The justice select committee has recommended the House pass the Policing Amendment Bill, but has pushed back its start date. Instead of taking effect one month after royal assent, the new powers will now come into force six months later. This gives police time to build the systems and guidance they need before the law kicks in.

The bill — introduced by Police Minister Mark Mitchell in March — makes several changes to police powers. It reaffirms the ability to record sound and images in public and some private places, expands powers to temporarily close roads, and gives officers new move-on order powers to manage public disorder. Parliament asked the committee to report back by 27 July, and it met that deadline on 6 July.

The bill came to Parliament without prior public or Māori consultation because of time pressure on Cabinet. The committee received 225 submissions — a high volume that signals public concern. Labour and the Greens opposed the bill; their objections differ in substance.

What the committee added to protect privacy

The majority recommended writing several privacy safeguards into the legislation. Police collection of personal information will now be explicitly subject to the Privacy Act's information privacy principles. An amendment bars police from making recordings in situations where they would normally need a surveillance warrant. The committee also recommended a three-year statutory review involving the Privacy Commissioner, the Independent Police Conduct Authority and the Ministry of Justice.

These additions fall short of what the Privacy Commissioner's office sought. That office made a formal submission on the original bill and the committee debated and rejected further safeguards it proposed. Lobby group Pillar NZ expressed disappointment, pointing out that key terms — like "intelligence purpose" — remain undefined in the bill itself. The Supreme Court's Tamiefuna v R decision, released in 2025, came up during the committee's work; it clarified boundaries around lawful police recording that this bill aims to put on a clearer legal footing.

The tension here is real: Parliament is being asked to expand recording and intelligence-gathering powers before police have the full systems in place to properly manage the privacy constraints attached to those powers. The three-year review is designed to give Parliament a formal checkpoint on that gap, rather than leaving it to be tested only through complaints or court cases.

Why police need the extra time

Police told the committee the new safeguards would carry significant operational, IT and systems costs. The extra six months is meant to let them test and refine operational guidance, make necessary IT changes, deliver training, and work with the Privacy Commissioner on how the new powers will actually operate in practice.

This sits within a longer pattern. Police have spent years trying to procure technology that meets privacy obligations around image collection and still have no clear answer on a full digital evidence management system. Labour raised this directly in committee, arguing that current police systems fall short of what would be needed to properly collect, handle, keep and delete the additional intelligence this bill would allow officers to gather.

Labour and Greens take different lines of critique

The Greens' objection goes to the bill's core design. Their argument is that it lets police bypass ordinary privacy rights and common-law protections around photographs, audio and biometric data, enabling surveillance of people who aren't suspects. That is a fundamentally different critique from Labour's. Labour's concern is operational — whether police have the capacity to administer the privacy constraints properly — not the breadth of the power itself. These two positions are likely to produce different amendments as the bill moves through the House's committee stage for detailed discussion.

The bill now returns to the House for its second reading. Mitchell's portfolio has a wider legislative agenda: the Crimes Amendment Bill is separately progressing through the House, and trespass law reform is flagged for introduction, all framed around reducing reoffending and boosting police visibility.