Sepuloni Carmel: Courts and Criminal Matters Bill — First Reading 
Sepuloni Carmel: Courts and Criminal Matters Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:663;Page:11003] 
CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour) 
: 
 The Courts and Criminal Matters Bill we are debating today is another bill that was developed by the fifth Labour Government. I acknowledge the excellent work done by the previous Minister for Courts my colleague the Hon Rick Barker. Although not all of his proposals made it through to this bill it is still a reflection of his hard work as the previous Minister. I congratulate Mr Rick Barker on his work. 
Before I get stuck into the detail of this bill I need to point out a slight contradiction that was just made in the House by the previous speaker from the Maori Party Rahui Katene. The Maori Party is voting for this bill but it disagrees with the measures for collecting fees. 
Rahui Katene 
: We want to make sure the education is done. 
CARMEL SEPULONI 
: Well there was something in Rahui Katene’s speech concerning the disproportional effect on Maori with regards to where the collected fines go. I remind the House that in December 2008 there was an Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill through which we saw a doubling of the fines for truancy. The Maori Party supported that bill even though there could have been an argument put at that time that Maori would be disproportionately affected by it. I think in some ways there is a slight contradiction with that matter. 
According to the current Minister for Courts this is the most comprehensive set of legislation measures designed to strengthen the recovery of unpaid fines and penalties in 12 years. It is “critical to the credibility of the justice system” as it establishes better processes for monetary penalties. We on this side agree that it is worthwhile legislation; that is why Labour developed it when we were in Government. Unfortunately National has been in Government for almost 18 months and it has taken this long for National to bring it to the House. We struggle to understand why if it is that important as the Minister for Courts the Hon Georgina te Heuheu pointed out it took 18 months to bring about its first reading. The legislation was almost ready to go when National took office as Rick Barker had done the lion’s share of work on it. Something that National consider as important as this Courts and Criminal Matters Bill still took a year and a half to come to Parliament despite the Government’s “tough on crime” rhetoric. 
We heard that empty rhetoric when we were debating the “three strikes” legislation the Sentencing and Parole Reform Bill yesterday. We have been told by the Ministry of Justice that that bill will do nothing to act as a deterrent to crime. We have had advisers and other people tell us that that bill will see more taxpayers’ money going towards punitive measures rather than taxpayers’ money being freed up to put into places like education health or rehabilitation programmes. We were also told and we heard it from this side of the House that with the “three strikes” bill we will see a lot of money going into the private companies the Government will give contracts to in order to run our private prisons. That legislation was seen as urgent enough to push through despite the fact that it was incredibly controversial; however this bill which members agree with took 18 months to bring to fruition and to the House for its first reading. We on this side have to be glad that at the end of the day it made it here; we just wonder why oh why it took so long. 
Labour will support this bill as it is a result of the work that Rick Barker did as Minister for Courts—work that we consider to be very important. It is important to recognise that courts are wiping millions and millions of dollars a year of unpaid fines; meanwhile the amount of outstanding money owed continues to grow. It is a problem that needs to be addressed. We saw figures released earlier this year that showed that between July 2008 and June 2009 the courts wiped $95.1 million of the total $806 million of unpaid fines. Common sense tells us that if we are going to charge these fines we should collect on them as well. The amount of outstanding fines is increasing each year. Given the large and growing amount of outstanding penalties the effectiveness of monetary penalties as a sanction for offending is being eroded. 
The regulatory impact statement to this bill states that many people can afford to pay their fines but choose not to until costly enforcement action is taken. I think that often the line is run that people cannot afford to pay the fines and in some cases that is the case but research says that a large number of them can afford to pay the fine; they just do not get around to doing it until action is taken. The amount of unpaid fines remitted to community work has more than tripled over the last 5 years from $16.6 million in 2005 to $55.7 million last year. There are a few other things that I will touch on with regard to this. The fines and monetary penalties are only effective if there are procedures in place to enforce the penalty as without that these penalties are just empty threats and will do nothing to deter criminals. We do not want legislation put through that is purely aspirational with regards to fines—and that could involve fines like we saw in the Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill with the truancy fine doubled—and with no intention to ever collect them. 
One of this bill’s major policy proposals is the driver licence stop orders initiative. I would like to take the time to discuss this in a little more detail. The driver licence stop orders initiative is a new method of enforcement that would allow the suspension of driver licences if people have not paid or given intention to pay outstanding traffic penalties. The driver licence stop orders scheme was approved by the previous Labour Government in July 2008. It is based on similar successful initiatives notably in Australia where these orders have greatly improved the rates of collected fines. In Queensland the scheme is successful in collecting three-quarters of fines owed by people who are threatened with licence suspension or who have their licences suspended because of unpaid fines. As well as Australia other countries such as Canada and the US have driver licence suspension as a fines compliance measure. 
Another major policy proposal in this bill is credit reporting. Through this system private sector lending companies and others will be able to find out if someone has overdue penalties. This will encourage people to pay fines and will make them accountable for the money they owe. It also means that the Ministry of Justice can use information stored by credit-reporting agencies to collect fines. This system will affect people who can afford to pay fines but choose not to because they have not previously faced any serious consequences for not paying. 
We will be supporting this bill but I make it clear that it is not the bill that the previous Labour Government would have passed. We would have liked to have seen a great deal more ambition and reach in this bill. It has potential but it stops short of addressing some of the more pressing matters related to the issue of unpaid court fines; for example there are over 80 issuing authorities dealing with these fines. That is crazy and it hinders a successful collection of fines. If this bill were to create a single agency to deal with court fines—which is what Labour Government and what this side of the House would have preferred—it would have been a great improvement and we would see a much better rate of fines collection. Labour suggested that but it has been left out of the bill before the House today. I am unsure of the logic or the reason for that and it is an example of the kind of forward-thinking that we would have liked incorporated into the bill. 
Another important matter that seems not to have been considered is the feasibility of huge fines especially when the person being fined is young. Research from the Ministry of Justice showed that once people cross a certain threshold of money owed—and for young people this threshold is usually around $2000—not only are they unable to pay the amount but also they become unwilling to even try to pay off some of the fine. The last thing we want is for our young people to be burdened with unnecessary fines so it would have been good if this bill had taken that into consideration in some way or another. I go back to what my colleague Jacinda Ardern was talking about before when she made the connection that our Minister for Courts is also the Minister of Pacific Island Affairs.