Ryall Tony: Courts and Criminal Matters Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Ryall Tony: Courts and Criminal Matters Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:626;Page:21687] 
Hon TONY RYALL (National—Bay Of Plenty) 
: 
 Part 1 of the Courts and Criminal Matters Bill is in respect of amendments to the Crimes Act of 1961. The principal change proposed in this legislation is to allow bailiffs to execute warrants to collect money owed by fines defaulters. 
We heard from Mr Gosche earlier along the lines that if a person who owed a fine tried to leave by plane that person would be stopped and not allowed to board the plane. That might be what the Minister for Courts told his caucus but I will tell Mr Gosche what the actual fact of the matter is. It is in respect of the ability to execute warrants under clause 4. The Government introduced a bill that stated that if a person owed $10000 in fines and a warrant had been issued for his or her arrest that person could be stopped at the airport. The pressure of the Opposition in the select committee got that amount lowered but the Government would agree only to drop it down to $5000. 
What Mr Gosche needs to know is the only people who can be stopped at an airport under this bill are people who owe $5000 of debt and have a warrant for their arrest. There are about 500 people in the country who fit that category who have a warrant out for their arrest. The Government’s own advisers estimate that they will stop 117 people—that is they will stop one fines defaulter every 3 days—and those defaulters may be prevented from getting on the plane if they do not pay their fines. The Ministry of Justice officials advised us that $1.5 million would be collected because of this bill. So Mr Gosche was wrong in respect of that. 
This provision allows for bailiffs—obviously someone stationed at the court—to execute the warrant and require someone to pay his or her fines. The level of fines owed is indeed a considerable concern to all. At the beginning of 2000 the debt was under $300 million; today our estimate has that debt at $650 million and it is growing exponentially. It is vital that we stop these fines defaulters. We know from official information provided by the Government that not very many people will be affected by this bill. Even though we are giving bailiffs this power under clause 4 it will be exercised very sparingly. 
The Opposition will be moving amendments in the Committee stage to lower the threshold. We want this Committee to focus seriously on whether we should be limiting this measure to people who have arrest warrants out on them. We raised that at the select committee and the Government said it could not do it because it thought it was administratively burdensome. Why can there not be a provision in this bill that allows the Government of the day when the system is up and running to remove that requirement for an arrest warrant? Why can we not have that amendment? 
Let us just go through the numbers again. When the bill was introduced by the Government the officials said it would affect 35 people a year. I wrote it down when they said it—35 people per annum. With the amendments made to this bill to have it catch fines defaulters with arrest warrants who owe over $5000 the estimated number is 117 people. The officials said that the estimated full benefit of fines enforcement in this bill would be $1.5 million. I do not know whether that is the estimated amount of fines recovery or whether it is just the value of the fines owed by the 117 people who will be stopped from leaving. Maybe the Minister could answer that question. Is the $1.5 million that the officials told the select committee would be the estimated full benefit of this bill the amount of collections that can be expected as a result of it or the total value of the fines owed by the estimated 117 people who will be stopped from leaving by this legislation? National members think that is something the Government should answer because the mountain of growing debt is incredible. As I said we estimate that it will have grown to $650 million by the end of this financial year and we estimate that the amount that is overdue is probably close to $350 million. 
The bill provides for the role of bailiffs but it also looks at the issue of reparation. The second part of the bill which will be debated a little later on deals with providing name and address information of people who owe over $1000 so that the courts collection staff can go after them but it does state that if people owe reparation there is no threshold in terms of that information being made available. What is worrying is that the proportion of reparations being collected for all collections made by the collections unit is dropping. There seems to be less focus on collecting reparations because the proportion of reparation receipts to total receipts collected by the collections unit of the Ministry of Justice is dropping and we are concerned about that. 
This bill is a missed opportunity. We think the Government could have gone a lot further and we will be moving amendments which we hope the Government will support to allow that to happen. Let us just go through the numbers again. This so-called get-tough bill was introduced into Parliament and the Government’s own advisers said that the bill as introduced would have seen it catch 35 fines defaulters each year. With the amendments that the Opposition encouraged the Government to make at the select committee we squeezed it up to 117 people per annum—one every 3 days—and the Government did not really want to do even that. The officials’ words were that the estimated full benefit of the bill for fines enforcement is $1.5 million. Is that $1.5 million the value of the fines owed by those 117 people that this bill will stop or is it the amount of money the Government expects to collect from them? We think that goes to the heart of whether the Government has acted as it should have with this bill. 
The way in which the bill will work is that if someone turns up at the airport who is in the computer system as being one of those few fines defaulters with a fine over $5000 and with an arrest warrant issued against him or her that person will then be taken to the side and dealt with. If those people say that they have an arrangement or that it is a case of mistaken identity the presumption will be that the police will let them carry on. If someone does admit to being the person who owes the money and if he or she does not have an arrangement in place that person will deal with a courts collection officer. 
What will happen if people say: “Yes I am going to make a down payment of $20 and I will keep paying it off.” they leave on the plane and they do not pay it off? What will happen there? What is to prevent people from saying they are going to make an arrangement paying a couple of hundred dollars and off they go? They still owe the debt and they still have an airline ticket that they paid for with money they could have put towards their fine. What will happen there? Maybe the Minister could take a call to explain to us what will happen if a fines defaulter for whom there is an arrest warrant makes a part-payment of the fine; will that person be allowed to continue on his or her flight? 
During this debate the combined Opposition parties will make this point: the Government is saying that this measure will stop fines defaulters from getting on to planes. That is what the advertising campaign will be all about. We will be moving on to that because this is more about the advertising campaign than the substance. 
Heather Roy 
: How much will the advertising campaign be? 
Hon TONY RYALL 
: We will be talking about that later on. This is all about an advertising campaign to give the impression that everybody who has a fine will be stopped at the airport and prevented from going overseas. Well the fact is even the Government’s advisers have said that 117 people will be caught.