Tanczos Nandor: Appointments — Police Complaints Authority—Ian Albert Borrin 
Tanczos Nandor: Appointments — Police Complaints Authority—Ian Albert Borrin 
[Volume:616;Page:11894] 
NANDOR TANCZOS (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party does not support the reappointment of Judge Borrin to head the Police Complaints Authority. We are not questioning Judge Borrin’s integrity but we feel that the Police Complaints Authority is facing some significant difficulties at this time and believe that a fresh view is needed within the authority. 
The credibility of the Police Complaints Authority is under serious threat. The simmering discontent at the role and function of the authority that has been bubbling along in the public mind for a number of years has reached a heat that cannot be ignored. We believe something has to give. The Government has recognised this with the introduction of the Independent Police Complaints Authority Amendment Bill that is currently before Parliament and has been referred to by previous speakers. That bill is an attempt to reassure the public about the independence of the authority and to try to give some investigative grunt to it notwithstanding the quite correct concerns raised by Mr Jones about the difficulty of finding genuinely independent investigators who are not either police or ex-police. It is of course significant that those changes have been put on hold while we await the outcome of the inquiry into the investigation of rape allegations against the police and into the police culture current at the time of those allegations. We believe it is quite proper that those changes should be put on hold pending that investigation. We hope the inquiry will help identify further changes that might be needed in providing for the investigation of complaints against the police. The curiously contradictory findings of two Police Complaints Authority investigations into the investigations by John Dewar of those allegations has generated yet more unease in the public mind about the way the authority has operated in the past. 
A significant concern I have about the current Police Complaints Authority is that when I have had the opportunity to question Judge Borrin at the select committee as Mr Jones has had there was no acceptance by him that such unease was anything other than a problem of perception. There has been no acceptance that there was a substantive problem with the way in which the authority has conducted its investigations in the past. 
Most problems may not be of the authority’s making. As Mr Ryall said the significant resource constraints the authority faces as well as the legislation covering the Police Complaints Authority have meant that complaints against police have of necessity had to be conducted largely by police officers who are often work colleagues and personal friends of the complainees. However we believe that the head of the Police Complaints Authority saying that this is simply a perception problem rather than a significant and systemic problem with an inevitable in-built bias is striking. The widespread public perception of bias is I believe a result of problematic past-practice rather than that perception itself being the problem. Of course public perceptions are not helped by the revelations in today’s newspapers that the inquiry into the investigation of the rape allegations will be significantly hampered because the inquiry may not be able to call Police Complaints Authority staff to question them about the conduct of various investigations. That raises a very significant question: who watches the watchers? 
The Police Complaints Authority is also facing a massive backlog of complaints with delays of such length that investigation seems pointless when one finally gets around to them. My colleague Keith Locke has been waiting 4½ years for a judgment on a complaint he lodged regarding police treatment of protests against a visiting Chinese leader in 1999. Mr Ryall has raised another example of the same problem. I recall the Justice and Electoral Committee during the last term of Parliament holding an inquiry into those same incidents. The select committee was also hampered in its inquiry because of the complaints before the Police Complaints Authority which inhibited the extent of evidence provided to the committee by submitters because it was a complaint before the Police Complaints Authority and that stopped the authority from talking to us about what it knew. It seemed a totally ridiculous and farcical situation. 
With the development of a new body the Independent Police Complaints Authority to investigate complaints against the police it is important that a new culture develop within the authority. The authority must have the confidence of the public and it must hold that confidence and retain it by instilling itself with a confident and courageous approach to the investigation of complaints against the police. 
I believe that the New Zealand Police is largely free of systemic or institutionalised corruption unlike some of our neighbours in the region. However it would be untrue to say that there are no problems in the police or that there are no corrupt officers or units. The key to this country keeping a police force largely free of such corruption is to vigorously investigate and deal with any examples of it. We cannot rely on the police to do that. The natural response of the police as with any professional body is to give the benefit of the doubt to its own members. That is why a strong independent and vigorous Police Complaints Authority is essential. 
The Greens believe that it is important that the transition to the new body is shepherded by a fresh mind with a new approach to the functions of the authority. The history of Judge Borrin in the Police Complaints Authority as the head of the authority and as the deputy prior to that we think makes it difficult for him to fulfil that role. For that reason we oppose the reappointment of Judge Borrin.