Police scrapped some crime-prevention funding to meet the Government’s savings expectations for Budget 2025, including for neighbourhood support and community patrols, and to prevent burglary and Māori youth offending.
These saved $7.8 million a year, but the Government still had to commit $120m a year to police in Budget 2025 just to keep the lights on.
The ongoing pressure for police to stay in their financial lane is revealed in Treasury documents for Budget 2025.
Police made several suggestions to meet the Finance Minister Nicola Willis’ savings expectations, including some that were rejected because they would “directly impact” the frontline, according to Treasury officials.
Ministers also rejected a proposal to close rural stations, but police are now proposing some closures in rural Canterbury, which have led to local community protests.
A Treasury briefing to Willis in November noted effective crime-prevention measures, such as community partnership services, can “reduce costs for the [law and order] sector in both the short and long term”.
“However, agencies have tended to put such initiatives forward for savings given they do not form a part of agencies’ ‘core’ functions.”
This could lead to higher costs and more crime (relative to the Government’s law and order goals) in the longer term, the briefing said.
“The risk is that in order to make savings and manage within baselines, agencies are creating higher costs for the Crown in the longer term, and potentially impacting on justice outcomes and the delivery of Government targets.”
As Budget 2025 neared, police again suggested axing crime-prevention measures, this time in the form of “grants and funds with minimal impact on the frontline and limited risk to the Crown”.
“The grants cover a trial designed to prevent burglary and similar property offences, partnership funding between [health service provider] Tuhoe Hauroa and police to reduce Māori youth offending and victimisation, and funding for Neighbourhood Support NZ and Community Patrols NZ,” a Treasury briefing in March said.
A lower-savings option was also presented, which gave the Government “a viable alternative, should ministers wish to retain some of the benefits of the programmes, including preventing victimisation and improving community safety”.
Ministers opted for higher savings, losing any such benefits but giving the Government an extra $7.8m a year.
Asked if crime prevention was secondary to enforcing the law, Police Minister Mark Mitchell said they “go hand in hand”.
He has been supportive not only of police cracking down on enforcing the law, particularly when it comes to gangs, but also increasing the number of police on the beat.
Police chief operating officer Andrea Conlan also said crime prevention was “absolutely” a core function of police.
“Like all government agencies, we made some difficult choices in meeting our obligation to be fiscally responsible,” she said.
“Funding has remained the same for Neighbourhood Support and Community Patrols NZ, but for some programmes and trials, funding has ceased.”
Mitchell said it was the police’s “job” to try to prevent crime every day.
“They’re the only ones that have the powers and the training to respond, take action, and make sure there’s a proactive response to any offending that does occur.”
So what does he make of the Government’s citizen arrest proposals, which would give the public more freedom to arrest than police, even though they are not trained as police are?
Among police concerns are excessive vigilante justice, the risk of escalating violence and the mishandling of children and young people, who are inherently vulnerable.
“Police give us free and frank advice,” Mitchell told the Herald. “Ministers have to take in the whole picture and then make decisions based on what they think is the right thing to do.”
Mitchell said shopkeepers, facing rising retail crime, had asked the Government for help and the new powers would “come with responsibilities, and very clear guidelines”.
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. At least we’re willing to make some bold decisions and do some things differently, and listen to the people that are most impacted.”
Though Mitchell had earlier rejected the closure of rural stations, according to the Treasury briefings, Canterbury police are now proposing a restructure that would involve some rural stations losing their local cops.
Sole-charge stations in Arthurs Pass, St Andrews, Pleasant Point and Rakaia would close. The Aoraki area would move to a “deployment” model, meaning help would come from other areas such as Timaru or Ashburton.
Resources would be redeployed to 24/7 hubs in Rolleston and Rangiora, with bolstered public safety teams in Timaru, Ashburton and Christchurch. The aim is to make the best use of police resources.
But the proposals have led to community protests, while Federated Farmers vice-president and Makikihi farmer Colin Hurst called them “short-sighted and dangerous”.
Police Association president Chris Cahill has said the “‘feel safe’ factor of a local officer should not be underestimated”.
Mitchell said the Arthurs Pass station, “basically a house”, has been empty.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen with that, but it effectively hasn’t had anyone in it for over two years,” he said.
“I’ve been very clear, from a central government point of view, that our expectation is a strong community presence of our police officers, and the police are actually being very effective in rolling that out.
“I’m sure all of that feedback and the consultation will be taken into account by the Canterbury police.”
A final decision, which was initially expected on September 1, has been delayed.
Last year, the Government gave police a one-off top-up of $120m, but this year the same amount per annum was committed to meet critical cost pressures.
Even then, the Treasury said it will be touch-and-go when it comes to no reduction in frontline services.
“The level of cost-pressure funding recommended will require active management to avoid frontline impacts,” Treasury said in a briefing in March.
“There is a risk that the proposed scaling of the funding sought results in police reprioritising from areas that impact frontline services.”
Police had already appeared to have put forward savings options “inconsistent with Government justice policy”, which were presented simply as a way of trying to meet the Government’s proposed funding bands for Budget 2025.
“A number of police savings proposals were not supported where they would directly impact frontline service delivery or were otherwise not viable,” the briefing said. Those proposals were all redacted.
Treasury officials noted 70% of the police budget was spent on wages and ministers needed to have a plan for wage negotiations next year as the cost of wages is “likely to become extremely difficult to manage beyond 2027 without new funding”.
Last year’s wage negotiation hit a brick wall and was sent to arbitration, which sided with the Government.
“Pay negotiations are always tough,” Mitchell said.
“You always want to do the best that you can, but from a Government perspective, we’re also in an economic recovery.
“We don’t want to see our country broke.”
Derek Cheng is a senior journalist who started at the Herald in 2004. He has worked several stints in the press gallery team and is a former deputy political editor.