Policing (Storage of Youth Identifying Particulars) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Policing (Storage of Youth Identifying Particulars) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee 
[Sitting date: 16 August 2011. Volume:675;Page:20848. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Policing (Storage of Youth Identifying Particulars) Amendment Bill 
First Reading 
Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Police) 
: 
 I move  
That the Policing (Storage of Youth Identifying Particulars) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. 
 This bill amends the Policing Act 2008 to restore the legal position under the Police Act 1958 in relation to the storage of youth identifying particulars—that is fingerprints and photographs taken by the police. That legal position was not intended to be altered by the Policing Act 2008 but that in fact is what happened. 
When the Policing Act 2008 was passed it was assumed that the legal situation relating to the police’s ability to retain the identifying particulars of youth was carried over from the Police Act 1958. In developing the Policing Act 2008 no policy decision was made to change this provision. However in 2010 police became aware that the wording of section 34 of the Policing Act 2008 which deals with the storage of identifying particulars by police was much narrower than the Police Act 1958 in respect of youth. 
The Policing Act 2008 as it currently stands allows police to retain youth identifying particulars only in circumstances where a conviction is entered and an order made that the young person be brought before a District Court for sentence or decision. Under the current legislation police can retain no more than about 50 sets of identifying particulars of young offenders per year. The current wording prevents police from retaining up to 1200 sets of identifying particulars per year for youth who have a charge proved in the Youth Court and for whom an order is made by a judge. Those orders range from a discharge right through to supervision with residence. This change was an unintended consequence of drafting. If this unintended situation is not remedied police will continue to be unable to retain the identifying particulars for these young offenders and any future reoffending by the same people will be more difficult to detect. 
Identification of young repeat offenders is a key tool to assist police to prevent future offending to stop offending growing in severity over time and to provide reassurance to victims. This bill seeks to rectify the situation through an amendment to the Policing Act 2008 to reflect the position provided for by the Police Act 1958 in relation to the police’s ability to retain the identifying particulars of youth. As the change to the legal position relating to youth identifying particulars was unintended police were not immediately aware of the change and as a consequence continued to retain youth identifying particulars that should technically have been destroyed over a period of 2 years from the introduction of the Policing Act in October 2008. In good faith police have now destroyed all those identifying particulars. 
Under the current legislation a person could potentially challenge a conviction that was based on evidence from improperly retained fingerprints. This process in itself could be a time-consuming and costly process. Such an appeal may also lead to victims feeling re-victimised. Also the safety of those convictions could be placed in doubt and result in potential challenges and further stress for victims. Such ongoing challenges are not in the public interest. Neither is it in the public interest to undermine confidence in the criminal justice system by failing to recognise the impact on victims if young offenders are not brought to account. In order to minimise the negative effects of potential challenges the bill’s amendments are to be retrospective to October 2008. That is also why I requested that the bill be progressed under urgency. 
This Government is keen to ensure that young offenders are apprehended face the consequences of their actions and have interventions put in place to help stem any risk of their reoffending in the future and becoming more serious criminals. We are equally determined to ensure satisfaction for the victims of crime. This bill seeks to rectify the impact of an unintentional legislative change that occurred during the drafting of the Policing Act 2008 and to restore the ability of police to retain the identifying particulars of young offenders as originally intended. On that basis I commend this bill to the House. 
Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour) 
: 
 The Labour Opposition will be supporting the Policing (Storage of Youth Identifying Particulars) Amendment Bill through all stages and I thank the Minister of Police for the information that has been provided.  
The Policing Act 2008 was a bill passed by the previous Labour Government and I was the Minister of Police at the time. It was a bill I have to say that followed a very long and careful consultative process. It took 2 years in the making. It was a bill to rewrite a 50-year-old Act and over those years there had been incremental changes. The actual Act looked more like a patchwork quilt than good legislation. So over those 2 years there had been wide input from many individuals from organisations and from the Law Commission. We even had a public research project undertaken about this bill and we had very good involvement from the Law Commission.  
I think one of the most important things about this bill was that we had across-this-Parliament work done on the Policing Act because it involved the New Zealand Police which is independent of any political party. So for the Labour Government of the time it was important that we got wide buy-in to a new Policing Act which we did. In fact at the time I commended members of this House for the work that was done on bringing together legislation that really only had one contentious part to it and that was whether we should allow police officers to also stand for local government. At that time we had what was called the “Ron Mark amendment”. Ron Mark was part of our coalition at that time and he was very adamant that we should not allow police officers to stand for local government. He had seen a police officer who had been elected to a particular local authority park his police car outside the council chamber and attend council meetings throughout the day when he should have been policing. Well that was the only contentious part of the bill at that time. But when we have a bill that makes so many changes it is possible that we can make mistakes.  
This is the second amendment to this Act. The first amendment was in October 2009 when we had to validate the oaths that were taken by police officers. That was done in this House in a very cordial way and we passed that through. We are now making another amendment and it too concerns an inadvertent mistake. It was never intended not to carry through the clause that existed within the old 1958 Act that enabled the police to hold and store identifying particulars of young people who had committed a crime had appeared before the Youth Court and had not been referred to the District Court for sentence but an order had been made against them under the Children Young Persons and Their Families Act. There are a number of orders that could be made and are made under that Act and they range from an order brought for supervision with residence to supervision with activity etc.  
It was never intended that the police should not continue to be able to hold that information. We are not talking about young people who had not done anything; we are talking about young people who had committed a crime. The idea was to hold the information in order to help reduce reoffending. That was why the information was being held. It was not being held inappropriately. As far as I can recall there have not been issues raised about such information being held. My understanding from the Minister is that it relates to about 1200 youths each year. I think this Parliament ought to accept that that was an error it was not carried over and that we need to amend it. We also accept that it needs to be done under urgency and it needs to be retrospective. We will talk more about that when we get to the clause by clause analysis.  
The Labour Opposition will support this bill. It could be said that we need to be much more careful when we are drafting legislation but I have not yet found any political party in Government that has not had to amend legislation at some stage. Although we are pretty good in this place we are not perfect. We are not perfect even when a bill goes before a select committee and we have numerous submissions. In fact the original bill had something like five position papers written on it. Every part of it was looked at examined and consulted on. However errors can still be made. The best thing we can do as a Parliament is rectify an error and move on to allow the police to carry out their role. We will support this bill and I hope it receives the support of this Parliament. 
JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki) 
: 
 The Policing (Storage of Youth Identifying Particulars) Amendment Bill amends the Policing Act of 2008 to restore the legal position that was held under the Police Act of 1958 in relation to the storage of fingerprints and photographs by the police. That legal position had not been intended to be altered by the Policing Act 2008 as has just been highlighted by the member across the House Annette King. When the Policing Act 2008 was passed it was assumed that the legal situation relating to the police’s ability to retain the identifying particulars of youth had been carried over from the Police Act 1958. In the development of the Policing Act 2008 there was no policy decision to change this provision. But in October 2010 the police became aware that the wording of section 34 of the Policing Act 2008 which deals with the storage of photographs and fingerprints was much narrower than the Police Act 1958 had been in respect of young people. This bill seeks to rectify the impact of the unintentional legislative change that occurred during the drafting of the Policing Act 2008. I commend the bill to the House. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 I too rise to support the passage of the Policing (Storage of Youth Identifying Particulars) Amendment Bill through all of its stages under urgency in this House. This is an appropriate use of an urgency motion because the bill is an opportunity for the House to correct what is indeed an unintended consequence of an error in the original law that was passed. I believe that urgency is absolutely appropriate in these circumstances. There is no requirement for the bill to go to a select committee and there is no requirement to call for public submissions because in fact the bill that led to this error being made was subject to a very full and complete consultative process as well as substantial hearings in the public arena through the select committee process. Nobody identified this problem during that process because it was a drafting problem. I was a Minister at the time so I was not on the select committee but I was on the Cabinet legislation committee so maybe I missed it when it went through— 
Hon Pete Hodgson 
: Unlikely. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: Probably unlikely. I did read the bills before I attended those meetings. But I did not pick up the particular clause now section 34 of the Policing Act that has led to this problem. 
I think the previous speaker Jacqui Dean identified the answer to a question I was going to ask and that is when did the police first realise that this was a problem. I think the member who just resumed her seat said that they became aware of the problem in October last year. If that is the case I will be asking when we get to the Committee stage why we did not use an earlier opportunity under urgency to deal with this— 
Hon Annette King 
: 2009. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: Well I heard the previous speaker say it was October 2010 when they discovered there was a problem. 
Hon Judith Collins 
: It was a bit later once we had clarified it. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: Once it was clarified. What appears to have happened is that the problem was identified and no doubt that was within police circles themselves. They would have referred it to the Crown Law Office I would suggest for an opinion. In fact the regulatory impact statement refers to that but it does not say what the dates were. I think it is important because we as a Parliament need to take note of these kinds of situations that we find ourselves in from time to time and undertake a bit of analysis of how we could improve in the future not only to mitigate against these things happening but also to ensure that the House has an early opportunity to address what is indeed a genuine error as this one is. This is an important matter to bring to the House. 
The other point I wanted to make was that yesterday we had quite a significant debate about the use of urgency to pass through all stages a change to the date of the census that arose out of the timing of the Canterbury earthquake and the timing of this year’s census. I felt that that bill should have gone to a select committee with public debate. I want to differentiate this bill from that bill for the reasons I have outlined. I think it is important that we enable legislation like this to go through all of its stages at once. 
Also as a general rule of principle one would not support legislation that had retrospective application but again there are instances where retrospective application is appropriate and this is one of those cases. The reason I am persuaded that this is the case in this instance relates to what costs the police would be put to in defending individual cases in respect of historic cases from 1 October 2008 to the date of the situation being rectified. As the Minister of Police said in her contribution Crown Law had advised that it is open to a young person to challenge a conviction based on improperly retained fingerprint evidence. 
What I had not appreciated until I read the regulatory impact statement was that one of the things the court considers when it is considering an appeal on these grounds is “the nature of the impropriety and in particular whether it was deliberate reckless or done in bad faith. If the Judge finds that the evidence has been improperly obtained the next step is to consider whether or not the exclusion of the evidence is proportionate to the impropriety by means of a balancing process that gives appropriate weight to the impropriety but also takes proper account of the need for an effective and credible system of justice.” The statement goes on to say: “If the evidence should have been excluded the court may confirm the conviction set the conviction aside or amend the conviction. If the fingerprint evidence was the only evidence justifying conviction then it may follow that the conviction will be set aside. If however there were other evidence justifying conviction then the Court may nevertheless confirm the conviction. Each case will turn on its own facts.” I think it is that last sentence that really compels us to the view that this legislation must be retrospective in application—“Each case will turn on its own facts.” The police could be required to defend challenge after challenge after challenge rather than relying on a precedent established by the first decision. 
Of course the cost to the Government the police and Crown Law would be considerable. One would have to actually ask whether the interests of justice were served at the same time because sometimes when we are balancing the cost to the Crown and in this instance the police with the interests of justice sometimes the cost to the Crown is the secondary issue and the interests of justice mean that we must pay the price. In this case I do not believe that the case has been made out for that price to be paid. I believe that retrospective legislation is appropriate. 
This law is backdated to the date when the police first established that this was a problem. They sought advice from the appropriate sources of advice they then sought to bring in amending legislation and they worked in collaboration with the Opposition to ensure its smooth passage through all stages in the House. This is a good process and one that I think shows that when Parliament can put its mind to addressing problems then it can do a good job. This is exactly why the Standing Orders allow for urgency and on that basis I am certainly very pleased to be part of the Labour team which is supporting the passage of this bill. 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party disagrees very strongly with the previous speakers on the Policing (Storage of Youth Identifying Particulars) Amendment Bill including Lianne Dalziel who said this is a good process. This is just reinforcing this Parliament’s bad reputation for being the fastest legislator in the West. The Green Party got hold of the bill just last night—an advance copy of the bill. It had not at that point been tabled in Parliament; no member of the public knew anything about it—its name its content or anything else. In fact the public would not have had any chance at all to find out about this bill until we started debating it in this House. At the time we started debating it the bill and the regulatory impact statement had been tabled in the House. So the public and any people who might be concerned about the legal issues involved in this legislation have been totally shut out of this process. If this bill is being rushed through in an hour or two anyone outside this Parliament will not know anything about it and cannot correct anything we may be doing wrong in passing this legislation.  
We do not know for example whether the Auditor-General has done a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act audit on this particular issue. There have been submissions to the Standing Orders Committee by various institutions including the Human Rights Commission about the speed with which bills pass through this Parliament without sufficient time for people to make submissions. The Human Rights Commission has talked about how it is a problem when people have only 4 weeks to make a submission and things like that. In this situation the public is totally shut out of the process and we have concerned citizens lawyers etc. holding seminars. I think a seminar was held in Wellington recently on the frequency of urgency and bills being rushed through—all of these problems in our Parliament—and now we are telling these people that a bill can just be rushed through in a couple of hours without anyone knowing about it and without the parties in the House knowing anything about it in order to do any research on it. They find out about it only the night before.  
In terms of the regulatory impact statement we were given a copy of the bill last night but I could not get hold of the regulatory impact statement because it was not live on the website. I have seen it only now after discussion on the bill has begun. I do not know anything about the Attorney-General’s report if any. There has been discussion on how we made a mistake in the Policing Act 2008. Well what better way to make another mistake than to rush a bill through in a couple of hours without any real consideration by this Parliament let alone by a select committee and let alone allowing submissions to a select committee. It is just totally—well I was going to say unethical; I think it is unethical to proceed in this manner.  
What is the problem? There are two levels. One level is whether we have made a mistake and whether people who do not have a conviction through the Youth Court but are discharged and things like that should not have their identifying details kept by the police. There is an argument that even though their action has been defined as a mistake that situation of their details being kept could continue. Basically we do not want to label young kids with a record—they might be targeted etc. So there is a substantive debate involved here as well as a technical debate.  
But even if we accept the Government’s argument and Labour’s argument that a mistake was made and that it needs to be corrected why does it need to be corrected in this manner? Will civilisation in New Zealand collapse if there are one or two appeals as a result of the alleged mistake made here? Do members think a whole lot of lawyers will be running around? Most people who go through the Youth Court want to get it over with and put it behind them. Will they suddenly engage a lawyer and will the lawyer make an appeal and will they have their conviction scrubbed on the basis of their information being illegally held by the police for a period? I cannot see it happening. Even if there were one or two cases—and I cannot see really that there would be more than one or two—that is not justification for rushing this bill through Parliament as it is or for having a whole retrospective process. Retrospectivity is very bad and people will rightly criticise us for that. Sure this Parliament can make very serious errors that have gigantic consequences involving billions of dollars and cause all sorts of heartache for people. This is not one of those errors.  
Let us look at the statistics provided. I rushed through a bit of a reading of the regulatory impact statement just in the few minutes I had before speaking on this bill and after the regulatory impact statement was made available. It says that 775 cases per year have their identifying details matched with a subsequent crime scene and that some of these cases might have been based purely on a link between the identifying particulars evidence from the previous event to this event—some of these cases. But nobody really knows how many appeals would be made on that basis. As the previous speaker Lianne Dalziel said even if the identity information from the previous event were taken into account by the judge which would be against the law in terms of the law as it has been for the last couple of years that does not mean that the conviction would be deemed to be invalid if there were as there is in most cases other evidence for the commission of that particular offence.  
It is all a very murky area. In fact it is one that should be looked at by the select committee. What is wrong with a select committee actually getting into this sort of thing? Then we find out that the police knew about this issue in October 2010. Jacqui Dean the National speaker disclosed that. If it is believed that a mistake was made in the previous 2008 legislation how come we did not go through a considered process with the parties in this Parliament informed and did not go through a proper select committee process to correct this error? It is just not good enough. The regulatory impact statement states that if just 20 percent of these cases were appealed it would be $20000 per case or $6.2 million but I cannot see that 20 percent of the cases would be appealed anyhow. But what is the price of justice? What is the price of this Parliament conducting the proper procedure of a bill through the House including having a select committee hearing? This is not a case where we need to violate that process.  
The substantive issue is very much debatable. The Green Party would like to get a bit of legal advice on this. We are not all expert lawyers who can suddenly decipher the 2008 Act and this amendment and work out exactly whether it is right. We cannot do that in the half an hour that we have been allowed in this Parliament and from hearing bits of information from other speakers. We require the assistance of research staff the Parliamentary Library informed public lawyers debate with other parties in this House a proper select committee process—all of those things which are an essential part of our democracy have been violated. We used the example of a similar event that was very distressing to the Green Party a couple of years back. A bill on extended parole was introduced into Parliament. We knew about the bill only at the time when it was introduced during a period of urgency moved by the National Government. It was deemed to be a technical bill. Then we found that there was a very critical Attorney-General’s report on that very same bill. The Green Party struggled to analyse it. We voted against it—the other parties did not—but it was a big abuse of process for that to happen. Thank you. 
Hon HEATHER ROY (ACT) 
: 
 I rise to speak to the first reading of the Policing (Storage of Youth Identifying Particulars) Amendment Bill. The ACT Party is supporting this bill. Although I frequently agree with the principled points that the previous Green speaker Keith Locke makes about urgency and parliamentary process we do not believe in this particular case that there is any sinister intent here at all.  
My understanding is that the Policing Act 2008 contained a drafting error that removed the police’s ability to retain fingerprints and photographs or to identify particulars of youth as they previously could under the Police Act 1958. Prior to that error youth identifying particulars could be stored for young people where a Youth Court made an order under section 283(a) to (n) of the Children Young Persons and Their Families Act. The error has meant that youth identifying particulars can be kept for young people only when an order is made under section 283(o) of the Act. It was certainly intended that the provisions for retaining youth identifying particulars in the Police Act 1958 be carried over into the Policing Act 2008. The bill that we have before us today in the House merely seeks to reinstate those provisions.  
I recall when the Policing Act under the stewardship of the Hon Annette King was being moved through and the preparatory work was being done. I would have to say that the then Minister of Police consulted very widely. I remember several occasions when she made her officials available to Opposition MPs such as me and a number of issues were discussed. I think it was a genuine oversight in the drafting of the legislation although that is not to say that we should not be more careful that everything is absolutely right. The Hon Annette King has in fact made that point herself in the House this morning. So there is a degree of regulatory responsibility we should be very cognisant of but it is totally unacceptable that we should have the police acting unlawfully. This bill is very much needed.  
Given that the intent was always that this provision would be in the Police Act 2008 I would on this rare occasion say that urgency is being absolutely appropriately used. It is important that this error be rectified as quickly as is possible. We have heard from other speakers that the police have collected youth identifying particulars for around 2 years unlawfully as they were unaware that there had been this legal change. This situation needs to be rectified very quickly as I said.  
This bill will not extend—and this point is very important—the police’s ability to collect or retain youth identifying particulars beyond what the 1958 Act intended. So in essence there is no change at all in the intent of collection of youth identifying particulars. It is merely rectifying the legislation and putting in place the provisions that were intended and should be there quite rightly. The ACT Party will be supporting this bill. 
RAHUI KATENE (Maori Party—Te Tai Tonga) 
: 
 Ata marie. The bill we are now debating was introduced in the urgency motion described only as a Government bill to be introduced and passed. Even in the internal email circulating about this bill it was referred to as the “Policing Amendment Bill”. In fact until 9.30 a.m. this morning I did not think it was even going to be debated today. One has to wonder why the intrigue. What was so contentious and so sensitive about this bill that we dared not speak its name? That name is the Policing (Storage of Youth Identifying Particulars) Amendment Bill.  
As a matter of principle I try to act in a way that is driven by trusting in the best of people. But here we are on a quiet Thursday morning in Wellington conscious of two very significant events occurring in other parts of the land. In Ngaruawahia at Turangawaewae Marae whanau hapu and iwi from right across Aotearoa are now gathering to remember Nga Kawe Mate o te Motu. This is one of the most significant components of the koroneihana where the people gather from the four winds to pay tribute and remembrance to all those who have passed on since the last coronation. The people come in their hundreds. The widows and children are welcomed on to the veranda of Mahinarangi and the korero begins. This year we are all aware of the significance of so many losses right throughout the land that we grieve collectively. Moe mai ra e nga huhua kua ngaro ki te po. 
[ 
Slumber there the many lost to the void. 
] 
Meanwhile whether in Auckland or in our homes by virtue of coverage from Maori Television the nation will shortly be stopping in our tracks to pay tribute to our former Governor-General and Archbishop of Aotearoa the Rt Rev. Sir Paul Reeves. It is a big day for Aotearoa. I return to a quiet Thursday in Wellington where with little fanfare or fuss while the nation is otherwise distracted legislation is being introduced under urgency and under plain cover to empower the police with the ability to store fingerprints and photographs of arguably our most vulnerable citizens our rangatahi. Is this conspiracy theory? Time will tell but at the very least I hope the Minister of Police can explain why even the name of the bill was not published until this morning.  
The key phrase omitted from the public record until 10 a.m. today was “storage of youth identifying particulars”—in other words the storage of things that can be used to identify youth. Currently under the Policing Act 2008 police can store youth identifying particulars like photographs and fingerprints only following a conviction. This bill amends the Policing Act 2008 to now include a wide range of categories for youth for which an order in the Youth Court other than conviction is made. Examples of orders for which the bill will allow police to keep youths’ fingerprints and photographs include orders discharging a young person without further order or penalty; admonishing the young person; fines; ordering the youth to come before the court for further action at a later date; paying money towards the cost of prosecution; repairing damaged property or any restitution or forfeiture of property; driving disqualification orders; or an order to attend programmes or courses on drug or alcohol abuse parenting etc. supervision or community work. One might well ask what is not being included in the bill. 
As a consequence of this bill if a rangatahi goes through the Youth Court and gets one of those orders against them the police will be allowed to keep their fingerprints and photographs. Currently that is not the case. So is there cause for concern? Presumably if the police are holding on to the fingerprints and photographs it will make matching up future crimes easier. One could argue that if a person commits a crime they need to do the time. It is important to note that this bill deals with retaining fingerprints and photographs not obtaining them. The assumption is that the fingerprints and photographs have been obtained legally. This bill deals with what happens after they have been obtained. For our people when they read this speech online tonight and they see orders such as “admonishing the young person” or “ordering the youth to come before the court for further action at a later date” their antennae will be raised.  
In preparing for this bill I came across an article published in 2007 in the police bulletin  
Ten‑One 
. It featured a police practice note that encouraged members of the New Zealand Police to promote the fact that it is in the best interests of children and young persons to voluntarily agree to be fingerprinted. To be fair the practice note made it clear that children under the age of 10 years should be fingerprinted only for the purpose of eliminating them from a police inquiry and that children aged 10 to 13 years cannot be fingerprinted without written approval from the Youth Aid section of the police. But the note also described the collection of fingerprints as being a crucial part of policing in the community. “Crucial” is a big word. There is not a lot of option built around that word. It means that collection of fingerprints is going to be and will remain a priority in the police officer tool kit. So although this bill is focused on storage and retention rather than on obtaining the fingerprints and photographs in the first place it is still part of a bigger picture in which the material relating to young people is being obtained and stored by our authorities in an attempt to establish serial profiling of youth offenders.  
That brings us to a much bigger discussion about racial or ethnic profiling and the connection to human rights—that is the fundamental rights relating to the protection of personal data and non-discrimination. Those are areas I will focus on in later readings of this legislation. The recognition of discriminatory ethnic profiling practices has taken on a new light in comparable jurisdictions around the world in the context of recent policy changes relating to counter-terrorism law enforcement immigration customs and border control. Discriminatory ethnic profiling describes the practice of basing law enforcement decisions solely or mainly on an individual’s race ethnicity or religion. For many of our community it is an issue they have unfortunately associated with too many policing decisions in relation to apprehension of our young people. It must be an issue that we give serious consideration to in this debate. The Minister will be well aware of the robust body of evidence related to police bias and over-scrutiny of Maori as is best articulated in the series of research reports around police responsiveness to Maori and Maori responsiveness to police.  
The Policing (Storage of Youth Identifying Particulars) Amendment Bill introduces a huge raft of issues for rangatahi and for the Maori population as a whole. The Maori Party will be opposing it at every stage. 
SHANE ARDERN (National—Taranaki - King Country) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to rise in support of the Policing (Storage of Youth Identifying Particulars) Amendment Bill. We have heard quite a revelation in Parliament today on a number of fronts. One that has come as a surprise to me and will be no surprise to Assistant Speaker Ross Robertson as a reasonably long-serving member of the House is that Parliament can make a mistake and individual MPs can make mistakes as can individual Ministers. I thank the Hon Annette King for the genuine way she presented that to Parliament. When I first arrived here 13 years ago the thing that staggered me the most—and this is not a partisan comment in any way—was the huge number of long-serving members of Parliament on both sides of the House who had never made a mistake—ever. Not once not ever. No mistakes had ever been made. So for a senior member of the House to rise and acknowledge that a mistake has been made is quite a step forward.  
The second revelation that I heard today which surprised me equally as much was the fact that the Green Party members are not experts on everything. That has come as a huge surprise to me because for the 13 years that I have been in Parliament they have been experts on everything and they are across all the detail particularly around agricultural emissions and other such things. They are experts and there is no question about it. To learn today that they are not experts on everything is quite a revelation. 
I do not buy into the conspiracy theory that has been espoused by one or two speakers. I can see there has been a genuine mistake and this is the response to that. I think there will be pretty much widespread support across the House for these amendments and I look forward to the passage of them through Parliament. Thank you. 
CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) 
: 
 I find myself in the very uncomfortable position of rising to defend Judith Collins. I feel unclean. I support the Policing (Storage of Youth Identifying Particulars) Amendment Bill. I have now had the opportunity to read it. Thanks to the waffle coming from certain other members in the House I have had the opportunity to sit down and go through it. I do believe this is a case where urgency is warranted. I am very critical of the Government’s overuse of urgency and I think a lot of cases where the Government has pushed bills through all stages under urgency have been totally unnecessary. But in this case I think there is actually a legitimate reason to do so.  
We want to be really clear about what we are doing here. We are fixing a mistake by passing the bill under urgency through all of its stages and retaining the status quo. We are not actually changing anything; we are retaining the status quo. The change was made by mistake and we are fixing the mistake. Parliament did not get all of the advice on the pros and cons of making the mistake in the first place. We are fixing the mistake and retaining the status quo. If members have a legitimate concern about the status quo there are other avenues to debate that. There are other ways they can raise those concerns but actually retaining the status quo is the responsible position for Parliament to take in this instance because this change was never intended to be made.  
The question is of course why we should fix the mistake urgently. The reason for urgency and the reason for doing it all at once and without a huge amount of publicity and notice prior is that we do not want to see a whole lot of young offenders who have been convicted getting off their convictions because the information the police held that allowed them to identify the offenders in the first place was something that technically under this mistake in the law they were not allowed to hold.  
I will talk particularly about what this might mean in the context of something that I hope people will be able to understand. In doing so I hope that members will acknowledge that I have had only half an hour to look at the bill and the notes. If I make a mistake the Minister of Police can correct me in her next speech. We have a problem with young offenders in Upper Hutt etching shop windows. They have caused thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars worth of damage etching these shop windows on Main Street in Upper Hutt. As I read it if the police identified those young people and they had previously been found guilty of something by the Youth Court—anything other than that last provision section 283(o) I think—and they had not been sent to the District Court for sentencing because the Youth Court had dealt with it the police would then no longer be able to hold the photographs and fingerprints that they would have otherwise held.  
If those young people then reoffended and were caught reoffending because they left fingerprints when etching windows on Main Street in Upper Hutt the police had used those fingerprints to identify them and they were then convicted under this law that is technically open to appeal. I am looking at the Minister and I hope that she will correct me if I am wrong. But technically that conviction could be appealed and those young people having done thousands of dollars worth of damage could be let off. Everyone who had been the victim of thousands of dollars worth of damage to their shop front windows would be outraged at the thought that the offenders could get off on a technicality because of a mistake that this Parliament made that was totally inadvertent totally unknown and could not have been foreseen. I think we are doing the responsible thing which is making sure that those convictions are allowed to stand.  
It is also important to remember why we send young people to the Youth Court. The Youth Court was established to protect young people so that they do not have to go through the District Court process except if they come under a very limited range of circumstances. This mistake has effectively diminished the powers of the Youth Court in a way that was never intended. I am a defender of the Youth Court. I think it is important that we have a Youth Court and that we do not put young and vulnerable kids in the District Court system unnecessarily. In having a Youth Court we have to make sure that the powers of the Youth Court are protected. This inadvertent mistake has severely diminished the powers of the Youth Court in a way that I am sure Parliament never intended.  
In supporting this legislation we are moving back to the status quo. That does not mean that some of the concerns raised by Keith Locke and Rahui Katene are not worthy of debate; I am sure that they are. But in retaining the status quo we are deferring those concerns for another day and I hope there will be another opportunity for them to put forward their arguments on those issues in due course.  
I turn to the provisions of the Children Young Persons and Their Families Act under which the Youth Court would deal with some of these young offenders. The Youth Court could be imposing a fine for example that would otherwise be imposed by the District Court. The outcome is effectively the same as it would have been in the District Court but the decision is being made by the Youth Court instead. The police technically therefore under this mistake that has been made would have to destroy all of the fingerprints and photographs that they hold of those young people potentially preventing the police from identifying reoffending by those young people.  
It could potentially prevent the police from doing the good work that they do in preventing youth reoffending. I think that is ultimately where we have to get to. We have to say that we do not want young people to keep reoffending and to end up in the District Court system when they are older. We want to give the Youth Court and the police the ability to deal with these young offenders straighten them out and get them back on the straight and narrow so that they are not getting into trouble any longer. I am concerned that this inadvertent mistake weakens the police’s ability to do that and that is one of the reasons why Labour will be supporting the bill.  
The Youth Court could impose a fine. The Youth Court could also make an order for the young person—or in the case of a young person who is under the age of 16 years for any parent or guardian of the young person—to pay a sum towards the cost of the prosecution. Under the mistake that has been made that would also result in all of the fingerprints and photographs of the offender being destroyed. The Youth Court could order the young person to pay a sum that it thinks fit by way of reparation to the person who had suffered emotional harm loss or damage to their property. The Youth Court has the opportunity to say that if a young person has done something wrong they can pay reparation to the victim or their guardian can pay reparation to the victim.  
Basically the young person has been found guilty; they have committed the offence. The Youth Court has heard the evidence and determined that the young person has committed the offence. In a District Court were an adult being convicted there would be no issue. The police would be able to retain their photographs and fingerprints. But because it is a young person who is being dealt with in a separate court that is set up to protect them we give the police a lesser ability to retain the evidence that previously they had been able to retain. That just does not seem right. One of the most important things about the Youth Court is that we set it up to protect young people and we should not diminish its powers because that undermines the legitimacy of the court.  
Overall as we go through the debate I will be interested to hear further argument. But it seems to me that we are correcting an anomaly.  
I will respond briefly to the comments made by Shane Ardern and reassure him that any evidence the police collected when he drove his tractor up the front steps of Parliament would not be covered by this legislation. He has long since ceased to be deemed a young person. So he is fine. He does not need to worry about this bill at all— 
Hon Pete Hodgson 
: He’s childish. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: Well he is childish but technically under the law he has nothing to worry about. All of the evidence that the police collected when they were investigating that matter will still be able to be kept.  
The Labour Party is supporting this legislation because we think legitimacy is urgent in this case and it does retain the status quo. 
MELISSA LEE (National) 
: 
 Ahn nyung ha se yo Mr Assistant Speaker Robertson. It is a pleasure to rise to speak on the Policing (Storage of Youth Identifying Particulars) Amendment Bill. Before I begin I say to the speaker who has just resumed his seat Chris Hipkins that he should agree with the Minister of Police more often because “scruffy” does suit him; “dirty” does suit him. It is a good look. Agreeing with the Minister of Police who does a fantastic job does suit that young man.  
This Government is keen to ensure that young offenders are apprehended face the consequences of their actions and have the interventions put in place to help them stem any risk of their reoffending and becoming more serious criminals in the future. Obviously we are equally determined to make sure that the victims of crimes are protected. In relation to this unintended situation as the previous Minister of Police Annette King has admitted it was the previous Parliament that passed the Policing Act in 2008 without the intention of giving the police fewer powers. If the bill is not passed today the unintended situation means that the police would not be able to retain the identifying particulars of these young offenders. That would mean that the police had fewer powers and that is not what we want.  
Identification of young repeat offenders is a key tool in assisting the police to do their job of preventing future repeat offending by these young people. We need to make sure that the young people do not continue to reoffend. When the Policing Act 2008 was passed as I said earlier and as other speakers have said the legal situation relating to the ability of the police to retain identifying particulars of youth was carried over from the Policing Act of 1958. It was not removed on purpose; it was done totally unintentionally. Therefore I think we are all in agreement in this House today—except for some people who believe that this is a conspiracy; I do not agree that there is a conspiracy—I support this bill. Thank you. 
CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour) 
: 
 Talofa lava malo e lelei kia orana. The tone of this debate has been quite good so far and I refer to what Shane Ardern said earlier about the fact that mistakes are made by Ministers. I think within what was achieved though we do need to remember that what Annette King did during her time as Minister of Police in terms of a complete overhaul of the policing legislation was a huge achievement. Unfortunately this is one mistake that has been pointed out but the usage of urgency to correct it is the right usage of urgency so we are now discussing this legislation. 
The tone of speeches until the beginning of Melissa Lee’s contribution has been good but I have to point out that her comments about my friend and colleague Chris Hipkins being scruffy and dirty are unfair. He is not scruffy and dirty at all. We do wonder what happened to the Melissa Lee who wanted to build motorways to get rid of all crime and stop South Aucklanders going to the rest of Auckland to commit crime. What happened to that big plan and strategy? We are wondering where that has gone. But that is beside the point. 
I turn to the bill. A mistake was made in the Policing Act 2008 and it is good that we are seeing urgency being used for the right purpose today so that that mistake can be corrected. We have before us the Policing (Storage of Youth Identifying Particulars) Amendment Bill. This bill amends the Policing Act 2008 to restore the legal position under the Police Act 1958 in relation to the storage of youth indentifying particulars fingerprints and photographs. As Annette Shane Ardern and other members who have spoken on this piece of legislation have said it was an inadvertent mistake that is now being corrected. 
Under the 2008 Act the police can store youth identifying particulars only following a conviction. This means that if the identifying particulars of a youth are obtained and the outcome of the case is that an order is not made under section 283(o) of the Children Young Persons and Their Families Act—relating to the youth being brought before the District Court for sentence or decision—then the identifying particulars cannot be stored. This legal position was not intended to be altered by the 2008 Act. There was no intention to alter that at all and as my colleague Chris Hipkins said basically this bill returns us to the status quo. There was no intention to change it.  
There needs to be greater scrutiny of complex legislation to minimise loopholes and greater scrutiny of the use of urgency to ensure that valuable parliamentary time is managed effectively. So there does need to be a greater level of scrutiny of complex legislation. We do need to keep in mind that that was very complex legislation so in some ways I think the House understands that we do need to be a little bit forgiving because of the complex nature of the legislation we are talking about and the fact that a mistake has been made—but it could have easily been made. However as we go into the future a higher level of scrutiny needs to occur to try to avoid that happening. 
When the Policing Act 2008 came into force a number of changes were made including to the way in which constables’ oaths were administered. However even after the changes oaths were still being administered in the same way as under the 1958 Act. This required an amendment to the Act to validate the oaths that continued from October 2009. So since this very complex legislation was brought in in 2008 I think this amendment bill will be only the second correction that has been made and hopefully this is the only other anomaly we find in the Policing Act. 
In October of last year Parliament had to rectify legislation because an amendment to the Summary Proceedings Act that came into force in June 2008 had excluded some minor property offences in the Crimes Act from schedule 1 of the Summary Proceedings Act. From  
Hansard 
 with regard to legislative mistakes Charles Chauvel said: “we need to look at why it happened and how we can do our best I think through the safeguards we have in the form of the officials and the select committee procedure and through our decisions as parties to vote in particular ways on particular legislation to safeguard against this sort of mistake being repeated too often”. The reality is that we are not perfect here and mistakes will occur. The point that Charles was trying to make—and I think we would all agree with—is that the fewer mistakes that can be made the better. So whatever levels of scrutiny we need to put in place to ensure they do not occur the better. 
According to the explanatory note of the bill 1200 youths have an outcome under section 283 of the Children Young Persons and Their Families Act 1989 and the related identifying particulars cannot be stored due to the unintended mistake in the 2008 Act. The storage of youth identifying particulars is vital for the detection of youth offenders who go on to reoffend and it is important that we have the correct mechanisms to prevent young offenders from progressing to become adult criminals. That is the point of taking this bill through under urgency at the moment. What we do not want is for young people who have been convicted to get off charges because their information was stored in a way that could be deemed illegal because of the anomaly that exists within the legislation currently and that is what this legislation is seeking to rectify. 
This necessary rectification will be vital to solving crimes. Hence we on this side of the House are supporting the Policing (Storage of Youth Identifying Particulars) Amendment Bill which has been put forward under urgency. We were slightly surprised that it was so secretive in terms of urgency and in terms of us not being aware until—how long was it until we found out that this bill was being brought in? [ 
Interruption 
] Oh OK. So it was at the last minute that we got this bill put before us but that is OK; we support it. Basically this bill amends the Policing Act 2008 to restore the legal position under the Police Act 1958 in relation to the storage of youth identifying particulars. We do need to make sure that if our young people are convicted they do not get off on some sort of technicality and this bill seeks to ensure that that does not happen. 
I want to again thank Annette King in her role as Minister of Police in the previous Labour Government. Great work was done with the legislation. We know that there is other legislation in this country that could do with an overhaul as well. There is legislation that has been added to time and time again— 
Hon Annette King 
: The Children Young Persons and Their Families Act. 
CARMEL SEPULONI 
: Yes the Children Young Persons and Their Families Act and other pieces of legislation have constantly been added to and the overall legislation is not very coherent. That was what Annette as the Minister of Police sought to address when the Labour Government dealt with this. What we need to do is look at other legislation that may need similar treatment and we know full well that even if that is done there is still the possibility that mistakes are made as the bill before us today points out. 
We have been concerned about the overuse of urgency with regard to some of the things the Government has been trying to push through but we think that this particular case is a good use of urgency. 
Before I finish I must tell members that one of my local principals pointed out that he found it really interesting that the Government would use urgency for national standards when there was no evidence to support them and they were contested hotly by those in the education sector but that it would say that child abuse in this country requires urgent attention yet it has not pushed through any legislation under urgency to address that issue. One bill that I constantly bring up that needs to be addressed urgently but has not been—it should be one of the measures that goes through under urgency—is the Domestic Violence Reform Bill which continues to languish at the bottom of the Order Paper. The next time—and I am sure there will be a next time—the National Government decides to put the House into urgency I plead with it to consider bringing the Domestic Violence Reform Bill through the urgency process. It was consulted on widely across the sector. It continues to be pushed down the Order Paper.  
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: Just for future reference the member must use a title or a full name when referring to members of the House. 
Dr CAM CALDER (National) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to rise and take a brief call on the Policing (Storage of Youth Identifying Particulars) Amendment Bill. This is an enjoyable collegial debate and as I look across the House I see that members opposite all seem to be freshly scrubbed despite the comment made by a previous speaker Chris Hipkins as to his own feeling of lack of cleanliness. 
Chris Hipkins 
: It’s not a good idea to slag the Opposition off when we’re supporting you you know. 
Dr CAM CALDER 
: Not at all; I was saying how well scrubbed the Opposition is looking.  
The speaker did make a good point—in fact a number of good points—and that was that this bill will not extend any powers of the police despite the concerns expressed by a previous speaker to my right. It will not extend any police powers at all; it will just retain the status quo. Parliament is acknowledging that we made an error in the previous Parliament. The legislation was made by that Parliament and it had an unintended consequence which was not picked up at the time. The reason for this amendment bill is to remove that unintended consequence which would allow guilty youths potentially guilty parties to escape consequences of their acts and win an appeal on a technicality. We will have the opportunity to debate this bill further during the course of its progress through the House and at this point in time I commend the bill to the House. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the Policing (Storage of Youth Identifying Particulars) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. 
Ayes 106 
New Zealand National 57; New Zealand Labour 42; ACT New Zealand 5; United Future 1; Progressive 1. 
Noes 13 
Green Party 9; Maori Party 3; Independent: Carter C. 
Bill read a first time. 
Second Reading 
Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Police) 
: 
 I move  
That the Policing (Storage of Youth Identifying Particulars) Amendment Bill be now read a second time 
. I would like to take the opportunity to thank Labour ACT United Future and Progressive for their support for this legislation. I will deal with a couple of issues that have been raised in the first reading debate. The first was the issue that there is a conspiracy. This issue was raised by the member from the Maori Party Rahui Katene. I have to say that I am particularly concerned by that comment because it sounded as though the Maori Party had not been given a copy of the bill until yesterday evening. Actually it had a copy of the bill 10 days ago as one would expect from a confidence and supply partner so I have to say I am a bit disappointed by that comment. Anyone who has any dealings with me understands that I am not someone who indulges in conspiracies; I do things pretty straightforwardly. So I have to say that I am very disappointed by that sort of implication. 
An issue was raised by the Green Party member Keith Locke about whether the bill should go to a select committee. I acknowledge that that was his concern. This matter did actually go to a select committee over 3 years ago in 2008 when as the Hon Annette King has related the original bill went through a very long process of 2 years in an attempt to get it right. Yet there were still unintended consequences. I do not cast any aspersions on people because when we have long processes like this and very complicated legislation with multiple rights that we are trying to connect to other Acts that have been around for a long time it is very important to understand that occasionally something will not work right. 
Mr Keith Locke has asked for some information as to essentially what went wrong. I am happy to provide that information to the House. The 1958 Act essentially said that if a person has had particulars—fingerprints and photographs—taken and that person has been acquitted so in other words found not guilty then those particulars must be destroyed. The 2008 Act turned it right round and said that the police could not retain the particulars—the photographs or fingerprints—unless the person had been convicted. And there were a couple of other exceptions such as with diversion and section 102. 
Basically the 2008 Act said that the person had to be convicted. This became a problem for youth in terms of the Youth Court which was set up—as has been rightly noted—in many ways to protect youth from themselves and to try to deal with their offending. It was set up for youth not to hide from their offending but to deal with it in a sensible way at a time when an intervention can make the most difference to their lives and also to the lives of potential victims. Essentially most of the interventions as they are mostly known in the Youth Court are not considered to be convictions even though in many cases the youth has said: “Yes I did the crime. Yes this is what I expect to happen.” There will have been a family group conference and interventions made so the only convictions really that would be covered by the Act would be those where the youth has been sent by the Youth Court through to the District Court for sentencing. These would be very serious offences such as rape murder and manslaughter—very serious offences. In other words all of these other examples of what we normally loosely call convictions for things like burglaries would not be counted as convictions. 
I do not think it is in the best interest of young people who have offended to ignore the fact that they have committed burglaries and that they are clearly in need of some pretty serious intervention in order to save them from a life of crime and to say that it is all a conspiracy and that the police are being mean. Well the police are not being mean; they are trying to save these young people from themselves and in many cases from a lifetime of crime. One of the things we know is that the younger somebody comes into the justice system particularly into the prison system—an 18-year-old for instance—the more likely they are to stay there for most of their lives. That is something we are trying to avoid. 
I think that all parties in this House agree with the fact that we are trying to deal with these young offenders—these 14 or 15-year-olds in many cases—who can sometimes cause quite a lot of harm and can cause victims to feel re-victimised if these matters are not dealt with which can ruin their lives. I do not think it is being smart in terms of legislation to ignore that situation and to say that it is a case of the police being mean and that we want to go around and help our young people against the police. The police are not there to be mean to young people; they are there to try to prevent crime and to hold offenders to account. We do not help young people by not holding them to account when they create victims and when they offend against the law. 
I say to the other members of the House who are supporting this bill that their support of this bill will help the police to do their jobs better in just the same way as was intended in 1958 and in the same way as the House intended in 2008. The House did not intend to change the law in relation to obtaining photographs and fingerprints of young people who have committed a crime and been dealt with in the Youth Court. The House did not intend that to happen. It was an inadvertent drafting error and the process had gone on for over 2 years. So I say to members who are suddenly saying today that we need longer processes that there is an example of a long process that did not work quite the way it was intended although most of the Act has. I think it is a good Act and we on this side of the House were very pleased to be able to support it. 
In essence this bill is about restoring what everybody else would have thought was the status quo and about helping the police in their constant fight to prevent crime to hold offenders to account and to protect the rights of victims. I commend this bill to the House. 
Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour) 
: 
 I would have expected cooperation by Parliament on the Policing (Storage of Youth Identifying Particulars) Amendment Bill because an inadvertent error was made at the time the original bill was passed. It was not something that was decided on by Parliament. In fact it was an unintended error made by Parliament by all parties in the House. I can say that because all parties got to sit around the table to discuss the original legislation over many many months and to go over its every detail. In fact it is probably the only legislation I can think of where that has happened. As Heather Roy pointed out when she spoke on the bill all parties were involved and were pleased to be involved in trying to get the best legislation we could.  
I accept the comments made earlier by Charles Chauvel—not in this debate but he has said them before—that we need to look at how errors are made and try to minimise them. But the Minister of Police has pointed out that the original bill went through a very long process which involved the Maori Party and the Green Party which was consulted on by the wider public including Maori and which went to our best legal brains. Yet at the end of the day we still found two inadvertent errors in it. I think that is because we are human. We do not know everything and sometimes errors are made. That is why I would have expected cooperation on this bill and I would have expected it under urgency. 
I think Lianne Dalziel set out very clearly why we need to pass this legislation under urgency. I can say that Lianne Dalziel is a person who looks very carefully at all legislation looks very carefully at human rights issues and gives very good advice on it all. She could see that there was a need for us to do this under urgency. I am not in favour of taking urgency on bills that are not urgent and the Government has taken a whipping on that from other parties in this House. But let us face up to it: when an issue requires urgency we expect the best cooperation possible on it. 
I too was very surprised by the comments made by Rahui Katene from the Maori Party. I could not detect a conspiracy in this bill. I was surprised that the Maori Party had had it for 10 days and then said it was a conspiracy. The member said it came “under plain cover”. I presume that when the bill was given to the Maori Party the party was told the name of the bill what was in the bill and what it did so for the member to come to this House and say that it was a conspiracy that it came “under plain cover” and that she did not know anything about it seems to me to be a great surprise and in contradiction to what the Minister of Police herself said. 
Rahui Katene went on to say that there were better and bigger things to do on this day in New Zealand. Of course some people would think there are better and bigger things to do every day in New Zealand than to be in this Parliament. But I actually think that this change is an important change that needs to be made. When we get to the Committee stage the Minister will have an opportunity to outline in greater detail why the matter was discovered in October last year and what process took place then before it came before this Parliament at this time. I think that people will look forward to that explanation; I am sure there will be one. I think it is an important thing to have. There are already people off today at the tangi for Sir Paul Reeves. There will be people going to different functions. But we are paid to do a job here as well and that is what we are doing.  
There appears to be a bit of information missing for some members. We are talking about the retention of information about young people who have been before the court and had a charge proved against them. We are not talking about the innocent young person who has not done anything; we are talking about a young person who has been before the Youth Court had a charge proved against them and been subjected to a finding or an order by the Youth Court. Those findings which we can go into later when we get to that clause are set out in the Children Young Persons and Their Families Act. They can be many and varied. They can include for example situations where restitution has been required to be paid to the victim of a crime. So we are not talking about some idea that we will pick up young Maori or Pacific people off the street and hold their information when they have done nothing. We are talking about young people who have been before the Youth Court have had a charge proved against them and have been subject to a finding.  
Rahui Katene 
: And we know who the police are picking up who they are charging. 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: I would be interested to know why the member who is interjecting now would not think it appropriate to hold that information.  
I think that Chris Hipkins gave an extremely good example. Young people in Upper Hutt—and this has happened in my own electorate and I am sure it has happened in many other people’s electorates—have gone out and etched on the windows of businesses within the business community. That cannot be rubbed off. They have ruined entire plate glass windows with the etching which costs businesses thousands of dollars. Those young people have been detected they have been picked up they have appeared before the Youth Court a finding has been made and an order has been given. 
When that order was given under the old Act the police could retain the photographs and fingerprints of those young people because they had offended. The next time they did it there was the ability to ensure that the right person was charged with the crime committed. So I cannot for the life of me understand why we would not want to continue to hold that information.  
There is a very important point here: Keith Locke said: “What price justice?”. I say to Keith Locke: “What price justice also for the victims?”—for the victims who were subjected to a young person destroying their property at the cost of thousands of dollars. That young person has had a charge proved by the Youth Court and the police want to hold the information about that young person who has offended. In many areas it is to help them if they reoffend or to ensure there is justice for those who have been injured in the committing of that offence. I cannot see what is so wrong in doing that. That is what we did for decades. The Policing Act 1958 was a 50-year-old Act but when we finally rewrote it 50 years after its enactment we forgot or overlooked the need to carry over those clauses. 
I also thought it was a red herring from the Maori Party to say that the issue we needed to discuss was about obtaining personal information. This bill has nothing to do with obtaining information. I am certainly happy to debate that issue at a later date and I also have views on how we obtain information and what information we obtain. But that is not what this bill is about. This bill is about the retention of impersonal information about a young person who has offended and who has already appeared before the Youth Court. 
Keith Locke in his contribution to the first reading also asked “What would be one or two appeals?”. Well Keith Locke would not have any idea how many appeals there would be if we did not take urgency on this bill today. He said the cost would be some figure like maybe $6 million. Well I can tell the House that I would rather spend $6 million on helping young people and on putting in place support for young people than on wasting the time of the court and wasting the time of the police to rehear a case in which the Youth Court has already made a finding on a young person but whose case is reopened on a technicality. You see there is a cost to justice but there are two sides to that—many sides in fact: the cost to police time the cost to court time and the cost to the victims who were offended against. Sometimes I think it is important to try to weigh up all of them and look at where the balance is.  
We on this side of the House believe that it was not intended that we did not carry through those clauses. The matter was never raised by the Greens in those discussions; it was never raised by the Maori Party in 2 years of consultation. It was an error and it is an error that we ought to correct today as soon as possible. I think as Chris Hipkins has said that it is in the interests of young people to do the best we can once they have appeared before the Youth Court to give them an opportunity when an order is made that is diverting them away from the District Court and from a major crime— 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member; her time has expired. 
JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki) 
: 
 The Police Act of 1958 put in the provision that the particulars of young people be recorded. It is worthwhile reflecting on the reason for that. The reason is that young people who go through the Youth Court may have made some pretty dumb decisions in committing the crime for which they were convicted so the Parliament of the day back in 1958 made in my view the very sensible decision that by keeping their particulars the police were then able if you like to track those young people if they were to offend again.  
The intention of doing that I guess is to hold those young people to account. I also suggest that if young people knew that their particulars were held on record it might have the effect of making them less likely to offend. That surely was the intention of the New Zealand Parliament in 1958 and again was the intention of the Parliament in 2008.  
There was an oversight and a mistake was made at that time. The Policing (Storage of Youth Identifying Particulars) Amendment Bill seeks to correct that mistake. It enjoys the support of most of this Parliament—quite rightly in my view—in that it holds young people to account and it provides a disincentive for them to offend again. In this second reading speech I again commend the bill to the House. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 I want to put on the record the conclusion of the regulatory impact statement. Nobody in this House will be surprised to find that I have studied it in depth. “The Policing (Youth Identifying Particulars) Amendment Bill will make no substantial change to the Policing Act 2008. The Policing Act 2008 will be amended (most probably section 34) in order to reinstate the scope for the retention and use of youth IP”—identifying particulars—“provided for in the Police Act 1958 and that was intended to apply to the 2008 Act. There is no evidence of a policy decision during the development of the Policing Act 2008 to reduce the circumstances under which Police could retain youth IP. Sections 32 to 34 of the 2008 Act aimed to allow Police to collect a range of personal information from suspected offenders for the primary purpose of identification prior to charge or summons. This information is to be destroyed unless a conviction is secured following criminal proceedings or the offender’s guilt is otherwise established. The legislation was drafted in this way to ensure that Police did not have the ability to build up personal information on people who were detained but who were later established not to have committed an offence. The amendment sought is consistent with the original intention of the Policing Act 2008 in that it seeks to retain the youth IP once the charge against the young person has been proved. As such there does not appear to be any specific reasons for not reinstating the provisions of the Police Act 1958.” 
When we look at what the bill does we see that it does what the regulatory impact statement asks it to do which is to address sections 34 and 34A of the principal Act. When we look at the principal Act we find that they sit within a part of the Act called “Powers operations and offences” and it specifically talks about identification of people detained by police. Unless somebody was an incredible technical expert there is no way that one would know from the face of the words in this statute that it did not allow the police to retain the information for people who had been convicted. Certainly on the face of it it says that the information cannot be retained for those who have been detained but are subsequently released. On the face of it there is no way that anyone would know that was the case. 
That is backed up by the  
Hansard 
 of the debate on the Policing Bill on 26 August 2008. In fact the debate on Part 3 traversed two dates—7 August then it was picked up again on 26 August. There were only two speakers on that part: the Hon Annette King who was obviously speaking as the Minister to introduce the part in the Committee stage and one Chester Borrows who took two calls on the part to show the National Opposition’s support for bringing the current policing regime “into the modern era” to quote him. It was a very brief but obviously meaningful contribution to the debate. 
What I think is extraordinary given the debate we have had in this House today from both the Green Party and the Maori Party is they said nothing about the part at all. They did not even contribute to the debate on it. In fact the amendments were agreed to and Part 3 as amended was agreed to without a party vote being called. So there was no focus on this part whatsoever. I would have thought that if it was such a point of principle it would have been dealt with then. On the face of it the bill as it then was looked like it was doing what we are making it do now. If it was such a big issue why was it not raised at the time? I myself would probably take advantage of an opportunity to have a go if I felt really strongly about something. If the Government was bringing back an employment relations amendment or something else that I felt particularly passionate about then I guess I would have a go even though I felt that it would be taking advantage of a technical error that people had not realised at the time was being made. We would have had a field day with it absolutely. 
But that is not the case here. This is a case where the whole of Parliament understood completely what it was doing and the technical writing of the law did not deliver on that understanding. That is all that we are dealing with here. It is just a technical error. It is a draftsperson error. We are a Parliament made up of human beings. We are not all legal professionals with the technical skill of the draftsperson. I certainly would not pretend to even begin to have that skill. I always took great care with the wording of legislation but even I did not always get it right as we can see if we look at the financial advisers legislation which our select committee virtually had to completely rewrite when it came back to the House under this Government. 
There are occasions when people get it wrong and if they do get it wrong then Parliament has to be able to front up and make those amendments. I do not think it is an opportunity to relitigate any of the issues that may be outstanding from the previous bill even though I have just admitted that I would be hypocritical and do that if I got the opportunity on an issue I felt passionate about. But I just do not think this legislation fits the bill. What this bill today does is correct a technical drafting error that prevented the intention of Parliament being expressed. That is all it does. I do not think it is appropriate for the opportunity to be taken to relitigate and certainly not to cast aspersions by saying the bill is being dealt with on a particular day in order to avoid the full scrutiny of this House. The full scrutiny of this House has been applied to this part. It was applied on 7 August 2008 and again on 26 August 2008. It had substantial consideration prior to the original bill even being introduced as evidenced by the fact that that legislation had overwhelming support. We do not often get legislation on which there is such unanimity across the House. I feel that on this occasion it is important that this bill proceeds under urgency through all of its stages so that we can correct a technical error and right a wrong. 
DAVID CLENDON (Green) 
: 
 I rise to support the comments made by my colleague Keith Locke earlier and to reiterate the Green Party’s opposition to the Policing (Storage of Youth Identifying Particulars) Amendment Bill. We do so on points of process and of substance. The process issues are clear. We are in urgency. I was handed a paper copy of this bill at about 11 o’clock last night. We did not have an electronic copy. We had no access to the regulatory impact statement. It is very difficult to make substantive decisions and judgments on the quality or necessity of legislation at 11 o’clock in the evening without the benefit of reference to any other people.  
We had no knowledge of the status of the evidence being talked about. We understand that for a number of years—for a period of some 2 years perhaps—evidence was retained which was an illegal act on the part of the police. It was clearly inadvertent; it was something they believed they could legitimately do. It was not until sometime after 8 o’clock this morning when we were able to get access to one of the Minister’s advisers that we knew about the status of that evidence—what the actual mischief was that this bill was seeking to correct. We were speculating until we saw this bill land on the Table an hour and a half ago as to what the problem was that was being addressed here. Certainly our speculation led us to the position the Government is proposing that there is an issue here of potential liability but it is a clear failure of process on the Government’s part not to inform a party in this House of what is going on. That is sufficient reason in itself to oppose the bill.  
The Standing Orders Committee is currently working on ways of streamlining the work of this House to avoid the necessity for urgency or extended hours. All parties in this House should be taken into confidence on matters like this which is a correction of an error—we concede that. An error was made by everybody in this House. There is no dispute about that. But to the extent that we are not taken into the confidence of the Government and given an appropriate period of time to give due consideration to these issues then the Government will have barriers. Any Government will have barriers if parties are not given due time. It is interesting to note that the Maori Party has had 10 days to consider this bill and it has come to a view to oppose it. We respect that view as I hope all others do. We do not know how long Labour has had to consider this bill. We had overnight and less than an hour and a half this morning.  
We are not in essence opposed to correcting errors. From memory we supported the necessary changes to the constables’ oath issue last year or earlier this year. There was a clear and urgent need to make that change under urgency because it potentially endangered a significant number of arrests and indeed convictions later. We are now told that the Government has been aware of this problem since October 2010. There has been ample time and opportunity to give this issue correct and appropriate process and to engage the whole House in looking for a solution to the problem. We are told—I assume in good faith—that nothing in this bill will extend the powers of the police but that the position will simply revert to what was believed to be the status quo post the change in 2008.  
With all due respect to the good intentions of the people making that claim we would like the opportunity to verify it. It is not unheard of that errors do occur either intentionally or by omission. This bill could be giving further powers to the police in relation to the issue of evidence retained or gathered or whatever it might be. We would like to have the time to get an independent legal verification of that point but clearly that is something that will be effectively denied unless we can do it in the course of the time this debate is actually in progress. The point has been made that the police are seeking to restore what they believe is their authority to retain evidence from young people who effectively are convicted in the Youth Court. The exceptions are those who are sent to the District Court for sentencing. Clearly only a high order of offending will involve that reference to the District Court. Under sections 283A to N of the Children Young Persons and Their Families Act which is referred to in this bill there is an extraordinary range of penalties against which young people can be judged and if they are so penalised then the information can be retained.  
Section 283A refers to incidents where young people might be found to have offended by the Youth Court and the judge might choose to discharge them or to issue an admonishment. Basically that is to give them for want of a better word a good bollocking in the court—to tell them off to indicate to them that they might be at the top of the slippery slope and to encourage them to mend their ways. I suggest that judges would use that option only when the offending was at the very very low end of the scale and when the young person has no history of offending and perhaps has a good robust family background. We can assume that judges would exercise their judgment in giving those very very light-handed penalties. At the other end under group 7 responses we are talking about much more serious penalties given to those young persons: residential supervision requirements to pay reparations or quite substantive fines and penalties that effectively could routinely otherwise be applied in an adult court the District Court.  
Under the substantive part of this conversation we would like to challenge whether it is appropriate for example that evidence ought to be retained that a young person’s identifying particulars ought to be retained when the judgment is that the offending was of such a low order that simply a discharge or admonishment from the judge is an appropriate response from the Youth Court. That is a very long way from a single offence or more likely a history of repeat offending that causes the judge to impose a much more substantive penalty along the lines of residential supervision or whatever it might be. We are told there is a likelihood of costs being involved if this error is not corrected and if the correction is not made retrospective back to 2008. That is a genuine concern. Looking at the numbers I think the figure of $6 million pops up at us from the regulatory impact statement.  
I highlight the fact that the possibility of an appeal for a young person who has been convicted would be there only if the evidence previously retained by the police was the sole evidence that led to that conviction—for example a fingerprint. It would be in cases only when there was no other evidence when there was no admission of guilt and when there was not some other means of identifying the culprit who had committed whatever the offence might have been. So the number of cases where there is a likelihood of liability to the police to the Crown would be very very small I would argue. How many cases at Youth Court level rest on a single fingerprint or perhaps a single photograph from a CCTV camera? How often is it that a single piece of evidence is not reinforced or supported by somebody who had observed the carry-on such as a shopkeeper or a member of the community with other evidence being available to the court upon which to base a finding of guilt at the Youth Court level? Having said that I say that doubtless there will be occasions when a young person might potentially see the opportunity to appeal.  
Again I reiterate what my colleague Mr Locke said earlier. The likelihood of young people wanting to once again go through the court process to once again shine the light on the facts of their prior offending and on the fact that they were actually issued a conviction or the equivalent of a conviction is we believe vanishingly small and does not justify this urgency process or the secrecy under which this legislation has been brought to the House.  
We have now been debating this matter for something like an hour and a half or an hour and three-quarters. The rest of the country is probably completely unaware of what we are doing but without getting into pedantics I say that we are making a substantive change here. What is currently not legally allowable police practice will become legally allowable police practice if this legislation goes through so to suggest that it is not a substantive change is actually a little bit ambiguous to say the least. As to bringing into the debate the matter of the 1958 legislation which was amended in 2008 we will say more about that in later speeches. Kia ora. 
RAHUI KATENE (Maori Party—Te Tai Tonga) 
: 
 There is an enormous body of literature associated with existing police bias and overscrutiny of Maori which I hope was explored in full before the Policing (Storage of Youth Identifying Particulars) Amendment Bill was drafted. It is disturbing to be in this Chamber and to hear the frivolous banter going across the House about members being children at heart or being scruffy and dirty. It is disturbing because we are talking about an extremely serious issue. I am not talking about police powers; I am talking about the well-being and the future of our youth.  
I will firstly respond to the comments of the Minister of Police that she was disappointed that we had drawn light to the fact that the public was not made aware of this issue until a few hours ago. I challenge both Minister Collins and Mrs King to read the  
Hansard 
. I did not say at any point in my call on the first reading of this bill that this was a conspiracy; I asked: “Is this conspiracy theory?”. Clearly the question has got people excited but let us not shirk from the responsibilities of debating in a manner that is open and allows different points of view.  
Yes the Maori Party did receive a copy of this bill as is expected in the confidence and supply agreement but a key statement in that same agreement is that “In the event that National Party-led Government papers are provided to the Maori Party in the course of consultation or briefings they shall be treated as confidential and shall not be released or the information used for any public purpose”. So although we were given the draft 10 days ago it was not until 9:30 a.m. this morning that the bill was introduced and we were therefore able to talk about it publicly. We take issues of confidentiality and good faith seriously so we did not leak the paper we did not speak publicly about this issue and we did not contact our networks. We did not seek feedback until the information was made public and I hope that that would be acknowledged by the Minister. 
I also have in mind what the Hon Annette King has said about there being five big reports that justify this move to store the unique personal identifying material of our rangatahi. Just as a starting point let me share with members at least the same number of big reports that create a certain level of truth to the allegation that crime will be found where it is most looked for.  
We could start by reading the vital resource produced by the Hon Justice Eddie Durie in 2007 “The Study of Maori Offending”. There is the evidence published in 2003 in Professor David Fergusson’s 21-year longitudinal study on ethnicity and criminal convictions which breaks down the data into both police contact statistics and criminal convictions. Moana Jackson’s study from 1988 should be a core text of any lawyer training:  
The Maori and the Criminal Justice System. A New Perspective: He Whaipanga Hou.  
There is the research by Pania Te Whaiti and Michael Roguski  
Maori Perceptions of the Police  
and 
 Police Perceptions of Maori 
. There is also former Commissioner of Police Peter Doone’s  
Report on Combating and Preventing Maori Crime 
 which was published by the now defunct crime prevention unit in the Ministry of Justice. These are just a few reports that must be considered within the debate if we are truly to exercise due diligence in looking at this issue.  
Essentially the key point is that although Maori make up only 15 percent of the general population they currently comprise 40 to 45 percent of all police apprehensions. The question that this House is yet to tackle is why Maori are overrepresented in the criminal justice system. But there is an even more pressing issue that we must attend to. Let me quote from the opening address of His Honour Judge Andrew Becroft Principal Youth Court Judge at the Ngakia Kia Puawai Conference 2005 in my home town of Nelson. In his address “Maori Youth Offending” Judge Becroft said: “Maori youth offenders make up around 50% of all youth offenders but in some Youth Courts the figure is as high as 80% or 90%—despite Maori encompassing only about a quarter of the New Zealand population under 17 years of age. This situation is deeply concerning to everyone involved in youth justice.” That is absolutely so.  
So why is this Parliament apart from the Maori Party and the Green Party prepared to put so much focus on increasing police powers rather than giving some serious consideration to the focus of an ethnic bias in the New Zealand arrest and conviction process. All of the research that I cited earlier indicates that Maori with a given history of offending are more likely to be convicted than non-Maori with the same offending history and social background. In another report called  
Whanake Rangatahi 
 Te Puni Kokiri revealed that Maori youth are three times more likely to be apprehended prosecuted and convicted than non-Maori youth.  
The other very significant issue that I think has been woefully overlooked so far in this debate is that this bill targets our young people. As such surely it is essential that young people contribute to this debate. What do we have to lose? Why would we not want to hear the views of our young people about this issue? Two months ago Rethinking Crime and Punishment called a meeting of young people—16 to early 30s—to discuss the establishment of a young people’s forum. They were concerned that the voice of young people is absent from the conversation about crime and justice. Despite the fact that young people are the most involved in the criminal justice system both as victims and as offenders young people are missing from the debate.  
At that inaugural meeting of the young people’s forum they raised some key issues which I hope could be heard in this House. They wanted to be involved in creating influencing shaping designing and contributing to policy and strategy. They wanted to see a strong young people’s voice speaking out on crime and justice issues and gaining the attention of policy makers researchers and those involved in the political process. They sought our support in assessing and responding to the needs of young people in decision making and planning processes but wanted to have ownership. They were not interested in paternalism or tokenism.  
In this debate a lot has already been said about the concept that mistakes are made. Well let me share a comment made by Emily Whittaker on Pita Sharples’ Facebook page at 11 a.m. today: “It is not fair that our rangatahi records be kept by the police for future use. Many of our Rangatahi make mistakes like we all do and in a lot of cases they regret their misdoings. Rangatahi are entitled to another chance. Why should they be the target for negative actions created by government. Why not focus on the positive and encourage our Rangatahi to stay out of the justice system altogether. I strongly oppose this bill.”  
Here is another comment from Awhina Rameka-Waapu: “Ae it would be relevant to all youth engari this is discriminatory policy. Maori are over-represented at every stage of the criminal justice process and can be seen as a result of bias that operates within the criminal justice system. … As such this policy will only exacerbate this bias and discrimination. Additionally all youth will make stupid mistakes in their lives we must provide the opportunity for second chances. This policy will take that away from them.”  
Mrs King stated earlier that there is a cost to justice. The Maori Party will never resile from our belief that the cost to justice that keeps on keeping on is the opportunity cost lost to our young people. We must not be afraid to hear what our young people have to say about this policy. The Maori Party is doing what it can to bring that debate to the House today. Our Facebook pages our Twitter accounts and our telephones are working hard to hear what our rangatahi have to say. We will place those views on the record. 
SHANE ARDERN (National—Taranaki - King Country) 
: 
 I rise again in support of the Policing (Storage of Youth Identifying Particulars) Amendment Bill. I was interested in the comments of the previous speaker Rahui Katene. I suspect that the heartfelt appeal the member made on behalf of the Maori Party for Maori youth is misguided in this debate. This debate is not about introducing something that is not there already; it is about correcting a mistake that was made inadvertently by Parliament. I suspect that the debate the member would like to have is on whether these records should be kept. That will be a debate for another time and on other legislation.  
I was also interested to hear the comments from the Green member David Clendon. He suggested that the Green Party had not been taken into the confidence of the Government over this bill. Confidence goes both ways. If the Greens had been taken into the confidence of the Government and the information contained within the proposals had been let out into the public arena then that would have created some problems for the police and potential costs to the justice system. So the member should perhaps go back and talk to the co-leaders of his own caucus and ask why they feel that the party might not have been taken into confidence. As we have just heard from Rahui Katene the Maori Party was taken into confidence and its members maintained that confidence. That is the challenge I throw out there and I look forward to a response to that.  
I would also like to bring to the attention of the House that if these amendments were not able to be made in the way they have been then there is a high probability that there would be some potential further litigation or appeal against some of the information that has been kept which would have wasted the time of the Ministry of Justice and the police and achieved nothing.  
Finally I am pleased that the member Mr Hipkins raised the fact that I am now no longer in the age group that is eligible to be affected by this bill but I suggest to the member that he should pay very close attention to the detail of this bill because his own records may still be captured under the provisions being discussed. I suspect that he will pay attention to the detail. Thank you. 
CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour) 
: 
 I rise to speak in support of the Policing (Storage of Youth Identifying Particulars) Amendment Bill. I have been listening to this debate very carefully and I find it quite fascinating. I find fascinating how this issue has been construed and the sorts of arguments that have been presented. I am not going to look at this bill from a historical point of view or even a technical point of view. I was not in Parliament when this legislation was passed and I certainly do not have the technical expertise of colleagues like the Hon Lianne Dalziel but it seems that if we take just a very simple common-sense approach—and I know that that word gets overused and I say it with some nervousness—then essentially what we are talking about here is a mistake. A mistake in legislation was made that has some significant consequences. The Hon Lianne Dalziel has referred back to the  
Hansard 
 of the time and has been very clear in looking at what the intention of Parliament was. It is always important when we look at our legislation to see what the intention of Parliament was at the time. The intention of Parliament at the time was clearly not to make the change that has been inadvertently made in this legislation.  
It seems to me that the average person living in this country would think given that circumstance that it is the responsibility of Parliament to fix that mistake—not to create a long and unnecessary debate about one very specific matter but to actually fix the mistake that everybody agrees was made. I have not yet heard a speaker stand up and say: “No no that was not the intention of Parliament and we strongly did this that and the other thing at the time.” Clearly the intention of Parliament was not to end up with the outcome we have currently. What is being sought here is to amend the Policing Act to restore the legal position in relation to the storage of youth identifying particulars—that is fingerprints and photographs for example.  
The Hon Annette King took us through the process she led as then Minister of Police of amending the Policing Act. I also say that everybody in this House understands that Annette King has a reputation for being a Minister who was very thorough and—as she has often been described—a “safe pair of hands”. She undertook a long consultative process of 2 years to look at an Act that was 50 years old. She has recognised in this Chamber as we all have that a mistake was made during that process. But given the long process and given the complexity of some of the things that were being changed in that legislation it is hardly surprising. This does happen from time to time and Parliament should be duty-bound to fix that.  
So now we have the situation where loopholes could be created and young people will not be picked up for committing subsequent crimes because their identifying particulars cannot be stored because of a technicality. Charles Chauvel—and this has been quoted by others—has talked about what we need to do when there are legislative mistakes. We try not to make them—that is the first thing. He is quoted in  
Hansard 
 talking about trying to identify how and why mistakes are made so that we do not repeat the problem because as a Parliament we want to pass good law. I think that everybody in this place would agree with that. We want to pass good law that will stand up and reflect the policy intention reflect the consideration undertaken by a select committee where the public have their say and reflect what we are trying to achieve—not to create unintended consequences as has happened here. So I put a lot of weight on the reference to what was in  
Hansard 
 around this particular provision. It makes it very very clear that there was no intention for this to happen.  
The storage of the youth identifying particulars is vital for the detection of youth offenders who go on to reoffend as I have said and it is important that we have the correct mechanisms to prevent youth offenders from progressing to adult criminals. The sooner we pick up people who are offending the more that can be done to try to stop them going down a certain path—especially with young people. We want to be able to intervene at the earliest available opportunity to identify the underlying problems and to try to ensure that they go down a different track. If that is delayed because the police do not have the ability to identify somebody in a repeat situation then the consequences will come to the fore—just later. They will come to the fore later. I think we all agree that early intervention around youth offenders is important. So rectifying the mistake that was made is vital to solving crimes and vital to providing early assistance and intervention for our young people.  
Later we will be talking about the parts of the bill but it is a pretty simple bill. The first part really just says that it is retrospective and the second part looks at repealing section 34 and inserting new sections 34 and 34A in the Policing Act to clarify the instances in which the identifying particulars of young people will be destroyed. It looks at that situation. There are two factors here in terms of general rules. I understand why the Greens and the Maori Party are raising concerns and I think it is important that we are scrupulous about these things particularly around retrospective legislation. We all want to be scrupulous around those sorts of situations because that is important and we want to be scrupulous about process. We in the Labour team have often raised concerns about process under this current National Government: the abuse of urgency the lack of scrutiny and the lack of an evidence base in legislation. But we do not believe in this particular circumstance that this is what the problem is. We are talking about dealing with something that everybody agrees is a mistake.  
The broader issues that have been raised in this debate are very very important ones: the causes of crime. I think we all want to get to the bottom of the causes of crime. One of the differences is that we on this side of the House understand that increasing inequality and poverty are part of the problem and that this is something that is going on in this country as we speak. More and more people are struggling to make ends meet the gap between rich and poor is growing and our young people and our children are being disadvantaged. Too many of them are living in poverty too many of them are unemployed and too many of them are not in education jobs or training. These are serious issues that we keep raising and I am afraid to say the Government has really really failed in regard to our young people.  
These are important questions to deal with when we are talking about the causes of crime. But I do think we need to ensure that the police have the tools they need to identify whether people are starting down a criminal track and to intervene so that we can try to do something about that earlier. I also think it would be very good for us to have a much more substantive debate about the causes of crime and to hear the voices of young people. I had the privilege recently with my colleague Charles Chauvel of visiting Arohata Women’s Prison and speaking to a number of the women who were there undertaking drug and alcohol treatment. They were very pleased to have two MPs asking their view on what led them to be there and what would make a difference to their chances of reoffending when they are released from prison. It was a very very interesting conversation and a lot of good insights came from that. People want to have the skills to get a job. People want a chance and people want to deal with things like addiction so these are important things. But hearing that directly from the women in Arohata was very very powerful for me.  
So as I say I understand why there is debate here but I think that if we want to talk about the causes of crime if we want to look at particular disadvantaging of Maori—and I absolutely accept that Maori are overrepresented— 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: I am sorry to interrupt the member. Her time has expired. 
Dr CAM CALDER (National) 
: 
 Thank you for the opportunity to take another call on the Policing (Storage of Youth Identifying Particulars) Amendment Bill. I take cognisance of my colleague Rahui Katene’s impassioned comments about the unemployment rates for young Maori particularly and offending among young Maori. It is a huge concern for this Government and I draw to her attention that there are thousands more Youth Guarantee places and places in trades academies on stream to help address that problem as well as growing our economy of course.  
However this particular bill we are considering now is not really the time for that argument. That argument is not apposite to this debate. What we have here as has been pointed out by a variety of speakers is an unintended consequence of the drafting of a bill that has led to the removal of the police’s ability to use certain tools. These tools are the storage of identifying particulars of young offenders.  
When the Policing Act 2008 was passed it was assumed that the legal situation relating to the police’s ability to keep these identifying particulars—fingerprints and photographs—would be carried over from the Police Act 1958. The simple matter is that it was not. There was no policy decision made to change this; it was as we know an unintended consequence of the drafting of the bill. We have heard many reasons why from members who were in the House at that time.  
I think it is a very simple situation we are dealing with here. I acknowledge the concerns of my colleague. I will say no more at this stage other than to commend the bill to the House. 
CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) 
: 
 I think it is really important that we keep in perspective what we are doing here. The Policing (Storage of Youth Identifying Particulars) Amendment Bill corrects a mistake that was never intended. It restores the status quo. So we are not making a significant change; we are restoring the status quo. I think it is really important that we keep in mind that this mistake this change that has occurred to the policing legislation was never debated by the public. It was never debated by Parliament. People did not have the opportunity to make submissions on it at a select committee—that was never intended. So to say that we are somehow erring by restoring the status quo and repealing this unintended change to the law is simply wrong. This is the right thing to do. Restoring the status quo in the absence of debate that should have preceded the change is the right thing to do.  
I am not saying that we should not have a debate about whether the police should store the identifying details of young people. If we had that debate I personally would stand up in Parliament and say that yes I support the provisions in the current legislation. I am not afraid of debating the issue but I do not think we should debate it in the context of correcting a mistake that was made. Basically the arguments being put forward by the Green Party and the Maori Party seem to be that we should leave in place a law that was unintended and was never debated and I do not think that that is right.  
I am not entirely sure what the point of Rahui Katene’s many contributions so far has been unless of course she wanted to devote 20 minutes to demonstrating quite clearly that the Maori Party has absolutely no influence over the National Government. We did not need 20 minutes for that; we knew that anyway. I think that all she has managed to do so far is demonstrate the fact that the Maori Party does not seem to have any influence over the National Government.  
I think that both the Green Party and the Maori Party have missed the critical point here which is that the bill is restoring the status quo. It is not designed to make a significant law change. As I mentioned in my first reading speech—unusually I am delivering my second reading speech only shortly after delivering the first reading speech—[ 
Interruption 
]—and Moana Mackey did not hear the first one so I am sure she will appreciate it—I think it is really important that we continue to respect the role of the Youth Court.  
The Youth Court is there to protect young people from themselves in some instances as the Minister mentioned but also from the harsher edges of the adult criminal justice system—we could use the Bill English phrase “the sharp edges”. The Youth Court is designed to protect young people from that. I think that is good. I think many of the concerns that David Clendon raised—I had some sympathy with many of the concerns he raised—when taken to their logical conclusion question the valid role of the Youth Court.  
I think that the Youth Court is really really important and we should not be questioning the role of the Youth Court and whether it is doing a good job. I think the Youth Court does a very good job and I am really disappointed if this debate which is about correcting a mistake is used to question the validity of the Youth Court.  
The other thing I would be disappointed by is if this debate is used to question the police. I spent 10 years fighting a legal case with the police which was ultimately found in my favour. But I am not holding a grudge against the police on that because I think that overwhelmingly— 
Hon Simon Power 
: That’s right—forgiving member. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: —I am a very forgiving member—the police do a very very good job. I will tell members another thing. I went out on night patrol with the police a few weeks ago and it was a real eye-opener for me. 
Hon Simon Power 
: It’s called an arrest. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: I was there voluntarily I can assure the Minister. It was an eye-opener and a lot of the people they were dealing with on a Friday night were young people. They were young people who were intoxicated or had taken drugs. They were very difficult to deal with and overwhelmingly what I saw was police acting in a very responsible manner in their dealings with young people. They were not going over the top; they were basically looking after the young people who were getting themselves into trouble. I think we should respect the really important role the police play in that.  
I do not think that we should always assume that the police are out to get people. They are not. Ultimately they are out there to protect everybody. Sometimes they are protecting young people from themselves and I think they do a pretty good job of that overall. I want to thank the Hutt Valley police for giving me the opportunity to go out on the night patrol with them. 
Hon Simon Power 
: Over that 10-year period. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: They have obviously forgiven me for the 10-year battle. 
Hon Steve Chadwick 
: They probably don’t remember you. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: They probably do not remember me either. I thank Steve Chadwick—that was very flattering! 
Hon Simon Power 
: Why was the member arrested when he was 7? 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: I am happy to go into the case in detail if it would be useful for the Minister. But I come back to the substance of this particular bill and the reason why we want to pass it under urgency.  
As I mentioned in my first reading speech I do not want to see young people who have been through the Youth Court have effectively been found guilty of doing whatever they were doing and have been dealt with under the Children Young Persons and Their Families Act through the Youth Court being let off on the basis that the information the police stored that identified them in the first place had been held by the police illegitimately.  
The other thing of course is that it might not necessarily be the dealings of the Youth Court that are brought into question. A subsequent proceeding in the District Court could be brought into question on the basis that the information the police used in the District Court hearing had been collected for an earlier hearing by the Youth Court. That could also be questioned and I do not think that that is the right thing to do.  
If it is the right thing to do it should be done deliberately by Parliament and not by mistake. It was never done deliberately by Parliament; it was done accidentally. If the Green Party and the Maori Party had very strong views on this during the debates on the Policing Act they could have raised those at the time. As my colleague Lianne Dalziel pointed out the only two people to speak on that part of the debate were Chester Borrows and Annette King. When the mistake occurred Maori Party members and Green Party members did not feel strongly enough about it to debate that part of the bill at all. So if all the concerns they are raising now are legitimate concerns there are opportunities for them to raise them but not in the context of preserving an inadvertent law change which is what opposition to the bill does. It preserves a law change that was not intended that was not debated that was not scrutinised and that the public never had a chance to have a say on and I think that is the wrong thing to do.  
I think Parliament is doing the right thing by correcting the law back to the status quo. Then if there is a legitimate debate to be had about whether the status quo should be changed there is a way to do that. The way to do that is obviously to introduce a bill refer it to a select committee and let the public have their say on it. We should not be making law changes by accident then arguing that they should be preserved. I think that is what this bill is all about. It is all about making sure that the will of Parliament is actually respected even when a mistake is made and that is what happened in this particular case. With that I will end here. I look forward to the Committee stage of this debate. 
MELISSA LEE (National) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to rise to take a short call on the second reading of this Policing (Storage of Youth Identifying Particulars) Amendment Bill. As parents we monitor the behaviour of our children and we punish them sometimes to make sure they grow up to be responsible adults. My son recently was grounded because he breached some rules within the house. He lost his use of the internet and his mobile phone and that was a terrible thing. He hated that punishment and he will hopefully not break those rules again. But if he continues to break those rules he will be punished further and maybe the length of punishment will increase. The police do similar things with youth offenders who have been charged and found to be guilty. Having fingerprints and photos helps the police to identify repeat offenders. I am concerned that the data collected since the Policing Bill was enacted in 2008 may be destroyed which would mean that youth offenders might not be dealt with to the full extent of the law. That is my only concern when we are debating this legislation.  
I will go now to a comment made by the Green Party member David Clendon who talked about process. I believe and previous members have actually said that the Policing Bill was debated thoroughly and in fact went through the select committee process. The Law and Order Committee members are not shrinking violets; I know that for a fact. It is the case in this particular current Parliament and I would imagine that the previous Parliament also had very robust debate in the Law and Order Committee. I believe that there would have been debate and it would have been thorough.  
I go to the comment made by the Maori Party member Rahui Katene who spoke passionately about this issue. But if people listened just to her speech alone without actually taking note of the whole context of the debate they would be under the impression that we are introducing new legislation to increase police rights and to take away rights from criminals. That is totally not so. This bill is about restoring police powers that they always had from 1958 to 2008 and that were unintentionally removed. Those powers were inadvertently taken away in a drafting error and this bill is to correct that. I commend this bill. 
CHRIS TREMAIN (National—Napier) 
: 
 I rise to commend the Policing (Storage of Youth Identifying Particulars) Amendment Bill to the House. Thank you. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the Policing (Storage of Youth Identifying Particulars) Amendment Bill be now read a second time. 
Ayes 106 
New Zealand National 57; New Zealand Labour 42; ACT New Zealand 5; Progressive 1; United Future 1. 
Noes 13 
Green Party 9; Maori Party 3; Independent: Carter C. 
Bill read a second time. 
In Committee 
Part 1Purpose and application of this Act  
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party has argued in the first and second readings of the Policing (Storage of Youth Identifying Particulars) Amendment Bill that the process we are going through rushing this bill through in urgency is a travesty of the parliamentary process. A lot of the argumentation both by National and Labour speakers has been that this is all just about restoring the status quo. They are using the fact that there was not a lot of debate around this provision before the Policing Act went through in 2008—in fact there was no debate about this provision—to say that somehow the intention of the legislation is the way they want it: particulars can be kept by the police of basically the whole range of people involved in youth offending who have come before the Youth Court.  
The fact that there was no substantive debate on the 2007 Policing Bill does not make a case one way or the other. If there was no debate on it members cannot say that the intention of Parliament was in any particular direction. Labour members can come out and say they were the Government then their intention was in that direction and they are sorry but they got it wrong in the legislation. Labour members can say that if they like and National members can get up and say they now believe that the intention of the bill was this or that. But Parliament is made up of all of the MPs and parties in Parliament and the Green Party did not engage with this particular clause in the 2007 bill because we were not aware of all of the implications which were not part of the general debate so we did not commit to an argument one way or the other on this particular provision. So the idea that we or the Maori Party or any other party had a particular intention over the 2007 bill which can now be divined by Labour or National speakers is nonsensical.  
What has happened as a result of this debate is that there clearly is a substantive issue. Once this issue has been brought to the attention of the whole Committee including the Green Party and Maori Party there is a substantive issue. It is not just correcting an intention of Parliament. It may be correcting an intention of the Labour Government or it may be correcting an intention of National but it is not correcting the intention of Parliament. Rather than saying “Oh well we can rush this through in urgency under our definition of the situation.” as Labour and National are doing they have to take Parliament into account particularly on the substantive issue that has been raised.  
The second to last speaker for National in the second reading Melissa Lee said that this situation has applied since 1958. Well let us dissect that a little bit. In 1958 there was no Youth Court. I am not an expert on what our methods of dealing with young people were like in 1958 but I think those methods were probably a little bit backward and that is another reason to have a proper consideration of this bill so that we can actually look at what the treatment was of young people back in 1958. We know that it was not until 31 years later in 1989 that the Youth Court was set up. So for the National speaker to say as she did that all of these provisions have applied since 1958 when there was not even a Youth Court in 1958 is nonsensical which is another reason why we have to have a substantive discussion of this provision.  
As Rahui Katene said Maori Party members are out consulting their networks now that they are allowed to because they did not have to hold their confidences past half-past 9 this morning I think Rahui said. There is clearly not only a Green and Maori Party MPs debate in this Committee but a community debate starting up around for example the provisions in the Children Young Persons and their Families Act section 283 paragraphs (a) to (n) which cover all of the different penalties that can be applied to young people short of conviction. One of the first of these penalties as my colleague David Clendon mentioned comes up in paragraph (b) and is admonishment. The idea that someone in 2011 who is admonished for often the most trivial of offences in the Youth Court should then have their fingerprints and all kinds of things preserved is against the modern concept of justice and youth justice in particular.  
We have in this Parliament passed legislation like the Criminal Records (Clean Slate) Act reflecting a more modern concept of justice—that we do not want to tar offenders with things they may have committed in the past. Surely if an 11-year-old has committed a minor offence that is dealt with by admonishment in a Youth Court that offence is not the sort of offence that should be necessarily followed by collection of all kinds of personal details and fingerprints etc. We want to create in that young person the feeling that—after their admonishment and the family telling them they have done wrong and all the rest of it—they have put all that behind them that there is nothing in the police records in terms of identifying characteristics and fingerprints and that they can go on to a whole new life. They might have shoplifted a packet of chewing gum or something like that. 
The Labour speaker Carol Beaumont said it was good to have a debate on the causes of crime. Well this provision is actually a good point for a discussion on the causes of crime. I really respect what Rahui Katene said about Maori offending and Pakeha and all the rest of it. But one of the problems of repeat offending including Maori offending is people getting alienated from the system by feeling that they are unjustly targeted. To have a softer provision whereby all this stuff is not kept on someone who is admonished in a Youth Court for stealing a packet of chewing gum is one way of getting rid of that alienation and reducing repeat offending. That is all modern thinking in relation to responses to crime particularly youth crime and is much more modern than what existed in the Police Act 1958 which has been referred to in the debate.  
The question of urgency and why we need it—and David Clendon said this now—relates to the argument that there will be piles of court cases that cost huge amounts of money. Annette King came up with the figure of $6 million. In fact the regulatory impact statement put out by the police says that possibly 20 percent of cases where identifying information was collected on young kids and used in a subsequent case would be appealed and could cost $6.2 million. A bit of common sense would say that when kids and their families have been through that process they do not want to resurrect it. In something like 99 percent of cases they will not go through the appeal stuff and cost the country millions of dollars and all the rest of it. If members do not believe David Clendon and me on that then perhaps that is why we should have a whole process around this bill. At the select committee we could get lawyers in and people from Child Youth and Family to tell us what the situation is whether there would be a lot of appeals and what the advantages or disadvantages are of not collecting all this identifying information on some people who have been subject to minor penalties diversion admonishment and what not in the Youth Court. Why should we not have that discussion?  
There is a certain embarrassment amongst the Labour and National speakers about this being retrospective legislation and there has been a lot of criticism of retrospective legislation by the legal profession. I think that is another very strong reason for not supporting this bill and for going through a proper process whereby we can have all of the discussion. Even the whole question of the relationship between the Policing Act 2008 and the Police Act 1958 could be discussed. I have not had time as a Green Party speaker here to look at all the amendments to the 1958 Act. I know that that Act did not deal with the situation of a Youth Court because that was not established until 1989. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 Part 1 deals with the retrospectivity issue but it does contain the purpose of the Act so I suppose we can traverse a bit more broadly. As I understand it this is where I depart literally from the Green Party speaker on this matter. The regulatory impact statement states: “There is no evidence of a policy decision being made during the development of the Policing Act 2008 to reduce the circumstances under which Police may retain youth [identifying particulars]”. Perhaps that is the question that the Minister in the chair the Minister of Police could assist the Committee with by responding in the debate on Part 1. Could she please explain to the Committee what the rules were prior to the Policing Act 2008 and how they related to the specific issue that we are addressing? I actually think that is the question that Keith Locke is asking. Given that the Children Young Persons and Their Families Act was obviously much later in its application than the Police Act 1958 what was it that existed before that saw us carried through to the 2008 Act provisions? I think that would be a useful basis for the discussion we will obviously have on Part 2. 
I want to go back through section 34 of the Policing Act 2008 in terms of what was stated in the bill. That provision 
passed through this House without any comments against it or indeed without any reference to any concerns and no vote against it either. It required that the identifying particulars of a person that are obtained under section 32 or section 33—Part 3 gave the power to identify people detained by the police but this provision was about keeping that information—“may be entered recorded and stored on a Police information recording system; but (b) any photographs or visual images of a person and any impressions of a person’s fingerprints palm-prints or footprints that are obtained … must as soon as practicable be destroyed—(i) after a decision is made not to bring proceedings”—that is it will not go to trial and will not be a matter dealt with by the court or essentially—“… (ii) after the completion of proceedings against the person in respect of the offence for which the particulars were taken unless (A) the person is convicted; or (B) the person is discharged under section 106 of the Sentencing Act 2002; or (C) an alternative resolution is imposed where the person admits to an offence (for example diversion).”  
So all of those issues were there on the record. As far as the House was concerned it believed that what it was doing was allowing the police to retain that evidence if the person was convicted if they were discharged under section 106 of the Sentencing Act or if an alternative resolution was imposed where the person admitted to an offence. What this particular bill does is change that to refer to “criminal prosecution proceedings”. It is a new definition and it essentially means proceedings “commenced against the person in respect of that offence or offences including that offence under the Crimes Act 1961 or under the Summary Proceedings Act 1957 (alone or if the person is a child or a young person as defined in section 2(1) of the Children Young Persons and their Families Act 1989 in conjunction with that Act);”. That is why it would be quite useful for the Minister to traverse the history of the legislation in order to make clear what would have happened under the Act in place before the 2008 Act was passed. 
The second point which is actually the in order discussion point for Part 1 is the question of retrospectivity. I have said in the House before I think in both the first and second readings that retrospectivity is something this House should as a general principle guard against. It is not a good proposition that we retrospectively reapply the law. Obviously people’s circumstances change and to change a person’s legal rights or obligations by retrospective application is something that even our New Zealand Bill of Rights Act invokes us to guard against. But I think there are occasions when retrospectivity is acceptable. 
Let us take the option that is proposed by the Green Party and that is to introduce a bill refer it to the select committee call for submissions and then expect the good lawyers of New Zealand to come and give us helpful submissions about how we might improve the law rather than their filing the trillion cases that they would file on behalf of their clients. And it would actually be their obligation to file them because it would have been brought to their attention that there was a technical opportunity available for them to appeal and get their client off—but only on a balancing act; there is no absolute guarantee that they would get their client off. In fact the advice we have in front of us is that as long as there was other evidence as long as this evidence was not the only evidence justifying conviction the court might nevertheless confirm the conviction. As I said before each case will turn on its own facts. That could result in the Crown facing case after case after case because it could never rely on the precedent of one case—the first case—as would normally be in the situation with a legal test case. 
I think it is really important that we think through carefully what is being proposed by the Government. As I said I would normally be claiming constitutional outrage in the depths of the night in deepest darkest urgency. I would normally refer to the date on the Chamber wall—if I could read it from here. I think it says 16 August but we are actually beyond 16 August. Oh it is behind me? Very good. It says Tuesday and today is not Tuesday; it is actually Thursday. So I would normally be making my constitutional outrage speech but this bill does not deserve one of my constitutional outrage speeches because it is not a constitutional outrage. It actually amends the legislation to say what Parliament intended to say. It was only a technical drafting error that left out the reference to the Children Young Persons and their Families Act that enabled this to happen. 
I think the Minister by explaining exactly what happened prior to the 2008 Act coming into effect—what exactly the sequence of events was what the law would have required—will make it very clear to the Committee why this bill should pass through all of its stages in these circumstances and why the rule against retrospectivity is not offended by this particular bill. I hope the Minister takes a call either in the debate on Part 1 or at the beginning of the debate on Part 2 in order to clarify for all of us the specific sequence of events and how that might specifically apply. I think that would give great comfort to those who have some genuine concerns which they have talked about. I have heard it was a conspiracy on one hand and then somebody else said that no they were actually just saying it was a conspiracy theory. But I do not think there is a conspiracy theory. I do not think there is a conspiracy. I do not think anyone believes that. I think the truth is somebody has identified a mistake and Crown Law has said yes it is a mistake and yes there are consequences. 
The police have acted on that advice and destroyed all of the evidence that they collected up until that point. They no longer retain it for that purpose. I think that is a worthy approach by the police and I think the least this Parliament could do is restore the tools they thought they held on the passage of the 2008 legislation and I understand from the Minister they held the day before the 2008 legislation was enacted. Let us put the police back into the position they were in before. Let us not worry about whether this bill is retrospective because the police have addressed the retrospectivity issue by destroying all of the evidence they held against young people who were convicted. I think that is the dividing line for most of us in this House: we are talking only about people for whom the information was retained post-conviction or post one of those other conditions. 
RAHUI KATENE (Maori Party—Te Tai Tonga) 
: 
 I will first speak about retrospectivity. Clause 3 states: “This Act amends the Policing Act 2008.” According to the explanatory note on 30 September 2008 the police lost the power to store particulars. So any records kept since 1 October 2008 have been kept in breach of the law. In essence the retrospectivity of this bill validates illegal behaviour by the police. If the police have acted in accordance with current law and have destroyed those records that is great. No records have been kept so there should be no need at all for this bill to be retrospective. As I have said previously in this debate it is the secrecy and the urgency that are the key issues. That is what creates this problem with process that justifies opposition to this bill until the issues are considered properly.  
I will look at the purpose of the bill. Clause 4 states: “The purpose of this Act is to amend the principal Act so that it indicates clearly when it authorises the storage and when it requires the destruction of youth identifying particulars.” I guess that is a description of what this bill will do but it is not a sufficient explanation as to why we need to store the fingerprints and photographs of our young people.  
I will share with the Committee a staggering statistic from Kim Workman who is the director of the Rethinking Crime and Punishment project. In his work  
Redemption Denied: Aspects of Maori Over-representation in the Criminal Justice System 
 we learn that for Maori males born in 1975—for example my eldest son—it is estimated that 22 percent had a Department of Corrections - managed sentence before their 20th birthday and 44 percent had a Department of Corrections - managed sentence by the age of 35. Thankfully my eldest son does not fit that statistic. A Department of Corrections - managed sentence includes both custodial sentences and community-based sentences. This is a fact that every MP in this House should be aware of before they vote on this bill.  
This bill as it sets out in clause 4 provides a legislative means for the unique identifying particulars of our young people to be stored on the record. National members and Labour members alike have tried to encourage me to keep the issues I have raised during this debate for another time and said that we need to focus our korero on the theme of this bill: to correct a mistake that was never intended. They say we are restoring the status quo. We have been told that the Maori Party and the Green Party have missed the point. We have been challenged that we should have raised these issues when the Policing Bill came up in 2008. Without putting too fine a point on it neither the Green member David Clendon nor I was in the House at that time. However I have read over the contributions made by the Maori Party when the Policing Bill came before the House and I want to restate a comment made by my colleague Dr Pita Sharples that effective policing relies on a wide measure of public support and confidence. Public support and confidence means having the courage to open up to scrutiny all issues around police behaviours. Thank goodness there are two parties in this House that have raised questions about process and about why we would introduce legislation under urgency to store the unique particulars of our rangatahi.  
I remind all those well-meaning members that there is a broader context to Part 1 of this bill which is the grossly disproportionate youth apprehension and prosecution statistics that provide us with a distinct challenge when we think about the relationship between the police and young Maori. We know that the apprehension rate of Maori youth is more than three times that of New Zealand European youth. We need to be open to scrutiny in this House and allow substantive debate whether or not it occurred in 2008. 
CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour) 
: 
 I rise to speak on Part 1 of the Policing (Storage of Youth Identifying Particulars) Amendment Bill. I will talk about clauses 4 and 5 and what they do but before I do that I need to comment on the points made by the last speaker Rahui Katene. The intention of the bill is very narrow and it is very simple. A mistake was made. The bill deals with a particular very narrow circumstance about maintaining identifying particulars of young people. It was not a constitutional outrage; it was a drafting error. We have a bill now to rectify a drafting error the impact of which was to accidentally omit some words that need to be in the legislation.  
I find it quite extraordinary that members would see this bill as the way to deal with what are very serious issues—which I have raised in the debate and which Green members and Maori Party members have raised—about our young people about the causes of crime and about the disproportionate impact on Maori and even the latter points that the Maori Party member Rahui Katene made about policing conduct. All of those are really important issues that I and many of my colleagues have a great deal of sympathy with. But this bill is not the way to deal with that. A minor technical narrow amendment bill is not the way to start to deal with some of the most significant issues that face us as a country. We need to be constantly looking at the causes of crime. As I said in my second reading speech we need to be looking at the impact of poverty inequality unemployment and all the other things that are disproportionately affecting our young people.  
Clause 4 states: “The purpose of this Act is to amend the principal Act so that it indicates clearly when it authorises the storage and when it requires the destruction of youth identifying particulars.” The purpose of this bill is to right what went wrong in 2008 when the legislation went through and if you like to reflect the intention of Parliament at the time.  
I am somebody who strongly believes in following good process but good process surely to goodness is about introducing a bill having select committee scrutiny reflecting on what happened at the select committee and passing legislation that reflects those outcomes. Obviously in the case of the 2008 Act as others have said—and Lianne Dalziel and Annette King have made this point—that did not happen. The process as Annette King outlined in her case was a very substantial process. There was a 2-year consultation period and then the track through the House after the select committee hearing went wrong. It went wrong; it accidentally omitted words that needed to be there. It was a drafting error. So let us not use that to try to create a much broader debate. If we want to do that then we should be raising the debate properly.  
Clause 5 makes it clear that the sections “substituted by section 6 of this Act apply and must be taken to have applied at all times after the close of 30 September 2008 to all identifying particulars obtained under the principal Act after the commencement on 1 October 2008 of that Act …”. This is the retrospective part and again I understand why people get nervous about retrospective legislation. I doubt that there are too many of us in this Chamber who do not see why it is problematic. But in this particular case it is necessary to ensure that our police are able to do the job they are meant to be doing and are able to identify youth offenders. In my opinion identifying youth offenders and ensuring that they are dealt with appropriately is better than not identifying them and finding them much further down the track when they are much more involved in criminal activity. 
DAVID CLENDON (Green) 
: 
 Part 1 of the Policing (Storage of Youth Identifying Particulars) Amendment Bill is clearly about the purpose of the legislation and is the heart of the proposed Act. Part 1 states that it seeks to amend the principal Act particularly in relation to the issue of the storage of youth identifying particulars. I think it is worth reflecting just for a moment on exactly what those are. 
This morning we heard reference to fingerprints. In fact youth identifying particulars include names addresses dates of birth photographs visual images—presumably footage from cameras cellphones or whatever it might be—fingerprints palm prints and footprints. Potentially quite an extensive body of information is being retained in these instances for young people who have been through a Youth Court process. We are told—in fact we are assured—that the issue has been corrected and again we can assume in the absence of any information that the youth identifying particulars that were retained post-2008 were destroyed perhaps 8 or 10 months ago presumably in October 2010 when this issue came to light. 
One wonders whether there has been an explosion of youth offending since that time. Have we seen the unfortunate repercussions that we are told would follow from the inability of the police to retain this information these youth identifying particulars? We now have nearly a year’s worth of evidence to inform us whether there is actually a real problem or whether a problem has been created. I think it is reasonable to suggest that we should have a proper process involving a select committee involving some time for consideration and involving external agencies with expertise in youth offending in youth law and indeed in ways to bring youth back on to a proper footing and leave criminal offending behind. We have that body of information available to us and I think it is worth considering that before we charge on and pass this legislation a couple of hours after many of us in this Chamber were blessed with its first reading. 
We have heard that the purpose of the bill is necessary and that we need to restore the police’s ability to store information because it will somehow enable us to intervene more readily and at an earlier stage in dealing with youth offenders—in particular with repeat offenders. There is somehow an assumption that having this information to hand will enable us to more readily steer youth on to a better path. I think that is a fairly dubious proposition. Our young people—indeed our young offenders—might be misguided but they would not have to watch too many television programmes to know how to avoid leaving behind fingerprints and getting themselves on cameras. I do think there is a considerable overstatement of the value of retaining this information in terms of enabling us to intervene at an earlier stage. 
I absolutely take the point though; many times in this House I have advocated in different contexts that we need to intervene at the earliest opportunity. Unfortunately a lot of the policy in relation to justice and corrections that we have seen passed in the last 12 months or so is steering us in quite the opposite direction. We are not dealing at an early stage with youth offending and we are not giving them the necessary treatment; we are simply resorting to prisons more and more routinely.  
We have heard the proposition that we need to consider the broader issues that underpin the purpose of this bill which is to amend section 34 of the Policing Act. I think that is the key section. To be fair having read that section just this morning I can understand that it is clear and easy to see how the issue could have been overlooked. The section simply states—I will paraphrase—that the decision from Crown Law turns on the definition of the word “conviction”. Obviously the legal definition of that word is such that the police were in error when they were retaining information relating to young people because technically it was not a conviction coming through the Youth Court unless it triggered section 283(o) of the Act or the penalty applied was involving direction to the District Court. So there is clear evidence—or it can be reasonably said—that this issue was overlooked that there was no analysis and that nobody at the time picked up the fact that the simple declaration of that word “conviction” was actually going to put in error the police’s assumptions that they could continue to gather that information.  
It is perhaps pre-empting a later part of this bill and a later clause but I think that under the purpose clause we can entertain the slightly broader issue— 
Debate interrupted. 
Sitting suspended from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. 
House resumed.