Public health researchers and community care workers have told the Government that its planned move-on order law risks criminalising young people experiencing homelessness and making their situation worse.

The Government announced the proposal in February. Under it, police would be able to tell a person to leave a specified area for up to 24 hours. Refusing the order would bring a fine up to $2,000 or up to three months in prison, according to RNZ. The Government frames the orders as targeting disorderly behaviour in public spaces.

The Public Health and Community Care Society issued a briefing on 14 June arguing the proposal lumps together antisocial conduct with survival behaviour — rough sleeping and begging are the main examples. For a young person with no safe place to sleep, a move-on order doesn't solve the underlying problem; it simply moves them somewhere else and adds a criminal record risk on top.

University of Otago researchers went further, saying the orders risk pushing homeless youth into criminal activity and long-term reliance on state support. They describe a pattern well-known in social policy: early contact with the justice system—even for minor offences—is strongly linked to entrenched disadvantage and repeated involvement with courts and prisons.

Notably, two government ministries appear to have reached a similar conclusion in their own internal advice. Both the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development and the Ministry of Social Development recommended, in documents released under the Official Information Act, that survival behaviours tied to homelessness—rough sleeping and begging among them—be explicitly left out of the orders. That recommendation does not appear to have made it into the publicly announced proposal.

The question for practitioners is why ministerial advice and the Cabinet's final decision differ. The February announcement described move-on orders as targeting disorderly behaviour, but the signalled legislation does not exclude the conduct that Housing and Urban Development and Social Development flagged. Whether that exclusion can be added through regulations, operational guidance to police, or requires changes to the actual law remains unclear from publicly available information.

For people working in community services, housing or youth justice, this isn't a theoretical concern. A move-on order sent to a rough-sleeping teenager doesn't create a bed; it creates a criminal record that complicates later dealings with Work and Income, housing waiting lists, and the courts. The Public Health and Community Care Society makes clear that homeless children face the sharpest risk under the proposed settings.

The Government has not publicly responded to the expert criticism as of 15 June 2026. The select committee process—if the bill is introduced or shortly will be—offers the natural place for the ministries' advice and the public health evidence to be examined against the policy's stated aims. Submitters will have grounds to push for the Housing and Urban Development and Social Development carve-out to be written into the legislation itself.

The broader issue here is whether a law aimed at disorder can fairly apply to people whose core problem is not misbehaviour but the absence of a roof. That tension sits at the heart of the expert objection.