Police in New Zealand will soon be able to order people to leave a public place for up to 24 hours after Parliament passed the Government’s move-on orders law under urgency on Friday 18 September. The Summary Offences (Move-on Orders) Amendment Bill targets disorderly behaviour, unreasonable begging and rough sleeping, and anyone who refuses an order can be prosecuted. More than 98 percent of the people who made submissions on the bill opposed it.
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith announced the final reading in a Government release that morning. The bill was one of a large package of legislation the Government has put under urgency in the final weeks of the parliamentary term, alongside the youth offending bill that sets up boot camps.
Goldsmith said move-on orders would “reclaim our streets and town squares for the enjoyment of those who visit, work and live there”.
“Businesses, residents and visitors are paying the price for unprecedented levels of disruption. Many are just trying to make a living, but have to face people camped outside their store, day in day out,” he told 1News.
He rejected the argument that the law punishes people for being homeless. “They simply provide Police with an additional tool to deal with people displaying disorderly behaviour in public places,” he said. “Only people who refuse those orders will face prosecution. A move-on order is not a criminal charge.”
Under the new law a constable can issue an order to someone behaving in a disorderly, disruptive, threatening or intimidating way, obstructing someone trying to enter a business, breaching the peace, begging unreasonably or sleeping rough in a way that suggests they intend to live in a public place. The order tells the person to move a reasonable distance away, set by the officer, for a set time of up to 24 hours. It must be given in writing or electronically. Police will also be able to briefly detain someone to confirm who they are.
The version that passed is noticeably softer than the one Goldsmith introduced. The original bill applied to people as young as 14. After months of hearings the Justice Select Committee recommended that orders apply only to adults aged 18 and over, and that change is now in the law. The committee also swapped “begging” for “unreasonable begging”, so that busking, street performance and charity collecting are not caught, and said a constable must weigh the time, place and length of the begging and its effect on other people using the space.
People moved on for begging or rough sleeping can also come back to the same area, as long as they do not repeat the behaviour that led to the order. As introduced, the bill carried a penalty of up to $2000 or three months in prison for refusing to move. The committee recommended cutting that to a fine of up to $1000, which it said was comparable to the penalty for obstructing a public way, and on 3 September Goldsmith said National was comfortable with the reduced fines, the age change, a fix covering legal freedom campers and a review of the law after three years. The Police Commissioner will also have to report how many orders are issued each year.
Not every change was welcome inside the coalition. Goldsmith said at the time that the changes to the begging definition and the rules on returning to an area would make the law harder for police to enforce, and that he was disappointed ACT had sided with Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori on those points. He confirmed the bill would not have had the numbers without ACT.
ACT MP Todd Stephenson said in Friday’s debate that his party had secured changes, including the higher age limit. “We inherited a mess in law and order, and this is yet another tool that we’re putting in place to deal with antisocial behaviour,” he said. New Zealand First’s Casey Costello compared the criticism to warnings made about the gang patch ban. “This bill takes our streets back, it gives an opportunity to put some commonsense tools in the hands of police,” she said.
Opposition MPs condemned the bill during the debate. Labour’s Camilla Belich said it targeted the country’s most vulnerable people without giving them the help they needed. “This is a very, very shameful day for our Parliament,” she said.
Green MP Tamatha Paul argued the law does criminalise homelessness. “[The government] did not even attempt to address the root factors of why there is record level homelessness in this country,” she said. The Greens tried to add a requirement for the Ministry of Social Development to offer help to everyone given a move-on order, but that change was voted down.
Te Pāti Māori MP Oriini Kaipara said she had received messages that morning from people living on the street, and urged the Government to deal with the causes of homelessness instead.
The weight of public submissions ran heavily against the bill. RNZ reported that submitters called it morally indefensible, unnecessary and a breach of the Bill of Rights, and some said it criminalised homelessness. Attorney-General Chris Bishop had earlier found that including begging and rough sleeping was inconsistent with the rights to freedom of expression and freedom of movement, the select committee report noted. One of the few submitters in favour said the current system had no teeth to deal with aggressive and non-compliant behaviour.
For shop owners and hospitality businesses in city centres, the law gives police a new option short of arrest. For social agencies, the worry is that people will simply be shifted from one street to the next. How often the orders are used, and against whom, will show up in the first police annual reports, and the justice minister must review the law after three years.
With the general election weeks away, the debate laid out clearly where each party stands on law and order and homelessness. If you are still weighing up where the parties stand, our voting tool can show which party best matches your views.
Will move-on orders make city centres feel safer, or just push vulnerable people somewhere else? Tell us what you think 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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