Mark Ron: Courts and Criminal Matters Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Mark Ron: Courts and Criminal Matters Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 19 June 2003. Volume:609;Page:6454. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
RON MARK (NZ First) 
: 
 I simply have one thing to say to our hapless Minister over there: well done finally! Welcome to the real world. The Minister might have finally done something to warrant the payment of that huge salary he gets the flash car he gets driven around in the flash car he has at home the ministerial credit card and all those perks and luxuries that he enjoys. 
Hon Tariana Turia 
: You’re jealous. 
Hon Paul Swain 
: Is this a bit of envy here? 
RON MARK 
: To the protestations of my colleagues in the Labour Party I say that I have been harping on about this issue for so long and it has taken as long as this to get it to the House. I hear all these cries and bleats from people on the Labour hustings campaigning about the need to provide more social services to the community and about the homeless the poor and the impoverished while sitting out there to one side is $488 million in unpaid fines. Members can just imagine all the good work that could be done in the community with that money but for the need to say: “Hey Ron you’re actually right and we’re going to get stuck into it. You were right to raise the question.” But no that Minister has a track record of knowing more than others and closing his ears and pretending the problem does not exist until it leaps up and bites him in the face. 
That Minister told me in the House that there were no problems with home detention and no one who had committed serious crimes was on home detention. In 30 seconds flat we found out we had rapists and people who had threatened to kill on home detention. In 30 seconds flat we found out that 11 people who had killed people were on home detention. Eleven people—more than I have fingers. 
Darren Hughes 
: This is a very gracious speech. 
RON MARK 
: I do not care about graciousness. I am more concerned about graciousness and care to the victims of those crimes I say to that young member. He needs to get his head around the fact that victims do not need to hear that that Minister says there are no people who have raped or killed on home detention and then find out that there are. That is why if that Minister is so blind ignorant and arrogant that he will not listen we end up with bills like this finally coming in when people have been saying that the problem is out of hand. Who has been saying that it is out of hand? Members should go to the statement of intent from the courts. 
Dail Jones 
: New Zealand First. 
RON MARK 
: New Zealand First for a long time has been saying that it is out of hand. New Zealand First has a couple of principles. We will support this bill. We will look at it very very closely and we want it tougher. I do not understand how any Government can grab an old-age pensioner within 7 days of that pensioner coming back from a holiday on the Gold Coast because he or she left the country and now the Government wants to get back in and get some of the money it might have overpaid because the pensioner was away for 2 or 3 weeks while on the other hand people who owe $30000 in fines are blithely popping in and out of the country. Duh! Someone has his or her priorities wrong. Someone would much rather focus on bagging pensioners than dealing with criminals who will not pay their fines. 
I will give the Minister one accolade—one bit of credit. Apart from winning an Oscar from Winston Peters—that was a Mongrel Mob nomination for his services to justice in New Zealand—he has actually brought a good bill to the House and right now I want to acknowledge the good work of the officials behind the scenes who have put this bill together and brought it here. We need to make sure that when we scrutinise this bill— 
Hon Tariana Turia 
: I’m going to nominate you for an Oscar. 
RON MARK 
: Here we go! They do not like it up them Mr Mainwaring do they? When we scrutinise this bill we will be firm about that. [ 
Interruption 
] The Minister asks what New Zealand First did. Eighteen months is a lot shorter than 4 years going on 5 years. The mandate we had is a little bit less than the mandate this Government has had. This Government came making huge promises. We know that it broke the one about taxes. Everyone is paying more taxes these days including the beneficiaries. Members should go and read the food bank report. It came out today did it not? It is a bad situation. 
Look at what the courts have said. I have a rap here for the Minister responsible for the Land Transport Safety Authority and the Minister of Police. One of the problems that the Hon Rick Barker has to help resolve is that generated by the Land Transport Safety Authority and the Minister of Police with their myopic focus on cash-register ticketing. They are proud of the constable up in Taihape who dishes out 100 tickets in one shift. But in this report we find that the courts cannot cope with it. 
There is one simple principle that must underline all matters relating to law enforcement which is simply that justice must not only be done it must be seen to be done for if it is not seen to be done it becomes totally ineffective. If we hand out tens of thousands of traffic tickets and then find that only 46 percent of them are paid within the time they are meant to be paid and the rest go on the never-never and are never paid—like all the headlines about boy racers tearing up tickets and laughing saying that no one will chase them—and do not chase those matters up people start to mock the law. 
This statement of intent from the courts is damning. There was a quadrupling of infringement notices issued by the police from 1992 to 2002. Members should compare that with the court statistics and figures on fines imposed by the courts which over that same 10-year period have remained flat. 
Now one comes to a simple deduction. Some people know that ticketing and fining only works to a certain point. Beyond that point we have to throw people in jail. But this Government does not like people being in jail; it wants them on home detention going to the gym so that they can perv at all the chicky-babes and going to the rugby to see the Crusaders. They can do all sorts of wonderful things except be in a jail. Victims do not like that. They hate to hear that we have let them out to go shopping. They also hate to hear that the Government is also paying them the unemployment benefit while they are on home detention—gambling smoking dope and organising their next business deal with the Highway 61. Hello! Let us be sensible about law enforcement. Let us make sure that the bill that goes through is so tight that no one who has outstanding fines in excess of $5000 is allowed to roam free. 
Remember those statistics that I finally dug out of the Minister? There are 280088 people who owe up to $5000 just in traffic fines. I run another business now but if I were still running my little business in Christchurch and I let my debtors run up to 280088 people all of who owed me up to $5000 I would be broke. Some Ministers do not understand that because they have never owned a business. They have never run one. They have never mortgaged themselves up to the eyeballs and employed staff. They do not understand the basic economics of getting money in and putting jobs and services out. We cannot run a credible justice system if we will allow 38 people to rack up $30000 in traffic fines and laugh at us. No wonder they say the law is a joke. 
I will give members a true story. There is a young Maori man—I know him very well he is close whanaunga of mine—who told me straight to my face that he owes $2500 worth of traffic fines. I said: “Do you? What are you going to do about it?”. He said that he had just rung up the court the other day and told them to come and get him. The court said “What?”. He told them to come and get him because he owed $2500 and they were warning him that he had to pay. He said he would not pay but that he had some books and he was prepared to do 2 or 3 months or however long in one of the prisons. He said they could name the prison he would go there and catch up on his reading. I asked him how he could do that. He said it was simple. His car wasworth only $800 and the fines were $2500. He said: “Do you think I am going to pay that amount of fines on a car that is worth that? They can come and take my car. I don’t own a home. They can do what they like. I can do 3 months in jail. I will do some reading. I will catch up on the backlog of some letters I need to write and then I will come out and the fines will be paid off.” Guess what? That is exactly what ended up happening. 
Hon Tariana Turia 
: That’s not true. 
RON MARK 
: It is true. I tell the Minister it is true and that is what happens in the real world. That young man was later convicted of assault and when he was in jail his case manager on the integrated offender management system—we have these wonderful things—turned around and did all the documentation so his fines were all remitted. The fines for $2500 were got rid of. He did a 3-month sentence for assault and he came out laughing. Do members think that the justice ystem will maintain credibility out there when that sort of nonsense is allowed to go on? Frankly the guy should have got another 6 months on top to settle out the $2500 worth of fines. If measures like that are in this bill the Government has our support. If not we will try our level best to make sure that they are and we will put a bit of steel in the Government’s spine so that it becomes more effective to deal with crime and will lend some credibility back to the justice system that has long since been lacking. 
New Zealand First has been right on this I say to the Minister. We were right on home detention we were right on deferred sentencing we were right on police and police serving on councils. We are here to give the Government any advice at any time that it may want it.