Coddington Deborah: Courts and Criminal Matters Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Coddington Deborah: Courts and Criminal Matters Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:626;Page:21704] 
DEBORAH CODDINGTON (ACT) 
: 
 As I said before this legislation appears to be good legislation. The intent is good in terms of not letting people welsh on their fines and not take their punishment. It is a piece of legislation that looks good but when one drills into it further one wonders what in fact it will actually achieve. Listening to the debate so far I heard Edwin Perry say that we will be going after only 117 people at the moment and collecting $1.5 million at most out of $500 million. I cannot see that there has been a cost-benefit analysis done on this legislation. 
Brian Connell 
: Yes there has. It is $1.7 million. 
DEBORAH CODDINGTON 
: The benefit is $1.7 million. And what is the cost? 
Brian Connell 
: The cost is $1.7 million to get back $1.5 million. 
DEBORAH CODDINGTON 
: Everybody knows that the courts system is in total disarray and has been for decades and this legislation will not clean it up. When I ask what the cost is we all know this legislation will invoke the law of unintended consequences. I just wonder whether there are things in here that are really necessary and actually defeat the purposes of this bill. For instance there is an education programme whereby people first of all will be told according to Brian Connell that they will be arrested and will be served with something so that when we turn up to serve the something on them they are not there. Then people are told that if they leave the country or when they come back they will be stopped at the border— 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: If they’re unlucky. 
DEBORAH CODDINGTON 
: Well we have to be really nice to criminals because if we are nice to them then they will be nice back. That is the socialist philosophy. And if they are really bad one should say: “Please be nice.” One just has to read the latest  
Rip It Up  
magazine. It has the Greens’ crime policy there in a nutshell. 
I get back to Part 3 and the education system. Why do we tell fine defaulters? Would it not be better not to have them come back just to let them go? If a person racks up a fine of $500 that amount compounds because of enforcement charges and it goes on. Most members here have children; we know what they are like. To use an analogy a young person goes out is meant to be home for tea at 7.30 but is not. At 9.30 the young person thinks he or she will get a growling anyway so might as well stay out until 1.30 and enjoy him or herself. Young people are the same with fines. They rack up fines for $1000 $1500 and think that they are never going to be able to pay $1500. They let it go and the fine goes up to $7000. Why do we not just let them go and not let them come back? [ 
Interruption 
] Edwin Perry is right; it is true—it will be wiped when they get back. That is quite right. If they get taken before the court if they get through all the barriers that this legislation sets up before we actually get the money out of them they are likely to get 6 months’ periodic detention or some community service. If we work backwards and calculate the time it takes to pay off the fines some of them are in effect earning something like $300 an hour through community service—and that is if they even turn up to do it. 
Clause 10 in Part 3 is another interesting interpretation in light of the recent decision of the Supreme Court. We now do not even know what the difference is between salary and wages and a payment in consideration of work performed under a contract for services. We cannot blame the courts for that. That is what this Labour Government—Margaret Wilson—has told them to do. It has told them to walk all over contracts. It does not matter if someone has a contract for services performed with a film production company for instance the contract is not that at all according to this Government because it can go before the court and it will become classified as wages and salary. 
That will have enormous consequences on the film industry as well as on all sorts of other industries where people are paid huge amounts of money for a very short time and then they might be off work for 2 or 3 months. But under this new philosophy from this Government people with employment contracts of that type will be entitled to the same personal grievance claims as people on wages or a salary.