Ardern Jacinda: Courts and Criminal Matters Bill — In Committee 
Ardern Jacinda: Courts and Criminal Matters Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:673;Page:19774] 
JACINDA ARDERN (Labour) 
: 
 This is my first call in the Committee stage of the Courts and Criminal Matters Bill. It is my understanding that we are currently going over Part 1 which sets out the provisions on the use of attachment orders to allow deductions to be made from wages and benefits to pay debts. At present attachment orders can be imposed only after an examination hearing to assess the debtor’s ability to pay the debt and that hearing requires both parties to attend. This is an attempt to streamline that provision and the enforcement process by enabling judgment creditors to file a financial statement or ask the court to assess the debtor’s financial means in the debtor’s absence. 
I will add a couple of extra questions that have been considered earlier in this area I understand—or at least considered by the select committee—on the question of attachment orders to enable deductions to be made from wages. I remember at the select committee questioning whether this would unfairly impinge on for instance a small-business owner if they would have to administer the attachment order on behalf of the debtor and whether it would represent a considerable cost. This came to mind after I had seen similar provisions in the UK result in a significant burden on small-business owners in particular. It is just a question that we may wish to discuss during the debate on this part but I imagine that by and large it will probably not be a great issue. 
I am working from memory here and perhaps a current member of the select committee can remind me of the arrangements for someone who is for instance on a benefit. A judgment might be made that an attachment order would be difficult for someone on such an income but I guess there are separate questions that sit around that issue. I would be interested in the difference between administering such arrangements for a Work and Income recipient for instance versus a small-business employee. 
I want to highlight though that this is a bill that Labour supports and we do so because overall it enhances the court’s powers and processes for the collection of fines. We were involved in the development of the bill from the outset. I think Rick Barker was involved in this work and I know this is an area he has always been very passionate about. One of the points I think he would raise is that we would like to see an overarching agency with responsibility for fines and there is no provision for that in the legislation. The reason for calling for such an agency is just the proliferation of groups involved in the collection of fines. I believe that more than 80 issuing authorities are involved in issuing fines and that plays some role in impeding the collection of fines. 
What kind of an amount of money are we talking about? Figures released earlier this year show that between the period of July 2008 and June 2009 just in terms of unpaid fines the courts wiped $95.1 million of a total of $806 million in unpaid fines. That is a huge amount—not only the amount that is being wiped but also in terms of unpaid fines. I know quite a bit of work has been done to try to improve the collection of fines such as using the ability to stop someone at the border before they travel abroad. I do not have the statistics but anecdotally I think there is probably a suggestion that that has been a successful campaign. 
I am really interested in the psychology involved when someone accrues quite a large amount of fines they need to pay. I think the Ministry of Justice has looked into this issue—and rightly so given its consideration of the wiping of debt. That research has shown that when people cross a threshold of money owed—and for young people it sits around I think the $2000 mark—they become unable and even unwilling to even attempt to pay off their fines. So we get to a point where if we start adding anything on it starts to become absolutely meaningless.