Bakshi Kanwaljit SinghKANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI (National): Thank you Mr Deputy Speaker for the opportunity to stand to support the final stages of the Policing (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill. The purpose of the bill is to amend the Policing Act 2008. At present the Policing Act does not explicitly enable Police to charge users for its services. This bill amends the Policing Act 2008 to provide Police with the ability to recover its costs for providing certain services. Here I would like to acknowledge the New Zealand Police for the services it provides us. Because of it we feel safe in our homes and in our community. This is important because the work Police does is to ensure that people are safe and the vetting service is one of those areas. It ensures the people who are working with the vulnerable or children are vetted before they go into that service. This bill is the result of a consultation paper that was released in December 2012 which attracted 147 submissions. Detailed consultation was done and thus this bill was formulated and its provisions were made. During the Law and Order Committee process there were a lot of detailed discussions with members and submitters and I would like to acknowledge all the members of the Law and Order Committee as well as the submitters who participated in the process to ensure that this bill is a fine bill and will help the people. Some of the Police services such as the vetting service provide a direct benefit to people and that is why a nominal fee is being proposed to be charged for providing the vetting service. The select committee also clarified the demand service". What are the demand services? That was not very clear but in the select committee process we did some work and ensured that "demand service" was clarified. I would like to point out a few things. Providing a request for an individual or an organisation or directly benefiting a person or an organisation although there may be an indirect benefit to the public as a whole—this was not clear when the bill was introduced but during the select committee process it was clarified that the "demand service" should be clarified further so that there was no confusion. As the bill was introduced the Minister had the authority to provide for exemptions and waivers of the refund of the fees but in the select committee process as the discussion happened we felt that that the Minister should not be the person involved in this exemption process. Rather the Commissioner of Police should be allowed once the regulations are made if there is a requirement for the exemption. It is now clarified that the Commissioner of Police in accordance with the regulations can provide for exemptions and waivers of the fees. This bill also provides that when the cost is to be fixed the Minister should ensure that the stakeholders are consulted before any changes are brought into this regulation. So the bill is a very close bill and there are clear indications what Ministers and the commissioner can do and cannot do. I hope this will go a long way. As the Minister mentioned the minimum charge for the vetting service of $8.50 is a very nominal charge and we hope that that will help because there are other regulations that require that vetting should be done for people who work with the vulnerable and children. With these words I commend the bill to the House."