Policing (Storage of Youth Identifying Particulars) Amendment Bill

Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Police) Link to this

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 Māori Party Rahui Katene. I have to say that I am particularly concerned by that comment, because it sounded as though the Māori 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) Link to this

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 Māori Party and the Green Party, which was consulted on by the wider public, including Māori, 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 Māori Party. I could not detect a conspiracy in this bill. I was surprised that the Māori 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 Māori 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 Māori 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.

JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki) Link to this

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) Link to this

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 Māori 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) Link to this

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 Māori 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 (Māori Party—Te Tai Tonga) Link to this

There is an enormous body of literature associated with existing police bias and overscrutiny of Māori, 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 Māori 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 Māori 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 Māori 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 Māori and the Criminal Justice System. A New Perspective: He Whaipānga Hou. There is the research by Pānia Te Whaiti and Michael Roguski, Māori Perceptions of the Police and Police Perceptions of Māori. There is also former Commissioner of Police Peter Doone’s Report on Combating and Preventing Māori 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 Māori 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 Māori 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 Puāwai Conference 2005 in my home town of Nelson. In his address, “Māori 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 Māori 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 Māori with a given history of offending are more likely to be convicted than non-Māori with the same offending history and social background. In another report, called Whanake Rangatahi, Te Puni Kōkiri revealed that Māori youth are three times more likely to be apprehended, prosecuted, and convicted than non-Māori 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. Māori 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 Māori 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 Māori 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) Link to this

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 Māori Party for Māori 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 Māori 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) Link to this

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 Māori 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 Māori—and I absolutely accept that Māori are overrepresented—

Dr CAM CALDER (National) Link to this

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 Māori particularly, and offending among young Māori. 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) Link to this

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 Māori 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 Māori 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 Māori Party does not seem to have any influence over the National Government.

I think that both the Green Party and the Māori 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—

MELISSA LEE (National) Link to this

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 Māori 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) Link to this

I rise to commend the Policing (Storage of Youth Identifying Particulars) Amendment Bill to the House. Thank you.