Mark Ron: Courts and Criminal Matters Bill — In Committee 
Mark Ron: Courts and Criminal Matters Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:627;Page:21944] 
RON MARK (NZ First) 
: 
 In speaking to clause 1 I guess now that after a speech like that we could aptly rename this bill as the forerunner to the “Grand Coalition National-Labour Coalition Government Bill”. I have to point out that the honourable member—and Simon Power is an honourable member; a good hard-working member from what I hear up in the Rangitaiki—is wrong. The Minister presented an appalling bill to the select committee. [ 
Interruption 
] The original presentation of the bill was appalling. It took a lot of work in the select committee. In fact most of the ideas surrounding the use of the Inland Revenue Department and the Department of Work and Income were all New Zealand First’s suggestions at the select committee table. 
We acknowledge the hard work of the staff who went back and convinced the Minister that he could get a lot more traction than he thought he could by amending this bill. But sadly as we have gone through the part by part exercise exactly what New Zealand First predicted has happened. All the substantive amendments that would have improved this bill were knocked back by the Government. The Government consistently refused New Zealand First’s motion to grant leave to have the bill sent back to the select committee so some steel and some spine could be shoved into it. It is appalling. 
This bill should be titled the “Oh We Missed a Great Opportunity Bill” because we have not put into this bill the ability for the courts to access the Inland Revenue Department information that would so easily wrap up all these little ratbags who deliberately hide from their bills. The consequence of that? Well I will use Labour’s own words. Without this sort of revenue coming in we forgo a lot of cataract operations hip operations and opportunities to improve road safety. The $650 million sitting on the back-burner not being recovered is nothing to be sneered at. It is a lot of money. 
By allowing that sort of debt to build up we are undermining the very work that this Government puts police officers out there on the road to do and that is an issue: infringement notices. I ask the Minister what point there is in targeting an extra 30 percent of infringement notices in 1 year—this is from the statement of intent last year for the police—if one has no intention of actively going out and getting the money from the fines that have been issued. One is actually directly undermining the work of the police. To then come into this Chamber and tell people that the Government is standing up to support the police is a load of—to quote the words of an up and coming leader—“baloney”. It is baloney. It is rubbish. 
New Zealand First intends putting this bill back to the floor to give it some teeth to give it some spine when we are in Government. My only message to the Labour Party is that it is nice to see that some of the arrogance has gone and people now realise that they probably will not be in Government. But if one is expecting an opportunity to be in Government one had better get ready to put some of the issues that we tried to discuss at select committee in respect of the Privacy Act off to one side and deal with the issues of Inland Revenue Department information and Department of Work and Income information and making that available to the courts. 
We tried desperately to get amendments to the bill. We tried desperately to get this bill back to the select committee so we could toughen it up and strengthen it. We know that the advisers are telling the Minister that a lot more could be done and the Minister himself in one of his speeches acknowledged that more can be done. Indeed he went further to say that he sees the need to readdress some of these issues. 
I will come back to what I said. New Zealand First thinks this bill could have been titled the “Oh We Missed a Golden Opportunity Bill” because the Government seriously has. It has not read the mood of the public in respect of these issues at all well; but then that is nothing new. We are seeing that daily are we not?