Faafoi Kris: Policing (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFaafoi Kris: Policing (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 04 November 2014. Volume:701;Page:534. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana):It is a pleasure to speak to the first reading of the Policing (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill. I am drawing on a couple of documents that have been helpfully supplied to us by the police to try to make sense of what is actually going on here. The first one is a helpful document from the police website entitled: “Cost Recovery—Frequently asked questions”. It asks a pretty simple question in terms of this bill: “What is cost recovery and why is Police considering it?”. The first two bullet points that it lists in terms of its four key objectives are: “To reduce demandfor ‘over and above’ Police services …” and: “To self-fund any increase in demand for any ‘over and above’ Police services;”.I would like to concentrate on that phrase “over and above”. The question that we on this side of the House have been consistently asking is: when has it become “over and above” police services to check the backgrounds of people whom we are going to put in positions of trust in our communities? Many instances have been raised around teachers and also people who are working in our early childhood centres. Mr McKelvie just mentioned an organisation the Special Olympics which police-vets its volunteers the people who help it with its activities. I think he mentioned drivers. There was an organisation that I met with locally this morning a women’s refuge which I also understand would police-vet its volunteers and its staff. To think that the police vetting and the checking of the background of the people who work in these high-trust situations in our communities is “over and above” what the police are expected to do is a bit of a concern in this House. This is why we do support this bill going to the select committee to get some more scrutiny as to what it considers the police consider “over and above” and reasonable to charge for.I think Kelvin Davis and Chris Hipkins have made a good point about the Teachers Council which is concerned about not just the number of people who will now face increased costs in order to get their police vet checks but also the fact that this may have a negative effect on checking out the backgrounds of people who work in our communities. We are concerned about that.We are also concerned at what might really be the motivation behind this introduction of cost recovery. Helpfully the third bullet point in this “Frequently asked questions” document supplied by the police is: “To offset increasing financial pressures on Vote Police;”. We know that over the last 4 years the Government has talked tough in terms of what it will do on law and order but it has not necessarily backed that up with the resourcing that it has given the police. We are concerned that this may be a move that may creep out further than just simple police vetting to try to take more pressure off what the Government has done in taking money and resources away from our police force.We do realise that it is probably fair enough to debate whether we have some events or some functions of the police charged for because some companies and some individuals are making a lot of money out of some of the activities where our police are keeping the peace or where we know there are potentially going to be big problems—whether they be things like music concerts or the Sevens here in Wellington—and where we know there is going to be a big police presence. Someone is making a hell of a lot of money out of it. There may be an argument in those terms that getting some cost recovery could be something that we could look into.But as I look into one of the documents on the table here the departmental disclosure statement I see that on page 6 or 7 there are a couple of Government departments that have been consulted which gives me concern around the likes of some cultural events and which I think we need to think about in terms of what added costs it may bring on to the organisers of such events. In box 3.2 it says that Te Puni Kōkiri was consulted on the draft Cabinet paper and policy approvals for the bill and the draft bill was sought from it. Then if we flick over the page to page 8 of the departmental disclosure in box 3.6 it also says that the Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs was also consulted.We will support this bill at the first reading. I think that the select committee will be a really good opportunity to have people from the community from different ethnic communities who may face increased charges when they are looking at holding major cultural events. I am thinking in my own patch maybe something like Creekfest but also in Auckland where the bulk of the Pacific community is something like the Pasifika Festival would be something where there would be quite a large police presence. It is a community event but would that event fall into the category where in the future it may get asked for a charge to have a police presence? It is a great opportunity to showcase some of our Pasifika police officers. I know that they have used it as an opportunity to do that—to put a positive message with policing. But I think that if the organisers of that event were looking at facing increased charges for having that police presence then that would be of concern to them because it would be a sizable increased cost.The other thing that I think has been raised in this House is that we do not want to get to the stage where we are opening up charging or cost recovery by the police to have them chasing events. The nightmare scenario I could think of is where we have authorised police officers doing the event control and maybe having a sprinkling of sworn officers there to supervise it and therefore the police would see that as an opportunity to go out and cost recover and charge the organisers of events a fee to make sure that there is a police presence there. That would be a step too far and I think the select committee will be the opportunity for us to ask those kinds of questions and hopefully get some assurances from the Government that that is not—we hope—the road that it is intending to go down.I must say—and it is a serious point I am trying to make—when I am hearing that the likes of Te Puni Kōkiri and also the Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs have been consulted on that I think that is a concern that I certainly do have in terms of those cultural events getting charged a fee for having a police presence.Again a major concern on this side of the House does come back to what is driving this. Is this another cost-cutting measure or “pushing of costs to others” measure by the Government that is happening? We have seen I think around about $40 million taken out of the police budget at the last Budget—Hon Ruth Dyson: How much?KRIS FAAFOI: $40 million. That is having obviously serious front-line effects at a time when although I praise the job that the police are doing—they are doing a very good job under very difficult circumstances—over time over the last 5 5½ 6 years since this Government took over they have been asked to do much more with much much less. We have seen the strain that that is putting on front-line officers. I believe that resignations from the police in terms of sworn officers have gone from an average of about 14 per month to somewhere close to 50 per month in recent times.I think we have to start asking some serious questions about what is going on with the police and the budgets as we are at the point now where we are getting quite a lot of resignations. There may be something else behind that and not just simply budgetary pressures. Maybe it is that some officers who have served for a long time have been asked to move on but I would hate that it would just be cost-cutting measures right across the board that are putting a huge strain on police resources.As we have said many times this bill does have Labour’s support to the select committee. We will be asking some serious questions around the kinds of functions that the police think are over and above. We have some concerns obviously around some of these sensitive positions in our community where there will be increased costs. We do think there is an argument for events where there could be some charging but again that does come with some caveats. So we will support this and look forward to seeing more out of the submissions from the select committee.