Nash Stuart: Courts and Criminal Matters Bill — Second Reading 
Nash Stuart: Courts and Criminal Matters Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:668;Page:15357] 
STUART NASH (Labour) 
: 
 I stand in support of the Courts and Criminal Matters Bill. I would like to make three points. 
Hone Harawira 
: Good points. 
STUART NASH 
: They are very good points. First I say this bill is long overdue. The Hon Rick Barker who was the Minister for Courts in the previous Labour Government had a bill very much like this already drafted on the Order Paper and ready to go. If Labour was still in Government this matter would have been well and truly done and dusted about 2 years ago. 
The second point I make is that Labour supports this bill because Labour has always supported bills that promote common sense and fiscal integrity and that get money back. This is a common-sense bill. Why? Because it is a Labour bill based on Labour principles brought forward by the Hon Rick Barker. 
The third point I make is that this is an absolutely necessary bill. Cam Calder waxed lyrical on the bill. One of his quotes was not from Shakespeare or Plato but from another philosopher. He also said the Law and Order Committee acted in a very cordial manner when it considered this bill. Of course it did because there is no contention about this bill whatsoever. It is a common-sense bill. We all agree with it; I think all of New Zealand agrees with it. So it will be passed tonight with unanimity and that is great. 
There are a couple of figures that I would like to give to the people of New Zealand because they are a bit shocking. We have heard a few figures tonight from Cam Calder and a couple of my colleagues but I say the figures released earlier this year show that between July 2008 and June 2009 the courts wiped $95.1 million out of a total of $806 million in unpaid fines. That is amazing—$806 million in unpaid fines. We have to ask what is going on. How many night classes would that pay for? How many early childhood education centres would that pay for? It is a hell of a lot. How many people in Napier would benefit from $800 million coming into their economy? There will be a hell of a lot more than that when Labour is back in power I can tell members that. 
This bill seeks to address the concern about the amount of overdue fines and the dissatisfaction of victims and offenders. I can well imagine that if I was a victim of crime and the court had imposed a fine or reparation to be paid to me from the offender but it was not paid that would just rub salt into the wound. 
Dr Rajen Prasad 
: It’s not fair. 
STUART NASH 
: That is right. This bill will address that fundamental principle of fairness. Fairness is a fundamental principle. When my children are playing and they are not getting on the thing they say is “Dad that’s not fair.” That is what certainly the Labour Party stands for. We have highlighted that our concern is about fairness. Sometimes it is about fairness to the people of New Zealand although this Government has missed the point there. This bill is about fairness to the victims of crime. This bill helps to address that situation; of that there is no doubt. That is why I am supportive of the bill. 
But one of the points I make is that I wonder why this bill has taken so long to come before the House. Why is that? This measure was practically finalised before the previous Labour Government left office. As I mentioned the Hon Rick Barker had drafted such a bill. It was ready to go; we gave it to the incoming National Government which says it is tough on crime. Simon Power has stood here in the Chamber and delivered speeches about National being tough on crime yet it took 2 years to produce this bill. How tough is that? I ask that question but I have no answer to it because there is no good answer. 
This bill also omits some of the proposals developed by Labour. For instance we wanted to create a single agency responsible for fines. Did anyone here know that there are now about 80 agencies responsible for the collection of fines? That is astounding. Addressing that would have helped with compliance issues and efficiency; it would have streamlined the whole process. I ask the Minister whether that problem is the subject of one of the Supplementary Order Papers that he will table on this bill—an amendment to streamline the whole process. All we hear from the Government is talk about streamlining processes. Labour put in an idea to streamline this process and it was thrown out. I cannot understand the reason for that. 
The Ministry of Justice’s research shows that when young people cross a certain threshold in terms of money owed—it is about $2000—they become unable or unwilling to pay even that fine. That is a lot of money for a young person and it is also a lot of money for many many New Zealanders who are facing increased costs due to GST rises etc. Given the large and growing amount of outstanding penalties the effectiveness of monetary penalties as a sanction for offending is being eroded and that comes back to the whole point about $800 million being owed in outstanding fines. 
I have a concern about this matter and Keith Locke talked about it earlier. This bill proposes that when people are not paying their fines lending companies and the wider community will get that information so it becomes a sort of “naming and shaming” thing. Today I was at a conference at Victoria University that talked about inequality. Keith Locke was dead right when he said a bill like this may in fact lead to increased inequality amongst New Zealanders in our communities. I will fight incredibly hard against that as long as I am in Parliament because inequality is like a rot that eats the heart out of our community. This legislation may well increase inequality and we must fight that at every turn. We are finding here that people get to a point where they cannot pay their fines—we have been shown that that is happening. Labour proposed to put young people with large amounts of fines into a case management system within which they had to acknowledge that they had a debt and had done wrong then work out a system to pay their fines. That was not taken up. Instead of managing the process of paying fines this bill proposes to name and shame defaulters. I for one have a real problem with that proposal and as mentioned with increasing the level of inequality. 
A couple of my colleagues have mentioned John Maynard Keynes which I found quite interesting. It was quite a good quote but I very much doubt whether John Maynard Keynes ever had outstanding fines. One thing he said about equality was that if a Government gives tax cuts to people at the top that will not stimulate the economy but that if it gives tax cuts to those at the bottom that will drive an economy out of recession. That is what he said. This Government has not learnt that lesson. As a consequence this economy will suffer and I feel greatly sorry for the people of New Zealand. In this country 650 people have a declared income of $1 million or more a year and they have just received $1000 a week in the hand in tax cuts—$1000 a week. I can imagine that if those people had fines they could pay them off straight away. People on the median wage in Napier received a tax cut of less than $5 a week and that money has been eaten up and eroded by increases in the cost of living increased GST and increased ACC levies. Those people will not be able to pay their fines. That is what I am talking about with regard to inequality. Not only does it drive wealth down but people get named and shamed. They become more and more disenfranchised under the whole political process and we all lose from that. 
I would like to make one point here and it is something I was completely unaware of until I read this bill. I suspect that the vast majority of New Zealanders are unaware of this point: the police and many territorial authorities actually have a policy of waiving infringements on expired warrants of fitness or out-of-date registrations that are still within 1 month of their expiry when the fault is remedied in a timely manner. I did not know that. I put my car in to get a service went away to Parliament came back picked it up and parked it to go to visit constituents—which I spend my days doing—and then what happened? I came out and there was a ticket on my window—a $200 ticket for the warrant of fitness being a week overdue. Thank you very much Napier City Council! I went off and paid that fine but I urge any New Zealanders who receive tickets on their windscreens for unpaid registrations or out-of-date warrants of fitness if they are within a month of their expiry to write a letter to the local council or to the Ministry of Transport—or to whomever—and ask for the fine to be waived because they are remedying the situation. People will get off those fines. 
I would just like to reiterate my three points. Labour members support this bill because we support any measure that— 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member but his time has expired.