Ardern Shane: Courts and Criminal Matters Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Ardern Shane: Courts and Criminal Matters Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:626;Page:21731] 
SHANE ARDERN (National—Taranaki-King Country) 
: 
 I would like to pick up on the challenge made by my colleague to the Government to tell us which Government members will stand on the podium in the election campaign and quote new clause 30AA in Part 8 of the Courts and Criminal Matters Bill when they talk about how they are getting tough on crime. I wonder whether the honourable Minister will do that. I say to the Minister Rick Barker that this is his opportunity to make a name for himself in respect of that huge pile of debt. Under Part 8 he can do that. The Minister has already acknowledged that the Hon Tony Ryall has a few good ideas and he has accepted one amendment. Why does he not use Part 8 to assert himself and actually do something? I am sure the Hon Dr Michael Cullen would be very pleased to get some more revenue. I know that he is a bit cash-strapped at the moment—he keeps telling the public of New Zealand that things are tighter than the National Party would have them believe. 
Hon David Carter 
: He’s got Pete Hodgson doing his Budget. 
SHANE ARDERN 
: Well that is the problem of course—and it does not matter who does it on that side of the Chamber. That is certainly the case when it comes to getting the dough out of the crooks. The Government knows how to get it from the poor “Joe Hard-worker” Labour voter who is out there battling away—and who will not be misguided enough to vote Labour again—but it does not know how to get tough on the crooks. The Government always talks about getting tough and says that it will do so as it campaigns up and down the country. I invite the Government to go out on the hustings in this election campaign—which will kick off in a few days’ time when Dr Cullen says he has had enough—and say that it has fixed the problem of the mounting pile of debt by adding clause 30AA. Up to $650 million is owed through all those outstanding fines. The Minister has the opportunity to fix the problem but he does nothing. 
It is a wet bus ticket of a bill that we have here today. I guess we could say that it is progress and that it is incremental. It does represent the aspirational approach that we have seen from this Government. It shows the same kind of level of aspiration in terms of getting on top of this problem as the Budget shows in terms of getting New Zealand back into the top half of the OECD. At the end of this debate when this legislation is passed by the Government we will have a situation where 117 criminals will be caught at the airports. Of course that means they will be kept in New Zealand when it would be better if they actually got away and went somewhere else. The Minister will be able to retrieve a small amount of money from them. These crooks will be asked politely and treated with absolute courtesy and once they have made arrangements to give the Government $2.50 or some such payment a month they will be able to hop on an aeroplane take off to London and disappear into the sunset. 
So I ask the Minister to take a call on this part of the bill and tell us why he has not exercised the power that has been bestowed upon him to get on top of what is clearly a major problem in his own portfolio. I ask the Minister to tell the people of New Zealand why the $22 million that is outstanding from those who are supposedly paying reparation is being paid off at the rate of $2.50 a week $5 a week or whatever it might be in the order in which the offences occurred. He should tell people why that is so. He should tell people why 25000 people out there at the moment have outstanding debts and why the court system is writing off $40 million of that a year. He should tell people why that is so and give them an explanation as to why the Government has concluded that that is how it should stay. He should tell the people out there why he believes that clause 30AA in Part 8 of the Courts and Criminal Matters Bill is absolutely consistent with the Government’s policy to get tough on crime and make criminals pay for their crimes. He should tell the people out there why when the Government does catch those 117 people at the airport it will extract from them no more than $1.5 million per year when the outstanding debt is $650 million. I ask the Minister to tell people why that is so and I tell him that he is missing an opportunity.