December 14, 2024 • 7 mins
An Auckland MP is concerned about the amount of time police are spending monitoring events - rather than being on the beat in communities.
Maungakiekie MP Greg Fleming is floating the idea of allowing police to charge for their presence at some large profitable events.
He says while on patrol with two local community officers, they told him they'd been at a large sporting event.
"They said - yeah, what would be amazing is if we could make you charge for these events, therefore instead of taking on-duty officers off the front line, we could offer overtime shifts."
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudgin
from News Talk ZEDB.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Right now, though, reading my local paper, as I mentioned
just before the break, the Only Hunger Community News, my
Electric MP raised an issue that sort of caught my attention.
According to the mangakearekre MP, Greg Fleming, police is spending
up to fifty percent of their time staffing large events,
the likes of concerts and big sporting events. This of
course means there is less police presence on their local beat.
(00:36):
Greg Fleming has been researching a solution and he joins me, now,
good morning, Greg, nice to.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Have you with us, Madana Franciscan love to speak.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Is the figure really that high? Up to fifty percent
of police time has been spent at big events here?
Speaker 3 (00:50):
It is for our local community based constable. So how
this came about was I hadn't been an MP for
very long or and I was heading out one Saturday
at night with community patrol in zed who keep their
patrol car with all of the patrol cars down there
and all the more, and we're about to jump into it,
and our two local officers may have actually met them
(01:11):
as a neighboring resistant there. But Chris and Don, we're
just coming back. And I asked them where they had
been patrolling that night. He says, obviously, we've got a
few crime hotspots in our community at the moment, and
they said, oh, we've just been We've just been starting
the Warriors game. And I asked them how long? How
often this happened, and this is where it came up,
and realizing that, wow, so we're losing that much of
(01:34):
our already limited frontline police time to these events, meaning
that our communities aren't getting the attention they deserved. And
this was actually their idea. They said, Yeah, what would
be amazing is if we could next to charge for
these events and therefore instead of taking on duty offices
off the frontline, we could actually offer overtime shifts. And
(01:56):
that's where it all began.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
That's really interesting. Would most communities have about two local
offices community officers comfortable?
Speaker 3 (02:03):
I think so? Yeah? I think so. Well. My letter
runs from Mount Welling and across to Royal Arc and
that we have two dedicated officers in the area, and
there is at least one, maybe one point five st
in Mount Wellington and they they've so it's part of
my research. I began chatting around the community and they
face the same issue as well. Yeah, so it's not.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
It's not a lot, is it, Greg. So if they're
spending half the time popular direction, but then do they
you know, not so bad part of your job. I
spoke to. I spoke to a detective inspector who'd worked
at Coldblane, was raving about the night and had a
fantastic time. So it's it's that it does seem ridiculous
that they are doing this, I presume for free, when
(02:46):
we were paying them to be working within our community.
I quite like your idea.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
Yeah. And the great thing about this, if it does
get through we are able to affect the law change
and certainly the police Minister's pretty enthusiastic about it, which
is obviously now now need to run through the legislative process,
is that you'll still get officers at these as still
going on to coldplay. It's just that the difference is
that they will be off duty officers who are on
(03:13):
overtime shifts rather than on duty ones. And so it's
a it's a win win because not only do we
get to keep our community officers on the front line,
but it's for all those officers who want to earn
some extra cash but will actually be able to do it,
because this is the other thing a found in the
research is that is that a large number of police
(03:36):
are very happy to work more than they're forty toty
five hours a week. It's just that under our police
regulations they can't. And so there's quite a few out
there who are taking overtime shifts doing other security measures,
private security and stuff that'd much rather be doing overtime
shifts for the police. And some recent changes to the
way that police process remuneration in the country would actually
(03:58):
facilitate this. And the timing of it's great.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Should events actually be charged for a police presence?
Speaker 3 (04:05):
Greek? Well, this is this is the debate that we
had that we've already had around parliament. So some of
the pushback and you can imagine this is exactly on
that line, right, So a number of MP's fact, I
was just chatting with a colleague this morning in advance
of a conversation with you and just to test out
my ideas, and that he was saying, you will conduct
the challenges. Great where you draw the line, So if
(04:25):
police start charging for one event, you know, where where
do we draw it? And I said to my absolutely
is the challenge. At the moment, we draw the line
right at the beginning, and so that police can't charge
for anything. I'm just my argument is that we can
move that line a little bit, a little bit of
long spectrum. And this is why we need the legislative
change because at the moment it's not actually possible in
(04:46):
New Zealand for a police to charge for something that
that also has a public benefit. And what I mean
by that is understandably, at the moment, if you've got
forty thousand people in one place, the New Zealand Police
out of public safety. I'm sure that there's a number
of staff here and so the event organized quite understandably
could push back and go, well, you chose to be there,
(05:07):
I didn't ask you to be there. And this is
what happened in the UK because they hadn't changed the legislation,
Advance actually lost the court case. And so that was
part of my resit with researcher realizing that we're going
to need to change it and us to make it
clear that having a public benefit as well as a
private benefit doesn't mean that you can't charge for the
private benefit. So this is, this is, and so we'll
(05:29):
be for a limited events. It will only be for
very large events where there's clearly a profit involved for
the event organized. But so yeah, it's not it's not
going to change the world, but it will certainly make
a difference to to our frontline communities.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
No sounds good. And just if you're going to try
and put all this in place, working on a law
and a policy change here, how long could this take? Greg?
Speaker 3 (05:49):
Well, I put it in as a members bill, so
it was passed off by my corcuse a couple of
weeks ago, and so I either now need to wait
for that to get pulled out of the tin, or
I need to get cross party support to get it
onto the paper, or it needs to get pulled out
by our government and it acts to become bill. So
any one of those things could happen next year, or
(06:10):
it could take mates longer. I'm sitting again for the
former excellent.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Hell, look, thanks so much for your time. Before you go, Greg,
I noticed that you're You're leader of the Prime Minister
mentioned this week on News Talks B that he is
actually only going to take about ten days off this Christmas.
Is that what other members of Parliament are doing as well?
Are you back to the grindstone pretty quickly? Oh?
Speaker 3 (06:31):
Fantastic question. I mean he's yeah, he's a boy. Howly
he is he is. His capacity for work is pretty
inspiration and we see that every day down there in Parliament. Yeah.
I'm feeling pretty exhausted at the moment myself. We finished.
At the end of next week. I'm going to head
away with my family. It catch my breath, hoping to
be back into it. Probably I'll be back on the
(06:53):
tools to some extent, I reckon second week of January.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Oh, it's not too bad, Gre No, you can take you.
Good on you.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
Thanks for your.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Time this morning. That was Greg Fliming there the manga
Kiki MP.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to News Talks it Be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudgin
from News Talk ZEDB.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Right now, though, reading my local paper, as I mentioned
just before the break, the Only Hunger Community News, my
Electric MP raised an issue that sort of caught my attention.
According to the mangakearekre MP, Greg Fleming, police is spending
up to fifty percent of their time staffing large events,
the likes of concerts and big sporting events. This of
course means there is less police presence on their local beat.
(00:36):
Greg Fleming has been researching a solution and he joins me, now,
good morning, Greg, nice to.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Have you with us, Madana Franciscan love to speak.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Is the figure really that high? Up to fifty percent
of police time has been spent at big events here?
Speaker 3 (00:50):
It is for our local community based constable. So how
this came about was I hadn't been an MP for
very long or and I was heading out one Saturday
at night with community patrol in zed who keep their
patrol car with all of the patrol cars down there
and all the more, and we're about to jump into it,
and our two local officers may have actually met them
(01:11):
as a neighboring resistant there. But Chris and Don, we're
just coming back. And I asked them where they had
been patrolling that night. He says, obviously, we've got a
few crime hotspots in our community at the moment, and
they said, oh, we've just been We've just been starting
the Warriors game. And I asked them how long? How
often this happened, and this is where it came up,
and realizing that, wow, so we're losing that much of
(01:34):
our already limited frontline police time to these events, meaning
that our communities aren't getting the attention they deserved. And
this was actually their idea. They said, Yeah, what would
be amazing is if we could next to charge for
these events and therefore instead of taking on duty offices
off the frontline, we could actually offer overtime shifts. And
(01:56):
that's where it all began.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
That's really interesting. Would most communities have about two local
offices community officers comfortable?
Speaker 3 (02:03):
I think so? Yeah? I think so. Well. My letter
runs from Mount Welling and across to Royal Arc and
that we have two dedicated officers in the area, and
there is at least one, maybe one point five st
in Mount Wellington and they they've so it's part of
my research. I began chatting around the community and they
face the same issue as well. Yeah, so it's not.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
It's not a lot, is it, Greg. So if they're
spending half the time popular direction, but then do they
you know, not so bad part of your job. I
spoke to. I spoke to a detective inspector who'd worked
at Coldblane, was raving about the night and had a
fantastic time. So it's it's that it does seem ridiculous
that they are doing this, I presume for free, when
(02:46):
we were paying them to be working within our community.
I quite like your idea.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
Yeah. And the great thing about this, if it does
get through we are able to affect the law change
and certainly the police Minister's pretty enthusiastic about it, which
is obviously now now need to run through the legislative process,
is that you'll still get officers at these as still
going on to coldplay. It's just that the difference is
that they will be off duty officers who are on
(03:13):
overtime shifts rather than on duty ones. And so it's
a it's a win win because not only do we
get to keep our community officers on the front line,
but it's for all those officers who want to earn
some extra cash but will actually be able to do it,
because this is the other thing a found in the
research is that is that a large number of police
(03:36):
are very happy to work more than they're forty toty
five hours a week. It's just that under our police
regulations they can't. And so there's quite a few out
there who are taking overtime shifts doing other security measures,
private security and stuff that'd much rather be doing overtime
shifts for the police. And some recent changes to the
way that police process remuneration in the country would actually
(03:58):
facilitate this. And the timing of it's great.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Should events actually be charged for a police presence?
Speaker 3 (04:05):
Greek? Well, this is this is the debate that we
had that we've already had around parliament. So some of
the pushback and you can imagine this is exactly on
that line, right, So a number of MP's fact, I
was just chatting with a colleague this morning in advance
of a conversation with you and just to test out
my ideas, and that he was saying, you will conduct
the challenges. Great where you draw the line, So if
(04:25):
police start charging for one event, you know, where where
do we draw it? And I said to my absolutely
is the challenge. At the moment, we draw the line
right at the beginning, and so that police can't charge
for anything. I'm just my argument is that we can
move that line a little bit, a little bit of
long spectrum. And this is why we need the legislative
change because at the moment it's not actually possible in
(04:46):
New Zealand for a police to charge for something that
that also has a public benefit. And what I mean
by that is understandably, at the moment, if you've got
forty thousand people in one place, the New Zealand Police
out of public safety. I'm sure that there's a number
of staff here and so the event organized quite understandably
could push back and go, well, you chose to be there,
(05:07):
I didn't ask you to be there. And this is
what happened in the UK because they hadn't changed the legislation,
Advance actually lost the court case. And so that was
part of my resit with researcher realizing that we're going
to need to change it and us to make it
clear that having a public benefit as well as a
private benefit doesn't mean that you can't charge for the
private benefit. So this is, this is, and so we'll
(05:29):
be for a limited events. It will only be for
very large events where there's clearly a profit involved for
the event organized. But so yeah, it's not it's not
going to change the world, but it will certainly make
a difference to to our frontline communities.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
No sounds good. And just if you're going to try
and put all this in place, working on a law
and a policy change here, how long could this take? Greg?
Speaker 3 (05:49):
Well, I put it in as a members bill, so
it was passed off by my corcuse a couple of
weeks ago, and so I either now need to wait
for that to get pulled out of the tin, or
I need to get cross party support to get it
onto the paper, or it needs to get pulled out
by our government and it acts to become bill. So
any one of those things could happen next year, or
(06:10):
it could take mates longer. I'm sitting again for the
former excellent.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Hell, look, thanks so much for your time. Before you go, Greg,
I noticed that you're You're leader of the Prime Minister
mentioned this week on News Talks B that he is
actually only going to take about ten days off this Christmas.
Is that what other members of Parliament are doing as well?
Are you back to the grindstone pretty quickly? Oh?
Speaker 3 (06:31):
Fantastic question. I mean he's yeah, he's a boy. Howly
he is he is. His capacity for work is pretty
inspiration and we see that every day down there in Parliament. Yeah.
I'm feeling pretty exhausted at the moment myself. We finished.
At the end of next week. I'm going to head
away with my family. It catch my breath, hoping to
be back into it. Probably I'll be back on the
(06:53):
tools to some extent, I reckon second week of January.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Oh, it's not too bad, Gre No, you can take you.
Good on you.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
Thanks for your.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Time this morning. That was Greg Fliming there the manga
Kiki MP.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to News Talks it Be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.
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