Hon LUAMANUVAO WINNIE LABAN (Minister for the Community and Voluntary Sector) Link to this
I move, That, pursuant to section 4 of the Environment Act 1986, this House recommend His Excellency the Governor-General appoint Dr Janice Claire Wright, of Wellington, as Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, for a term commencing on 5 March 2007.
I also move, That, pursuant to sections 4 and 5 of the Police Complaints Authority Act 1988, this House recommend His Excellency the Governor-General appoint the Honourable Justice Lowell Patria Goddard QC, High Court Judge of Wellington, as Police Complaints Authority for a term of five years with effect from 13 February 2007.
Dr Jan Wright is an independent policy analyst and consultant with a number of non-executive public sector directorships, and has been selected to be the next Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. Dr Wright’s strong academic credentials and personal attributes give her the ability to apply intellectual rigour to complex matters affecting ordinary people.
Dr Wright has a Doctor of Philosophy in Public Policy, Harvard University; a Master of Science in energy and resources, University of California, Berkeley; a Bachelor of Science (1st Class Hons) in physics, University of Canterbury; and a Diploma of Teaching, Auckland Secondary Teachers’ College. She is currently a member of the Accident Compensation Corporation board and chair of Land Transport New Zealand. Previously she was chair of Transfund New Zealand, and has been a council member of Transit New Zealand, the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority, the Independent Biotechnology Advisory Council, and the Institute of Chartered Accountants of New Zealand.
Since becoming an independent policy analyst and consultant in 1998, her clients have included the Environmental Risk Management Authority, the Ministry for the Environment, the Royal Commission on Genetic Modification, the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology, Christchurch City Council, Victoria University, and parliamentary select committees on transport and the environment.
The role of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment was established in 1986 to provide independent scrutiny, advocacy, and advice, with the goal of maintaining and improving the quality of New Zealand’s environment. This role has the capacity to investigate, report, and make recommendations on any matter where the environment may be, or has been, adversely affected. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment is independent of the Government, and reports to the House through the Speaker, working within established practices that do not impinge on the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’s independence. Dr Wright takes over from Dr Morgan Williams, who did not seek a third 5-year term of office, on 5 March 2007.
I move now to the Police Complaints Authority. Section 4 of the Police Complaints Authority Act 1988 provides for the appointment of an authority whose function is to investigate complaints alleging any misconduct or neglect of duty by any member of the police, or concerning any practice, policy, or procedure of the police. The authority is also responsible for investigating any incident involving serious bodily harm notified to the authority by the Commissioner of Police.
Justice Lowell Goddard QC has considerable experience in the criminal justice system and is well qualified to perform the duties of the authority. After graduating with a Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of Auckland in 1974, she practised as a barrister, and was appointed Queen’s Counsel in 1988. In 1992 she was appointed Deputy Solicitor-General for New Zealand, and in that role undertook responsibility for the prosecution of all indictable crime in New Zealand. She was appointed to the High Court bench in December 1995. Justice Goddard is well regarded within judicial and wider legal circles, and I am confident she will make an excellent authority.
The current authority, Judge Ian Borrin, will reach the statutory retirement age for the authority in early 2007. It is an opportune time to acknowledge and thank Judge Borrin for the dedication he has shown over a number of years of service in what is certainly a highly important and challenging role. Judge Borrin became the deputy authority in 1997, subsequently became the acting authority in 2000, and has been the authority since 2001. Judge Borrin leaves the new authority with a solid platform upon which to continue to strengthen the status and performance of the entity, including further developing the role of independent investigators and the timeliness of complaint handling.
Additional funding was provided in Budget 2006 to address a backlog of complaints that had built up over time, and those resources are being used to great effect. The Minister of Justice intends to advance the Independent Police Complaints Authority Amendment Bill next year, to further enhance the capacity of the authority by expanding its membership to three people.
I am confident that Justice Goddard will effectively manage the transition to the new structure proposed in the bill, and provide the high standard of leadership and integrity required of the holder of this office. I welcome the support of the parties in the House for this very important appointment.
LINDSAY TISCH (National—Piako) Link to this
National will be splitting its calls on this debate. I will speak on the appointment of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, and my colleague Chester Borrows will speak on the motion to appoint the Police Complaints Authority.
The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment is an Officer of Parliament, appointed by the Governor-General on the recommendation of this House for a term of 5 years. We heard earlier that that term will start in March 2007. My colleague the Hon Clem Simich was on the subcommittee of the Officers of Parliament Committee that interviewed, and made the recommendation of, Dr Wright for this position. I was on the Officers of Parliament Committee that confirmed that appointment, and now it is coming through to the House.
The office, powers, and functions of the commissioner are established by the Environment Act of 1986. The commissioner is required to comply with section 17 of the Public Finance Act of 1989, and accounts to the Speaker as the responsible Minister for the office. The commissioner has the capacity to investigate, report, and make recommendations on any matter where the environment may be, or has been, adversely affected. But the commissioner does not have the power to make any binding rulings, and is unable to reverse decisions made by public authorities or the courts. The commissioner provides Parliament with advice and an independent check on the capability of the New Zealand system of environmental management and the performance of public authorities, central and local, with statutory and administrative responsibilities for maintaining and improving the quality of the environment.
And so it is that this House is making a recommendation to appoint Dr Janice Claire Wright to the position of Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, a very important position. Dr Wright has a very good CV. I have it in front of me. I do not intend to go through it at length, but I can tell members that she is a very talented and determined person. She has those qualities that will enable her to be an excellent Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, so the National Party supports the recommendation of the Minister, and we look forward to working with Dr Wright in the ensuing years.
CHESTER BORROWS (National—Whanganui) Link to this
I rise on behalf of the National Party to endorse the appointment of Justice Lowell Goddard QC to the role of Police Complaints Authority in her first term, for a 5-year term. Justice Goddard comes to this position with a long history as a high-profile member of our judiciary, and I am sure that she will bring to this position a significant degree of integrity. That is a very important attribute for the Police Complaints Authority to hold, in order to allow it to endure as a system.
The role of the authority is to investigate complaints against the police, and to scrutinise the procedures of the police in the various circumstances that cause the public some concern from time to time, such as deaths in police cells, police shootings, and some other matters. The role is one of being the official scrutineer of public and police engagement, so the authority has the ability to either enhance or counter confidence in the police, depending on the way that the police are found to have carried out their duties. There is also the dual role of the authority in terms of running its own investigations and supervising investigations of police officers by the police, a particular process that has come in for some flak in the past.
We all need to have confidence in the police’s ability to achieve their objective of carrying out their core business of protecting life and property. So I look forward to the beginning of work in this role by Justice Goddard in February. At the same time, I pay respect to Justice Ian Borrin, who has served in this role prior to this appointment. The manner in which he has conducted his duties, the scrutiny and evaluation he has held police under, and the level of integrity with which the authority has carried out its role, in terms of scrutiny and evaluation, has really been second to none. I look forward to that continuing. Thank you.
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader—Green) Link to this
It is hard to believe, looking back, that just 20 years ago New Zealand had no statutory agencies with responsibility for the environment on behalf of the Government. Not only did we have no Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, but we had no Ministry for the Environment or Department of Conservation. We had what in those days were called “little green dots” spread through some agencies like the Department of Lands and Survey, and the New Zealand Forest Service, but there was a huge debate in those days around creating agencies with a proper mandate to carry out the Crown’s obligations to protect the environment on behalf of the people of New Zealand. So around 20 years ago those three agencies were created—the Ministry for the Environment and the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment under the Environment Act, and the Department of Conservation under the Conservation Act. Up until then we had a Commission for the Environment, which was not a statutory agency; it was a creature of Cabinet fiat, and had only voluntary processes.
So a lot has happened during that time. As we celebrate that 20th anniversary—and, in the case of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment the anniversary in March next year—we look back on 20 years of two people who have served in that role with great dedication and in a very distinguished way. I want to pay respect at this stage to the first Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Helen Hughes, who was particularly famous for a rather dry remark. When asked by a visitor from overseas what her powers were, and what sort of teeth she had, she said: “Oh, no teeth at all, but very powerful gums.” She was succeeded 10 years ago by Dr Morgan Williams, who has also had a distinguished role in the position. I pay tribute today to Dr Williams, as he approaches his retirement from the position, and also to the new incumbent—a third distinguished person—Dr Jan Wright.
During the 10 years that Dr Williams has been the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, he has published a series of reports that were ignored or attacked when they first came out but have been regarded as standard good sense within a few years. I think of Creating our Future: Sustainable Development for New Zealand, in which he laid out what New Zealand needs to do to implement sustainable development. I think of his report, in which he talked about the need for environmental education and how important that is if we are to raise a generation of young people who are environmentally literate and who actually understand the biophysical systems we depend on for our lives.
Possibly his most famous contribution has been Growing for Good: Intensive Farming, Sustainability and New Zealand’s Environment, which is an examination of the environmental impacts of our farming and our food production systems. It goes way beyond farming and takes it right through to the supermarket chains, which dictate what farmers must do, and to the overseas markets. He shocked people by pointing out that we had a sixfold increase in the application of nitrogen fertiliser over a comparatively small number of years, that our water quality was suffering, and that intensification of farming had major environmental impacts. The report was greeted initially by screams of outrage, but these days when we look at the farming journals we find more and more farmers saying that they have completely changed their practices and their view of farming as a result of the report. It has had an amazing impact on our move towards sustainability, and I believe that it will go on having an impact for many years yet. It is full of good information and good analysis.
So I thank Morgan for his contribution over 10 years, and I particularly welcome Dr Jan Wright, who I think will be a very distinguished performer in the role. Dr Wright has, first, a physics degree, then she studied energy in the energy and resources division at the University of California, Berkeley, with distinguished people like John Holdren. She then completed a PhD in economics from Harvard, specialising in health economics. It is a very wide and varied background. I first knew Jan when she was teaching at the Lincoln Centre for Resource Management in Canterbury and working on the economics of energy efficiency for households. She taught a raft of students who have since ended up in distinguished places, and she taught serious energy analysis, which we need more and more as the foundation of the work that has to be done as we address the serious impacts of climate change, energy security, and oil prices.
We have come a long way in 20 years. I hope that in the next 20 years we will make as much progress in terms of cementing into the mainstream of Government thinking the requirements for environmental sustainability and conservation. I strongly endorse the appointment of Dr Wright by the House.
TE URUROA FLAVELL (Māori Party—Waiariki) Link to this
Tēnā koe, Madam Assistant Speaker. Kia ora tātou katoa i tēnei ahiahi. I rise today to talk to Government motions Nos 3 and 4, driven by the constant call of Māori that we, the Māori Party, identify, track, and articulate the markings of progress in this Parliament.
It is a call that this Parliament has borne witness to over centuries. Indeed, at the time of the centennial in 1940, the MP for Stratford apparently stood up in this House and declared that it was “an opportunity to celebrate 100 years of progress in this wonderful Dominion, one which has never been out-shone in any other country, indeed a real Pacific haven away from the troubles of an older world”. That is what he said.
That was the prevailing view until Sir Apirana Ngata came along, and he got up in this House and shared his view of evidence of Māori progress. He said: “I do not know any year the Māori people have approached with so much misgiving as this centennial year. In retrospect, what does the Māori see? Lands gone, the power of chiefs humbled in the dust, Māori culture scattered and broken.” As we move towards the bicentennial in 2040, now is the opportunity to really focus on whether genuine progress for Aotearoa includes Māori within its frame.
The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment may be the one step—a very important step—in achieving that progress. I stand today to acknowledge the outstanding contribution that Dr Morgan Williams has made to this nation in his role as the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. I have never met the gentleman, but I understand he is someone who has valued the importance of integrity, independent opinion, and transformation. I am told that in fulfilling his functions as guardian, as advocate, as auditor, as information provider, and as adviser he has taken seriously the need to focus, absolutely, on the progress we are achieving in meeting our responsibilities to care for and nurture the environment.
In that, tangata whenua have greatly valued the vision we share with Dr Williams of providing for the land we want our children to inherit. Tangata whenua believe that if we care for, nurture, and respect the environment, and if we collectively take responsibility for Aotearoa, then our natural resources will be healthy, safe, and intact for everyone. So in this light the work that Dr Williams has led in developing the genuine progress indicator, has been welcomed by us, the Māori Party. We appreciate the way the genuine progress indicator inserts the economic contributions of household and volunteer workers, by adding to one side of the ledger but subtracting other factors, such as crime, pollution, and racism, from the other end. We believe that this indicator can provide us with a far more comprehensive measure of wellness than conventional indicators.
That will be the context in which this House welcomes Dr Janice Claire Wright as the new Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. Dr Wright is charged with the honour and the serious responsibility of assessing the impact that humanity has had on the earth’s ability to sustain life. Tangata whenua attribute huge value to such a role. As whānau, hapū, and iwi, we consider our responsibilities as tangata kaitiaki very seriously, and we know they require that we take whatever measures are necessary to ensure the well-being and future good health of the environment. So in this light the Māori Party is delighted with the appointment of Dr Wright, a person who describes her skills as including the capacity to be an inspiring leader who sets the pace for change. She is politically astute, and able to work at all levels of Government.
The Māori Party will be contacting her, to bring her up to speed with the proposal we have tabled in this House for an urgent cross-party parliamentary commission to look at reducing Government, personal, and business dependence on oil. An urgent commission would indicate that we are taking the oil crisis seriously, and that we would work together as a nation in a collaborative approach to set out a time line for action. Now that would be real progress.
The other appointment being announced today is the recommendation for the Hon Justice Goddard to be appointed as the Police Complaints Authority, a notable first for this High Court Judge. Although again I do not know this identity, I note that the Hon Justice Goddard is not unused to being first. She is, after all, one of two women first to be appointed a Queen’s Counsel—along with Chief Justice, the Hon Dame Sian Elias—and the first Māori woman to be appointed a Justice of the High Court. We, the Māori Party, warmly congratulate her on this auspicious appointment.
We also want to take this opportunity, with our eyes firmly focused on genuine progress, to share some of our thoughts around the proper functioning and management of the Police Complaints Authority. The Māori Party has been disappointed that this Parliament failed in 2000 to take up the recommendation from Sir Rodney Gallen that the authority should no longer be a Crown entity but an Officer of Parliament, with the independence of the Ombudsman.
The notion of independence has been a concept that Māori have raised concerns about consistently over the last decade. The report entitled Māori Perceptions of the Police reports a strong perception by Māori that “… the Police Complaints Authority would be self-protecting and biased in favour of the police should Māori bring a complaint against the institution or individuals within it.” The report describes the views of Māori participants who felt there was little point in complaining about these practices, as they did not see the Police Complaints Authority as being independent from the police. Indeed, a frequent perception expressed was that simply being Māori was sufficient cause for suspicion by the police. The document recommended that another process for hearing Māori grievances should be undertaken immediately. It is the process that Sir Rodney Gallen recognised in his suggestion that there should be provision for a Māori member to be appointed to the authority—a recommendation that the Government of the day neglected to implement.
We cannot bury our heads in the sand to the very real concerns of bias that have been presented by whānau, hapū, and iwi in the context of the nature of an authority to address complaints made by Māori against the police. So, in the interests of being helpful, the Māori Party comes forward in speaking to this motion with two particularly good proposals for consideration by the Hon Justice Goddard.
The first proposal is the restructuring of the Police Complaints Authority as a truly independent body, resourced to undertake substantive investigations as well as its current policy inquiries. The heart of the problem has been that the Police Complaints Authority has relied a bit too much on police officers for the authority’s investigatory capacity, and suspicion about police investigating complaints about their colleagues has lingered. The previous Minister of Justice, the Hon Phil Goff, when releasing the review of the Police Complaints Authority, confirmed this when he stated: “There is a strong public view that police investigation of complaints against themselves is neither independent nor appropriate. It is critical that there is full public confidence that such investigations are independent.” Although the Independent Police Complaints Authority Amendment Bill was passed, in recognition of the need for an impartial and independent watchdog on policing matters, it would be fair to say that in some communities considerable angst is still raised.
The second suggestion we bring is to consider the establishment of an autonomous Māori investigative branch as part of the new Police Complaints Authority, to review Māori complaints against, and Māori relationships with, the police. The ongoing interest of the public to have the decisions of the authority reviewed, the consistent questions around impartiality, and the drive for autonomy are all vital issues that require further discussion.
We welcome the Hon Justice Goddard to this very stimulating area of policy discussion and we, the Māori Party, look forward to joining with both her and Dr Wright in working together in the pursuit of genuine progress for Aotearoa. Kia ora tātou.
NANDOR TANCZOS (Green) Link to this
My co-leader Jeannette Fitzsimons has already spoken on the appointment of Jan Wright to the role of Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, so I will not be speaking on that matter except simply to add my personal thanks to Dr Morgan Williams for the extraordinarily good job that he has done in that role, and to say that I look forward to Jan Wright’s continuing the excellent tradition and precedent that has been set for that role.
I rise, really, to speak on the appointment of Justice Goddard to the Police Complaints Authority and to say at the outset that the Green Party supports that appointment. It is clear that Justice Goddard has had an illustrious career and that there is no reason to think anything other than that she will do an excellent job. The problem, of course, is not her as a person—as highlighted by Te Ururoa Flavell—the framework within which she will be operating and the resources available will be the real problem. I thank Te Ururoa Flavell for putting forward a couple of useful suggestions that have merit and are worth considering, particularly from the Government’s point of view, because that is where the decisions on resources and suchlike will be made.
If we look at the framework within which the Police Complaints Authority currently operates, and also at the resourcing available, we will see that enormous problems are caused. The first one is simply time delays. My colleague Keith Locke has had a complaint before the Police Complaints Authority for 7 years. For 7 years his complaint has not been dealt with. It is absolutely outrageous that that can be the reality coming from a body that is charged with investigating complaints against the New Zealand Police, which has significant statutory authority to use force against citizens of this country. It is absolutely outrageous. That may be an extreme case, but significant delays are not unusual. I just think back to the Steven Wallace case. As far as I am aware, there has still not been a finding in that matter. So time delays are an enormous problem, and a large part of that can be put down to the fact that the resourcing made available to the Police Complaints Authority is totally unacceptable.
The second real problem is that most complaints are not investigated by the Police Complaints Authority; they are investigated by the police. Essentially, that means that officers who have complaints made against them are being investigated by their mates. This is particularly true in rural communities where the commanding officer visits the other police officers socially. Those officers have a barbecue on the weekend, they play sport together, and their children know each other. Those are the people who investigate complaints against each other. It is just not surprising, is it, that some of those findings are open to a suspicion of bias—it can be nothing else.
This is partly a resourcing issue. There have to be the resources to investigate complaints against the police independently. The other issue is that the authority has to be able to develop an investigative capacity. That is one of the reasons why the Green Party has said very clearly that it would like to see an independent prison inspectorate joined with an independent police complaints authority to enable an investigative capacity to be developed that could conduct investigations into closed-shop professions, such as the police and correctional staff.
The other thing around the Police Complaints Authority is that it has tended to be user-unfriendly in the past. As someone who has made complaints to the Police Complaints Authority in the past, I have to say that the system seems designed to discourage people from pursuing complaints against the police. That may be an attempt to filter out unmeritorious complaints, but that is not what actually happens. What happens is that the people who are most alienated from our political systems, who are those most alienated from the systems of authority and power in this country, are continually dissuaded from making complaints. I hear all the time—and I am sure that other members do, too—of cases that warrant serious investigation, such as complaints against police misconduct. The people who do not make those complaints simply ask what the point is, because they say their complaints will not even be investigated. They say that the cops will look out for each other, they will investigate themselves, and they will just brush it under the carpet—and, of course, in my opinion, that is what happens on numerous occasions.
Another problem with the Police Complaints Authority is that it is totally complaints-driven, so we do not get the systematic investigation into serious, systemic problems within the police. For example, we know that some police officers abuse their powers to search without a warrant. We know that it happens; we have seen evidence of it. Evidence has been brought before this House in select committees and the like of police abusing powers to search without a warrant. Those are highly draconian powers of search, and no investigation is being done. That is exactly the kind of thing that a police complaints authority should be able to look at, and this Police Complaints Authority does not do that job.
Similarly, I refer to the use of pepper sprays. There is almost no control over the use of pepper sprays. We have seen on our TV news people being pepper sprayed while handcuffed. I hear allegations all the time of people having been pepper sprayed in police cells. That is totally contradictory to regulations, to guidelines, and to all the assurances that we were given when those sprays were brought in to be used by the police. No investigation is being done, at any serious level, into these matters, and that is exactly the kind of thing that the Police Complaints Authority should be empowered to look at.
Even when complaints-driven matters are so serious that the Police Complaints Authority actually conducts an investigation, the information it uses for that purpose cannot be used for prosecutions, because the secrecy provisions that the Police Complaints Authority is wrapped up in mean that the matters it raises in interviews and the like cannot be used as evidence. I think that that is totally ridiculous. What other profession has a situation where, if complaints are made against someone relating to potentially criminal activity, after the first investigation is done the evidence generated cannot be used in court? It is ridiculous. People say: “Oh well, this is to promote openness so that people will spill their guts to the investigators.” Well, one could make the same case for any kind of crime. It is absolutely ludicrous, and it essentially means that there is one rule for the police and one rule for everyone else. I would be interested to know where the National Party stands in respect of this issue, with its one-law-for-all rhetoric—where does it stand on having the same law for the police as for everyone else?
I recall the Justice and Electoral Committee’s inquiry into the policing of the protest during the visit of the Chinese Premier, and Mr Barnett will remember this very clearly because he was chairing the committee at the time. It was a very good piece of work that we did, but we were enormously hampered by the rules governing the Police Complaints Authority. The information that the authority had obtained through interviewing complainants and police could not even be made available to the Parliament. Even Parliament was told that it could not have that information for the purposes of a select committee inquiry, because the legislation did not allow it. It is absolutely ridiculous.
Of course, that situation leads to the findings of the Police Complaints Authority being entirely opaque. The authority makes decisions but complainants have no idea of what it looked at in making its decisions, and the basis on which those decisions were made. So it leaves a suspicion in the public mind that the authority is not properly investigating cases. Whether or not the authority is doing so is not the point. The point is that the decisions the authority makes are not being justified on the basis of saying what matters it considered, whom it talked to, and what information it used to make its decision. That information is not available to the public. It leaves a bitter taste in the mouths of complainants and an ongoing suspicion that the complaints are not being conducted properly, thoroughly, and with regard to all matters.
The Green Party supports the appointment of the Hon Justice Goddard to this position, but we fear that we are handing her a poisoned chalice, because the legislative framework around the Police Complaints Authority is so poor that inevitably she will be hampered in doing the job effectively.
The Green Party looks forward to the progress of legislation, which is before this House, that will progress a truly independent Police Complaints Authority. What is more, we would like to see that legislation operate so that an independent Police Complaints Authority can work in conjunction with an independent prison inspectorate to allow the development of an investigative capacity that can actually do the job, that has the resources to do the job, that has the expertise to do the job, and that is able to generate enough momentum within itself that it can actually crack the shell and penetrate what is really going on within professions such as the police and the Department of Corrections. We have heard allegations of a culture of abuse, violence, and intimidation within both those bodies.
This country needs an independent investigative body that can seriously look at this problem and get to the bottom of it, so that we can all be assured that we have the best, the least corrupt, and the most transparent services of those kinds anywhere in the world.