Pillay Lynne: Courts and Criminal Matters Bill — In Committee 
Pillay Lynne: Courts and Criminal Matters Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:673;Page:19786] 
LYNNE PILLAY (Labour) 
: 
 Along with my colleagues I will stand and take a call. As we in Labour have said we support this Courts and Criminal Matters Bill although we are disappointed that it is not as comprehensive as it would have been had all the recommendations that Labour put forward come into effect. 
I will also talk about driver licence stop orders because that is what Part 2 is about. Along with my colleagues who have talked about those orders I think that they are really important and a very good and effective way of addressing the new measures in terms of the non-payment of fines. What will happen is that liable persons will be sent a warning notice which will give them 14 days to resolve their traffic penalties before their licences are suspended. That is very sensible. 
I note from the select committee’s report that 69 percent of debtors are aged between 20 and 39 years of age. Members have not made any mention of the fact but I would probably put money on it that the vast majority—certainly a majority—of them would be men. Given that 69 percent are within that age group improving compliance for the payment of penalties is a very sensible and desirable thing to do; if nothing else it will set people on the right track so that they do not have penalties or debt just continuing to stack up because of some misdemeanours. Those infringements may be for parking speeding or any of those sorts of offences that have led to fines. 
Under the process if a warning notice is served by any means other than personally on a defendant the service will be deemed complete only after the driver’s licence card has been returned to the Ministry of Justice. If for example a driver licence stop order was served electronically and the defendant failed to return his or her licence card or to make arrangements to pay the fine—either by paying the fine itself or by making a fine payment—then that driver licence stop order could be reissued and personally served on a defendant by an authorised officer. So it is a very appropriate way of dealing with what is a very real problem. 
I know that Kris Faafoi talked about the amount of $672 million in unpaid fines. That is a substantial amount and goodness me what a lot of good could be done with that. We could certainly see the reinstatement of early childhood education funding and a number of other things. 
Melissa Lee 
: $1.4 billion in early childhood. 
LYNNE PILLAY 
: Maybe the Government’s contribution to KiwiSaver could be reinstated—goodness me we have a little bit of interest from Melissa Lee over there. Perhaps with that sort of money we might not see the slash-and-burn approach to housing in New Zealand. That is certainly an astronomical amount of money to be tied up in fines but to see it tied up in unpaid fines is really really terrible. 
I think it is very appropriate that we support this bill. I think that the driver licence stop order will be a very effective tool which in a worst-case scenario will lead to tougher sanctions in terms of cars being impounded etc. It is a good step towards getting people on the right path to taking their debts seriously so that that debt does not continue to grow and ruin their lives.