Rough sleepers are already drifting out of central Auckland and into neighbouring suburbs, weeks before Parliament has even finished writing the law meant to move them along, a frontline homelessness agency says.
Lifewise told RNZ this week that people sleeping rough had begun shifting away from the city centre because of fears about the Government’s move-on orders bill, which is still working its way through a select committee. Chief executive Pam Elgar said the pattern was showing up before the legislation had passed, with vulnerable people relocating rather than risking an encounter with police once the powers take effect.
The claim, if it holds, cuts to the heart of the argument that has followed this bill since it was first floated in February. Supporters say it will clean up city centres. Critics say it will not solve homelessness at all, it will simply push it somewhere less visible and leave the underlying problems untouched. The early movement Lifewise describes looks, on its account, a lot like the second outcome.
At issue is the Summary Offences (Move-on Orders) Amendment Bill, which would hand police a new power to order people out of a public place for up to 24 hours. The orders could be issued to anyone aged 14 or older who is behaving in a disorderly, disruptive, threatening or intimidating way, obstructing the entrance to a business, breaching the peace, begging, rough sleeping, or otherwise showing an intention to settle in a public space. Someone who refuses to move, or who returns inside the 24 hour window, could face a fine of up to $2000 or up to three months in prison. Giving police false details would carry a separate penalty.
The Government has been consistent about why it wants the powers. Announcing the plan, Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith said New Zealanders were fair-minded people who wanted to help those in need, but that this did not mean the country should accept its city centres, and particularly its tourist areas, becoming “places of intimidation, and dysfunction”. Police Minister Mark Mitchell framed it as a straightforward safety measure, saying the bill was “about public safety and providing our frontline with additional enforcement powers to ensure the public can feel and are safe”. The Government has pointed to businesses in main streets and town centres struggling with disruption that it says currently goes unchecked.
The opposition to the bill has been unusually broad, and it does not come only from the political left. When the Justice Committee heard oral submissions this month, one submitter after another lined up against it. Lifewise’s Elgar told the committee the bill criminalised rough sleeping and begging without touching the “root causes of homelessness, addiction, trauma, poverty or mental health need”. Submitter Paul McMahon argued the whole exercise was unnecessary because “everything genuinely harmful that this bill is aimed at, is already against the law”, and pressed the point that the machinery of government itself had reservations. “The police say it isn’t needed, the Ministry of Justice says it won’t work, and shouldn’t be done. The Attorney-General says it breaches our Bill of Rights,” he said.
That last point carries weight. The Attorney-General has already reported that the provisions aimed at begging and rough sleeping would place an unjustified limit on rights protected by the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. The Ministry of Justice, the department that would have to make the law work, has questioned whether it will achieve anything. Auckland Council, hardly a radical body, has formally asked for begging and rough sleeping to be stripped out of the bill on the grounds that the measure would displace people who are already vulnerable while doing nothing about why they are on the street in the first place.
Not every voice has been opposed. A small number of submitters backed the bill, arguing that the current system has no teeth to deal with aggressive or non-compliant behaviour that stops short of an existing criminal offence, and that shopkeepers and passers-by deserve a tool that works. Pillar NZ head of operations Arian Tashakkori sat somewhere in between, telling the committee he was sympathetic to the goal of safer central business districts but could not support the bill in its current form, warning it set a “poor legal precedent” for civil liberties. Submitters opposed to the measure told the committee it was “morally indefensible”, a phrase that has stuck to the process, according to RNZ’s report of the hearings.
Where the bill goes from here now rests with the Justice Committee, which has to weigh the submissions and report back to Parliament before the bill can move to its next reading. The Government’s own announcement set out its case, and the bill text is public, but the political question is now less about the wording and more about the effect. Lifewise says the effect is already visible on the street, and that it is the wrong one.
With the country heading to a general election on 7 November, law and order is shaping up as one of the sharper dividing lines between the parties, and this bill sits right on it. If you want to see where the parties stand on issues like this before you vote, try our voting tool.
What do you make of the move-on orders plan, and would it make your town centre safer or just move the problem down the road? Have your say in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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