Beaumont Carol: Courts and Criminal Matters Bill — In Committee 
Beaumont Carol: Courts and Criminal Matters Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:673;Page:19785] 
CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to speak to Part 2 of the Courts and Criminal Matters Bill which as others have said is about amendments to the Land Transport Act 1988. In particular people have focused on the provisions on driver licence stop orders. As others have said we think this is a very sensible provision. It inserts a number of sections into the Land Transport Act to authorise the imposition of these driver licence stop orders. It will mean that people can have their driver’s licence suspended if they have not made arrangements to pay overdue traffic penalties. 
It is important to note that that measure was not seen as the penalty in itself. The driver licence stop order is not a penalty in itself as in some overseas regimes but an incentive for the proactive resolution of overdue traffic fines. I understand that similar schemes have been operating in Australia and have been working successfully. It is always good I have to say to find examples of similar jurisdictions where something has been tried out and we can weigh up whether it is beneficial. That is a very positive thing and it is good to see that we have been able to pick up this idea. 
The measure has the following features. A warning notice will be given to people so that they have 14 days to resolve traffic penalties before their licence is suspended. Hopefully that will give people a major jolt. Living as I do in Auckland I say that being without a car in the current environment of limited public transport options would make life very difficult. Most people are still I am afraid to say reliant on their car to get to their workplace and therefore to earn the income they need to live on. That is of course if they are lucky enough to have a job; sadly too many Aucklanders and too many New Zealanders do not because of the unemployment situation and the lack of Government action on jobs. 
I come back to Part 2 and its amendments to the Land Transport Act to allow for the suspending of driver licences including limited licences held by people in default. So on the point I was making about work this would also suspend licences that people in other situations might get to be able to travel from their home to their workplace and back. Those would also be suspended and people would be prevented from obtaining a licence during the time they were subject to the driver licence stop order. 
The good thing is that if the person pays the overdue fines their driver licence will be immediately restored to them unless during that period it expires and then obviously they will not have a licence at that stage. Importantly a person driving in breach of a driver licence stop order will have his or her vehicle impounded for 28 days. Again that is quite a stiff penalty and I think it will make people think seriously about whether they will infringe. 
One of the things I thought was quite interesting was that apparently members of the Law and Order Committee were interested in the advice of the New Zealand Police and the fact that its policy was to waive infringements for expired warrants of fitness or outdated registrations of 1 month or less when the fault was remedied in a timely manner. The committee felt that that policy of compliance incentive—encouraging a person to go and get their warrant of fitness or registration—was a very good practice. 
I agree with that. I think that the committee is absolutely right on that. Apparently the same is true for parking infringements although I do not quite understand how that works. Somebody who was on the committee might like to tell me. 
I understand though that a difference of opinion came about on this matter when the Labour members wanted to use the legislation to regularise the waiver policy we have just talked about. That seems like good common sense but unfortunately it seems that that idea was opposed by the National members. I believe they went on to signal though that they might advance such a provision in future legislation. We would certainly like to ensure that that happens because it seems a very sensible policy to give people that little shove or incentive if you like to become compliant. 
These changes to the Land Transport Act 1998 are actually quite significant ones. They are quite well structured and they also provide fairly major signals to people about the seriousness of paying their traffic fines. 
I noted earlier that my colleague the Hon Rick Barker who as others have noted played a very major part in this Courts and Criminal Matters Bill and who deserves congratulations for that has had traffic fines as have I. It would be interesting to hear about the experiences of others.