Tanczos Nandor: Serious Fraud Office (Abolition and Transitional Provisions) Bill — First Reading 
Tanczos Nandor: Serious Fraud Office (Abolition and Transitional Provisions) Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:647;Page:16108] 
NANDOR TANCZOS (Green) 
: 
 The Greens are supporting this bill going to a select committee. However we do so with a number of reservations and after some lengthy discussion among ourselves. I guess we take a position similar to the one outlined by Ron Mark on behalf of New Zealand First. 
The Government has made the point that the nature and scale of fraud offending has changed since the 1990s. Fraud it says is now made more complex by globalisation computer and Internet access and identity fraud. It talks about the anonymity and speed that these things allow. It says that although there still exists a category of fraud that is strictly the criminal abuse of commercial practice and not covered by the taint of organised crime there is a clear track of convergence between organised crime interests and the commercial world. The more serious organised criminal enterprises the Government says are using commercial and financial expertise as devices not just to launder the proceeds of the crime or to accrue assets but also to utilise financial processes and decision makers within the system for criminal financial gain. 
This may be so but it does not demonstrate to us that a dedicated Serious Fraud Office is no longer required. Although there is no doubt that organised criminals use complex financial transactions both to hide their wealth and to create further wealth that has always been the case and I am not sure exactly why that is an argument for disestablishing the Serious Fraud Office. So our first concern is that the Government has not clearly demonstrated the need for this legislation. 
I heard Mr Goff speak at the beginning of this debate about how this legislation will allow the police to crack down on drug dealers in particular. I guess he does not mean the shareholders in DB Breweries Ltd Lion Nathan Ltd Philip Morris British American Tobacco or Glaxo Smith Kline. I know that these kinds of bills—and the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Bill is another very good example—always hold up drug dealers as being the most heinous type of criminal despite drug transactions being made generally on a “willing buyer willing seller” basis. But in this focus on targeting drug dealers the fear of many is that white-collar criminals who actually defraud both the Government and ordinary people of their property who often leave elderly people robbed of their savings and who reduce unwary investors to penury will become simply a secondary concern for investigators. That is not to say that gangs do not engage in activity that robs often the poorest people and causes tremendous hardship in their communities; it is simply to reiterate the point made by a number of previous speakers that the effects of crime are not lessened by being of a corporate nature and that unfortunately the discussion focused on crime and criminal investigation too often centres on a class-based myopia. So that does reduce the focus on white-collar crime. 
In any case when we look at what the organised crime unit is likely to spend most of its time doing there is no doubt that busting gangs is much more sexy work for the police and actually also a whole lot easier because unravelling the complex strands of financial crime is an enormously difficult task. Perhaps it is that complexity that has meant that the Serious Fraud Office has not been as effective as many had hoped when it was established. 
Certainly it is no incentive for the police to go after white-collar criminals. This I guess is really our second reservation because although the Government has assured us that the focus on serious fraud will not be lost in this new organised crime unit I am not at all sure what the guarantees are within the bill. I am unclear what will lock in a focus on serious fraud and without such an assurance we cannot really be satisfied. That is not to say that the Serious Fraud Office itself has been satisfactory in this area anyway but the solution to that as my colleague Mr Harawira indicated may well be more a case of boosting the Serious Fraud Office perhaps reforming elements of its legislation and ensuring that it undergoes a meaningful culture change rather than wrapping up the agency and folding it into an organised crime unit. 
So as I indicated the Greens are supporting this bill going to the select committee because there are issues here that need to be properly discussed and aired and we think it is important to provide an opportunity to hear from the public and from experts in the field about the best way forward in addressing these serious issues. But we give no assurance of further support unless the evidence more clearly stacks up that this is the best way to move forward.