Sage EugenieEUGENIE SAGE (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. The Green Party is opposing this bill because it is about the Government retreating from providing a core service: policing for safe communities. We have seen today the State exercising its powers of punishing people—punishing mothers on a benefit because they will not disclose their child's father because they may have been the victim of sexual abuse or the victim of incest. Yet here in this bill this Government is saying that we will be prepared to ensure that the police cover a lot of their costs and we are moving to user-pays policing which is undermining the role of the police in ensuring public safety and community safety.There were a lot of submissions on this bill highlighting the major impacts on voluntary organisations from the vetting charges and from this move to user-pays and cost recovery. Yes there have been some changes made in the select committee but those changes are not substantial enough and they are alongside the provisions in the bill that allow the Government to introduce regulations by stealth to expand the opportunities for the police to recover charges for their services. So restrictions on the cost recovery provisions are not nearly clear enough in the bill and instead we have seen this Government because of its underfunding of the police putting the burden on the police to try to find some money to try to move to user-pays. So there are not sufficient concessions in the select committee's consideration of the bill to actually provide the certainty that the Green Party needs that we are not step by step moving to user-pays policing and undermining their statutory role in safeguarding community safety.My colleague David Clendon has a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) which we will be debating in the Committee stage to make it very clear that teachers of State schools should be exempted from having these cost recovery charges applied. This is because it is essential that teachers and people in childcare situations all have the opportunity to go through that vetting process without those organisations then having to pay for that. It will have an enormous impact on their budgets and that is what the Government has failed to recognise—the impact of these charges on the voluntary sector. The way to address this issue is to increase police funding not to shift the charges on to the voluntary sector by requiring it to pay for vetting. So we have got major objections to the bill. We encourage the Government to seriously consider the SOPs that are being promoted to ensure that critical parts of society do not have these significant costs imposed on them.It is a bad bill. It is taking away the fundamental responsibility of the State through the police to provide for community security and safety. We do not want user-pays policing where community organisations where schools and where others are having to pay for basic police services. I think we all agree that where there is a significant commercial benefit as with large concerts where the police provide services there there is the potential for some cost recovery there but not for our childcare organisations not for our schools not for our charitable organisations. That is just shifting the costs on to the community sector which the Government should be paying for by adequately funding the police. We oppose this bill.