The Greens will be supporting this bill, as we did through its previous stages. It has been an interesting bill.
In one sense, in the way it has proceeded we have seen MMP in action, particularly with Stephen Frank’s amendment last night. I think we want to learn something from that. Even though we come from quite different philosophical bases – certainly, the Green Party and the ACT party are philosophically very far apart – we should always look at each other’s amendments closely, because sometimes we may actually agree with them.
That was the case with various parties in this House when they looked at Mr Franks’ amendment to see whether it had any particular problems. We looked at whether it would restrain the commission, and, in reading it closely, we found that it would not. The amendment clearly stated: “may be achieved without materially prejudicing the commission’s ability to ascertain and report the truth” – that is, the commission still has control of its own destiny to expose what it wanted to, but it would be advised by the rest of the amendment to keep the Police Complaints Authority material confidential, particularly information that might identify individuals. The amendment was a good example of the MMP process.
At the start, the Government was a little reluctant to go along with the amendment, thinking it would constrain the commission, and that was the argument it outlined. But it was good to see that at the end of the Committee stage the Government came to the party. Whether that was because it genuinely was convinced by Mr Franks’ amendment or just does not like losing a vote in the House, I have yet to determine. However, I will give it the benefit of the doubt that it agreed with the amendment, finally.
Mr Franks said there was a problem of the new watchdog, this commission of inquiry, looking at another watchdog, the Police Complaints Authority. That is the situation. It is problematic that people have such little confidence in the Police Complaints Authority, particularly in what it was doing back in the period 1986 and beyond.
The heart of the problem was that the Police Complaints Authority relies a bit too much on police officers for its investigatory capacity, and, in a small town like Rotorua, it may be that – and the commission has yet to determine what the real situation was – the police officer doing the investigations and forwarding the analysis to the authority, had too close a relationship with the people he was investigating, and was not necessarily coming in with independent conclusions. Whether or not that is true, that is the import of some of the newspaper coverage. I will leave it to the commission to work out what the real truth of the situation is.
I agree with Mr Franks, too, that the more transparent the commission of inquiry can be, the better. That way, people will have faith in the outcome of the inquiry. We do not want everything heard in secret sessions and for people to end up thinking that justice was not done, particularly in respect of those people who are alleged to have suffered sexual abuse, if that did in fact take place. I think there is a need for the Police Complaints Authority to keep some of its information secret.
One reason, which I have talked about previously, is that we want to encourage people to come forward to the authority, be they whistle-blowers in respect of complainants, whistle-blowers in the police force itself, ,who could be other officers who do not like what is going on and are a bit scared to be known amongst their fellow officers because of the consequences that may ensue by, in a sense, narking on their fellow officers. A bit of protection is needed to encourage fellow police officers to inform on bad apples in the police force so that we can have a truly non-corrupt and non-biased force.
The other category of people we want to protect is the complainants. Again, sometimes in small towns, people in difficult situations – as is the case with some of the people the commission will be investigating – be they young people, people who are feeling under a bit of pressure from those who are more senior to them or from the police in the district, or whatever – need to be protected to enable them to come forward to the Police Complaints Authority in the future. I think that a certain secrecy is required for that.
We will deal with those sorts of things further in the new version of the Police Complaints Authority proposed in the Independent Police Complaints Authority Bill Amendment Bill that will be coming before us in more detail after the commission of inquiry report. It is currently in the House but has been moved down the Order Paper because of this commission of inquiry.
But some complainants point to a problem with a lack of information available in the proceedings of the Police Complaints Authority – that is, although it is right to keep the identity of certain complainants secret, the proceedings of the authority itself are sometimes a bit too secretive or a bit too non- transparent, much more so than the proceedings of other complaint systems in other professions, such as the medical profession.
In those professions, there is an ability to bring in name suppression, particularly if the complaints are frivolous there is the protection of the possibility of name suppression. However there is a presumption of openness in a lot of those proceedings, whereas with the Police Complaints Authority the presumption tends to be the opposite – that of secrecy. We have had examples of that. I have heard of examples of complainants being a bit dissatisfied with the results of the Police Complaints Authority inquiry, in that a few lines of the result are read and that all the rest is done in secret. They do not believe that justice has been done for them, and they cannot see the evidence that justice has been done, because everything was done too much in secret.
Somebody might complain of having been beaten up and claim they have a couple of witnesses. But in the end the police officer’s word is taken, and a person feels that it is all wrong, but if the proceedings had been a little more open, he or she would have got the whole picture and perhaps be more satisfied with the decision.
One of the sections in Mr Frank’s amendment in relation to the commission is relevant to the Police Complaints Authority, too, I think. His amendment to clause 6, which adds new subsection(2C) – and which is now in the bill because it has been accepted – states: “(2C) Steps or restrictions referred to … may be waived with the informed consent of any person to whom this Act extends the benefit of confidentiality in respect of any matter…” So I think that could perhaps be applied more in relation to the Police Complaints Authority proceedings.
If the complainant in a case says: “I want it all to be open. I am quite happy for my information and identity to be known. I just want justice”, then perhaps the proceedings of the Police Complaints Authority could be more open than they are at the present time. Sure, some of the police officers might be a bit upset that their names might be a bit more known, but in order to have a non-corrupt and non-biased police force, I think we have to move more in the direction of openness in that respect, and the Greens will go in the direction.
I conclude by saying we do support this bill. It will help make us more confident in the operations of the police force and, hopefully, the Police Complaints Authority.