Graham Kennedy: Third Readings — 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Graham Kennedy: Third Readings — 
[Sitting date: 07 July 2011. Volume:673;Page:19910. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM (Green) 
: 
 This has been a long and complex process getting to where we are today the third readings of the legislation arising out of the Courts and Criminal Matters Bill. The bill was introduced last year in April the first reading was in May the Law and Order Committee reported in October and the second reading was in November but the Committee of the whole House did not convene until this week—7 months later. The reason for this was the sheer complexity of the original bill. It was described by the Minister for Courts as the most comprehensive set of legislative improvement in the recovery of unpaid fines reparation and civil debt in 12 years. The amount of unpaid debt stands somewhere around $700 million so there is a strong rationale to improve matters. We acknowledge the intent of the Government to simplify what is a complex matter as the Minister said a short while ago to arrive at for example a single definition of “fines” “court costs” “offenders’ levies” and other concepts. 
The original bill itself would have amended four principal Acts: the District Courts Act the Land Transport Act the Summary Proceedings Act and the Sentencing Act and would make consequential amendments to 16 other statutes. In the Committee of the whole House this week it was agreed to divide the bill into 20 separate bills that cover in addition to these four the Children Young Persons and Their Families Act the Customs and Excise Act the Disputes Tribunals Act the Family Courts Act the Personal Property Securities Act the Misuse of Drugs Act the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims Act the Privacy Act the Railways Act the Residential Tenancies Act the Social Security Act and the Tax Administration Act. This gives some insight into how hugely complex the changes are which has been commented on by both Government and Opposition members already and their ramifications across the statute book. 
At the first reading I advanced the Green Party’s concern that the statistics we have to hand in this country on this kind of thing appear to be unsatisfactory. We sought to research the question of whether the fines exacted on convicted defendants fall disproportionately on lower-income groups. Neither the Parliamentary Library nor the Minister of Justice seemed able to ascertain that fundamental fact pertaining to social equity in our judicial system. 
There is a paucity of sociological statistics in this country which has the effect of thwarting social engineering and legislative insight. We suspected though—yet we acknowledged that there was not conclusive proof available—that the fines were exacted disproportionately on the lower-income group which is moreover correlated with age and ethnicity difference and Lynne Pillay commented on that just a moment ago. 
We were concerned that the bill would authorise home detention or even prison sentences as substitutes for unaffordable and unenforceable reparation orders. This we believe was inappropriate and would add strain to the already overstretched prison facilities and we opposed the proposal of vehicle seizure and confiscation as introducing an unduly harsh penalty regime for unpaid fines. 
The Green Party is not represented on the Law and Order Committee so did not make an input into the report. But in the second reading we commented further with a view to making constructive input. We advanced an alternative approach for unpaid fines to get alongside defaulters and to ameliorate the problem through a process of consultation. A repayment system over a period of time could we suggested be devised that does not impose an unduly harsh financial burden on people who in today’s world are finding things tough. A supportive rather than punitive regime for people who are struggling to abide by judicial penalties is in our view the politically preferred and societally wiser route. Overall we saw the bill as counter-productive to the stated goal. Rather than getting more money from people it is likely to give more social problems through greater unemployment incarceration alienation and possibly racial tension. 
The debate in Committee saw a slew of amendments put forward by the Government itself designed to streamline some of the flaws it had perceived in the bill as originally drafted. None of this is to criticise the good intent of the Government in drafting the legislation and for that matter its efforts to keep Opposition members informed and updated on the increasingly complex critical path it trod with the bill. We have followed the rather bewildering fate of Supplementary Order Papers 201 and 202 and then 243 and 244. We could not agree with these amendments because ultimately they would in our view weaken people’s rights: specifically the proposed changes that strengthen the regime to allow personal property to be seized when someone might not have been convicted yet a judge thinks they could be involved in crime and for the incarceration of people who do not pay fines. Put simply putting people in jail increases the likelihood that they will commit further crimes. 
We do not think this is the best outcome for New Zealand and our communities so we could not vote for those changes. That being said I thank the Minister and her officials for their effort in compiling an annotated legislation guidebook and subsequently its corrigendum and then the addendum to the corrigendum. They have certainly tried to keep the faith in this procedural respect. But none of this has altered our fundamental judgment about the far-reaching shortcomings in the bill or to be precise the thrust of the original bill in the 20 separate pieces of legislation now before us. The omnibus legislation fails the tests laid out in the Green justice policy platform which clearly states a preference for and support of provisions to deduct unpaid restitution and court fines through the Inland Revenue Department or Income Support mechanisms. As I have noted when offenders receive income support or are of limited means they should be given a choice to either pay off fines or provide restitution in some other way. We remain of the view that the main provisions of the bill are an affront to national justice and a danger to the social cohesion of the country. As a result we remain opposed to the bills and shall be voting against them at the third reading.