Worth Richard: Courts and Criminal Matters Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Worth Richard: Courts and Criminal Matters Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 19 June 2003. Volume:609;Page:6451. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
RICHARD WORTH (NZ National—Epsom) 
: 
 It is obvious from the comments the Minister has made that he has a thorough and instinctive knowledge of this bill. That is demonstrated by the rapid-fire way in which he read from a script—I would say word for word—the background to this legislation and the compelling reasons for its introduction. National supports this bill and is glad to see that it will go the Law and Order Committee where there are many fine National members who can well evaluate the merit and the disbenefits of the bill. 
The imposition of fines for breach of the criminal law is a core sanction and in the mass of legislation passing through this House many criminal offences have been both created and refined. A common sentence is the imposition of a monetary penalty or fine. Both in the Sentencing Act that was passed by this present Government and its predecessor the Criminal Justice Act there is a clear direction to the sentencing judge that before a fine is imposed proper regard is to be had to the financial circumstances of the offender. Where the offender does not have the financial means to pay a fine a fine will not be imposed. That means that at the date of imposition of the penalty the court has formed the view that an offender has the wherewithal to make payment of the fine. The natural inference of that is that the fine should be able to be paid within the time frames if any set by the sentencing judge. So when a mass of money is not finding its way to the consolidated account we face a situation that requires the intervention of Parliament. 
Of course monetary penalties are not confined to breaches of black-letter criminal law only—for breaches of the Crimes Act for example. Fines may be imposed for breaches of a raft of statutes. There are fines for example for offences created under the Resource Management Act and quite swingeing fines can be imposed for offences under the Commerce Act. 
I would like to say something about the content of the Courts and Criminal Matters Bill which aims to improve the effectiveness of the Department for Courts’ fines and civil enforcement activities. The bill contains various amendments to a number of statutes impacting on those activities and the Minister now listening intently across the House has spoken briefly about that. The powers of the Department for Courts to gather information about fines defaulters and enforce fines were significantly extended in earlier legislation—the Summary Proceedings Amendment Act. Although the new tracing and enforcing options implemented through that legislation have made a significant contribution towards the enforcement of unpaid fines they require further improvement and that is what this bill is all about. 
The bill will do three things: first it will extend the scope of information the department can seek from other Government departments through information-matching programmes; second it will clarify certain statutory provisions to remove confusion and better reflect Parliament’s original legislative intention; and finally the plan is to extend additional protection to the public by ensuring that they are informed of their rights and responsibilities and are not unduly penalised as a result of outstanding fines. Those are praiseworthy aims. 
It must be of real concern to the administration that as at 30 June 2001 unpaid fines in New Zealand totalled $350 million and of that amount $204 million was overdue or in default. There are approximately 500000 individual defaulters and 1.2 million separate fines in default. In a population of 4 million people 500000 individual defaulters are failing to meet their obligations in respect of activity determined to be criminal by the court. On any view of it that is a significant number and the consequence is that fines start to lose credibility as one of the tools in the sentencing armoury. If the collections unit is able to trace the whereabouts of a fines defaulter the fine can generally be recovered or the matter otherwise resolved. 
I am offering these views to members opposite some of whom it is suggested—I know not the truth of this—owe significant outstanding amounts to the Department for Courts in respect of sundry offences. The collections unit however is unable to trace a significant minority of defaulters and if it cannot trace them it is unable to take any meaningful enforcement action beyond issuing a warrant for their arrest. It has to be a good outcome that those who seek to depart to distant shores by air might well feel the tap of a customs officer’s hand on their shoulder as they seek to board the plane. They could then find themselves being withdrawn from the waiting line in order to make appropriate payments to the authorities—or else secure or compound for the amounts at issue. 
One of the strategies that has proved quite successful in the collection of fines has been the public naming of such defaulters in the press. To date that seems to have been a South Island initiative and good on the South Island! It is not an initiative that has yet spread to Christchurch but there are members opposite with responsibilities in electorates in that area who might well see merit in that course. I will instance two illustrations where there has been some success one of which involved the  
Nelson Mail 
 in naming fine-dodgers. On March 31 this year defaulters from the Nelson and Blenheim courts owed $7 million in fines. There is no indication of how many of those defaulters were Labour voters but one would expect them to account for a significant number. That figure was a slight decrease on December 2002 when $7.3 million was owed. The Nelson district collections manager said there were too many defaulters to count so he selected a sample of names to be published particularly those of people who owed victims’ reparation for a crime or road accident. 
A similar initiative was embarked upon in South Canterbury where fines defaulters owe $1.2 million. The plan was for their names to be similarly published on the basis that that sometimes encourages the fines defaulters themselves to do something about their fines. More commonly however the collections unit would be provided with useful information by third parties about the whereabouts of those fines defaulters from whom the money could then be sought. It is not that the mechanisms are lacking for the enforcement and collection of the money when the defaulter is found; rather the situation is that if the fines defaulter can be located there are effective mechanisms in place.