The Government is planning to give police the power to tell people to leave an area for up to 24 hours. If someone refuses, they could be fined $2,000 or jailed for up to three months. The Government says these "move-on orders" are meant to stop disorderly behaviour in public spaces.

But public health experts and researchers say the plan has a serious problem: it will treat homeless young people as criminals for just trying to survive.

What the experts are saying

In June, the Public Health and Community Care Society released a statement against the orders. Their main point: the Government's plan doesn't tell the difference between actual bad behaviour and survival behaviour. A young person sleeping rough or asking for money isn't doing either to cause trouble — they're doing it because they have nowhere else to go and no other way to get by.

A move-on order doesn't fix that. It just moves the problem somewhere else, and gives the young person a criminal record in the process.

Researchers at the University of Otago went further. They warned that these orders could push homeless youth into crime and long-term reliance on government help. The concern is based on something researchers have seen many times before: when young people get early contact with the justice system — even for small things — they tend to get stuck in a cycle of disadvantage and keep coming back to the courts and police.

What the Government's own ministries said

Here's the stranger part. Two government departments looked at this plan and reached the same conclusion as the experts. The Ministry of Housing and Urban Development and the Ministry of Social Development both said — in documents released under the Official Information Act — that survival behaviours like rough sleeping and begging should be left out of the move-on orders.

But the Government hasn't put that carve-out into the actual proposal it announced in February.

The key question now is whether that gap matters. It's not clear yet whether the Government can fix this through regulations and police guidelines, or whether it would need to change the actual law.

Why this matters in practice

For people who work in youth services, housing, or the courts, this isn't just an abstract argument. When a move-on order is used against a homeless teenager, it doesn't solve the problem of them needing a place to sleep. Instead, it creates a record that makes life harder — it can complicate their applications to Work and Income, their chances of getting on a housing list, and their dealings with the courts. Young people with nowhere safe to go face the biggest risk.

As of mid-June 2026, the Government has not publicly responded to the expert criticism. The next step will be a select committee process, where MPs will hear from experts, government ministries, and members of the public. That's where the evidence from the University of Otago and the health experts can be tested, and where those submitting views can push for the two ministries' recommendation to be written into the law itself.