Brown Peter: Courts and Criminal Matters Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Brown Peter: Courts and Criminal Matters Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:626;Page:21719] 
PETER BROWN (Deputy Leader—NZ First) 
: 
 As I listened to the honourable member those facts astounded me. I hope I heard him right. He said that over 25000 people in this country have overdue fines of over $5000 and this bill if I have it correctly is effectively targeting 117 of them per year. I ask the Minister in the chair Rick Barker what he will do about the 24883. Nothing! He has gone blank. He does not have a clue what the Government will do about the 24883. 
Hon Rick Barker 
: We’re pursuing them relentlessly. Many of them are already paying their fines off piece by piece. Under arrangement to pay is at a record level. 
PETER BROWN 
: Oh he has a lot of confidence in arrangements to pay. I tell the honourable member that if he owed me $10 and I could not find him I would ask his colleagues where he was and they would tell me. [ 
Interruption 
] I will put it the other way round. If I owed him $10 he would probably ask my colleagues where I am and nobody would worry about telling him. 
 There is a very simple solution to address the problem in total—never mind the 117 but the whole 25000 people with overdue fines of over $5000. It is very simple. When people get a fine it should be part of the understanding that if it is not paid by a certain date they will lose their privacy privileges totally. On the date when the privileges expire the data-matching process would come into play. All Government agencies would have access to their information—from their Inland Revenue Department number to their telephone number their address and any aliases. People would lose the right to privacy. It is a very very simple solution and the choice is not the Government’s—the Government is not imposing anything. The choice is that of the person who owes the Government money. 
If guys are getting away with owing that amount of money that is absolute daylight robbery. It sends the wrong message to law-abiding New Zealanders and the Minister knows it—in his heart he knows it. He knows he would like to target the 24883 people not just the 117. A simple way to do it is to put a little notation on the bottom of a judge’s order that if a fine is not paid by such-and-such a day the Government has the right to data match all of the individual’s personal data no matter what. The situation will be permanent unless he or she pays the fine. If the individual wants to clear the backlog and get back to being treated like a normal citizen who has his or her privacy respected maybe the Government will say that it will not charge a fee. That would encourage people to pay their fines on time. 
This bill addresses just one tiny little aspect of the problem. When I heard today that outstanding fines total over $650 million I was absolutely appalled. I looked at the pro rata tabulation in the commentary on the bill and I saw that it simply calculates that of the $650 million owed in the vicinity of $400 million relates to fines that have been overdue for some considerable amount of time. I looked at figures my colleague Ron Mark gave me some time ago that showed how much people owe. This Government is stuffing around and blowing against the wind. 
Clayton Cosgrove 
: It must be true if Ron gave it to you. 
PETER BROWN 
: I do not for one moment think the member is saying my colleague was not telling the truth. He would not dare to do that.