Huo Raymond: Courts and Criminal Matters Bill — Second Reading 
Huo Raymond: Courts and Criminal Matters Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:668;Page:15355] 
RAYMOND HUO (Labour) 
: 
 As at 31 December 2008 over half a million people and organisations owed penalties totalling $790.2 million. Over 80 percent of those penalties were unpaid infringements that had been filed for enactment by the police local authorities and other Government agencies. The amount outstanding is increasing each year. Around 57 percent of the people with penalties owe less than $500. Many of those people can afford to pay the penalties but choose not to do so until an enforcement action is taken against them. Figures released early this year showed that between July 2008 and June 2009 the courts wiped $95.1 million of the total $806 million in unpaid fines. Therefore the amount of outstanding fines is increasing each year and the amount of unpaid fines that the courts have to wipe is also increasing. 
The Courts and Criminal Matters Bill seeks to address concerns about the amount of overdue fines due to the dissatisfaction of victims when offenders do not comply with reparation orders and to the frustration of creditors and debtors using the courts’ civil debt enforcement process. Labour supports this bill and I acknowledge the great contribution made by the Hon Rick Barker who is sitting in the Speaker’s chair. In fact the bill as acknowledged by my colleagues earlier resulted from work done by him while Minister for Courts in the Labour Government. 
This bill is an omnibus bill. It amends the District Courts Act 1947 the Land Transport Act 1998 the Sentencing Act 2002 and the Summary Proceedings Act 1957 and consequentially amends 16 other Acts. The principal changes introduce three new sets of incentives to encourage people with overdue fines to enter into and maintain acceptable payment arrangements. The three sets of incentives are credit reporting super priority and driver licence stop orders. The credit-reporting initiative proposes the release of the overdue penalty balance of eligible people to the private sector credit industry via credit reports. The District Court will obtain a higher priority over secured property of a credit provider if the loan was advanced when the overdue penalties could have been released under the credit-reporting proposal and when that property was subsequently seized by the court some or all of these discoverable penalties were still overdue. People were lending money to people to pay for cars and the car lenders were always assured of getting their money back. The law stops car dealers from hiding behind the law. When the money is lent the lender can check a register. It gives them grounds to refuse to finance people who have fines. 
The bill as introduced provides that if an enforcement officer serves a person with a driver licence stop order the person must immediately surrender his or her driver’s licence to the enforcement officer. 
The Law and Order Committee received 15 submissions from individuals organisations and other parties. More than half of the submissions expressed support for parts of the bill. Some submissions supported the intent of the bill but would like to see the court go further in supporting the resolution of debts and encouraging financial literacy. Some of the general submissions expressed concern about its fairness and the impact on poor and vulnerable people of the current and proposed fines and civil debt enforcement mechanisms. Some of the issues raised at the Law and Order Committee are worth noting. The Privacy Commissioner is particularly concerned about the release of Government-held personal information to private sector credit reporters and the shift in the use of personal information that this signifies. The commissioner recommends that the relevant clause clause 69 be removed from the bill. 
Licence suspension is another issue that we spent a considerable amount of time deliberating on. Our current collection measures focus largely on seizing goods that can be sold to resolve fines and reparation. Internationally licence suspension is widely used as a fixed-term penalty for traffic offences and as a variable-length fine compliance measure. Queensland Transport reports a 75 percent success rate in collecting fines after threatening or imposing licence suspension. There are four further differences between Australia and New Zealand. In Australia first of all there is a statutory obligation to promptly update address information on the driver’s-licence register; secondly third-party body insurance is compulsory; and thirdly there is deemed service by post for all driver’s-licence suspensions. I think New Zealand can learn a great deal from this experience. Fourthly there is an onus on people who owe fines to find out if their licence has been suspended rather than the state authorities having to prove service. By comparison in New Zealand there is no statutory obligation to ensure that address information on the driver’s-licence register is always up to date. The accident compensation scheme precludes third-party compulsory body insurance. 
Attachment orders were another issue the Law and Order Committee looked at closely. Attachment orders are used 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 judgment debtor’s ability to pay the debt; both parties are required to attend the hearing which can be inconvenient and incur delays and further costs. Some ideas were floated at the select committee as to the way service can be improved or using alternative methods be deemed to have occurred. Service by post is certainly one effective way for us to look at but what about some new methods such as emails or messages via cellphone or Facebook? 
Given the large and growing amount of outstanding penalties the effectiveness of monetary penalties as a sanction for offending is being eroded. The threat of credit reporting together with other measures proposed in the bill will provide people with a stronger incentive to voluntarily resolve them. There is another problem with the existing regime. Currently there are 80-plus issuing authorities and this undoubtedly impedes the collection of fines. Labour proposed to create a single agency to have responsibility for fines. It is regrettable that this provision is missing from this bill. 
I look forward to the bill’s third reading. Thank you.