Clendon David: Policing (Constable’s Oaths Validation) Amendment Bill — Procedure First Reading Second Reading Third ReadingText is subject to correctionClendon David: Policing (Constable’s Oaths Validation) Amendment Bill — Procedure First Reading Second Reading Third Reading[Sitting date: 24 October 2013. Volume:694;Page:14284. Text is subject to correction.]DAVID CLENDON (Green): A few days ago when I first saw the title of this bill we are debating today I actually assumed it was on my desk by mistake. I saw the top line and thought: “Why has somebody disinterred that old thing?”. For a moment I thought: “Was there a sunset clause in that legislation we passed back in 2009 under urgency?”. Of course there was not. It was a piece of legislation necessary to remedy an error and sadly here we are again some 4 years later once again retrospectively putting right virtually the same mistake. Clearly that is an unacceptable situation. It brings no credit to anyone. It chews up a great deal of time in this Parliament at a time of year when we have a long Order Paper and after this only five more sitting weeks. It is a wholly unsatisfactory situation but there you are.The new bill of course the Policing (Constable’s Oaths Validation) Amendment Bill 2013 will sit alongside a bill entitled exactly the same but the last number would be 2009. The Greens will support this bill simply because it would be irresponsible to do otherwise and that point has been made by our Labour colleagues. The situation that the bill remedies is untenable and cannot be allowed to stand. I would make the point that we are supporting this bill of our own volition despite some rather over-excited media commentary which I saw earlier today suggesting what the Greens and indeed Labour have done: “A backstairs deal has been sewn up to ensure the legislation…” passes. I would just like to put on record that neither I nor any of my Green colleagues have met with Minister Tolley on the backstairs or anywhere else. It is a nonsense report. We are supporting this legislation because as I said it would be irresponsible not to.The situation is untenable. It is untenable for a number of reasons. We cannot allow the error to stand. To do so would put 63 serving police officers in a position where they could be prosecuted for carrying out their duties which they have done in good faith for the time since they have been sworn in. If any one of us was to present ourselves as if we were police officers we would clearly be subject to some fairly serious legal consequence and that is as it should be. Impersonating a police officer is an extremely serious offence and so it should be. Effectively the 63 officers have been in effect impersonating a police constable and that is an untenable situation for them. They could be personally liable for their actions at any point where they have gone beyond carrying out activities that a normal person a civilian a non-officer would carry out. They are then vulnerable to being charged personally and that is simply unacceptable.The other side of it of course is that any of the prosecutions arrests or legal processes that those officers or their activities have stimulated could be deemed invalid. It could clearly result in ongoing prosecutions having to halt and convictions having to be overturned. Effectively some people who committed crimes people who have performed criminal activities could get off and could escape justice if we do not put this error right. As I say it would be simply untenable to do otherwise.I actually enjoyed the hospitality of the Police Association at its dinner last night. I had to bite my tongue quite hard on a number of occasions to not reveal the content of what we would be debating today. I looked about that room and I wondered whether any of these 63 affected officers were in that room. In all likelihood at least some of them were. It puts them in a very unhealthy situation.I think it is worth quoting the insertion into the Policing Act section 115A of the 2008 Act which was inserted as a result of the 2009 legislation. It says: “A Police employee or judicial officer who has administered the constable’s oath described in section 22(1) in the period 1 October 2008 and ended with the close of 12 October 2009 is to be treated as having been authorised throughout that period by the Commissioner to administer the oath…”. Now we are going to see yet another paragraph inserted below that one to remedy this latest oversight. One hopes that we will not be back in a year’s time inserting yet more text into that already much amended Act.At the time in 2009 when the first mistake was uncovered I think that the media commentary—and indeed academic commentary—was reasonably benign. It was accepted that a mistake had been made. People make mistakes. It was a technical error a glitch. I think there was certainly some reporting in theNew Zealand Heraldfor example and Television New Zealand ran a story on the matter. It was as I said reasonably benign; it was not overly critical. I guess we all recognised that we can make mistakes. But to make the second mistake—or rather to make the same mistake twice—simply smacks of carelessness and lack of attention to detail and that is completely unacceptable.There was an academic study done recently on the use of urgency by this Government and preceding Governments and there was an interesting analysis done of situations where these academics judged the use of urgency to be justifiable or not against a set of criteria and I think “or not” equalled political expediency. The particular piece of legislation passed in 2009 was deemed to be a justifiable use of urgency and arguably today is also a justifiable use of urgency in order to avoid any appeals against what may have happened in the interim. It may be justified in that sense but it is not justifiable to simply accept that this mistake could have been made not once but twice.It is critical that we put this right but it is unfortunate that a recent citizen satisfaction survey—as recently as September of this year and it was a 10000 respondent survey so it was a pretty robust investigation—found that 79 percent of those 10000 people reported they were confident in the country’s police officers. The survey asked people their views about police their feelings on how safe they felt and what their service experience was when they had interactions with the police. The overall satisfaction with service delivery sat at 83 percent and given that for numbers of us our interactions with officers are going to cost us money—if for example we have been misbehaving in terms of speed limits or whatever it might be—I think that is a remarkably high display of confidence and I believe that is well justified. Our police do a good job they do a difficult job and I believe that for the most part they do it very very well.The repetition of this mistake cannot do other than weaken the public’s confidence in the police service. It can do not other than cast doubt on the organisation: not on individual officers necessarily but certainly on the administration of the police force. It is most unfortunate that the officers out there—who are working very very hard to do the right thing to fulfil the oath that they take in good faith and doing all the right things by the public to do their best to keep the peace and ensure public safety—are being compromised by these administrative errors which cannot stand.We heard from the Minister earlier that there will be an internal investigation lead by Police Commissioner Marshall to discover what went on and to ensure it does not happen again. That is a good thing and I have the greatest confidence in the commissioner’s integrity but I think we need to go beyond that. I believe we need an external inquiry into how these mistakes happened and how we can be sure that they do not reoccur. For that reason I have today written to the Auditor-General’s office askingthe Auditor-General under section 16 of the Public Audit Act to undertake an inquiry into this matter to endeavour to identify what has happened why it happened and how we can ensure that this situation does not occur and that we do not find ourselves once again in a year’s time passing legislation under urgency to fix something that ought never to have happened. With that point I will end my speech but I will seek leave to table a letter that I have today sent to the Auditor-General. I do seek that leave now.