Parker David: Sentencing (Offender Levy) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Parker David: Sentencing (Offender Levy) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
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Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour) 
: 
 I repeat what has been said by previous speakers from around the House: we all feel for victims and we all wish that more could be done for them. Unfortunately— 
Nathan Guy 
: Are you voting for it? 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: We are voting for the Sentencing (Offender Levy) Amendment Bill to go a select committee. I seriously doubt whether it will have our vote once it comes back from the select committee because it does not withstand scrutiny. The issue here is this: why pay more than $50 to collect $50? Essentially that is the equation here. 
The regulatory impact statement included in the bill from the Government—wholly inadequate as it is—refers to the fact that extra costs will arise for both the court and the ministry collections. Vote Courts will pay. It will cause additional cost both in the court process and in collections. I will just drill down on that point a little bit because no one from the Government has. Its totally inadequate regulatory impact statement does not have even one figure in it as to these costs. 
The Opposition has asked members of the Government repeatedly to give us some estimate as to what the cost is. This estimate has not come from them so I thought that I would look at the Budget documents and see how much is spent on the collections vote in order to get some estimate of what this measure will cost. It just does not make common sense to me that we can recover $50 from an offender for less than $50. I do not know of any corporate people who recover $50 debts from unwilling payers because it costs more than $50 to do it. Quite apart from the court filing fees the processing time costs more than $50. I thought I would look into this. How much do members think the appropriation is for fines collection by the courts? 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: Richard will know. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: I ask Richard Worth. 
Hon Dr Richard Worth 
: $5 million. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: I tell Dr Worth that he is out by a factor of 10—the appropriation for fine recovery and civil debt collection is $66 million the vast majority of which is for fine collection. The appropriation is $66232000. 
Let us think about this. How many offenders come to court and do not go into the fines collection system? There are quite a number of them. Quite a number of them get community service or periodic detention and do not have to pay a fine. We have heard from the National Government that everyone will be in this system. 
Another fiction being run here is that somehow this will always add an extra $50. Well an offender makes a statement of position that goes up to the bench and the judge thinks about what is realistic reparation because there is no point in being completely unrealistic. The court may add on $50 for victims of crime but often the amount will be taken off the fine the reparation or the court costs. So in reality if we take these things into account less than $50 extra will be paid by offenders. 
Let us put that aside and assume that the full $50 is added. We will tease that point out at the select committee and I think we will get an acknowledgment from officials that in reality less than $50 per offender will be added. But let us assume that the full $50 is asked for. What will have to happen that does not happen now? The court will have to do something extra for every offender that comes before it. 
Hon Steve Chadwick 
: Another transaction. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: It will be another transaction for the court. 
An estimated 100000 offenders go through the court system every year which means that 100000 people will pay the $50 and that is where we get the $5 million figure from. Currently $66 million is spent to recover about $200 million worth of fines. If we look at the $5 million as a proportion of all fines collected we see that this cannot be done for less than 10 percent of the cost of collecting all fines and no one is kidding himself or herself about that. We cannot collect the amount from everyone rather than just from some people and say that it is likely to cost no more than 10 percent of what is currently spent on the collection of fines. 
We know that that amount is currently over $60 million. So this will add about $5 million to $6 million to the cost of fine collection for the Ministry of Justice. 
Hon Simon Power 
: Don’t vote for it then. Vote against it. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: I say to Mr Power that we will dig down on this at the select committee. He should be embarrassed with the outcome because this is poor policy. He wants to pay $5 million to victims and that is a good thing to do. But why does he not just pay it out of the money already being collected from fines? That would be far more cost-effective. Why spend more than $5 million to collect $5 million? He is wasting taxpayers’ money. It will cost more than $5 million in order to collect the $5 million and he as much as acknowledges that fact in the regulatory impact statement. It states that it will be some years before enough money is collected to cover even the start-up costs: “It is anticipated that over time the revenue generated from the levy will cover ongoing collection costs and will rise to sufficient levels to fund services for victims of crime.” The Government will not collect any net money from this; this will cost money. 
We look forward to exposing this point at the select committee. I am pretty confident that this bill will be so discredited that in the later readings it will not get the support of as many parties in this House as it will do at the first reading.