Retired district court judge Tony Fitzgerald has told a parliamentary select committee the Summary Offences Amendment Bill is "legally unnecessary, inconsistent with the Bill of Rights Act, careless, and callous."

A select committee is a small group of MPs from across Parliament who scrutinise a bill line by line and hear public submissions before it proceeds. This bill would give police the power to direct people as young as 14 who are begging or rough sleeping to move elsewhere. Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has defended the legislation, saying it covers problematic behaviour not already covered by existing law (RNZ).

Fitzgerald served 27 years on the bench across criminal, family, and youth courts before retiring in March. For more than 15 of those years he presided over Te Kooti o Timatanga Hou, the Court of New Beginnings — an Auckland-based court that holds homeless people accountable for low-level offending while helping them into housing and work. His submission draws directly on that experience.

He argues the bill would make people liable for imprisonment for nothing more than sleeping in public spaces, which he notes are the only spaces a homeless person can sleep. He is especially critical of including 14-year-olds in the move-on powers, arguing that a 14-year-old begging and sleeping on the street should raise care and protection concerns rather than trigger police powers.

Fitzgerald's submission adds to a body of opposition to the bill. Criminal barrister Danielle LeGallais, co-founder of the Sunday Blessings charity, has also made a submission against it. Sunday Blessings hands out 250 takeaway meals in central Auckland every Sunday, and LeGallais has told the committee that some homeless people already believe the move-on orders are in effect and are confused about what the bill would mean for them (RNZ).

The Police Association has also previously raised concerns about the move-on bill, as referenced in earlier RNZ reporting.

Goldsmith's position is that the bill addresses a gap in existing legislation. He has framed the move-on powers as a tool for dealing with behaviour that current law does not adequately cover. Fitzgerald's submission disputes that premise, arguing the measures are not legally necessary and would expose some of the most vulnerable people, including children, to criminal liability for conduct that stems from their lack of housing.

The broader context here is the tension between the government's law-and-order agenda and the practical realities of homelessness that those working at the coalface, including Fitzgerald and LeGallais, encounter. Fitzgerald's argument that a 14-year-old on the street is a care and protection issue, not a criminal justice one, goes to a point select committee members will need to weigh: whether the bill's age threshold sits comfortably within the existing Oranga Tamariki framework — the government agency responsible for the wellbeing of children and young people — or cuts across it. LeGallais's observation that rough sleepers already believe the orders are live suggests the bill's mere existence in the parliamentary process is having an effect on the people it would apply to, regardless of whether it passes.

For opposition MPs on the committee, Fitzgerald's submission provides a legally grounded critique from a jurist with direct, extended experience of the population the bill targets. For the minister and the bill's supporters, the question from the select committee process will be whether Goldsmith's framing of a legislative gap holds up against the argument that existing offences and care-and-protection pathways already cover the conduct in question.