Mark Mitchell said the government did everything it could to put forward a fair agreement. Photo: RNZ / Angus Dreaver
Police Minister Mark Mitchell says some police officers may choose to go to Australia following the government's win in a long-running pay dispute with the police union.
The parties were unable to agree on a pay deal after about a year of talks and on Monday an independent arbitrator announced she was in favour of the government's offer.
Police will be getting a $1500 lump sum payment, a flat $5000 pay increase plus another 4 percent increase in July and again in 2025.
There will also be a 5.25 percent increase in allowances backdated to November.
The Police Association says it is disappointed with the arbitrator's ruling, and many officers may end up crossing the ditch for bigger pay packets.
Police Minister Mark Mitchell said at the end of the day he wanted to avoid going to Final Offer Arbitration and he understood how frontline police officers were feeling about the deal.
"All that I can say is that hand on heart is that we put forward the best offer that we could in the circumstances that we were delivered as an incoming government."
Mitchell said it was quarter of a billion dollars more and he was proud that paid overtime would be available to frontline officers for the first time ever.
Bringing in paid overtime for frontline police would make a financial difference, he said.
"Accruing TOIL (time off in lieu) is not a good way to manage that so having a paid overtime framework now is actually, I think is important for our frontline police and they've never had it before."
Mitchell said he thought that front line police realised "we have got their back".
"I understand around the pay but again I'd say that we got a massive hospital pass, we did everything that we could to put a fair agreement forward."
Mitchell acknowledged that some police officers may choose to go to Australia as a result of the deal but he hoped they would stay.
"I'm certainly not going to be critical of any that do go to Australia because you know they've already provided outstanding service for us here in New Zealand."
Mitchell said he had not seen any evidence of police officers being forced to take on second jobs due to salary levels.
"We would always like to be able to pay our police officers more as we move our country into a more positive economic frame, as we start to grow the economy then you know I hope that we're going to be in a position in the future to be able to do that."
Mitchell said they were on target to deliver the promised 500 new police officers by the end of next year.
There was a pool of people wanting to join the police force and staff attrition levels were down from 5.5 percent to 4.5, he said.
"So at the moment we're still on track to be able to deliver those 500 additional frontline police officers."
Asked how the police force would guard against the risk of bribery and corruption if officers felt they were not being paid enough, Mitchell said New Zealand had one of the least corrupt police forces in the world.
"We'll always continue to make sure that you scan the horizon and take the measures and putting the measures in place to make sure that we have one of the least corrupt police services in the world."
There were 21 new officers going on the beat in central Auckland and 10 in central Wellington from today.
"From what I understand it has been very very well received and people are very happy with it.
"I've seen comments from store owners that their staff feel safe seeing police back out on the beat and highly visible - so it appears to be going very well."