75th annual conference, Police Association
new-zealand-labour-party
Fri Oct 15 2010 13:00:00 GMT+1300 (New Zealand Daylight Time)
75th annual conference, Police Association
Friday, 15 October 2010, 11:04 am
Speech: New Zealand Labour Party
75th annual conference, Police Association
Phil Goff, Labour Party Leader
I would like to start by acknowledging President Greg O’Connor, and congratulate you Greg on being re-elected President of the Association for a seventh term.
I want also to congratulate Inspector Mike O’Leary on being honoured at this conference with the first Police Association Bravery Award, for rescuing children from a burning van while he was off duty. His courage and selflessness was inspirational.
I want also to express my sympathy to those who have been brought into harms way while they have been serving the public of New Zealand.
I think of Senior Constable Bruce Lamb and Constable Mitchel Alatalo, who were shot on duty, and police dog Gage who was fatally shot trying to protect them.
And I think, too, of the family of Sergeant Don Wilkinson, who had to endure the trial of his killers.
Nine police officers have been shot in the past two years, two of them fatally.
So I say to you on behalf of the public, we appreciate the contribution you make to our community, and the dedication to your duty and the hard work you do.
Labour is committed to strong and decisive action against criminals, and against the causes of crime everywhere they occur.
Today I want to outline some directions in our new thinking on law and order.
Over recent years New Zealand has gone a long way on punishment.
As Justice Minister I personally introduced sweeping reforms to toughen sentencing and to match that with toughened enforcement.
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But while I support keeping serious offenders locked up, I’m also acutely aware that there are limits to how safe we can keep the public if we just focus on sentencing and punishment.
To protect the public and keep people safe we have to make sure we use the full range of other tools as well.
Prevention is always better than cure.
We know the factors that contribute to criminal activity - abuse of alcohol and drugs, lack of employment, dysfunctional families that give their kids a rotten start in life, mental disorders.
Some research I did the other day using Department of Labour statistics really worried me.
Overall unemployment has gone up to 6.8 per cent and in Maori and Pasifika communities its over 14 per cent.
But if you look further into these figures there is some alarming material.
Around 48% of Maori and Pasifika young women aged 15 to 19 are not in work, education or training. Nearly one in two. And for Maori and Pasifika teenage boys the figure is one in three.
Kids who start off life with poor education, low self-esteem, little to hope for and no expectations represent not just a personal waste but also an economic and social disaster for the whole community.
They have time on their hands and for many that can be associated with drug and alcohol abuse, teenage pregnancy and anti-social and criminal behaviour.
This problem should be an urgent priority for government to address but too little is being done.
On the alcohol and drug abuse side, we know that 80% of people in our corrections system have a problem with drug and alcohol abuse or addiction.
That justifies taking seriously the Law Commission’s well-researched report and recommendations.
And it justifies a serious effort at prevention and treatment aimed at those whose alcohol and drug use cost this country hundreds of millions of dollars.
It’s a problem as today’s media headlines proclaim that booze is cheaper than bottle water.
Resourcing our police adequately is obviously also important.
The National Party promised at the 2008 election that it would fund 600 new police.
The minister made a big play of this pledge when she came to your conference this week.
What she didn’t mention as explicitly is that about 380 of those 600 new police officers were already promised and funded by Labour.
Another 300 of the 600 were sent to South Auckland.
That meant to put in place the Government’s 300 officers in South Auckland, other districts lost staff.
In fact when Labour Members of Parliament asked questions about the budget we found out the details:
Eight out of the twelve police districts will have fewer police by the end of 2011 than they had 2009.
Forty-six fewer in Wellington, 32 fewer in Auckland, and fewer in Southern, Waikato, Waitemata, Central, Eastern and Bay of Plenty.
Northland and Tasman, will keep the same numbers.
Only Canterbury and Counties/Manukau, will get more.
In each year of the last term of the Labour Government police numbers went up on average by over 400 a year. And this year, to June 2010, the total numbers went up by one.
I cannot believe that those districts that are losing police are safer than they were before.
Every part of New Zealand needs to be adequately policed. Not just South Auckland. Not just big cities, or small towns - but every part.
While police numbers are falling around most of the country, there was a reality check last week when the new crime statistics came out.
They showed violent crime rising, murders rising by 20 percent, the highest in over a decade.
I am not going to blame the government for the increase in the number of murders.
But they made big promises in Opposition that they were going to reduce violent crime.
And they have failed. Family violence is up. And sexual violence is up. Nearly 6500 more violent offences took place in this year than in 2008.
The homeowner whose place was burgled feels less safe.
The woman who has moved out to a shelter, and the kids who are living in foster homes, know that violent crime has been increasing.
And therefore the promises made by the Government when they were in Opposition were reckless.
The lesson in this is that it is easy to make big promises about law and order, but delivering on those promises is different.
What the cuts in police numbers bring home to me is the importance of making sure there is a police response whenever someone reports an offence.
If you come home and find your car or house has been broken into, you want to know someone will come along and examine the scene as quickly as possible.
We are still a small enough country that every person can expect their safety to be taken seriously.
Labour’s thinking can be summarised as ‘sweating the small stuff.’
This means making sure there is a timely police response to all reported crime.
The value of this is that a lot of the people who go on to commit serious offences often start out on smaller offences.
And mums and dads in their homes feel their safety has been violated, and they worry about their loved ones, when they are victims of even small scale offending.
They wonder what will be next.
So when you call the cops, someone should turn up within a reasonable time.
That’s sweating the small stuff.
We want to engage with you, and with others who have a stake in these issues over the coming year.
If we’re going to make sure that there is a response when someone calls the police, then we need to make sure police resources are being used as well as we can.
So I want to look at how we can do that.
Police officers have told us about their frustration that if they pull over a drunk driver in the evening, they can be taken out for the rest of the night taking an individual back to the station to be processed.
If they could process offenders at the roadside, and reduce the time spent on processing, then we could release that officer back onto active duty.
That would have the same effect as hiring large numbers of extra officers.
I am interested in studying improvements in processing in other jurisdictions.
For example, jurisdictions overseas have introduced new electronic processing equipment.
Also overseas there is a move towards breath-testing as complete evidence, now that machines are much more accurate and reliable today.
There might be more room for a front line officer to complete his or her responsibilities at the arrest scene.
Others express huge frustration at time wasted in court because of antiquated systems we still use there.
Too much of the time is taken up on paper work and other compliance requirements which take officers away from front line duties.
What I am signalling is that we are studying these ideas, and interested in discussing them further with you.
In the same vein I want to talk about another issue that I know is angering police.
Fifteen people have already died on our roads this year during police pursuits.
The evidence has never been clearer - drivers who try to outrun police are likely to kill themselves or innocent people who inadvertently get in the way.
There isn’t an easy solution.
But I agree with the Police Association that we have to take stronger action than we have to date.
What is difficult for officers is that you are damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.
If you commence a chase and someone gets killed, you get the backlash, but if you don’t chase then you get criticised for letting a dangerous individual get away, who may then go on to kill someone by drunken and reckless driving.
The size of the problem has been highlighted by your association’s own Police News.
Police engage in up to 2500 pursuits each year. And one in four of those pursuits ends in a crash.
The blame rests fairly and squarely with the drivers who try to outrun the police.
Labour is committed to tightening up the laws on failure to stop. In particular, we are considering three options:
Toughening up existing provisions in the law, such as mandatory licence suspension and impoundment of a vehicle on a first offence;
Taking the Police Association’s recommendation to have failure to stop become a qualifying offence under sections 128 and 129 of the Sentencing Act 2002, which mean the offender’s vehicle would be at risk of confiscation; or
Looking across the Tasman where the New South Wales government is about to pass a law that introduces new offences with serious terms of imprisonment as a penalty.
Current proposals involve tougher sentences for repeat offenders, but we need to act strongly at the first offence.
When someone is recklessly putting the lives of police and other innocent people at risk, let alone their own lives, we can’t afford to wait for two to three offences or for someone to die before we get serious.
The innocent person killed or maimed as a result of the actions of these drivers doesn’t get a second chance.
Drivers who fail to stop, and thus initiate a police pursuit, don’t deserve a second chance either.
Before I move on from Australia, I want to mention one other example where Labour is looking closely across the Tasman.
Last year when I came to this conference I mentioned my interest in organised crime laws in South Australia.
Those laws are very tough - so tough that they have been challenged in court.
The Australian Supreme Court recently invalidated the laws there.
But I have been to South Australia to study these laws myself, and we are different in one important respect: In New Zealand, a court can’t strike down parliament’s laws.
But we are not so different in another respect: Just as in Australia we have a serious and dangerous problem with organised crime operating here.
I was therefore disappointed to hear the minister this week, after she left your conference, claiming that the government has got on top of the organised underbelly.
It’s true there has been some great work by the police that has resulted in the seizure of tens of millions of dollars of gang assets, under legislation I introduced into Parliament.
But if the minister seriously believes we are now on top of the organised crime underbelly then she is out of touch with the reality.
I recall a survey of your members released last year that showed a majority of members identified gangs, organised crime, and the organised drugs trade as the threat they worried about most.
A huge amount of the crime in our community ultimately routes back to organised crime - including drugs, money laundering and violence.
The tough anti-gang laws in South Australia are an example of the sorts of tools that can truly make a difference.
They allow the Attorney-General to declare a criminal bikie gang an outlaw organisation.
It introduces serious new offences for members of an organisation that has the purpose of organising, planning or supporting serious criminal activity.
There’s more: Police could go to a Judge to get orders that stop members of criminal organisations from associating or communicating with each other.
Labour is actively studying these laws, and their applicability to New Zealand.
We have already committed to a Commission of Inquiry into the extent of organised crime - and what further measures a new Govenrment can bring in to keep New Zealanders safe.
I want to respond to one other item mentioned by the Police Minister this week - when she raised the possibility of routinely carrying guns in police cars.
We will study the detail of this idea when it comes through, because there are questions we need to find out more about.
It needs to be an evidence-based approach. Labour will support proposals that make police and the community safer.
I understand why access to guns at short notice is needed, and I support that.
Police officers are being called more frequently today than at any time in our past into dangerous situations where guns are involved.
Safety of the police is a critical consideration.
But I have to say that I and many other New Zealanders don’t want to see officers routinely wearing pistols in holsters on the street.
The Commissioner is going to release proposals for change later this year and we will look at those carefully.
The test will be that we make police and the community as safe as we can.
Labour’s guiding principle is that everyone has the right to be safe in their house and in their community.
I know police are out there every day trying to protect the public, and to keep harm at bay.
Labour supports you in your work.
We are committing to working and making changes to make your job easier and our community safer.
I’ve outlined some ideas today that we want to hear more about.
And I look forward to our continuing dialogue.
Thank you once again for the work your members do and the opportunity to join with you at your conference this morning.
ENDS
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