Ardern Shane: Courts and Criminal Matters Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Ardern Shane: Courts and Criminal Matters Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:626;Page:21697] 
SHANE ARDERN (National—Taranaki-King Country) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to follow on from my learned colleague who has given me quite a bit of new material to use in this debate. I start by saying that in an earlier debate today on an issue that is similar in some ways to what is happening here—the whole issue of trying to protect New Zealand’s integrity and defence and now its financial base as it were in terms of trying to get back the fines that people are failing to pay—a member of New Zealand First Jim Peters raised an interesting point. He said that a National Party member had just spoken about a red Green member and had used the terms “hard left” and “red” in a way that is no longer relevant today given that we are trying to enhance our trade with China and other such places that would otherwise in a time gone by have been described as very red. I accept that the honourable member who is a former headmaster—a very good one I hasten to add and one who would if he were to go back to that profession earn a lot more money under National Party policy than he did in the past under the Government—is partly right. I accept that Jim Peters’ assertion is partly right. But in my comments I was trying to demonstrate the historic meaning of “red”—that is those hard left Russian kind of Stalinists that we seem to be debating more and more in this Parliament as we move closer and closer to the election. 
Here is another example of that kind of approach. We have before us a bill that is on the surface quite a good idea: to get those who are not paying their fines to do so. I am led to believe that there is somewhere in the order of $600 million or more in outstanding unpaid fines. The Government is introducing various clauses to deal with that. In particular Part 2 gives the Customs and Excise Act 1996 a bit of a revamp so that customs officials at the airport can catch those crooks on the way through. We are playing with that and maybe we will toughen it up. Then when I look at some of the figures that have come out of the various official papers and at some of the comments my colleagues have made I find that if we are totally successful in this measure we will catch 117 people. That estimate was put forward during the development of the bill. 
Who are those people? They are the people who have convictions. As the ACT member the Hon Richard Prebble said they are crooks—it is the crooks whom we are going to hold on to. We are losing 650 or 700 New Zealanders a week to Australia. We will keep back 117 of them per year and those will be the crooks. We want to keep them here. It is a classic example of the sort of red policy that we talked about when we discussed the Terrorism Suppression Amendment Bill (No 2). 
I am told that if we do manage to catch those crooks at the border that will gain the Government $1.5 million out of the $600-plus million that is already being lost through unpaid fines that the courts are writing off—at the rate I am told of about $40 million a year—because they decide that it is a lost cause and they will not follow it up. How does that compare with the treatment of poor old “Joe Hard-worker” out there who may though some mistake or other fill in his tax return form slightly incorrectly? What kinds of penalties would be imposed on him and what kinds of assets would be seized from him if he were to make such a mistake? The only conclusion I can come to is that once again our very left Government which is moving further and further left and into the red has decided that the way to get back at that limited number of people is to keep the crooks in New Zealand and to allow the good hard-working decent citizens of New Zealand to be driven offshore because of the punitive policies the Government adopts towards them. 
I also ask the Minister who is in the House and looking after this bill why he has put in place—