Barker Rick: Courts and Criminal Matters Bill — In Committee 
Barker Rick: Courts and Criminal Matters Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:673;Page:19780] 
Hon RICK BARKER (Labour) 
: 
 I will talk about Part 2 and in particular about driver licence stop orders for the non-payment of fines. We have a longstanding problem in this country of drivers who continue to drive seemingly with impunity while having a large number of outstanding fines. Previously there was no means of reconciling that; no means of connecting the privilege of driving to the number of fines that people had. 
This issue came to a head when I received a letter from someone I knew whose mother had been badly injured in an accident. He had gone to court and the young driver was charged with careless driving. During the court hearing it somehow came out that this person owed $42000 in outstanding fines and had a very long list of other issues. The letter writer said to me: “Surely someone must have known that this young man was a menace on the road. This young man’s driving was erratic this young man was driving against the law and he was an accident waiting to happen and it was my mother who was the one who had the accident. Why are the people in authority not taking effective action against these young drivers?”. It was a good question it was a fair question and the question was right on the button. 
This measure of driver licence stop orders seeks in part to address that issue. It says to people who accumulate an excessive number of fines that if they do not take responsibility for them do not pay them and do not learn the lesson of their bad driving behaviour their licence will go—no question about it. I think this is a very powerful message to send. 
It is one that is long overdue and there were some technical problems about getting it introduced in terms of the legislation. There were technical policy problems that took some time and it was whilst I was in Government that a lot of the work was done. I am very pleased to see that the Hon Georgina te Heuheu and this Government have introduced this legislation because it is long overdue. 
I do not know where the change of attitude has come from but there was a time in this country when whenever anybody got a fine the first thing they did was to front up to the court and pay it. One did not have outstanding debts. That was the nature of who we were as a people but somehow over a generation or two we have lost that belief. Some people have this view that they can simply have outstanding fines to the Crown and it is of no consequence whatsoever. 
This legislative change says that that time is over. There will be a consequence it will be swift and it will be very effective. Everybody knows that if they get caught driving without a licence they will be in even deeper trouble. 
The message in this legislation to those who incur fines is that they should pay them or the State will take effective action against them. They are given the privilege of driving on our roads. The roads have rules for the safety of others and those people as drivers are obliged to follow those rules. If they do not there will be effective action taken against them. 
The second bit which I think I have missed—in part because I was distracted—but which I want to speak to briefly in the Committee stage is about the change in the credit that people have. This issue runs in a similar line to the one about driver licensing and outstanding fines. 
A number of young people have their cars—quite expensive cars—and for whatever reasons they have a pile of debts against them and they get their cars confiscated. The very first thing they do is to go to a car yard that will sell finance to them and they finance the fines back into the car. The person who lends them the money knows that there is a substantial amount of money outstanding to the State—not directly but they know who these people are and what they do—and they finance the car. When the car is seized by the Crown the person who gets the money first is the finance company under the old arrangement. So the finance company is more than happy to sell them the car on finance because they know that if it gets confiscated it is going to get its money back and the Crown can wait in the back of the queue. 
This legislation will change the priority so that when a car is confiscated and sold the first priority will be the payment of fines. We will do this by making sure that the information about people’s debt is available to those finance companies. If the finance companies sell a car with finance to a person who has outstanding debts to the Crown for outstanding fines they will know that they are second in the queue for the money and that the priority for receiving that money will be the Crown. I think this will be a substantial handbrake on those people making decisions about selling cars to people who are irresponsible with their vehicles and the way in which they drive and accumulate fines. 
So there is a pincer movement here. The pincer movement in this legislation is firstly that if any outstanding fines are left unattended a person will lose his or her licence. The second part of the pincer movement is that we will attack their ability to finance themselves into a car if their car is stolen. 
We will do this with a very serious intent. Our serious intent is to say to the person who wrote the letter to me some time ago about his mother being injured by someone who had a massive list of outstanding fines that we took the matter seriously. Yes I say to the person who wrote the letter we should have known that that person was a menace on the road and we should have taken action against them. This legislation does that in two ways. I think in all good conscience that I can then sometime in the future say to the person who wrote the letter that their matter was taken seriously it was heard and it was done effectively. 
A number of the finance companies tried to quibble with this legislation by saying that the Crown was somehow using its superior weight and power to go past them and to get the money first. Well I want to say to them that sometimes one has to have a batting order. Someone is No. 1 batsman someone is No. 2 and someone plays at three four and five. The Government is entitled to set the batting order. It is entitled to do so not only for its own interests but also for the interests of the community and the people who drive on the road. 
This change in priority is to signal to those people that the Crown takes this seriously and our priority is not to stop people getting financed—we do not want to do that—but to say that if a person has a huge number of outstanding fines he or she should not be treated in the same manner as a person who has no outstanding fines. We want to say to the person who has a huge list of outstanding fines and to the people who want to finance them into a car and put them back on the road that they cannot do that with impunity and that they risk their money. That is because the person they are selling a car to and financing into a car is a liability—a liability measured by the number of fines incurred and the number of outstanding fines not paid. 
This Parliament is entitled to take a dim view of that. This Parliament is entitled to act and act decisively and we do so. I think this is very good legislation from that point of view. It is here to serve the public interest of those who drive on the road and it is not necessarily here to be about collecting fines. 
Let us deal briefly with the issue of collecting fines. I know it is beyond the ambit of this legislation but the point needs to be made that if people do not want fines they should not speed. If people are complaining about the Government and the State using fines as a collection mechanism for finance well the simplest way to cut down the income flow is to not speed and to not break the law. I am sure this country would be very pleased to see its revenue from infringements for traffic offences fall to zero because if it fell to zero we would have a law-abiding citizenry. 
Some may see a fine for speeding as simply a tax; a tax imposed for the privilege of speeding. Well I say to them that if one speeds one has to pay a fine. I must admit that I have had a few speeding tickets; Triumph motorcycles sometimes have a mind of their own I must say but I do my best to control it. I have had fines and I readily accept that if I have broken the law and sped then I have to pay the fine—I have no problem about that. But one does not always do it wilfully and wrongly. However the fact is that I cannot blame the State for my getting a fine; I blame myself and I have to take responsibility for myself. 
I just want to commend this legislation and say that Parliament has done fine work here.