Tanczos Nandor: Appointments — Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment Police Complaints Authority 
Tanczos Nandor: Appointments — Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment Police Complaints Authority 
[Volume:636;Page:6962] 
NANDOR TANCZOS (Green) 
: 
 My co-leader Jeannette Fitzsimons has already spoken on the appointment of Jan Wright to the role of Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment so I will not be speaking on that matter except simply to add my personal thanks to Dr Morgan Williams for the extraordinarily good job that he has done in that role and to say that I look forward to Jan Wright’s continuing the excellent tradition and precedent that has been set for that role. 
I rise really to speak on the appointment of Justice Goddard to the Police Complaints Authority and to say at the outset that the Green Party supports that appointment. It is clear that Justice Goddard has had an illustrious career and that there is no reason to think anything other than that she will do an excellent job. The problem of course is not her as a person—as highlighted by Te Ururoa Flavell—the framework within which she will be operating and the resources available will be the real problem. I thank Te Ururoa Flavell for putting forward a couple of useful suggestions that have merit and are worth considering particularly from the Government’s point of view because that is where the decisions on resources and suchlike will be made. 
If we look at the framework within which the Police Complaints Authority currently operates and also at the resourcing available we will see that enormous problems are caused. The first one is simply time delays. My colleague Keith Locke has had a complaint before the Police Complaints Authority for 7 years. For 7 years his complaint has not been dealt with. It is absolutely outrageous that that can be the reality coming from a body that is charged with investigating complaints against the New Zealand Police which has significant statutory authority to use force against citizens of this country. It is absolutely outrageous. That may be an extreme case but significant delays are not unusual. I just think back to the Steven Wallace case. As far as I am aware there has still not been a finding in that matter. So time delays are an enormous problem and a large part of that can be put down to the fact that the resourcing made available to the Police Complaints Authority is totally unacceptable. 
The second real problem is that most complaints are not investigated by the Police Complaints Authority; they are investigated by the police. Essentially that means that officers who have complaints made against them are being investigated by their mates. This is particularly true in rural communities where the commanding officer visits the other police officers socially. Those officers have a barbecue on the weekend they play sport together and their children know each other. Those are the people who investigate complaints against each other. It is just not surprising is it that some of those findings are open to a suspicion of bias—it can be nothing else. 
This is partly a resourcing issue. There have to be the resources to investigate complaints against the police independently. The other issue is that the authority has to be able to develop an investigative capacity. That is one of the reasons why the Green Party has said very clearly that it would like to see an independent prison inspectorate joined with an independent police complaints authority to enable an investigative capacity to be developed that could conduct investigations into closed-shop professions such as the police and correctional staff. 
The other thing around the Police Complaints Authority is that it has tended to be user-unfriendly in the past. As someone who has made complaints to the Police Complaints Authority in the past I have to say that the system seems designed to discourage people from pursuing complaints against the police. That may be an attempt to filter out unmeritorious complaints but that is not what actually happens. What happens is that the people who are most alienated from our political systems who are those most alienated from the systems of authority and power in this country are continually dissuaded from making complaints. I hear all the time—and I am sure that other members do too—of cases that warrant serious investigation such as complaints against police misconduct. The people who do not make those complaints simply ask what the point is because they say their complaints will not even be investigated. They say that the cops will look out for each other they will investigate themselves and they will just brush it under the carpet—and of course in my opinion that is what happens on numerous occasions. 
Another problem with the Police Complaints Authority is that it is totally complaints-driven so we do not get the systematic investigation into serious systemic problems within the police. For example we know that some police officers abuse their powers to search without a warrant. We know that it happens; we have seen evidence of it. Evidence has been brought before this House in select committees and the like of police abusing powers to search without a warrant. Those are highly draconian powers of search and no investigation is being done. That is exactly the kind of thing that a police complaints authority should be able to look at and this Police Complaints Authority does not do that job. 
Similarly I refer to the use of pepper sprays. There is almost no control over the use of pepper sprays. We have seen on our TV news people being pepper sprayed while handcuffed. I hear allegations all the time of people having been pepper sprayed in police cells. That is totally contradictory to regulations to guidelines and to all the assurances that we were given when those sprays were brought in to be used by the police. No investigation is being done at any serious level into these matters and that is exactly the kind of thing that the Police Complaints Authority should be empowered to look at. 
Even when complaints-driven matters are so serious that the Police Complaints Authority actually conducts an investigation the information it uses for that purpose cannot be used for prosecutions because the secrecy provisions that the Police Complaints Authority is wrapped up in mean that the matters it raises in interviews and the like cannot be used as evidence. I think that that is totally ridiculous. What other profession has a situation where if complaints are made against someone relating to potentially criminal activity after the first investigation is done the evidence generated cannot be used in court? It is ridiculous. People say: “Oh well this is to promote openness so that people will spill their guts to the investigators.” Well one could make the same case for any kind of crime. It is absolutely ludicrous and it essentially means that there is one rule for the police and one rule for everyone else. I would be interested to know where the National Party stands in respect of this issue with its one-law-for-all rhetoric—where does it stand on having the same law for the police as for everyone else? 
I recall the Justice and Electoral Committee’s inquiry into the policing of the protest during the visit of the Chinese Premier and Mr Barnett will remember this very clearly because he was chairing the committee at the time. It was a very good piece of work that we did but we were enormously hampered by the rules governing the Police Complaints Authority. The information that the authority had obtained through interviewing complainants and police could not even be made available to the Parliament. Even Parliament was told that it could not have that information for the purposes of a select committee inquiry because the legislation did not allow it. It is absolutely ridiculous. 
Of course that situation leads to the findings of the Police Complaints Authority being entirely opaque. The authority makes decisions but complainants have no idea of what it looked at in making its decisions and the basis on which those decisions were made. So it leaves a suspicion in the public mind that the authority is not properly investigating cases. Whether or not the authority is doing so is not the point. The point is that the decisions the authority makes are not being justified on the basis of saying what matters it considered whom it talked to and what information it used to make its decision. That information is not available to the public. It leaves a bitter taste in the mouths of complainants and an ongoing suspicion that the complaints are not being conducted properly thoroughly and with regard to all matters. 
The Green Party supports the appointment of the Hon Justice Goddard to this position but we fear that we are handing her a poisoned chalice because the legislative framework around the Police Complaints Authority is so poor that inevitably she will be hampered in doing the job effectively. 
The Green Party looks forward to the progress of legislation which is before this House that will progress a truly independent Police Complaints Authority. What is more we would like to see that legislation operate so that an independent Police Complaints Authority can work in conjunction with an independent prison inspectorate to allow the development of an investigative capacity that can actually do the job that has the resources to do the job that has the expertise to do the job and that is able to generate enough momentum within itself that it can actually crack the shell and penetrate what is really going on within professions such as the police and the Department of Corrections. We have heard allegations of a culture of abuse violence and intimidation within both those bodies. 
This country needs an independent investigative body that can seriously look at this problem and get to the bottom of it so that we can all be assured that we have the best the least corrupt and the most transparent services of those kinds anywhere in the world. 
Motions agreed to.