Collins JudithHon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Police): I would like to take the opportunity to respond to some of the questions raised by the member who has resumed his seat Chris Hipkins and others. When I first became the Minister of Police at the end of 2008 one of the areas of risk for the Police was actually the vetting service. The reason for that is that it was so far behind in dealing with the massive requests and demands for vetting that had been made and doing checks on them that what we found is that people were waiting months in many cases for vetting. We looked at the fact that it was taking so much police time and looked at what we could do about it. Some years later we now have this bill going through the Committee of the whole House stage. Let us have a look at some of the comments that have been made and concerns raised by Mr Hipkins—he is very concerned about the cost of vetting. Well all indications that I have are that the police-vetting fee will be $7 or around $7. I think teachers are actually paid sufficient amounts of money to pay $7 for vetting. Why should this happen? Well actually because the requests for vetting have gone up hugely over the last 10 years. We now have police having to deal with more than half a million requests a year. That is a staggering number of requests for vetting. Who is asking for these vetting services? Are they all schools? Are they all teachers? Are they all early childhood education centres? No they are not. Sometimes in many cases with the million New Zealanders living overseas many of them are overseas employers who are asking for this—people who in many cases are in positions of responsibility and who are well paid. I think around $7 is a very reasonable fee. That is the main area that we are talking about here. Yes there is an opportunity for other areas to be brought in where they are demanded by people and are not actually core police business but that is not something that can be brought in by the Police itself; it has to go through an Order in Council process and regulation and actually Governments are not keen to do those sorts of things if they believe the public would not agree with it.Let us have a look at what police actually do for this vetting service. For a start they might release information about a conviction history the location of the court where the matter was heard the date of the offence the offence itself and the sentence imposed. They may also release any further information that may not strictly be part of those areas but that is important for someone who is seeking to have themselves vetted. There are occasions when police hold relevant information that they would be unwilling or unable to release. In these instances a withheld details statement is provided to the agency. All of this work takes a lot of care and a lot of attention and if police get it wrong who gets blamed? Who gets blamed? Actually it is the police. The police get blamed if they get it wrong. Can they afford to let just anybody do this? The answer is no actually. They need to have people on this work who know what they are doing and who understand how important it is.Actually vetting requests at around $7 each I have got to say is not that much. If you are in fact applying for a job as a teacher or even in early childhood centres it is not that much frankly for the amount of time the amount of responsibility and the amount of care that goes into it. I would much rather that the Police was able to charge a very reasonable fee—particularly when compared with any other jurisdiction; as far as I am aware we are the only comparable jurisdiction that does not charge any vetting fee—to charge something for that to get some recompense towards being able to resource that area properly and not to see it simply as a cost on Police and its budget. Some people might not think vetting is important but I think vetting is important and the fact that the vetting requests are now well over half a million a year tells me that this is a big area for police and one they do need to have some extra help with. It is also important for people to just be aware that it does cost money.