Lillian
Hanly, Political reporter
The prime
minister will not say yet if he would support a potential
law change to keep publicly elected officials safer, and the
leader of the opposition says there has been “complacency”
around their security.
Speaker Gerry Brownlee told
The Post legislative changes are
being looked at to ensure people elected to public positions
are more protected.
Parliamentary Service and
Parliament’s internal security services have been working
with the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet since the
end of last year on the issue.
Brownlee said they were
looking at “what might be needed, by way of legislative
changes, to ensure people are a little bit more protected –
not just MPs, anybody elected to any public position, who
should be able to carry out that work”.
Christopher
Luxon does not talk about his own security, but said he was
conscious it’s a “challenging environment at
times”.
The conversation comes after New Zealand
First’s Shane Jones was verbally
abused at Auckland Airport at the weekend, and his wife
was allegedly assaulted, with someone grabbing her
shoulder.
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Luxon said that was “unacceptable”.
In
regards to a potential law change, Luxon said he would look
at what the speaker proposed and form a view later, but he
agreed the issue should continue to be
considered.
“What I’m trying to find is the balance…
I would hate to lose the accessibility to our politicians
while also trying to keep them safe.”
Luxon said as he
moved around the country, generally people are “pretty
good”.
“Yes, we have our moments, and yes there are
threats,” he said, but he thought “we’ve got the balance
right”.
“It’s right to continue to look at it, to make
sure we have, it is dynamic – we should continue to do
that.”
Labour leader Chris Hipkins agreed with the
prime minister around not wanting to lose accessibility to
politicians. But he said the risks posed to public officials
and safety concerns around that had gotten “significantly
worse”.
“And I think there has been up until now a
degree of complacency around the security of public figures
in New Zealand, including members of Parliament.”
He
said it needs to be accepted “the world and society has
changed and there is more risk now than there was
before”.
Hipkins said he did not want New Zealand to
become one of those countries where MPs and elected
officials were “sequestered away” from the public, “that we
lose that ability to interact in the way that we
do.”
He said despite the increase in risk, he still
did his own supermarket shopping.
“I still interact
with people on the street – and I would hate to see us lose
that.”
But he thought “we need to be more eyes wide
open to the fact there’s more risk associated with
that.”
Hipkins would not go into detail, but said
there had been times he felt unsafe, and there had been some
“significant instances” where he has had support from the
police or other security agencies “as necessary”.
He
also acknowledged his and Christopher Luxon’s experiences
might not be the best to assess in regards to who might be
most targeted.
“I think we do need to have a slightly
more mature and sophisticated approach to the way we regard
members of Parliament security that is based more on
risk.”
He said there had been “steps toward that” in
the past few years, but “we’ve still got a way to
go”.
“There’s no question when I took over as prime
minister from Jacinda Ardern, the level of vileness
of abuse headed in the direction of the prime minister
went down significantly for no other reason than I was not a
young woman.”
He said that “speaks volumes”, and
showed that women, those from ethnic minorities and “those
who offer something different to the democratic process”
will often find themselves the target of more
abuse.
“That’s not okay, but it is something we need
to be aware of and we need to take steps to put greater
protection and security around.”
The speaker and the
Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet were approached
for
comment.
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