Connell Brian: Independent Police Complaints Authority Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Connell Brian: Independent Police Complaints Authority Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:606;Page:3673] 
BRIAN CONNELL (NZ National—Rakaia) 
: 
 I am delighted to take a call on this bill because like many New Zealanders I believe that it is an issue of State importance and I feel very strongly about it. We live in a country that is especially fortunate in that we have many things denied to a majority of nations in the world. We have clean water education freedom to vote freedom of speech freedom of association and so forth. I also believe that most New Zealanders would agree that one of our greatest assets is that we are well served by a strong and well-disciplined police force. Unlike some other police forces ours does not meddle in politics or brutalise its citizens. The police do a difficult job and generally they do it well despite their constant battles with top-heavy administration resource shortfalls and lack of staff. That shortfall in staff is nowhere more starkly manifested than in our police’s inability to control violent and out-of-control crime in Auckland.  
One thing we must remember though is that our police force is not perfect. We have all heard stories and allegations of police misbehaviour and ineptitude. Some are related to individual cases such as the Bain trial the Tamihere trial the Bouwer affair and of course some members in the House might remember the Arthur Allan Thomas trial. Others were larger in their scope such as the allegation that the police removed their identifying numbers just before they baton-charged students at a sit-in protest at Otago University in the early 1990s.  
On the whole people overwhelmingly respect our police force for the work that it does but given cases like those is it any wonder that people doubt that the police always act in accordance with the standards we set them. Everyone hears rumours and urban legends about a range of suspicious behaviours by the police. Typical examples would be of evidence being conveniently discovered under unlikely circumstances or of hardened criminals who suddenly start to sing like songbirds to secret police witnesses and who by the way subsequently get significant reductions in their sentences.  
Whether or not those stories are true does not matter here today. The fact is though that we have all heard them. No one who relays them believes that the police will be brought to account for their actions in those cases by an authority that is perceived to be a part of the old boy network. The need for an independent authority to rule on complaints against the police is as needed here as it is needed in the legal and medical professions. No one takes a body seriously if it is not seen as being independent and impartial and worse if it makes allegations against the police seem more believable because a clean verdict from the Police Complaints Authority means nothing and no one expects a guilty one.  
Under the current system there is no credibility whatsoever when complaints are investigated only by serving police officers and when the entire conduct of the inquiry is kept secret. Even the reports of their own investigations are normally not made public so how can they possibly ever show the public that they are actually doing the job rather than whitewashing the actions of fellow officers? Take the case of the Waitara shooting for example. Constable Abbott and his family went through hell on earth over the killing of Steven Wallace. The taking of a human life is always a serious matter but that poor officer endured close to 3 years of agony. His story might have been different if the Police Complaints Authority had had credibility. The public needs to know that there is more to it than a rubber stamp; otherwise the reaction will always be: “Oh well of course they cleared him.” As a result of the authority’s status as a spineless body in the public’s view the exoneration of Constable Abbott was worth essentially less than a Labour campaign promise.  
That is why I was gladdened to see this legislation. As I perused the bill it became clear that here was an intelligent sensible remedy to problems that have been increasingly evident for some years. It is a vital step to rebuilding the image of the police within our communities. All in all I was delighted with the common sense displayed in it. Then I got to the section about how the authority should be constituted and for me it all came crashing down—not I hasten to add from any fault in the legislation but in the clear knowledge of how the Labour Government would apply it. According to section 4A which clause 6 inserts into the principal Act the authority will consist of three members appointed by the Governor-General on the recommendation of the House of Representatives. That sounds eminently sensible and reasonable until we consider the recommendations in Sir Rodney Gallen’s review of the Police Complaints Authority in 2002 in which he proposed that the authority should consist of three persons; that the chairperson ought to be a person who holds or has held judicial office; that there should be a Maori member which recognises the significance of the Treaty of Waitangi; and that there should be a layperson who represents the community generally.  
I predict that when it comes to the time to appoint the representatives of this authority Labour will once again crawl back to its cringing worship mentality of political correctness. As surely as a dog returns to vomit Labour members will be unable to resist the delight of appointing someone because of his or her supposed knowledge of the treaty but who in reality will probably be a person whose chief credential has been to insult a vast number of New Zealanders who do not spend their entire lives apologising for events that are over 160 years old or who do not worship all things Maori with blind fanaticism. Once again we will find Labour seeking out the loudest mouth with the fewest credentials as it has done before. After all that is how Labour got its front bench. That is what it will do because that is what it always does. Any reasonable person would say yes to the appointment of a judge and yes to the appointment of members of a community and he or she would probably suggest that a third member should be a retired police officer. Yet it does not seem likely that that will happen given Labour’s track record of pandering to the politically correct clauses of treaty arranging.  
In my view an independent properly constituted Police Complaints Authority would ease the work of the police. Currently there is a perception that police complaints are not always given the treatment they deserve. It is easy to understand that people do not have faith in the ability of an authority to be impartial when it is constituted and run by the very people it scrutinises in cases where allegations of wrongdoing may exist. I do not believe that we have serious ongoing problems within our police force. Yet as the saying goes “Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion.” I put it to members of this House that that must be the case with our police force.