Garcia PauloPAULO GARCIA (National—New Lynn): Thank you Madam Speaker. I'd like to preface my contribution to the District Court (Protecting Judgment Debtors on Main Benefit) Amendment Bill by discussing a bit of a background to this bill. Those not in the legal profession may not know that attachments are the most common use of the law to enforce a civil debt through which debtors could have their income whether from Work and Income or from employment already designated for payment to their creditor. In 2014 the law addressing this civil debt situation was passed to allow for collection of civil debts by an enforcement system. It has been troubling to note that by 2015 the Commerce Commission noted that the numbers of orders per month increased approximately 400 percent after that change—from approximately 200 to over a thousand. Public reporting has further highlighted that in 2018 over 24000 attachment orders for civil debt were granted against people on the benefit—beneficiaries. Only around 5000 of civil attachments were made against people on wages—people who were working. In 2020 the Salvation Army also noted that only 14 percent of attachments in 2020 were placed on people who were working and receiving wages leaving a massive 86 percent of attachment orders against beneficiaries.The law as drafted seems to offer a limited prospect of reducing the debt burden on beneficiaries. The bill primarily targets orders made under the District Court. The District Court is not the only avenue for attachment decisions to be made and other legislation allows for that in other jurisdictions as well outside the District Court. For that main reason there is a limited scope. It will not stop the large amounts of attachment orders being made to beneficiaries. Also the District Court already has the power to limit an attachment order on beneficiaries. Currently that limit is at 40 percent of their income.I think that the object of the law in 2014 has mainly been to help people take responsibility for the debt that they take on. Yes circumstances may change but then the responsibility of taking more debt is a personal one and something that each individual truly needs to get a handle on in life. This is one of the major points in life that when we take debt we should be able to take responsibility for that and make repayments. The law in that sense also oversteps the decision that District Court judges are already enabled to make limiting what attachment judgments that they can make decisions on and use the protected earnings rate at 40 percent to limit those decisions. The object really is personal responsibility.If we look at the increasing number and percentage of attachment decisions from 2014 all the way to 2020 which is what we have in evidence the fact is that a very large sector of persons who are receiving the benefit have found themselves unable to pay for one reason or another—some surely on legitimate grounds. But the Government also needs to be responsible in making sure that individuals are able to well foster that ability to make decisions about their expenses and their debt going forward.The idea of limiting to 5 percent attachment judgments will not incentivise individuals from pushing themselves to taking on that personal responsibility of being mindful of the debts that they incur. We want to foster that knowledge and ability among everyone in the community and particularly beneficiaries who are dependent on welfare for their daily means. Our objective of getting people back into work also falls within this attempt to get people out of the cycle of dependency and getting them to take responsibility and to get into work.The bill essentially oversteps an existing ability of District Court judges to make that decision. Also because it is limited to just the District Court then essentially the scope is very limited and will not really—probably slow down the number of people on the benefit who are taking that well beyond their capability. It is often that we have also heard about lenders' responsibility and this has been dealt with as well. While there is legislation for lenders' responsibility then providing for a limited cap on what can be attached in a debt judgment to 5 percent does not work to foster their responsibility among individuals to actually be mindful and to control their decisions in seeking debt or borrowing money.I think that very often there is no discussion on personal liability; it has to be the liability of everybody else other than the person taking on the debt to be conscious of what he or she is getting into. What we are focused on is really getting individual responsibility up and getting people to understand that they need to be mindful. It is a responsibility of everyone and particularly if they are already struggling and having very little means or a very small source of funds or limited funds because their funds are coming from welfare. For these reasons we do not support this bill.