O'Connor Damien: Sentencing (Offender Levy) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
O'Connor Damien: Sentencing (Offender Levy) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 20 October 2009. Volume:658;Page:7346. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour) 
: 
 Classic Tory tokenism—that is what I say about this bill. Although Labour will support this bill because indeed it does no harm the question must be put to the House and I guess to the people of New Zealand that after spending all this money going through the whole process and considering all these issues has it been worth it? I guess we will find out in a year or two’s time. 
Hon Annette King 
: In 4 years’ time. 
Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR 
: That is right. In 2 years’ time I think we will make a judgment and so too will the people of New Zealand. We will see what happens then. 
The terrible reality is that crime creates unfairness. There is no way of avoiding that reality. Whatever crime it is an injustice occurs. Someone is the perpetrator of that injustice and the other person or persons are usually the victims. It is Parliament’s role and responsibility to reduce the unfairness of those crimes and the unfairness across this nation. What will happen when a crime is committed? Usually our good police catch people at an increasing rate—well under a Labour Government they used to do that. Thanks to Minister King and effort focus and encouragement the police caught criminals at an increasing rate. They were then taken through the courts and were convicted if they had committed the crime. The same process will continue but when all criminals are convicted a $50 levy will be imposed on them. 
The question must be about whether we are reducing the unfairness of the process. As I have travelled around this country and as I have been an MP the biggest issue of unfairness relating to crime has been the issue of inconsistency in sentencing. People cannot understand how in one part of the country there will be a sentence for a certain crime and in another part of the country there will be a different sentence for the same crime. So the Labour Government brought in the Sentencing Council and that was the single biggest initiative to reduce unfairness from crime. Victims felt that if a convicted criminal received a lesser sentence then that was a huge unfairness and it reflected poorly on them. But this present Government has said that it will do away with the Sentencing Council because it is not important and that it will set up a bureaucracy to charge every convicted criminal $50 which will address the issue of unfairness. Well that is tokenism and I am sure that Mr Deputy Speaker could understand that if he had the opportunity to say so. But the fact that the Tory Government has disbanded the Sentencing Council the single most important— 
Hon Simon Power 
: It never started. 
Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR 
: Mr Power knows that. He knows that the Sentencing Council was the best initiative in terms of addressing unfairness in crime in this country but he was forced to disband it because of ideology. I know that Simon Power agreed with having the Sentencing Council. 
The $50 levy will now be a significant step forward in addressing unfairness in crime. Let us look at some of the costs. It will cost $1.3 million to set up this bureaucracy—this from a Government that says it is reducing bureaucracy. It will then spend $1.5 million a year to run the bureaucracy. Again this is from a Government that claims to be reducing bureaucracy. How much will the Government get? The claim is about $5 million a year or closer to estimates just over $13 million over 4 years. I will let the House or the National members do the arithmetic on that. That is not delivering good value for money for victims in terms of either this Parliament or the Government’s efforts in bureaucracy. 
Let us then look at those this levy will be collected from. The reality is that there has been an obligation in the justice system for some time to pay reparation. It is one of the things that the Labour Government brought in in a genuine attempt—not tokenism like the Tories—to take from those criminals some money to pay back to their victims. But we realise that as with unpaid fines it is sometimes very hard to extract money from criminals for a whole lot of reasons. Many criminals do not have money for a start—that is why they have committed the crimes—and some are just very pigheaded have good lawyers or whatever. But there are tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars—in fact I am not sure what the last count is—in unpaid fines throughout this country so we are therefore going to impose a $50 levy on every convicted criminal. This is big progress for the National Government and for Mr Power! No doubt it is his greatest claim to fame. 
Let us have a look at those we will collect that levy from and whether it will be possible to collect it. The Ministry of Justice itself says that it will be taking money from people who owe the offender levy. I quote from a document: “People who owe the offender levy will be grouped based on their willingness and ability to pay and their attitude towards compliance.” So those criminals who are convicted and charged a $50 levy and who say they would like to pay the levy will no doubt pay it. But the Ministry of Justice will group together those who do not want to pay and say that some criminals are in the too-hard basket and that it will not take the levy from them. Yet some are in the easy basket and it will take it from them. That will create more unfairness in the justice system not less. 
There is some honesty coming from the Minister of Corrections; this happens only infrequently. But she said—and she should have spoken to Mr Power before he set up this legislation—“There’s no point fining people who don’t pay fines when you’ve got other action to take.” We know that the Ministry of Justice will not follow up on those token fines and levies so that again creates an unfairness in the system when in fact the Government claims that it is trying to help victims. This is typical Tory tokenism and that is true of most of the legislation and many of the people on the Government side of the House. 
I will now go to an organisation comprising a learned set of gentlemen and ladies the Law Commission. Let us just see what the commission said about this levy. Mr Power obviously did not listen to the Law Commission when he should have—that is when he was drafting this legislation. The Law Commission report states: “There would be particular difficulties with imposing levies on persons who have been sentenced to long-term imprisonment.” There is no surprise there. The report continues: “Moreover the non-payment rate of small levies imposed on all offenders would probably be so high that the administration cost of enforcement would exceed the amount collected.” Well if we are starting off with best projections that $5 million will be collected and that it will cost $1.3 million to set up the scheme and $1.5 million to run it there is not much margin for leeway there. I say that within a year—certainly within 2 years when the Opposition will be checking the Government on all of these facts and figures before the next election—the Government will be in a negative situation regarding this levy. 
I will talk about the other issue of unfairness in relation to those who will end up paying the levy and I quote again from the Law Commission report: “If levies of the same amount were imposed on all offenders that would raise proportionality issues …”. As my good learned colleague Clayton Cosgrove asked how can anyone justify charging the same levy on a multiple murderer as on someone who might have been involved in some low-level property crime? I continue by quoting the Law Commission: “why should an offender convicted of a very minor offence without any direct victim at all pay the same amount as an offender convicted of rape or wounding with intent to commit grievous bodily harm?”. 
The Labour Opposition will support this legislation but I have to say that we do so reluctantly because in my summation this legislation which was paid for by the removal of the Sentencing Council will create more unfairness in the justice system than we have seen before. This Government ignored the wisdom of the Sentencing Council and closed it down.