Davis KelvinKELVIN DAVIS (Labour—Te Tai Tokerau): If I was Pita Paraone I would actually be worried. Pita Paraone is the chairperson of the Waitangi National Trust and every Waitangi Day there are about a hundred Māori policemen standing around protecting politicians. If the Government has its way it could possibly be charging the Waitangi National Trust for those policemen to be there protecting politicians because if we look at this bill it says: For the purposes of this section demand service"—so basically it is a demand that those policemen and women be at Waitangi Day—"(a) means a service that—(i) constitutes policing;"—they are there policing—"(ii) is provided only on the request of an individual or organisation;". I am not sure whether it is the Waitangi National Trust that requests those police personnel to be there or whether it is actually the Government. Is the Government going to end up charging itself to protect itself? The definition also says it "is provided to the individual or organisation requesting it and is of direct benefit to that individual or organisation (even though provision of the service may also be of indirect benefit to the public as a whole);". So the public as a whole does benefit from having police personnel at Waitangi Day but the thing is that they are not responding to police calls for service relating to potential offending they are not conducting criminal investigations and they are not prosecuting criminal offences. So chances are the Government if it is the Government that is requesting police to be at Waitangi Day and other events such as that may actually end up charging itself which actually sort of negates the cost of charging for service. The charge is $8.50. Three years ago it was $7; now it is $8.50. Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi actually proved our point when he stood up and said "Oh in Australia and other jurisdictions the cost is $50." because that is exactly what we are afraid of. That is exactly our point. We were starting off at $7. It is now $8.50. Who knows whether in a couple of years' time it is not going to be $50?I was thinking about the school I used to be principal of. We had about 40 staff members including caretakers and other support staff. At $7 per staff member that comes to only about $280. That is not too bad. That is actually pretty easy for a school to absorb. But then if the cost of police vetting goes up to $50 that is something like $2000 that the school needs to find. When I looked today at the amount of money that schools across Tai Tokerau are going to lose because of the changes that Hekia Parata is putting in place something like 81 percent of the schools across Tai Tokerau are going to be losing funding and this is just something else that is going to be added on top of those costs. Kōhanga reo—how are they going to afford extra costs? Kōhanga reo are way underfunded but it is really essential that staff at kōhanga reo are actually police-vetted. You know we are not opposed to police vetting; we are just opposed to the public having to pay for something that is essentially a service that the police should be providing anyway. But here is a novel idea for the Government. We know and the Minister knows that the police have had to absorb $300 million worth of costs over the last 4 years. The novel idea is: why does the Government not actually just fund the police to do the job? As David Clendon said $3.5 million is not a lot in the scheme of things. Why does the Government not just fund the police to be able to do their job and stop putting it back on to members of the public? Stop putting it back on to New Zealanders to dip into their pockets to do what the Government could just do for itself if it decided that it was going to fund the police to a level that they actually deserve. Search and rescue—David Clendon raised a really important point there. If people are lost in the bush and they fear that they may be charged for the search and rescue does that not jeopardise people? Does that not jeopardise their safety if they believe that they may actually be charged for search and rescue to come and look for them? That comes down to the Government actually putting people's lives in jeopardy. Just finally—just very briefly—the other important point I would like to make is: what may happen if police are called out to a false alarm? I know now that when fire brigades are called out to false alarms they charge people. What is in the future? This is the problem. We are worried about what is going to happen in the future in terms of this bill whether the cost will go from $8.50 up to $50. What is the thin end of the wedge that Ron Mark spoke about? Will police in the end start charging for false alarms? If you look again at what I read out earlier: if police went out to a call it would constitute policing it would be provided on the request of an individual and it would be provided to the individual or organisation requesting it. But in respect of the response of the police to calls for service relating to potential offending—yes potential offending; it is not actual offending—they are not conducting an investigation; they are just turning up and there is nothing to investigate and it is a false alarm and they will not be prosecuting anyone. Will people be charged for false alarm callouts to the police? There are so many unknowns in this bill. That is the real concern with of course the biggest concern being that the greatest unknown is how much this is actually going to cost individuals in 3 4 or 10 years' time. Kia ora."