Williams ArenaARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): It's a privilege to take this call and I'm very happy to do so. My call will be short but I want to make some important points about this ridiculous bill that absolutely is not worth our time in urgency. This Minister has come down to the House and he has asked us to sit here on a Friday when we could otherwise be in our electorate serving our constituents and talking to them about their concerns when it is Budget week whereas instead we are dealing with parking fine taxes. Hon Simeon Brown: Don't be so workshy.ARENA WILLIAMS: This Minister is in charge of it too. He's not the justice Minister but he is the Minister who cost his finance Minister about $1.5 million from the land transport plan. When did that happen? Was that at the Transport and Infrastructure Committee? Who was on that? Remind me how much that cost. Was it about—I don't know—1.5 over the forecast period? Is this how much this bill saves? Good on that Minister for finding savings but unfortunately those savings are coming straight out of the pockets of ratepayers straight out of the pockets of mayors and councils that that Minister got on the stump at election time and said he would be fighting for. He told local councils around this country that he would be on their side yet here he's on their side reaching into their pockets to pull out another 4 percent of the costs that they are levying on ratepayers. That's the approach of this Government. It's to make sure that the Government is getting more of people's money so that they can announce it on Budget day as a tax cut. Well good on that Minister! At least he made up for it when I spox'ed him at the select committee. So I am going to be raising some issues at this committee stage. [Interruption] It will be a lively committee stage debate you can see because there are a number of Government members who want to contribute just in my call. What I'm going to get to is it's sort of about the reasons why one would charge a levy or a fee. I want to start to unpack why this isn't in fact a fee—it's more like a penalty that's being imposed on people—and why this isn't the appropriate way to do it in legislation. The cost recovery statement that we've been provided with does go into that and as some of my colleagues have spoken about this shouldn't be thought of as pure cost recovery because it's not. Because we haven't had any policy advice about whether that 10 percent that is levied now does in fact not meet the costs to actually recover the debt. If that's the case if it was in fact a bright idea from this Minister to make up for some of the costs then that's not actually cost recovery. It's being levied on councils who ultimately pass it on to ratepayers who are exactly the same people who would otherwise benefit from other savings. So it's just passing costs here to people out there to pay and that's not actually what the cost recovery mechanisms should be used for.I'll also be asking some questions around whether it's reasonable that local government should pay more for the collection of these fines given that they already have a mechanism to increase the actual dollar amount which is through the Orders in Council. It is important that local councils are able to levy fines. You create some certain policy outcomes by only allowing very very small fines and you create certain policy outcomes by levying larger fines.Celia Wade-Brown made an excellent contribution which was continuously interrupted by that side of the House about why for instance with parking fines you create a certain policy outcome if they are artificially low. So there are reasons why you might want councils to be able to levy appropriately high fines in that situation but then there isn't necessarily a policy rationale for why—on those fines when the cost of recovery will go up in dollar amounts if that cost also rises because it is a proportional amount—you would then need to increase the proportion as well. I'm sure we'll tease that out in the select committee stage—Hon Rachel Brooking: I'm looking forward to that.ARENA WILLIAMS: —and we are looking forward to that. As my colleague the Hon Rachel Brooking says parking fines are something which actually do change consumer behaviour. They are something which affect the way that our cities feel so it is useful for us to really get into the detail of what the rationale is for charging those fines which is very different from why you would charge court fees. Court fees raise all sorts of access to justice issues and there are also different policy rationales for that. This bill uses a blunt instrument to treat them as if they're both the same and that is the wrong way to do this. So I cannot commend the bill.