Connell Brian: Third Readings 
Connell Brian: Third Readings 
[Volume:630;Page:2387] 
BRIAN CONNELL (National—Rakaia) 
: 
 Thank you Mr Deputy Speaker for the opportunity to take a call on this legislation so that I can reply to some of the things the Minister for Courts has just said. The first myth I want to burst is the fact that this legislation has been in the House since May 2003 and the Minister congratulates us on filibustering for that long. We are a fantastic team and we accept his congratulations with the good intentions with which they were delivered. 
Lindsay Tisch 
: This is the bill you’re supporting too. 
BRIAN CONNELL 
: We will get to that. The legislation aims to improve the effectiveness of the Ministry of Justice’s fines and civil enforcement activities and the National Party thinks that that is a very worthy initiative. It is a step in the right direction. Accordingly we do support it but I have to say to the House that I foreshadow those comments with some significant reservations and cautions about lost opportunities which I will come to shortly. 
The original bill contained various amendments to the nine different statutes impacting on these activities—hence we are now debating nine bills as per the Order Paper—to extend the scope of information that the department can seek through information-matching programmes with other departments. Again the Minister in his call alluded to this and I want to come back to that in more detail. 
In particular the legislation creates an arrangement allowing the collections unit of the Ministry of Justice to compare its database of fine defaulters with the New Zealand Customs Service database of people travelling out of the country. This sounds good as far as it goes but in actual fact this legislation will be remembered more for its lost opportunities than for enhancing the effectiveness of fines and civil enforcement activities. 
Despite the constructive advice from Opposition members throughout the Committee stage the Government simply would not take that advice on board. It ignored it and now we are left with legislation that is philosophically sound but in practice is not ideal and in some aspects is fundamentally flawed. Let us get down to the detail and find out why. 
After listening to the Minister the casual observer and the casual listener would have been forgiven for thinking that people who are fines defaulters and who are attempting to leave this country by plane would be stopped at the airport unless they had paid their fines. The Minister said that to the House. He might have actually said that to his caucus because Labour members seem to have been taken in by that. He might actually be saying it to the man on the street but it simply is not correct. 
Under this legislation defaulters will be stopped only if first there is a warrant out for their arrest and second they owe $5000 or more in fines. The Government’s own advisers advised the Government that approximately 500 Kiwis fit that category and of that number they estimate that only about 117 will be stopped. To put that another way one defaulter will be stopped every 3 days. It could have been worse. The Government originally wanted to set that threshold at $10000 which would have reduced that number to 35 people. But because of the pressure exerted by the Opposition parties that threshold was reduced to $5000—and the Minister has the cheek to stand up and try to take the credit for that. It gets worse. There are nearly 483000 people who owe—and members should listen to this number—$671.7 million in fines. Those figures are accurate as at the end of December 2005. Of that number $367 million is overdue and no arrangement has been entered into to repay that money. 
National’s view is that if people can afford to travel overseas they can afford to pay their fines. We also believe that we should forget about the arrest warrant threshold. If people owe fines then we expect them to be paid before they get on a plane and go on their OE. We expect that as a fundamental privilege of living in this country people will meet those obligations. We do not mean entering into mealy-mouthed pay arrangements; we actually mean paying the bill. The only flaw I can see in that strategy is that some of these lowlifes who would otherwise have been going to Australia to live will end up staying in this country and that will probably lower the IQ of both countries. 
The Government hides behind the argument that if we do this lots of travellers will be held up at the airport so we should not do it. It conveniently ignores the development of the Advance Passenger Processing system for outgoing flights which enables early warning signals to be given to airline staff to stop or delay people from getting on those planes and to make sure that their bags are not loaded. So the argument that people will be delayed is a fallacy. The technology exists now to make sure that will not happen. 
The technology also exists to nail fines defaulters in larger numbers. The moment they attempt to buy a ticket a cross-reference to the Ministry of Justice would tell the ticket issuer that they have an outstanding fine and at that point they could be told that if they try to get on the plane they will be stopped and that they must pay their fines. We could get even tougher than that. We could actually tell those people that if they do not pay they will not go anywhere or we could take the money for their fares and remit it to the Ministry of Justice to offset the money that they owe fellow Kiwis. If we were really serious about it that is what we could do. The Chinese have a saying: “If you execute one you educate a thousand.” I am not advocating that but what I am saying is that if we start to train people and change behaviour the word gets around very quickly. 
Shane Jones 
: Ha ha! 
BRIAN CONNELL 
: Even Mr Jones’ crowd would get it through their thick skulls that if they owe fines then they have to pay them. 
As the prospective purchaser of that ticket has just given all his or her details to the ticket issuer everyone knows where the defaulter lives and the next person who bangs on his or her door should be the bailiff with a hand out saying: “Oi you owe some money.” 
Using the Government’s own figures it is estimated that the full benefit of the fines enforcement measures in this legislation would add up to a total $1.5 million. That is right I ask the Minister is it not—$1.5 million? Did he tell the House how much it would cost to recoup that money? He was silent on that fact actually. It will cost $1.68 million to recoup $1.5 million in the first year and the Minister stands up and tries to convince this House that that is value for money. 
I told the House that there is $671.7 million in outstanding fines; $1.5 million represents 0.02 percent of the $671.7 million. Yet this Government would have us believe that it is serious about fines defaulters. Yeah right! 
I have one last issue I want to canvass. Why will the Government not allow more extensive information-sharing between Government departments in order to catch fines defaulters? The Minister tried to argue that the technology is not yet developed enough to do that. Well that is simply not true. The Government refuses point-blank to allow cross-referencing to the Inland Revenue Department and Work and Income. I can only conclude that the reason it does not want to do that— 
Hon Rick Barker 
: You should have listened to my speech. They do that regularly. 
BRIAN CONNELL 
: The Minister has had a chance. He should shut up and listen. The only reason the Government does not want to do that is it probably would be attacking its own voting base. That is how cynical that crowd is. The Government has the technology it could enforce it and collect a lot more money but it refuses to. 
National supports the legislation because it is a step in the right direction but I lament it as an opportunity lost. It could have been far far better.