Sporting Shooters Association of New Zealand Inc.
In August 2021 the Office of the Auditor General issued a guide for “The setting and administration of fees and levies for cost recovery with four basic principles:
- Equity
- Efficiency
- Justifiability
- Transparency
The guide further states that the principle of transparency requires that:
“Fees and levy payers need to have enough information to understand and assess whether the:
- basis or method for setting fees or levy is appropriate;
- fees or levy are fairly costed: and
- revenue generated is correctly accounted for and used appropriately”
In their consultation document Review of Fees 2022 police have provided no information whatsoever as to how their full cost recovery fees were derived.
As Neville Dodd, President of the Sporting Shooters Association of New Zealand says, “There is not even the basic information, such as the hourly charge out rate for staff engaged in providing licences and permits, how much time each process takes and what additional overheads such as rent and vehicle use are applied.
Without this information how can anyone assess whether these proposed fees are fairly costed and comply with the Auditor General’s guidelines.”
We also note that with police acting as a monopoly in providing these so called “services” there is no incentive for them to strive for efficiency.
“The Review of Fees document provides readers with the Police’s opinion on what they would like full cost recovery to be for a range of firearms licensing and regulatory processes and the option to choose from a number of percentage partial recovery for each. This is clearly designed to lead submitters to give the outcomes that police seek. This bias together with the lack of transparency in setting the fees make the whole consultation process a “sham”, says Dodd.