A retired judge who spent years working with homeless people says a proposed new law that would let police tell rough sleepers to move on is "legally unnecessary, inconsistent with the Bill of Rights Act, careless, and callous."

The law in question is the Summary Offences Amendment Bill, currently being looked at by a select committee — a small group of MPs from different parties who examine a proposed law and listen to what the public thinks before it goes any further. The bill would give police the power to direct people as young as 14 who are begging or sleeping rough to go somewhere else. Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith says the law covers behaviour that existing rules do not (RNZ).

The judge, Tony Fitzgerald, retired in March after 27 years on the bench. For more than 15 of those years he ran Te Kooti o Timatanga Hou, the Court of New Beginnings — a special Auckland court that deals with low-level offending by homeless people while also helping them find housing and work. He says his submission is based on what he saw there.

Fitzgerald argues the bill could send people to prison just for sleeping in a public space. He points out that public spaces are the only places homeless people can sleep. He is especially concerned about 14-year-olds being included, saying a child that age begging on the street should trigger help from child-protection services, not police powers.

Others have spoken against the bill too. Criminal lawyer Danielle LeGallais, who co-founded the Sunday Blessings charity that hands out 250 meals in central Auckland every week, has told the committee that some homeless people already think the move-on rules are in place and are confused about what the bill would mean for them (RNZ). The Police Association has also raised concerns, according to earlier RNZ reporting.

Goldsmith says there is a gap in the law and the bill fills it. Fitzgerald says that is wrong — he says existing offences and child-protection pathways already cover the behaviour the bill targets, and that the new measures would expose vulnerable people, including children, to criminal penalties simply for not having a home.

The bigger picture is the clash between the government's push for tougher law and order and what people working with the homeless actually see. Fitzgerald's point is that a 14-year-old on the street is a child in need of care, not a criminal. That is something MPs on the committee will have to weigh against Oranga Tamariki, the government agency that looks after children's wellbeing. LeGallais's comment that rough sleepers already think the rules are live shows the bill is already affecting people, even though it has not passed.

For opposition MPs, Fitzgerald's submission carries weight because he has years of direct experience with the very people this bill would affect. For the minister and the bill's supporters, the question is whether Goldsmith's argument about a gap in the law stands up against the claim that current rules already do the job.