Worth Richard: Courts and Criminal Matters Bill — In Committee 
Worth Richard: Courts and Criminal Matters Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:630;Page:2236] 
Dr RICHARD WORTH (National) 
: 
 I challenge very directly the remarks of the previous speaker the Hon Jim Sutton and pick up on one of the points that he made. He is the Minister in the chair he has officials seated near him and he tells us—those of us who are listening—that there is no up-to-date information on the level of outstanding fines. Well there is such information. It is information in the public domain. It is information provided by the Government. 
What exactly are those numbers? The latest numbers available to me which are numbers that have been published are that as at 31 January 2006 $671.7 million was owed in fines by 482939 people. Of this amount $366.7 million was overdue for payment. Men between the ages of 20 and 30 owe $213.2 million. It is not the case as the Minister would assert that the House is listening to repetitive speeches; it is more the case that this Government simply refuses to come to grips with the issue. 
The previous speaker spoke of the legislative history of the bill and it is a bill that has made the slowest and most tortuous progress through this Parliament. As I look back in  
Hansard 
 I see that the last time that I spoke on the Committee stage of this bill was on 17 June 2005. What we see writ so large is that this Government is said to be tough on law and order. If that is so then this bill wholly unmasks that pretence. This is not a Government that seeks to maintain an effective efficient legal system. Cries to the contrary are simply wrong. 
I also find it absolutely amazing that Mr Sutton can respond in the way he has just done by somehow saying that the bulk of the fines outstanding are in respect of infringement notices and it is not that private individuals have suffered significantly. That must surely be the shoddiest of intellectual arguments. The reality is that a number of people have broken the criminal law they have been brought to account they have been fined and they have chosen not to meet their obligations and their debt to society. To suggest that that does not matter just because a third party—an individual in society—is not out of pocket completely ignores the reality that there must be credibility and confidence in the legal system. I say to the Minister that it is a disgrace that he can stand and firstly not provide accurate information and secondly can somehow suggest in the flights of sophistry that this huge burden of unpaid fines reflected in the infringement notices does not really matter. 
When I look at the issues I see that a very significant issue that is much ignored is that fines accumulate and for no substantial reason are often written off in bulk. There are a large number of examples of this. Last year we saw a person who had $73000 in traffic fines wiped. There was another case in Hamilton of a person who had $31352 of debt for traffic offences wiped. That shows clearly that the system is not working. It is no penalty at all to be convicted and fined to not pay one’s fine then to have that fine written off. That is not what this legal system is all about. That is why I join with others on the National side of the Chamber in saying that although we support this bill there is much further work to be done. 
I am very conscious of the fact that Mr Barker—the Minister who is substantially responsible for this legislation—has been keen to get it through. He has failed hugely in that task as the legislative history of the bill shows. He has seen it as a matter of urgency that this legislation be enacted. But those responsible on the Government’s side for setting the parliamentary order of business have simply refused to respond to that call. They have also failed significantly to deal with the allied problems of unpaid fines—allied problems that include the failure of community work and its ineffectiveness as a sentence. Numbers of people are sentenced to community work which is quite often a sanction for non-payment of a fine. But many of those people so sentenced simply do not turn up. That is why the time has come for us to get tough on those who choose not to pay their fines. 
This legislation is structured simply. It impacts on a number of Acts. There are I think nine Acts in all that are amended—for example the Crimes Act the Customs and Excise Act the District Courts Act and the Immigration Act. It is divided into two parts: the first concentrates on issues relating to the policy proposal to apprehend fines defaulters at airports; the second focuses on other fine enforcement proposals. 
It is a statement of the obvious to say that the ability to collect a fine from a person who is not prepared to pay that fine depends on knowledge of that defaulter’s whereabouts and the ability that that person may or may not have to meet that financial obligation. So a key—and I would say laudable—objective of the bill is to improve the compliance of fines defaulters who travel overseas while minimising disruption to other travellers and airlines. Occasionally the Ministry of Justice receives information that a fine defaulter for whom a warrant to arrest has been issued is planning to leave or return to New Zealand. If that occurs the ministry will arrange for the police to intercept the defaulter at the airport and to take enforcement action. If this bill is enacted if the necessary mechanisms are set up at the border and if there is a willingness on behalf of the Government to put appropriate resource into the system I do not doubt that there could be a substantial and remedial impact from what is proposed. Those are certainly parts of merit in this legislation. So we will see an informal information-sharing regime set up between the ministry customs and the Department of Labour. 
 I conclude by expressing hope that this will not be legislation that the Government shows a lack of will to follow through on once it is passed. I say that in a serious way because the history of this legislation to date is certainly not consistent with the will to deal with a significant issue. For Mr Sutton to say that the fines are substantially related to infringement notices and therefore we should not be concerned is laughable and reflects no credit on him at all.