Borrows Chester: Urgent Debates — Commission of Inquiry into Police Conduct—Report 
Borrows Chester: Urgent Debates — Commission of Inquiry into Police Conduct—Report 
[Volume:638;Page:8556] 
CHESTER BORROWS (National—Whanganui) 
: 
 If there is one organisation in this country that we need to have implicit faith in it is the New Zealand Police because that organisation carries the can for a lot of other organisations and agencies. When they are unavailable it is the police that people think of to call on when they are at their most vulnerable. I find today to be a particularly difficult day and as the Minister of Justice has said earlier it is a particularly black day for the New Zealand Police. 
I am wary of some comments made that suggest the New Zealand Police needs in some way to put this issue behind it and move on. I believe that that is the last thing it needs to do. I believe that the New Zealand Police needs to be able to carry in the back of its mind today the lessons it can learn from this report and the lessons it has taken on board over the last few embarrassing years as various incidents have come to light. I feel sorry for the vast number of police officers; I think about half of them have been in the police for only 10 years. 
But I believe that the underlying theme at the bottom of this report is one of satisfaction on the part of the public with the work of the police. It is not up to the police or to the rest of us to decide whether people can have confidence in the police. In the end it is those people—the most vulnerable in our community—who will decide whether they have the confidence in that organisation that is needed in order to be able to bare their souls in some respects and to make complaints of a most personal nature. 
 The initial complaints that led to this report are welded into the minds of police officers and former police officers like myself. In thinking back on the culture that existed at that time I say thankfully that there have been a large number of changes. I can say that I like many others am very proud of the service I had with the New Zealand Police—in my case between 1975 and 1999. But I feel tainted by these complaints particularly as a member of the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) through the 1980s and 1990s and I feel tainted by the tenor of this report although I believe that every one of its recommendations is completely justified. I agree with the Government which has said it will implement every one of them. 
The fact is that although individual officers have been the subject of complaints individual officers have the ability to change the culture of the groups in which they operate. Although the commissioner has made the point as he sees it and as he has viewed it that there is no suggestion within the report of systemic failure I agree with others who have spoken and said that in fact Dame Margaret Bazley has found exactly that to have occurred. 
I think back to the early 1980s and to training within the CIB. For instance the detective manual that existed at that time called upon detectives to be very wary of complainants in sexual abuse matters and reminded detectives that those complaints were easy to make and hard to defend. In actual fact of course such complaints are incredibly hard to make. Thankfully in the mid-1980s there were law changes in respect of sex crimes within the Crimes Act that protected victims and encouraged them to be able to give good evidence that could lead to a conviction. The fact is too that at that time the police implemented a number of sexual abuse and child abuse teams which led each of us to a new understanding of the psychology of sexual victims and sexual offenders. 
What I find most despicable about the complaints of which a lot has been made in the media—and so it should have been—is that each of the three offenders whose names we heard mentioned time and time again had been members of the CIB. Each of them would have been fully aware of the nature of the psychology of sex victims. Each of them would have known that the behaviour exhibited by 18-year-old and 16-year-old girls and by those who had been the subject of abuse showed a consent that was not soberly given in full awareness of the facts as to what they were consenting to at the time. I do not believe personally that the police officers had any right to rely on any consent they had been given. Even today—20 years down the track—to try to argue that it was all a matter of consent is something I find absolutely abhorrent. The public demand higher standards of the police than of those in other professions and that has been underlined time and time again when dealing with members of the public. 
I notice that recommendation R18 seeks consistency and transparency in the complaints process so that there is a consistent level of service across the country. I think that particular recommendation goes to the heart of what I was speaking about just a couple of minutes ago: the ability of an individual or a couple of individuals to dictate the culture within the group. No one would look back on the history of the Rotorua CIB squad and see that there was anything less than a disgusting level of public service in relation to sexual crimes. It is important that members of the public who wish to make a complaint are able to go into any police station around the country and to receive the same high level of service that they would receive anywhere else. 
I also note the recommendations that there is to be an annual “health of the organisation” audit by the State Services Commission and under recommendation R60 annual auditing for 10 years by the Auditor-General in relation to the implementation of new measures. I see those audits as being entirely necessary because no matter what changes may have been made in recent times or will be made in the next couple of weeks in respect of this organisation we have to know—and to have confidence—that the changes will be implemented not only this year but next year the year after that and the decade after that. The fact that Dame Margaret Bazley saw fit to put into writing her concern that the organisation may move on too quickly from this inquiry—and believe once it is over that the boxes have been ticked—and the fact that she has seen fit to put in not one but two audit measures that will operate over at least the next decade is hugely embarrassing for members of the New Zealand Police. And that is embarrassing to myself as someone who was associated with that organisation. 
I do not wish to continue speaking much longer other than to say that the complainants in all matters who are making complaints against the police take their complaints seriously. It is incredibly important—in fact it is fundamental—to life within a civilisation that the members of the public can have full confidence in their State’s agent. I am very happy with the recommendations in respect of the Police Complaints Authority. I know that the authority will do all it can to give substance and confidence to its work in respect of the New Zealand Police. Although this is a black day I look forward to a day sometime down the track when every one of our country’s citizens can have a full level of confidence in our police service. 
The debate having concluded the motion lapsed.