Barker Rick: Courts and Criminal Matters Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Barker Rick: Courts and Criminal Matters Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 19 June 2003. Volume:609;Page:6449. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon RICK BARKER (Minister for Courts) 
: 
 I move  
That the Courts and Criminal Matters Bill be now read a first time. 
 At the appropriate time I intend to refer this bill to the Law and Order Committee for its consideration. 
This is an omnibus bill designed to improve the effectiveness of the Department for Courts’ fines and civil enforcement activities through interrelated amendments to a number of Acts. The amendments extend the scope of the information the department can seek through information-matching programmes and through requests to other Government departments. They provide clarification for the public to ensure that people are informed of their rights and responsibilities and are not unduly penalised as a result of outstanding fines. Amendments also clarify certain statutory provisions so as to remove confusion and better reflect Parliament’s original legislative intention. 
I turn first to the improvements to the department’s information-gathering mechanisms that support its fines enforcement activities. In particular Parts 2 4 and 6 of the bill create an arrangement that allows the department’s collections operating unit to compare its database of fines defaulters with the databases of the New Zealand Customs Service and the New Zealand Immigration Service of people travelling into and out of the country. Currently most fines defaulters are able to leave New Zealand permanently or to leave and re-enter the country without attracting the collections unit’s interest. Only a small proportion is intercepted. That reduces the credibility of fines as a sentence by suggesting to the public that the fines and reparation that are imposed will not be collected. 
Under the initiative in this bill alerts will be triggered when serious fines defaulters enter or leave New Zealand at an international airport. Collections officers will use the information about the fines defaulter’s residential address passed on to them by the New Zealand Immigration Service to initiate standard enforcement action. The most serious fines defaulters will be intercepted at the airport where they will be given the opportunity to pay the fines immediately or to make an arrangement to pay or they will be arrested. 
Related to that clause 33 closes a loophole that would have allowed serious fines defaulters to evade enforcement action simply by travelling on a Sunday. The clause removes the current restriction against the issue and the execution of a warrant on a Sunday in the case of arrest for the non-payment of a fine. 
Clauses 29 31 32 and 35 make necessary improvements to the existing information-matching and information-sharing arrangements between the Department for Courts the Inland Revenue Department and the Ministry of Social Development. Location information—especially telephone numbers—is the key to cost-effective tracing of and contact with fines defaulters. As most wage and salary earners are no longer required to complete a tax return the address information derived from the Inland Revenue Department is becoming out of date and unreliable for the enforcement of fines. Instead obtaining employer information in respect of fines defaulters from the Inland Revenue Department will mean that defaulters can be contacted at their places of work to make arrangements to pay outstanding fines and reparation. Clause 32 extends the existing legislative protections for employees against wrongful treatment by employers to ensure that employees are protected against any unwarranted repercussions of fines enforcement action. 
The bill also addresses a number of other areas relating to the effective enforcement of fines. It proposes amendments that will better ensure that the public are aware of their rights and responsibilities so that they are not unduly penalised as a result of outstanding fines. Fines defaulters who are paying off fines or reparation by instalments and who experience a substantial financial improvement or who are found to have given misleading information when entering into the payment arrangements should take responsibility for paying off the fines and reparation as soon as practicable. That is especially important when reparation is owed to a victim. Currently a fines defaulter in that situation cannot be required to increase the instalment payment unless the individual defaults on it. Clause 27 enables the registrar to take appropriate steps to vary the amounts payable under the arrangement. 
Clause 22 provides clarification for victims of offences when multiple reparation orders have been made and the defendant has made arrangements to pay off the amounts over time. Distribution on a first-in-time basis recognises that those who have been disadvantaged for the longest period are entitled to receive compensation first and provides victims with greater certainty about the amount and frequency of payments. 
Clause 25 makes provision for separate forms for individual types of offences or classes of offences such as resource management dog control fisheries or local government by-law offences. As infringement offences have increased in number and type the currently prescribed standard reminder form has come to be used for an extremely diverse range of offending. Some sections of the form do not apply to many offences and the notes to the defendant on the reverse side of the form are lengthy and hard to read. More offence-specific forms will assist alleged offenders to understand their rights and their responsibilities. 
The bill also makes a number of amendments to provisions affecting the administration of the Department for Courts’ enforcement activities of which I will mention the three main ones. The department’s collections unit which is currently responsible for enforcing fines imposed by the District Court will assume full responsibility for enforcing indictable fines imposed by the High Court. That function is currently performed jointly by the registrars of the High Court and by the police for whom fines enforcement is not a core function. The transfer will create greater consistency in fines enforcement and will better align functions within the department. 
Clauses 9 and 12 will enable bailiffs to take bail bonds in situations when a debtor cannot practicably be brought immediately before a District Court judge or registrar. When a judgment debtor fails to attend a civil enforcement examination when the order cannot be served or when contempt procedures apply and the debtor is arrested he or she is bailable as of right by a judge by a registrar or outside the court’s normal working hours by a member of the police. In remote areas it can sometimes take several hours to take a debtor to a police station. It is appropriate and consistent with the current powers of bailiffs to empower them to do that. 
Clauses 9 and 12 also align the provisions of the District Courts Act relating to the issuing of warrants to arrest a civil debtor with the fines-related provisions of the Summary Proceedings Act. That clarifies the circumstances in which a court registrar in lieu of a judge may issue a warrant to arrest a civil debtor where an order for examination cannot be served or where the judgment debtor fails to appear before the court. The two Acts will become consistent in relation to District Court registrars’ powers to issue warrants for arrest. 
Overall the measures contained in the bill share a common theme of ensuring that the court system’s fines and civil enforcement activities operate fairly and effectively and I commend the bill to the House.