Leary IngridINGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): This is just really bad law and it's really unfair. If I think of my own family I have the blessing of being from a mixed Dutch and Pasifika family and the reality is that members from both sides of my 'aiga—my extended whānau and sometimes in our own little unit—will do things like forget their registration on their car or maybe park for five minutes longer or whatever. And they get a fine and then it becomes difficult because in my family most of us don't have accountants we don't have very organised ways of doing things and we work organically. The fine comes in and then we hang it on the fridge just as Dr Duncan Webb said and then for many of my family it comes down to Am I going to bring something to the church service on Sunday to contribute—Hon Member: Or going back to the Waiheke vineyard!INGRID LEARY: —or am I going to feed the extended family who are coming around? Oh maybe I'll just keep that on the fridge and leave it alone." And somebody mentioned something quite sarcastic over there and I'm speaking really seriously here. The things that the Government members find funny and trivial are realities for many people. So when we look at the impact of this law what happens in that situation? Somebody doesn't pay their fine maybe they even stick it in the bottom drawer they get reminder letters it becomes overwhelming and then the Ministry of Justice rings up and says "How about you do a payment plan?" And you say "Oh yep."—and everything else that you have to say to make them go away—and you agree to have a direct debit out of the bank account. The direct debit comes around and again the cost of living takes over and next minute there's a $25 bank charge and maybe another one when it bounces and maybe another one. And these bills line up and pile up and pile up and become quite unmanageable.And this is the situation that is really unfair for families that are going to be impacted and it's come out in the costs recovery impact statement in the report that talked about the unfair impact. Now that is bad enough. But then if we look at the jurisprudence of this—and the lawyers in the Government benches should know what I'm talking about about the strict-liability nature of fines—and the fact that people who are in this situation in the first place it might be a small fine but it starts as a guilty-until-proven-innocent. So to contest perhaps that that little registration ticket that was supposed to be shown on the window wasn't visible because it fell on the floor somebody needs to be able to contest that. They have to pay the fine unless they can prove that they weren't liable. So that means under the laws of natural justice and normal jurisprudence we should take even more care when we are imposing additional cost or additional liability to those groups of people.But what are we doing here? We're sitting in urgency and without a select committee process—and I'll come to that in a minute because there's some really sloppy drafting in the bill that we didn't even get to in the committee stage because the debate was closed down before we got to ask questions about some of the words in Schedule 4.But the evidence base—the Minister was sitting in the committee stage trying to say that this is good public policy and that there was an evidence base for saying that it was about cost recovery. There was no evidence base to prove that. We asked numerous questions from this side of the House about what the numbers were and what the baseline was and also actually what type of fee was this even going to be. It appears that it's a tax when I look at it because we know that a levy looks across a situation and requires payment across a class of expenditure. A fee is much more about a sort of vertical digging down. So this would appear to be a fee. But also what was deeply concerning was the purpose because if it is a fee or a levy—and it's being dressed up as a levy; I actually think it's a tax but it could be a fee—it has to be justified really carefully and there has to be a good reason to do it.Now under the legislation it is saying in the purpose that this is about cost recovery but in the title it is talking about "Budget Measures". What we've heard in the contributions from the Government tonight is that this is a way of trying to fill a fiscal hole because we know that the Government had to borrow $12 billion to pay for the fiscal hole created by the $2.9 billion handout to landlords. And now they're scrambling around. But a good law would be very clear about whether the purpose is cost recovery or whether it is a tax and what we have had is mixed messages.We asked that in the select committee—no we didn't have a select committee process of course; in committee—and we didn't get a satisfactory answer. In fact we put amendments forward to say "Let's take the words 'Collection Costs' and just keep 'Budget Measures.'" because this is clearly about trying to fill the Budget hole that's been left.Who's it impacting? It's impacting people who are the least likely to be able to afford it. And I think that's really unfair. When I look at the bad drafting—and there's lots of things around the drafting including the date. I mean July coming up—that is extremely fast and doesn't allow for the systems to be able to cope correctly. And I'll come to that in a minute with the Invercargill example that I've mentioned.But if I look at the Schedule in new Part 4 clause 11(3) in this clause it talks about "amount of a fine includes" and then it's got the words "without limitation an instalment—(a) of the fine; and (b) paid under a court order" and so on. Now what really concerns me is bandying around the legal words "without limitation". If we had a select committee process for this that would have been tested. We would have tried to understand. If it is a fine without limitation a strict liability offence where the mens rea is already assumed unless somebody can prove that it's not what do we mean by "without limitation"? I don't even get to ask that. What does what do those words mean? They could mean anything. Is that going to be something about interest is it going to be some other thing that is added on to the final—I'm not sure and perhaps it's just irrelevant. I suspect the answer if we had got to this in the committee stage would have been to cross those words out. But that is sloppy drafting and the members opposite know that in this House it is about precision of language. That is what creates fairness and that is what avoids unintended consequences. And so it's really disappointing to see that kind of drafting.And it's no surprise given that we're doing this in urgency and that we're doing it without a select committee where we would have had people like the Law Commission where we would have had interested groups and others say "Actually Minister or actually select committee what do those words mean? Do we need to strike them out or do we need to define them further?"I turn finally to the example of Invercargill. And I did mention this in the committee stage because the Government treated the questions that we asked with a lot of disdain and acted as if this was some kind of ridiculous situation in which we were posing hypotheticals. Just last week in the newspaper the Invercargill council have done the right thing actually. They have decided to repay $500000 worth of parking fines to local people. I commend them for doing that. It was a difficult decision and the reason is because they had made a mistake under the administration. And we know with strict-liability offences that the legal requirement is for the law and the evidence burden to be very strictly applied given that the burden of proof has changed from a presumption of innocence to a presumption of guilt unless innocence has been proven. So I do commend them for doing it. But what really concerns me is that the Invercargill City Council is also trying to consider whether to pay $90000 to subsidise public transport for the kids who won't get that now that the subsidy's gone. And they need to catch buses to go from the south of the city to the north of the city to play their sports games. And that is something that is around social inclusion. It's keeping kids out of trouble and keeping them active.You may ask "What has this got to do with the bill?" Well everything. This is a direct result of administration and carelessness where it had profound results that had a fiscal cost which meant that now our most underprivileged and our most needing people who really want to get out there play sport and participate cannot do so because of the type of administrative shonkiness that this bill presents. It's lawmaking that's done from the Wild West. It's done far too fast. It's done for the wrong reasons—it's done for the intention of filling a tax hole rather than a genuine cost recovery reason. We know that because we haven't seen the evidence base. And it breaks my heart because I know from the communities that I live with that the people who will bear the cost of this because it will be passed on from councils will be people like my 'aiga and my Dutch extended family who just can't afford to pay the fines and get hit time and time again. It's bad lawmaking."