Policing Bill

Dr RICHARD WORTH (National) Link to this

It is a privilege to speak in support of this bill, and I commend it to the House.

HONE HARAWIRA (Māori Party—Te Tai Tokerau) Link to this

On 25 October last year a crowd of over 700 kaumātua, pakeke, rangatahi, and tamariki marched through Rotorua in a peaceful protest against the police terrorism raids into Tūhoe. They marched for civil liberties, they marched for indigenous rights, and they marched for justice.

On that hīkoi were senior students from Te Kura Kaupapa Māori o Te Rotoiti. The tumuaki of the kura, Hawea Vercoe, told the crowd of the views of his students on hearing the news. During our kōrero on the topic, he said, one student commented: “It must have been scary to have the police with guns coming to your house, especially when you are just waking up.” Another student questioned the tactics used by the police by asking: “If the police thought there was trouble happening in the bush, why didn’t they just go and see the kaumātua or call a hui at the marae?”.

In the years that lie ahead of us, those young people, those whānau, and this nation will return again and again to the events of 15 October 2007 to question the role of the police. They will return, just as this year on 25 May we returned to Takaparawhau to reflect on the traumatic actions of 30 years ago, when State forces rudely, violently, and incorrectly arrested 222 people who were occupying Bastion Point. The year 1978 was one of many low points in contemporary Māori-police relations, with Tainui Āwhiro’s occupation of ancestral land also being rudely and violently interrupted by police arresting and charging those people with trespass on their own tribal burial grounds.

So how wonderfully ironic it is, then, that 30 years later Angeline Greensill, Māori Party member of the House for Hauraki-Waikato, and Rāhui Kātene, Māori Party member of the House for Te Tai Tonga, will take their rightful place in this House, for they are the children of Eva Rickard and Big John Hippolite, who were arrested at Raglan all those many years ago, and that they will be joined on the Māori Party list by Grant Hawke, the chairman of Ngāti Whātua o Ōrākei Trust Māori Board, who, along with myself and hundreds of others, was arrested at Bastion Point in 1978. Those who think that those events are just bad memories to haunt the national psyche should please note that the Tūhoe court cases are ongoing, and that the Independent Police Conduct Authority has still not released its findings on the shooting of Steven Wallace, who was killed by police in April 2000—April 2000! The homicide inquiry was over by June 2000, the policeman was cleared of criminal charges in 2002, the coroner’s findings were released in 2007, yet still the questions remain.

I have taken the time to track back over some of these events of national significance because they form a crucial context to the Policing Bill, which aims to improve the effectiveness of the police, and which should take as a starting point the climate of anger, mistrust, and fear that still haunts those communities and many others besides. I have taken the time to track back over some of these events to remind the House that the purpose of this bill, which is to confirm and strengthen police operational and governance arrangements, will never be achieved until we take a genuinely fresh look at the powers of the police. The 60 recommendations of the Bazley report gave us some real pointers about what standards of conduct the police as an association, as a branch of Government, and even as an agency of social control should have, if there is to be any improvement in the relationship between police and Māori.

Police wield great authority and considerable power in our society. It was disappointing to hear the arrogant dismissal by the Police Association’s Greg O’Connor of concerns about the Taser as being due to people being “hijacked by political parties with points to score”, or corrupted by the influence of minority interest groups making the Taser seem more dangerous than it is. Well, well, well! I wonder whether the British Defence Scientific Advisory Council’s medical committee would consider itself to be a minority interest group for having the temerity to say that if children and adults were shot by a Taser, they were at great risk of suffering “a serious cardiac event”.

Maybe Mr O’Connor would like to volunteer to be the target of a Taser shot; not the controlled experiment that the police did for television, but one out on the street where one’s head would not land on mats and would be likely to bounce off the concrete. I say that because I know that the police had a hell of a time trying to get some poor bugger to volunteer for the TV shot, and even though he knew what to expect he still screamed in agony and suffered the uncontrollable muscle spasms, the writhing body-wide cramps, and the total loss of control that the Taser causes.

After Greg O’Connor has been dropped screaming to the ground, maybe one of the politicians who support the Taser can go next, and maybe one of those members’ teenage kids can go next—especially those of the Māori politicians who support the use of the Taser, because, believe me, it is their kids and mine who are the prime targets for these weapons of torture. And let us do it out on the forecourt of Parliament, so that we can all see the pain and suffering that 50,000 volts will cause our kids, so that we can all hear the screaming, and so that we can all witness the horror that the Taser will bring to our streets. No takers? Nah, I did not think so. I can just see the Tui billboard now: “True, Tasers don’t hurt. Yeah, right”. I know that members will ask “Why us? It’s not us politicians committing crimes.” But, in fact, we do. The only difference is that when we get snapped we just pass a law to make our wrongs right. It is a pity our kids out on the street cannot do that.

We support the new human resource management processes, the new code of conduct, and any moves to improve police organisation, but I return to the key issue we face: the poor way that the police deal with communities, particularly Māori communities. That theme ran through many of the submissions that were presented. The Māori Party takes those views very, very seriously, and 3 weeks ago we argued for the inclusion of a Treaty clause to ensure that Māori would be involved in all decision making, from governance to operations. We proposed a simple amendment to the bill stating that “in interpreting and administering this Act, effect be given to the Treaty of Waitangi”, thereby highlighting the Government’s Treaty obligations and the need for the Government to do all it could to improve its relationship with Māori. That Treaty clause was voted down by every one of Labour’s Māori MPs. Indeed, the only people with the courage and the foresight to support the Treaty were the Māori Party and the Greens, and my deepest thanks to the Greens for their support.

We remember the use of armed police to destroy Māori communities all over the country, from the Hokianga to Takaparawhau, from Hauraki to Whāingaroa, from Tūhoe to Taranaki, and from 1846 right through to the cowardly police terrorist raids into Tūhoe in 2007. We know only too well that our people will not forget the hurt and the pain inflicted by the forces of the State upon Māori. Given the refusal of the Government to recognise and deal with that history in an open and honest, Treaty-based manner, the Māori Party will be standing alongside its people in voting against this bill. Tēnā koe, Mr Deputy Speaker.