Parliament’s Justice Committee is expected to recommend that the Government’s move-on orders bill no longer apply to anyone under 18, removing the element of the legislation that drew objections from police as well as from the bill’s critics.
RNZ reported on Wednesday morning that the committee’s report on the Summary Offences (Move-on Orders) Amendment Bill, due back on Thursday, will recommend lifting the minimum age from 14 to 18. The committee has been working through the bill for months and heard from police, legal experts and social service organisations. RNZ understands police raised concerns about children as young as 14 being covered by the new power.
The recommendation still needs sign-off from ministers before it becomes part of the bill. Government MPs hold the majority of seats on the committee, which gives some indication of where the numbers sit.
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith told RNZ he would not comment until the committee reported back. He said MPs had taken into account the many submissions and the “wide variety of views” in them, and acknowledged “some concerns [had been] raised” about the ages covered, while maintaining he was comfortable with the bill as it was introduced. He also told RNZ on Tuesday there were “a lot of people who do want to see us reclaiming our town’s centres and main streets”.
The bill would let a constable issue a move-on order to anyone aged 14 or older in a public place if the officer had reasonable grounds to suspect the person was engaging in, or had recently engaged in, disorderly, intimidating or threatening behaviour, disruptive behaviour, unreasonably obstructing someone entering or leaving a business, breaching the peace, begging, or rough sleeping. The order can require a person to leave and stay away from a specified area for up to 24 hours. Refusing one knowingly or recklessly and without reasonable excuse is an offence carrying up to three months in prison or a fine of up to $2,000. Protest activity and freedom camping are expressly carved out.
Announcing the bill’s first reading on 21 May, Goldsmith said in a statement carried by Scoop that “our streets and town centres have endured unprecedented levels of disruption in recent years” and that “many people no longer want to be there”. He rejected the idea that the powers made homelessness a crime. “There has been much said about this legislation, so let me set the record straight, the Government has no policy to criminalise homelessness,” he said. “Only people who refuse those orders, will face prosecution. A move-on order is not a criminal charge.”
The age threshold was not the only thing that troubled the bill’s critics. Attorney-General Chris Bishop tabled a report under the Bill of Rights Act on 14 May finding parts of the bill inconsistent with protected rights. In that report he wrote that “the scope of the ‘begging’ ground is, without more, too wide”, and that a narrower ground covering aggressive begging would achieve the same purpose with less intrusion on freedom of expression.
Bishop also found the effect of an order unjustified where it was issued for begging or rough sleeping, because it shuts a person out of an area for every purpose, not just the behaviour that triggered it. He set out a practical example. A person rough sleeping near the only shop in the area, issued with an order, “would not only prevent them from resuming their rough sleeping but also from visiting the shop to buy food”, and there could be a medical centre or a church in the same area that the bill would not direct the officer’s attention to. We covered that finding when the bill passed its first reading in May.
Police Association president Steve Watt raised his own concerns in July, telling RNZ that the bill “risks placing police in a role of managing the visible effects of homelessness, addiction, mental health issues, poverty, and youth vulnerability, rather than addressing the underlying causes”. He pointed out that officers already had powers to deal with disorderly or offensive behaviour, assault, obstruction, property damage and graffiti. Goldsmith responded on Morning Report that the bill was being mischaracterised, saying that “if you’re lying in a sleeping bag on the ground, on a bench or in a doorway, that is currently not covered by any offence”.
At the oral hearings in July, submitter Margy-Jean Malcolm called the bill “morally indefensible, legally unnecessary and fiscally irresponsible”. University of Otago professor Nevil Pierse described seeing a 15 year old girl sleeping outside his building on the way to work. “She was simply a young person with no place safe to go,” he told the committee, according to RNZ’s account of the hearings. Claire Achmad, who was Children’s Commissioner until the end of July, told MPs the bill “must not progress” and that passing it would be “yet another backwards step on children’s rights in New Zealand”.
Not every submitter opposed it. WhangΔrei teacher Simone Ackermann told the committee her community had spent 18 months living beside long term vehicle encampments in a public reserve, describing drinking, drug taking, fighting beside a children’s playground and vandalism. She said her community contacted the council, visited police and spoke to the local MP without result. “The system simply has no teeth to deal with the sort of issues we encountered,” she said.
The timing now matters as much as the content. The House sits on Wednesday and Thursday, then for two more weeks in the middle and end of September, before rising for the last time on the evening of 24 September ahead of the general election on 7 November. That leaves very few afternoons for the bill to clear a second reading, a committee of the whole House and a third reading. If it does not, it dies with this Parliament and would have to start again. Voters can check where the parties stand on law and order and other issues with our voting tool.
An age change would also not settle the argument that has followed this bill since it was introduced. The begging and rough sleeping grounds, the ones the Attorney-General singled out, are still in the bill unless the committee has recommended changing them too. That will be clear on Thursday.
What do you think of the move-on orders bill and the plan to lift the age to 18? Leave a comment below and tell us how you see it.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job π
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