Courts and Criminal Matters Bill

CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (National) Link to this

The National Opposition will support this bill, as other speakers said at other times, during the various stages of the debate. But I do want to make a couple of comments about the passage of the bill and say that this is yet another example of a missed opportunity. There are a lot of words in this bill but I wonder whether, at the end of the day, it is going to achieve a great deal.

Let us look at the legislative history of this bill. Maybe I am a new, naive MP but I have to say that from my point of view the legislative history, and I am sure the member for Wellington Central would agree, is simply atrocious. Let me remind my friend Ms Hobbs what the legislative history was. This bill was introduced on 14 May 2003. It had probably been in gestation for a couple of years before that. The first reading was on 19 June 2003. Does the member remember it? Then it went to the Law and Order Committee where it was stuck, not for months, but apparently for years. Then the second reading was in May and June 2005 and we had the earlier part of the Committee stage in June 2005. Is that good lawmaking? Is it something that the very competent and able member for Wellington Central as a parliamentarian, not as a partisan politician, can be proud of? I doubt it very much, indeed. It is atrocious.

So much for the legislative progress, if that be the term—let us look at the issues that the legislation confronts. Total debt for fines in 2003 was $500 million. In 2005 it was $650 million. I would be grateful if the Minister in the chair, the Hon Jim Sutton, could give us a 2006 update. This figure is escalating at a rate that I find simply unbelievable. This bill is not just about criminal fines enforcement, it also tries to deal with civil enforcement against judgment debtors because that is also an incredibly important matter. Just last week I had someone say to me: “I’ve got a relatively small judgment which I have obtained against someone. How do I enforce that judgment in a manner that is expeditious and is reasonably cheap so that lawyers’ fees won’t eat up the costs of execution?”. It is these relatively small sums that really do upset the small traders, the small-business people in this country. We have to have a system that enables people to obtain the fruits of their judgments as quickly and cheaply as possible.

So these are major issues and in my opinion this bill deals with some of the issues but it does not really deal with them all that effectively.

When one reads the bill, a large amount of effort seems to have been spent on stopping debtors at the airport before they skip to Australia or other parts. Yet when the officials at the Law and Order Committee were asked how many debtors actually came into that category, I think they initially said there would have been about 35, then subsequently it grew to the leviathan sum of 117. So this huge amount of effort is not to deal with 350 or 3,500 debtors who would be stopped once the legislation comes into force, it is to deal with only about 35. I am sure the member for Wellington Central will not mind if I tell her that it reminds me of that great poem by Horace, the ancient Roman poet—and the member would know the quote—“The mountains will be in labour, and an absurd mouse will be born.” I would yield the call to the member so that she could translate it into Latin, but I bet she could not.

Part 3 deals with the District Courts Act 1947. This part does not adequately deal with the inefficient District Court procedures. It fiddles with the existing procedures, most of which were introduced in 1992 when the District Court Rules were updated. For example, clauses 9 and 12 make provision for bail for judgment debtors. Well, big deal. Quite frankly, litigants are entitled to proper access to justice, as the National Party, in conjunction with the Māori Party, has been saying in relation to the other bill, and not to be left with unenforceable judgments, which must reduce confidence in the entire civil justice system. It does not inspire confidence in the civil justice system when one simply plays around the edges.

The provisions relating to fines enforcement are an improvement but are still rather cumbersome. I personally think, and I would be interested in the Minister’s views, that defendants who are fined, rather than being able to partake of this lackadaisical procedure where they get 28 days to pay their fine, then if they do not pay the fine they can be called before the court, or before a registrar, to be examined, should immediately after judgment be required to speak to either an enforcement registrar or even a District Court judge about how they propose to pay their fines. That examination should take place immediately, not days or weeks later, and certainly the opportunity should not be given to people to abscond. I cannot see—and again I would be interested in the Minister’s views on this—why at the time judgment is given against them, or at the time they are fined, their passports are not taken away. Then the issue of them shooting off to Australia and having an army of people at the airport to try to stop them vanishes because they simply have to surrender their passports and deal with the issue upfront, immediately.

Then there is the final issue that the select committee referred to in its report of targeting fines defaulters in Australia. Of course, if what I proposed just a minute ago came into force it would no longer be an issue because they would not leave the country before they had paid their fines. The select committee report states that the bill does not provide for a reciprocal information-sharing policy with Australia and that it needs to continue to be looked at. That is all fair enough. There are sometimes some difficult conflict of laws issues that can arise, but I cannot see why there cannot be reciprocal cooperation between Australia and New Zealand on this issue. I do not see why there could not be legislation introduced here to deal with Australian debtors, and legislation introduced into the Federal Parliament to deal with New Zealand debtors who may be present in Australia, for the purpose of enforcement of New Zealand fines, and that for the purposes of that federal legislation New Zealand would be in the same position as any state of Australia.

So at the end of the day it is a bill that National will support because it does effect some improvements, but like the Legal Services Amendment Bill (No 2), it could have been so much better. These are important issues and the particular concern I have is not with the huge judgment that is obtained, because normally commercial people or insurers pay up reasonably quickly; it is the judgment creditors, for example, who have a relatively small sum that they wish to enforce. The procedures for enforcing civil judgments under the District Courts Act of 1947 are cumbersome. We really do need to have provisions that cut to the chase.

On the issue of the enforcement of fines, there is a lot of talk in this legislation—there are a lot of words—but at the end of the day it could be simplified so much more easily by simply saying to a person, when he or she is found guilty of an offence and a fine is imposed: “You don’t leave the country until it’s paid. Front up immediately and say how you propose to pay it, and, if not, what your worth is.” In other words we need an upfront, tough solution to this problem because $550 million to $650 million as an amount for just the criminal fines that are outstanding is simply unacceptable.

I conclude by referring to what was said in the select committee on constitutional affairs in England, which has been dealing with the enforcement of judgments recently, when one person said: “Ineffective enforcement procedures”—and he was speaking in relation to the civil courts—“undermine the credibility and integrity of the civil courts and the credibility and integrity of small claims more than any other factor.” Plenty of people in this country, knowing what the cumbersome District Court Rules enforcement procedures are, simply abandon any hope of recovering moneys that may be outstanding. In any civilised country, that is a totally unsatisfactory situation.

That is all I want to say about this legislation. It is a poor effort.

Hon JIM SUTTON (Minister of State) Link to this

The member who has just resumed his seat, Chris Finlayson, asked whether there was an updated figure for the total amount of court fines, reparation, and infringement fines due but not yet paid. I am sorry but we do not have an update on that. However, the figure of $650 million that was given is pretty recent. It does include court fines and reparation, but the great bulk of the amount—about $500 million—is infringement fines.

So it is not money that other citizens are urgently in need of; it is money owed by people who, in general, have been convicted of some misdemeanour and are required to pay a fine as reparation to society for their misdeeds.

From the Opposition I hear endless repetitive complaints about the problem, but no real new ideas about what could be done about it. This bill is designed to improve the effectiveness of the Ministry of Justice, fines, and several enforcement activities through interrelated amendments to a number of Acts. It will improve enforcement powers, and that is what we are here for. I do not think the House should be subjected to long and repetitive complaints about the problem. The bill attacks the problems. We should just vote it through and get on with it.

Dr RICHARD WORTH (National) Link to this

I challenge very directly the remarks of the previous speaker, the Hon Jim Sutton, and pick up on one of the points that he made. He is the Minister in the chair, he has officials seated near him, and he tells us—those of us who are listening—that there is no up-to-date information on the level of outstanding fines. Well, there is such information. It is information in the public domain. It is information provided by the Government.

What exactly are those numbers? The latest numbers available to me, which are numbers that have been published, are that, as at 31 January 2006, $671.7 million was owed in fines by 482,939 people. Of this amount, $366.7 million was overdue for payment. Men between the ages of 20 and 30 owe $213.2 million. It is not the case, as the Minister would assert, that the House is listening to repetitive speeches; it is more the case that this Government simply refuses to come to grips with the issue.

The previous speaker spoke of the legislative history of the bill, and it is a bill that has made the slowest and most tortuous progress through this Parliament. As I look back in Hansard, I see that the last time that I spoke on the Committee stage of this bill was on 17 June 2005. What we see writ so large is that this Government is said to be tough on law and order. If that is so, then this bill wholly unmasks that pretence. This is not a Government that seeks to maintain an effective, efficient legal system. Cries to the contrary are simply wrong.

I also find it absolutely amazing that Mr Sutton can respond in the way he has just done by somehow saying that the bulk of the fines outstanding are in respect of infringement notices and it is not that private individuals have suffered significantly. That must surely be the shoddiest of intellectual arguments. The reality is that a number of people have broken the criminal law, they have been brought to account, they have been fined, and they have chosen not to meet their obligations and their debt to society. To suggest that that does not matter just because a third party—an individual in society—is not out of pocket completely ignores the reality that there must be credibility and confidence in the legal system. I say to the Minister that it is a disgrace that he can stand and, firstly, not provide accurate information, and secondly, can somehow suggest in the flights of sophistry that this huge burden of unpaid fines reflected in the infringement notices does not really matter.

When I look at the issues, I see that a very significant issue that is much ignored is that fines accumulate and, for no substantial reason, are often written off in bulk. There are a large number of examples of this. Last year we saw a person who had $73,000 in traffic fines wiped. There was another case in Hamilton of a person who had $31,352 of debt for traffic offences wiped. That shows clearly that the system is not working. It is no penalty at all to be convicted and fined, to not pay one’s fine, then to have that fine written off. That is not what this legal system is all about. That is why I join with others on the National side of the Chamber in saying that, although we support this bill, there is much further work to be done.

I am very conscious of the fact that Mr Barker—the Minister who is substantially responsible for this legislation—has been keen to get it through. He has failed hugely in that task, as the legislative history of the bill shows. He has seen it as a matter of urgency that this legislation be enacted. But those responsible on the Government’s side for setting the parliamentary order of business have simply refused to respond to that call. They have also failed significantly to deal with the allied problems of unpaid fines—allied problems that include the failure of community work and its ineffectiveness as a sentence. Numbers of people are sentenced to community work, which is quite often a sanction for non-payment of a fine. But many of those people so sentenced simply do not turn up. That is why the time has come for us to get tough on those who choose not to pay their fines.

This legislation is structured simply. It impacts on a number of Acts. There are, I think, nine Acts in all that are amended—for example, the Crimes Act, the Customs and Excise Act, the District Courts Act, and the Immigration Act. It is divided into two parts: the first concentrates on issues relating to the policy proposal to apprehend fines defaulters at airports; the second focuses on other fine enforcement proposals.

It is a statement of the obvious to say that the ability to collect a fine from a person who is not prepared to pay that fine depends on knowledge of that defaulter’s whereabouts and the ability that that person may or may not have to meet that financial obligation. So a key—and, I would say, laudable—objective of the bill is to improve the compliance of fines defaulters who travel overseas, while minimising disruption to other travellers and airlines. Occasionally, the Ministry of Justice receives information that a fine defaulter for whom a warrant to arrest has been issued is planning to leave or return to New Zealand. If that occurs, the ministry will arrange for the police to intercept the defaulter at the airport and to take enforcement action. If this bill is enacted, if the necessary mechanisms are set up at the border, and if there is a willingness on behalf of the Government to put appropriate resource into the system, I do not doubt that there could be a substantial and remedial impact from what is proposed. Those are certainly parts of merit in this legislation. So we will see an informal information-sharing regime set up between the ministry, customs, and the Department of Labour.

I conclude by expressing hope that this will not be legislation that the Government shows a lack of will to follow through on once it is passed. I say that in a serious way, because the history of this legislation to date is certainly not consistent with the will to deal with a significant issue. For Mr Sutton to say that the fines are substantially related to infringement notices and therefore we should not be concerned is laughable and reflects no credit on him at all.

RON MARK (NZ First) Link to this

This bill, as the honourable Chris Finlayson pointed out, has been long in the coming and long in the delivery. We have to admit that while it has floundered around in the processes hundreds—no, thousands—of young offenders have been able to thumb their noses at the law and walk away, clear in their minds that the law is ineffective.

One would not believe this, given the amount of publicity certain National Party spokesmen are getting of late on law and order, but it was actually New Zealand First that brought the issue of the level of outstanding fines and reparation payments to the attention of the House. In about 2001-02 New Zealand First started to ask written questions and oral questions in the House, and we had front-page headlines in the Dominion Post pointing out that $550 million was owed in outstanding fines and had not been collected. From there, the snowball started to move and gather momentum. Unfortunately, the snowball was the fines-gathering machine, as more and more young boy racers, in particular, thumbed their noses at traffic officers who were filling their ticketing quotas. They continued to rack up tens, hundreds, thousands, and tens of thousands of dollars in fines, knowing full well that the likelihood of their ever being required to pay them off was virtually nil.

I sat on the Law and Order Committee and listened to the information and advice from the officials. I must put it on the record here and now that I still consider this bill—although New Zealand First will support it because, let us face it, we have to get something through; we have to get the law changed and make some improvements—is only a start. We believe that many inconsistencies will still remain in the legislation, and that many things that could have been included in this bill were not, specifically because the Labour Government—propped up in those days by the Greens and United Future—saw no need to go down the path New Zealand First advocated. I will highlight a couple of areas in which we believe this legislation is still deficient.

It absolutely boggles my mind to hear officials tell me that the reason the courts cannot collect fines is that they do not have the address of the offender. Excuse me? Firstly, one asks what the heck the traffic officer wrote on the infringement notice. As it turns out, sometimes he or she wrote the vehicle registration number and the name of the driver, only to find that the person did not live at the address he or she had given. But here is the real rub: two organisations, both State departments, know where each and every New Zealander lives. Day in and day out, one cannot avoid the prying eyes of the Inland Revenue Department. If one gets two jobs and claims a benefit, Work and Income will be on one’s back. If one is a pensioner who flies out of New Zealand for a holiday in the Pacific and stays longer than one should stay, one is immediately greeted on returning by a letter advising that the holiday was too long and the payments made will be recovered.

How is it that some Government departments can find anybody at any time, but the courts—arguably the second-highest office in the land—cannot? The answer is simple. The legislation lacks in one basic area: it does not allow the courts to access Inland Revenue Department or Work and Income information. That, as I contended in the select committee hearings and in the report back, and as New Zealand First still contends today, is absolutely, patently absurd. Why is it that the courts, which should not be considered inferior to Work and Income, with all the disasters it has, or to the Inland Revenue Department, which has a history of harassing people to the point of committing suicide as it hunts them down in order to collect outstanding revenue, cannot have the same information as those agencies?

New Zealand First says that this legislation should give the courts the power to access any information they need in order to find some little dirt bag of a boy racer who has racked up $100,000 worth of fines. Is that unreasonable? No, it is not. It is not unreasonable when one considers the damage done to the justice system when its integrity is undermined by catching people, charging them, prosecuting them through the courts, having them convicted and sentenced, and then not enforcing the penalty. What is worse is that when the same little rabbit is back before the courts on another raft of charges, the courts simply add those charges to the list. And when the fines defaulter comes back again, the courts remit the lot in exchange for community service, which the offender does not do.

Who is made to look a fool? Who becomes a monkey? It is the courts. Who can we least afford to make a mockery of? It is the men and women of the State institution that is our judiciary system. By allowing legislation as inadequate as this to operate and rule, we undermine the efforts of the men and women in blue who are out there in our communities, trying to protect us. We may as well tell them all to go home and forget about it, because even if they do catch the hoods, the bad guys, the thugs, and the thieves and get them sentenced and fined, nobody will bother to collect the money. That is the truth.

Even worse than that, this legislation does not give us the power to bring fines defaulters back when they flee to Australia. It does not give us the power to share information with the Australian authorities in order to catch a toe-rag like the gentleman owing $1 million worth of fines who is living in Australia right now, extradite him, bring him back, sell off his assets, and recover them for the State. I ask anyone who says that is over the top and we should not go as far as that to consider this. Hospitals around the country have trouble in meeting the demand for cataract operations for elderly people whose quality of life has gone because they can no longer read a newspaper. Hospitals around the country struggle to find the money to carry out elective surgery on knees, hips, and other joints. Parents still—and New Zealand First will fix this—have to pay in order to have children under 6 years seen by a doctor. Whether it is $5, $10, or $15, it is still money that comes from their pockets. We are still struggling to get cardiothoracic services provided in some parts of the country. Yet we sit here and pander to the privacy issues for a bunch of ratbags who will not pay their fines, while $500 million to $600 million sits unclaimed.

This legislation is not good enough, and it will be readdressed. It must be readdressed. We will pass this bill in order to get some improvements made but it is, as I have told the Minister, inadequate. As I have told the Minister, this bill is a slap in the face for the good men and women in blue who enforce our laws and catch the bad people for us. It is a slap in the face for the judiciary—the men and women on the benches who find people guilty, sentence them, and issue fines. And it is a slap in the face for every law-abiding, tax-paying New Zealander who has to watch nanna struggle to get around the house because she still has cataracts. We have some work to do, and New Zealand First means to make sure that it is done, by crikey, before 2008.

MARTIN GALLAGHER (Labour—Hamilton West) Link to this

I will not take a very long call. As chair of the Law and Order Committee I just want to thank the members of the committee. A previous speaker, Mr Chris Finlayson, was trying to be positive, and I respect his attempts to do so. I know he will join with me in thanking members of the committee for their very fine work, including his own colleagues the Hon Tony Ryall and Brian Connell, a good hard-working member from the South Island. Obviously I want to acknowledge Ron Mark and Marc Alexander, the former deputy chair.

I acknowledge this bill as, in my view, a big step in the right direction. I have listened very closely—of course I have—and will continue to listen very closely to Ron Mark, and I acknowledge the wonderfully good contribution he made during the hearings.

I also want to take an opportunity to say that I am looking forward to the regime that will operate at airports and the message that will go out. It is interesting that when this gets media coverage there will be a number of people who will start to think about paying off fines because they are about to go on holiday to the Gold Coast and suddenly realise they will be at embarkation and “zammo, tough bix”, they ain’t going. The logic is very simple. If people can afford to take a holiday and fly on Freedom Air, Air New Zealand, or Emirates Airline to the Gold Coast, then they can afford to pay their outstanding fines and reparations.

I think the real issue that this Parliament must continue to address is a reciprocal information-sharing policy with Australia. The previous select committee visited Australia and talked to various state and federal jurisdictions about this and I refer members to page 7 of the commentary. I thank previous speakers for alerting us to this. Obviously more work needs to be done on this policy with Australia, both at federal level and state level. I also highlight the fact that it is not plain sailing from state to state. The concept should be in terms of the notion of jurisdiction. In the case of someone who lives in Invercargill and shoots through to Darwin, it seems to me that there needs to be a jurisdiction in terms of cooperation so that somehow the long arm of the law will reach from Darwin to Invercargill, and vice versa, for those people who owe the system at either state or federal level in Australia or in New Zealand. I acknowledge indeed that is an area we need to look at.

The first priority is obviously to stop such people from leaving the country in the first place. I absolutely acknowledge that, but I think more work has to be done to develop a closer relationship with state and federal authorities in Australia around this area of fronting people and, if need be, bringing them home to pay their fines, or have a system whereby they appear before appropriate authorities in the relevant state and have to pay up.

Without further ado, I thank members of the previous Law and Order Committee for their very hard work. I look forward to making progress on this bill.