Police may not be able to meet Govt’s promise of 500 new cops

Thursday, 5 December 2024

Police Commissioner Richard Chambers has said the Government’s target to recruit 500 new police officers could take longer than expected.

But associate police minister Casey Costello has a different recollection of how police were tracking with the deadline.

There’s currently a two-year delivery date on the target, with the Government promising in the NZ First-National coalition agreement that it would meet these numbers by the end of 2025.

But police now have their sights set on a later date, one in 2026.

Labour’s police spokesperson Ginny Andersen questioned police executives on the issue in a select committee hearing today, and whether that number was likely to be met.

Deputy Commissioner Chris de Wattignar said the target “was set by the coalition Government agreement and it’s a very ambitious target and we always accepted that from the outset, it’s very, very challenging.”

When asked if June 30 2026 was a more accurate date, de Wattignar said, “that’s probably a more accurate picture of the target with our projections at the moment.”

Currently, there 306 trainees at the police college wings, and there will be 100 more from April.

The target will be met, de Wattignar said, but things have to be done differently, and they have to maintain those standards in recruitment and training.

Part of the difficulty, de Wattignar said, was that the funding for the recruitment only arrived in July, “so we’ve been working on the two year basis that we actually have the money to do the spend.” Because of this, police college could only increase class sizes from next year.

He said they should reach the target by the time that funding is exhausted, by the end of the 2025/2026 financial year.

Richard Chambers said police were working hard to ensure they have 500 'outstanding police officers”, and while they are working towards delivering that number by next November, he was confident that they would have it in 2026.

“The pipeline, which we refer to in terms of people very keen to join New Zealand police, is looking very healthy,” Richard Chambers said.

He said that the training of new recruits was critical, and there are processes to go through to select the best candidates which wouldn’t be sacrificed in order to hit the target.

“I'm not going to compromise on the quality of our people to meet a date.”

When asked if he had advised Associate Police Minister Casey Costello that it was more likely that the target would be achieved in 2026, Chambers said, “I have had a number of meetings already with Minister Costello, and we talk openly with a good deal of common sense about what we need to do to deliver 500 outstanding police officers.”

But Costello had a different recall, telling media: “I regularly meet with police around recruitment and there has been no indication from them that the target is unachievable.

“I understand that it’s an ambitious goal, but police are reporting a significant increase in applications, there’s a major recruitment campaign under way and they are preparing to increase the size of recruitment wings next year.”

Costello said the goal was not unrealistic, that they had crunched the numbers and extrapolated out.

Police executives also confirmed some of the funding allocated to reach the target had gone towards the new Federal St police station in Auckland CBD.

Chambers said that funding allocation had not impacted its ability to reach the target.

Labour’s Ginny Andersen says Police Minister Mark Mitchell made promises to the public with a “forked tongue”.

“Mark Mitchell famously flip-flopped on this number, confusing the public with messy sums, but the truth of his hollow promise has been revealed.”