Power Simon: Courts and Criminal Matters Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Power Simon: Courts and Criminal Matters Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:626;Page:21709] 
SIMON POWER (National—Rangitikei) 
: 
 I feel compelled to make a contribution to this part of the debate—in particular this part of the Courts and Criminal Matters Bill. I want to record the Minister for Courts’ comments again in  
Hansard 
 and thank him for indicating support for what no doubt from this point on will become known as the “Ryall amendment”. I think the Minister to his credit given the late hours that the Committee has been working on various bills has seen the sense of the amendment tabled by Mr Ryall and the National Party thanks the Government for its support on that amendment. 
There does however remain the question of the deletion in Part 4 of aliases—in particular their deletion from the information relating to a person who is in default that may be held. The Minister’s statement—and I will paraphrase for the Committee’s sake—was that the officials were against aliases being included because they were concerned that more people would be picked up who were not people of the kind that they wanted to pick up or words to that effect. The Minister nods and agrees that that is a fair interpretation of his remarks in his last contribution. Well actually this bill and the seriousness of the bill are not the officials’ concern. They are there to advise the Minister. I would be interested in knowing why the Minister is prepared to have aliases removed from the information that may be held. The Minister gave the example of his travelling overseas and being known by a name other than the Hon Rick Barker—Richard I believe the Minister said was his given name. 
But is not the point that that provision which errs on the side of caution in terms of people who may go by more than one name is completely inconsistent with the provision that follows relating to Crown liability? Under that provision—I am talking about new section 141AF(2) inserted by clause 15—the Crown is “not liable to any person … for any loss or damage caused as a result of or in connection with the actions described’’ above which is liability for fines if the employee of the Crown “has not acted in good faith or has been grossly negligent.” Would not the easy way to deal with the aliases question and the question contained in that part of the clause simply be to weaken the second provision so that there is liability if the official or authorised employee was simply wrong? If we include aliases and if the official or employee gets it wrong then the Crown should have liability in that instance. 
This bill is trying to have a dollar each way by saying on the one hand we do not want to be too tough and on the other hand we will make the threshold that a person owing fines has to meet far higher than an ordinary criminal threshold. In other words there is liability on behalf of the Crown only if the employee of the Crown has not acted in good faith or has been grossly negligent. Well what if there was liability if the employee was just wrong? Surely that would be enough of a protection for the person who may or may not use an alias and it would enable the Government to reinsert aliases and information relating to aliases back into the bill. At present the Minister is trying to have his cake and eat it too. It would be a far simpler drafting exercise for the Minister simply to include aliases and while he is at it drop the threshold of liability for the Crown so that if officials get it wrong the person concerned can bring an action against the Crown. That would make far more sense. The Minister should include aliases and drop the standard.