Locke Keith: Policing Bill — Third Reading 
Locke Keith: Policing Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:649;Page:18104] 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party supports the Policing Bill. It systematises the legal foundation of our police services quite well. It is important that we get it right because of the very important role that the police play in our society to make sure that the law is upheld and it is important that the police are operationally independent. I think we see them as being operationally independent from the Government and from the Parliament. We have seen examples even in this current Parliament and the previous Parliament where the MPs themselves sometimes misbehave and sometimes even break the law. It is important that there be no pressure put on the police not to uphold the law properly in respect of MPs just as they would uphold the law properly in respect of every other citizen. It is important that they are bound by a professional code of ethics and operate independently. Because they are a disciplined force it is important—and the last speaker mentioned this—that there is a clear separation of powers between those who enforce the law the police; those who are in judgment on those who break the law the judiciary; and those who make the law those of us here in Parliament. For that reason the Green Party has gone along with the provision that police officers cannot be full-time members of city councils. City councillors make the law in the form of by-laws so we should not have police officers—who enforce those by-laws and the general laws—on the city councils. However I indicated in my previous speech that I have sympathy for the few police officers who are on city councils at present and who do a good job. I personally know Alf Filipaina who is on the Manukau City Council and he is a very good constable who has done quite well as a city councillor as well. 
The police have to be operationally independent but there is no strict rule book by which to work out what is an operational matter and what is a policy matter. There has been debate on whether the use of Tasers should be an operational decision or whether it should be a policy decision for the Government and Parliament. One way of making clear that something imposed on the police by Parliament or the Government is happening and is not happening behind the scenes is to make public the policy position that is being issued in the form of an instruction to the police. Previous legislation the Police Amendment Bill which did not go through and has been superseded by this bill was moving to a situation where the policy directives from the Government would be deposited in this Parliament so that they were clear and above board. That provision is not included in this bill but it might have been a good direction. 
In my opinion and in the opinion of the Green Party the decision to bring in Tasers is clearly something that should not be purely an operational decision. It is quite clear from the question I raised in Parliament today that because Tasers have been declared by the United Nations Committee Against Torture to be instruments of torture to bring in Tasers would be contrary to international law. That is what the UN committee has decided and communicated to different jurisdictions when it has issued its reports. If we look at international law we see that it is Governments that are responsible and not police forces. In so far as the question of Tasers enters the area of international law surely it is a Government responsibility to determine whether Tasers are brought into operation or not; it is not something for just the police force to determine. Any international rulings will be against the Government not the police. There are a lot of other arguments as to why this should be an issue for Parliament and Government and not simply the police. 
When the issue of Tasers is debated sometimes the arguments against the Green position that Tasers should not be brought in—such as those from Chester Borrows today—are somewhat puerile. For a start Chester Borrows says that the Greens are against the police and never support them. The Greens have been supporting just about everything the police do through the whole period of our existence and we proclaim very often—and I proclaim very often—that we have one of the best police forces in the world. I state that again today. So to say that the Greens are against the police is just silly. 
The other argument is that the Greens do not understand that the police are in dangerous situations and that they need this weapon because they are in those dangerous situations. One of the problems with that argument just in its simple form is that it can be used as an argument for bringing in any weapons at all. The police considered a whole lot of weapons before they brought in the Taser—they had a whole investigation called Project Lincoln. But we could argue that any such weapons would be justified on the level of argument that they could in certain circumstances be useful in dealing with dangerous situations. The thing that disturbs me is the logic being used to bring in the Taser and that is that there are certain situations where Tasers would be useful—and the Greens have always admitted that—because we go from that argument to the argument that any weapon should therefore be brought in. We could use that same argument to routinely arm the police as is the situation in the United States. Clearly there are certain situations where if all police officers had a gun at their hip they might be able to save a life or even their own lives. But is that an argument for routinely arming the police? No it is not because there are certain down sides. We see those down sides in the United States where the routine arming of police and their readiness to use their arms—sometimes at the drop of a hat—have caused more deaths both of people in the community and of police officers themselves. It has caused great angst in the community and has led to a whole psychology in America that people can pull out their guns quite quickly. Often the victims of that are police officers themselves. New Zealand to the contrary has had more of the British style of policing where the police are not regularly armed. 
That is the problem with Tasers. Their use is upping the level of violence in policing and it will lead to a lot of angst a lot of problems and a lot of disruption of police-community relations as it has in America. Members just need to Google “Taser” tonight to see that in the last week or two just about every day there is an argument somewhere—particularly in North American jurisdictions—over the misuse of Tasers. Governments around the world such as the Canadian Government are currently involved in reviews of Taser use because of the problems Taser use causes and how it disrupts police-community relations without necessarily making the police or community any safer. We have even seen a whole lot of arguments around the misuse of pepper sprays as in the Whakatane police cells and elsewhere or at the Fight for Life protest or in Rotorua where one of the protesters got compensation for the misuse of pepper spray by the police. 
To bring in a 50000-volt weapon in that context where there is already debate over pepper sprays and where there is already debate around the world over Tasers is not a step forward. The Green Party is quite against it and believes that it is such a pity that the commissioner has made a decision to bring in the Taser. Its introduction is a few months off and hopefully as a result of the election—and I know that this is what Greg O’Connor is worried about—the Greens might be able to veto the introduction of Tasers and that would be a very good thing.