Locke Keith: Courts and Criminal Matters Bill — Second Reading 
Locke Keith: Courts and Criminal Matters Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:668;Page:15354] 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 The Courts and Criminal Matters Bill tries to confront a real problem and that is the thousands of unpaid fines and all sorts of administrative difficulties involved in running around chasing after people to try to get some money out of them. But there is an intrinsic problem and I think this bill goes in the wrong direction. That is why the Green Party opposed the bill on the first reading and will oppose it on this reading as well. 
The bill is not particularly productive because the people it chases after are in the main the very poorest people in our society. They might get a little fine for a parking infringement a speeding fine or some small criminal offence but they are the people who are down; often they are unemployed between jobs or in large families. It is often somewhat difficult for them to get money together to pay a fine. They tend to avoid it and put it off then it gets bigger and more and more problems develop. There are two ways to deal with that problem. One is to get alongside the person affected and try to work out a repayment system—to work out a way that is not too much of a heavy burden on him or her at any one point in time. The other way is to just slam more penalties on top of that person in various ways. 
A lot of the people who will be affected by this bill are young Maori—and maybe Hone Harawira will speak after me. That is where the concentration of unpaid fines often happens to be. The bill will only make young Maori who are more likely to be unemployed and more likely to be poor even poorer and in more difficulties socially in all kinds of ways under the pressure of what is proposed in this bill. 
This bill proposes various things like driver licence stop orders. Let us take the example of a young person with fines owing who is finding it very difficult to pay them and who has finally got a job. If that person jumps into their car to go to work to get money to pay the fine but all of a sudden is hit with a driver licence stop order that person cannot get to work. They will lose their job and get further and further in debt. So stop orders are not necessarily the answer. They are associated with amendments to the Sentencing Act 2002 to make reparation and vehicle confiscation orders more efficient. Somebody who is in this difficult position might not only have their licence taken off them; their vehicle which is probably the main asset they own in life might be confiscated. That really puts them back to square one or behind square one. To make matters worse this bill authorises unaffordable and unenforceable reparation orders to be substituted by home detention or prison sentences. Again let us take the young person who is struggling. They have not been able to afford their fines or for various reasons are a bit mixed up. Now not only do they lose their licence or lose their car; they might get chucked in jail or on home detention. That just is not the answer. It may be the answer in some cases and the Green Party is certainly not denying that but the whole approach is a punitive approach that does not really put us any further forward. 
There is talk often about an underclass in our society. This bill will help to enlarge the underclass—the people who are really in difficulty. When they are subject to all these additional penalties they are more likely to change houses change names and try to get away from the authorities. That creates even more problems for them their families their friends and their workmates. It does not really work. 
Another element of the bill is to provide information on a person’s fines to credit authorities. Well that does not necessarily help. Sure it helps if someone applies for a loan because the credit authorities can find out that the person has a big fine and might be more likely to default on their loan. But it does not help the person to get out of the bind they are in. We should be starting at the other end with more social workers more people working with schools. We should work with all the sorts of organisations who are in contact with these people—community organisations whanau organisations iwi organisations all of the organisations that can work alongside those people to get them to repay their debts. 
To my way of thinking the punitive approach does not work. It develops collective anger amongst people who are down at the bottom a psychology of their being on one side and the people on the other side the richer people being out to get them. They think it is fair enough if they dodge the law and dodge the repayments because that is the only way that they will get by in life. 
The Green Party in summary sees all of these measures as counter-productive—that is the word for it; they are counter-productive. If we add them all up we will not necessarily get more money for Treasury out of them; we will get more social problems more people in prison more people unemployed more people who feel alienated from the system more people who feel that they are part of an underclass and also more racial divisions in our society in the sense that Maori are more likely to be affected than non-Maori. Thank you.