The subtext of this is that boys will be boys—and look at the result. And still the police blame the young women for not being brave enough to come forward or provide the evidence they needed to conduct a proper investigation.According to the report a basic investigation of complaints did not happen or was woefully inadequate. There are pages and pages of examples here of failed practice. It is very hard to support the view of the Minister of Police that things are getting better when there could be such systemic failure. It is not about individuals; it is about system failure. Records were not kept. Child Youth and Family was not involved. Supervision was insufficient. These were the same things that were brought up in 2010 by the Independent Police Conduct Authority and by Margaret Bazley in 2007—the same issues.What more evidence do we need that the police are not up to the task of fixing the problem themselves? Dealing with the problem in-house is not working. That is why we believe an independent task force of the police should establish a clear work programme and implement practical changes in the force. The task force must have authority to do this. It should be able to review the implementation and change that occurs and have members who have expertise in sexual violence prevention. This is so basic. I thought we had won this when Louise Nicholas was allowed to work with the police. What is going on? It is not good enough for the police Minister or the police force to say they have changes in hand. Most clearly they do not. Every day that goes by victims of sexual violence risk facing this kind of inexcusable treatment. Urgent action is required.What is really disturbing is that there are suggestions in the report that the victims of the Roast Busters gang were treated with compassion and courtesy by the police. These women did not need courtesy and compassion in the form of niceness; they needed justice. They did not need a cup of tea a hug or a bunch of flowers. They came for justice and they were failed—courteously failed no doubt; compassionately failed. But that is not compassion. It is barely courtesy and it certainly is not justice. The police claim that they did not have enough evidence to prosecute these men cannot be taken seriously when the report shows they did not even consider what was involved. They did not even look at the range of available offences. It is all outlined in this report. They did not even look at investigating some of the claims of these young women.The report showed that the police failed to take complaints seriously at all in some cases. It is incredibly disturbing. Is it any wonder that some young women do not want to press charges. I have to look at the other women in this House and ask: would we? Would we at 14? Would we at 13? Would we feel that it was worth it after hearing this terrible story? Would we encourage our daughters or our sons to seek justice through the justice system at a young age when this is how they are treated? As my colleague Jan Logie said today it is hard to conceive how the police could now do right by the complainants but the least the police Minister can do is ensure that failures like this never happen again.The victims of abuse in this country should be confident they can walk into any police station anywhere in the country make a complaint and be taken seriously. Not only that they should know that the weight of the justice system will fall in behind them and ensure that they get the justice they deserve. It is really horrifying reading in this report. I urge members to read it. We are responsible for the organs of this State the institutions of this State. We cannot hand this back to the police and say: “Yes you’ve got a 10-year plan. Yes it seems like you’re trying hard. That’s enough.” It is not enough. We have had three reviews—three reports—now and we have a society where some in the media colluded with the police failure over the Roast Busters case where some people made comments that deterred young women. So I would not isolate just the police force. I would say we have a society where there are still people who will rationalise justify minimise and ignore attacks on young women who will accept sexual assault as part of growing up and as somehow normal and acceptable.It is very disturbing to read the comments of the police officer who said that he did not talk to the parents about the young men’s behaviour because he got side-tracked. It is extremely disturbing to think that the culture could exist where he felt he could get away with that within his own professional organisation. So that is why it is not about an individual bad policeman; it is about the fact that the supervision was inadequate. If you read this report you will see how the supervision of the front-line police was inadequate as well. So the problem goes up the chain. It goes out of the organisation and into a society where young women are not treated with sufficient respect and so when they experience or even allege this kind of abuse they cannot get the State to support them enough to even investigate the situation.It is a damning report but it is worse than that. It is a situation where some people may give up hope. We cannot afford to give up hope that justice can be done in this country for victims of sexual abuse and assault especially for young ones. If I was a young woman and if I saw this report now I would be wondering whether it is worth telling anybody what happened to me. If I was a young man—what is the message to the young men? What is the message to those young men who were involved and who got away with this scot-free and whose parents did not even get consulted because the officer got side-tracked? What is the message? That it is OK? That you can get away with it? That actually society does not care enough? That the police force does not care enough to even ask you to be accountable for your behaviour? This is a dark day and we must have an independent task force to make genuine change so that we do not have our young women giving up hope. Kia ora.