Kerre Woodham: What do police do now?

The other big news story from last night was the result of the arbitration between the New Zealand Police and the Police Association. This is what happens when you go to arbitration, there's a winner and there's a loser. And in this case, the Police Association has lost in final offer arbitration, with the government's proposal to increase police pay being chosen.

When you go to arbitration, you put your offer in as the Police Association and it can't be too ridiculous because if it's too ridiculous the arbiter will simply take the most reasonable and sensible offer. So you have to go in with your best offer, but it has to be reasonable. Same with the government, it has to be reasonable, it has to cover off the conditions, it's got to be an acceptable offer. And then there is no meeting between these two offers, it's one or the other. And what happened? Well, the Police Association was the other. The government's proposal was accepted, and that offer is a $1500 lump sum payment, a $5000 wage increase, a 5.25% increase in allowances back dated to November of 2023, a 4% wage increase from July 1st this year, a 4% wage increase from July 1st next year and paid overtime as of July 1st 2025. It's pretty similar to the offer that was made by the Government earlier this year and that was an offer that was roundly rejected by 75% of those police officers who voted.

The Police Deputy Commissioner acknowledged that officers would be disappointed and frustrated but it was the independent arbitrator that found the offer from New Zealand Police was fair. And that's what I mean about arbitration. With mediation, the mediator isn't a decision maker and the process is based on achieving co-operation between the parties. So you sit there and say, well, that seems reasonable. What do you think about that, and you get them to work together to make their own decisions and agreements, and the mediator’s simply there to help guide the discussions. With arbitration, it's the private determination of a dispute. It's gone past mediation. It's now a dispute and an independent third party will rule a settlement of the dispute after considering the representations of the parties. It's called an award, it's final and it's binding on the party, so there's no walking back from that. It's written and it's enforceable by the courts.

So where does that leave police officers? You had an independent third party who decided that the New Zealand Police offer was fair and reasonable. And ultimately, by rejecting the Police Association, that the Police Association were asking for too much under the circumstances. So, if you're an officer who's not happy, what do you do now? Do you wait for the better times? Or do you walk? That's all you can do. And where does that leave the coalition Government’s promise of 500 more police officers in their first two years of government?

Police Minister Mark Mitchell says they wanted to do more, but the economic conditions meant the offer was the very best that they could do.

“I completely, totally understand, you know, the way our police are feeling but hand on heart line, we've inherited it. We've had a huge hospital pass and we've put together what we think is a really fair package. This new offer that our government put on the table is a quarter of a billion dollars more in an environment where as a country we're paying $8.5 billion a year just in interest payments. You know we've got to get our books back in order. We've got to start fighting our way back to a surplus and getting the economy up and running again.”

Well, he's quite right. That was Mark Mitchell talking to Ryan Bridge on Early Edition this morning. He's quite right. I mean, we can only give what we've got, we don't have the money, we can't pay the same wages as other countries, like Denmark is comparable in size, or Australia, who's our neighbour. We just can't. This is the price of the policies that were administered during the last six years. This is what happens.

Chris Cahill of the Police Association says police are really disappointed and they appear to be hamstrung because they are a group of people who simply cannot strike.

“It's not the worst deal ever, Mike, without a doubt. The problem is it doesn't get officers back even with inflation over the, sort of the five-year period. So the last two years and the three years going forward, and the other thing it doesn't do is address the big increases in demand, the big increases in risk and, and, complexity in the role and, and, other groups such as nurses and teachers that have been able to take industrial action have had some recognition for that over the last five or ten years. Police never have. So there's those two issues that it has really why we haven't been able to settle.”

So there we go, Chris Cahill says. It's not the worst in the world, but it doesn't take into account the long, protracted industrial dispute, and the fact that the risks of the job have increased, which everybody would acknowledge is true.

So what do you do now? You've got a young person in your family or somebody who's looking to do a career change, who wants to join the police, as a family member, what do you say? You are a serving police officer, you've been holding out, probably holding out for a National-led government who are more likely to be reasonable, who are more likely to want a galvanised police service who have had a lift in morale, who believe that they have a government who's backing them ... you've probably been waiting for that and this is what they're offering. Is it good enough to keep you here until the good times roll around the corner? We are hearing reports from overseas that, you know, maybe the streets aren't quite paved with gold the way we've heard. Times are tough pretty much everywhere. Crime is up. There's a contempt for authority among certain groups of people that's on the rise. And that's the world over.

So what do you do? Settle in and wait it out for the better times that must come or have you reached breaking point?

Kerre McIvor, is a journalist, radio presenter, author and columnist. Currently hosts the Kerre Woodham mornings show on Newstalk ZB - where this article was sourced.