Borrows Chester: Private Security Personnel and Private Investigators Bill — Third Reading 
Borrows Chester: Private Security Personnel and Private Investigators Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:666;Page:14026] 
CHESTER BORROWS (National—Whanganui) 
: 
 I rise to speak to yet another sterling piece of legislation the Private Security Personnel and Private Investigators Bill. It had its germ as we have just heard within the National Party and it was polished by a National Government at the top of its game. It was filtered through the Justice and Electoral Committee and has gathered wide support from across the House. This legislation needs to deal with changes made in technology since the parent legislation was introduced and it takes account of the wide range of purposes that private security personnel and private investigators work on today. It is also interesting to note that for the first time security guards will be required to undergo training and they will not just undergo training but also be required to display competency. The reason for that is that people can undergo training by way of mantra they can tick boxes and it could be said that they know stuff but we need to know that they can display the competencies. A lot of the people involved in the security industry come from similar backgrounds within other agencies—for instance within the armed forces the police and customs. Those people will have the technical difference of being able to say that they display a competency rather than having to undergo training. It means that they will not need to go through and do the tick box thing. They can display the competency and will not have to waste time doing the training. 
Why that is important is that more and more right across our society we are expecting people not from Government agencies to perform tasks that have traditionally been done by Government agencies. For instance there is not a single piece of core police work these days that is not done at some place in our country by a private security company. As has been previously mentioned there was quite a bit of debate about the ability of private security guards and private investigators to take photographs and take video and audio recordings because previously they had not been able to do that. If they were confined merely to watching people—gathering evidence for journalists and mudslingers—then maybe it could have been OK to leave the law where it was because members in this House for instance have been the subject of that sort of abuse. 
However I know that a number of private investigators are used in the investigation of crime. Some of it is serious crime. Some of it is crime that the police do not have the resources to be able to investigate in terms of time and personnel depending on where in the country the crime needs to be investigated or on what the current crime trends are at that time. We see a large number of fraud investigations being carried out by private investigators and private investigators going ahead and investigating a number of missing person - type offences and incidents. We have the ridiculous situation under the current legislation where parents could give a photograph to a private investigator to go and look for their missing child who was maybe a young teenager and had run away from home yet the private investigator could not show that photograph to anybody else to ask whether that person had seen the child. If the private investigator thought that he or she had seen the child the private investigator could not take a photograph of the child in a street situation or without the child’s consent in order to go back to the parents to confirm identification. 
The changes to the powers of private security personnel and private investigators is timely especially in view of the Rugby World Cup coming up next year as we have heard from the Associate Minister of Justice. The bill enjoys wide support from across the House and I commend it to the House.