Nash Stuart: Courts and Criminal Matters Bill — In Committee 
Nash Stuart: Courts and Criminal Matters Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:673;Page:19786] 
STUART NASH (Labour) 
: 
 I have a couple of questions on Part 2 of the Courts and Criminal Matters Bill. They are really practical process questions and I would not mind if the Minister in the chair the Minister of Immigration answered a couple of them. 
I will talk about new section 91C to be inserted by clause 43 “Warning notice to be served on defendant”. It may interest people in the gallery or wherever they are watching that initially this provision was called “Warning notice to be sent to defendant”. But the Law and Order Committee changed it to read “served on defendant”. The interesting part is what was crossed out. New section 91C(1) initially concluded: “by delivering it to the defendant or by sending it to the defendant by ordinary post or by electronic means.” but the select committee obviously decided that that was not a robust enough system to ensure compliance or to ensure that defendants could say with hand on heart that they had received this message. An opening was left for someone to slide on through and deflect his or her responsibility. As I was saying before this is all about accepting responsibility. 
There are a couple of practical issues here that I would not mind the Minister answering because they are quite significant. We have heard that there is $672 million in outstanding fines. That is an astronomical amount—$672 million in outstanding fines. But we have also heard—again this comes down to new section 91C—that now that warning notice has to be served on the defendant. I am assuming that a policeman or a bailiff has to go—well it states it in the bill—to the person’s place of residence and hand the person that notice. If the person is not at his or her place of residence then the notice has to be handed to a person over the age of 14 and if the person refuses to accept that notice it has to be proven that the official reasonably tried to deliver it. So there is no excuse for not having it delivered. New section 91C(3) actually states that “No driver licence stop order imposed on a person is invalid merely because a notice … was not received by that person or was received …” but that is beside the point. 
My question is how will that actually be done? If $672 million is outstanding we are talking about a lot of people. How will this process be resourced? Will the police dedicate a certain team of people? I assume it is all retrospective as well. If someone has a fine outstanding as of now once this bill is passed into law then that person will be liable for one of these driver licence stop orders. They do not know when they will get them. I wonder whether the Ministry of Justice has a process in place or has a suggested time line on how long it will take to police this. How long will it take to get the resources needed to deliver every single one of these notices to the perpetrators’ places of residence and sign off and say that they have been delivered? 
I also would not mind knowing what the payback is. Let me give an example. The Inland Revenue Department has estimated that for every $1 spent on debt collection it gets back about $62. The department chases hard. That is not a bad rate of return we must admit. When we questioned the Minister of Revenue in the last Finance and Expenditure Committee he said that $62 might be a bit high and that it might be closer to $35 or $40. But it does not matter. If we are spending $1 and getting back $35 or $40 that is an amazing rate of return. I wonder whether the Ministry of Justice has done a similar analysis for this process. For every $1 it spends issuing notices or chasing outstanding fines—$672 million of them—I wonder what sort of return it will get. 
The reason I ask is that it comes into the benefit-cost analysis. If the ministry puts 10 people on to serving this will 10 people over the space of a year be able to recover $50 million or maybe even $100 million? I am not too sure. This is simply a lot more than putting a letter in the mail to the person and saying: “OK in 14 days you’re stopped.” 
As my colleagues Rick Barker and Kris Faafoi have outlined there are many instances of young men and women—well I assume there are some older ones as well—who believe they are immune. They believe that they can drive and it does not matter. They will get pulled up they will get a ticket and they will keep driving. That is simply not good enough because as we said it is about taking responsibility. But I am assuming—and I could be wrong—that if a young man like Kris Faafoi in the example he gave is pulled over by a policeman— 
Lynne Pillay 
: You’re a young man like Kris Faafoi. 
STUART NASH 
: —OK let us not the stretch the truth here—and it is proven that he has $10000 worth of outstanding fines is the policeman allowed to issue a warning on the spot? That would make it easier. That would make the process a lot easier. As Kris Faafoi said the man was not drunk under the legal definition. Legally what happens is that the policeman or policewoman issues an infringement notice and the offender drives off. What do they do with that ticket? Well $672 million worth of outstanding fines shows that they rip up the ticket and throw it in the back seat. They forget about it until they are pulled up next time or perhaps until we find them and they can go to court. They get a fine in court but they go out keep driving and keep committing these offences. It is simply not good enough. 
Are the police allowed to issue a warning on the spot there and then? Obviously a name has to go on the ticket. After 14 days the policeman will register the ticket and then the Ministry of Justice can go around and take the person’s licence off them or impound their car which I think is a very sensible solution. This guy has $12000 worth of fines so take his car for goodness’ sake. He has to take responsibility for those fines. These people have broken the law. That is what our democracy operates under. 
I ask the Minister in the chair the Minister of Agriculture to give us a bit of an idea how this process will be policed and the sorts of resources that will be put into it. This thing will have no teeth. We all support it—well I do not know whether the Greens do—but it will have no teeth if it is seen as just another piece of legislation on the law books to be filed away without the necessary resources to chase it up and follow it up. That is what is absolutely necessary. That is what will send the message. If a guy walks along to a drag race and all his mates ask where his car is and he says that the police came around and the new enforcement team they have in place came and took his car his mates will say: “Oh goodness me. That’s rough.” All his mates will have fines and if that is not enough impetus then it will happen to the second chap and the third chap until these young offenders start getting the message that they have to take responsibility for their fines for the $672 million worth of fines outstanding. 
There are some resourcing issues. This system will not have the teeth that we want it to have it will not have the consequences or the outcomes that we would like it to have unless the police have the ability to issue something on the spot or the Ministry of Justice diverts some resource into it. A benefit-cost analysis would be good; I assume the ministry has done it. It may well allow it to up the staff and up the resource. As I said for every $1 spent the Inland Revenue Department collects about $40 and I suspect it is just as high with this system. It may even be higher. It is not as if we are chasing fraud. We are chasing people who have committed an offence. It is there in black and white. We do not need to take them to court. They have been to court they have been issued a fine and there it is. But that is a slight concern I have—it is a concern I have. 
I think members have heard that every Labour member supports this bill. It is a really good measure—it is a good measure. We are talking about $672 million. As my colleague Lynne Pillay said we would not have to sell a power station if we got in $672 million. We could have early childhood education back or even night classes. But I think everyone agrees it requires extra resourcing; there is no doubt about that. There could be more jobs maybe through the Youth Guarantee scheme but I suspect they will have to have a little bit of training in this area. 
It is good law. There are a couple of questions that I would not mind the Minister answering. Thank you very much.