Hon GEORGINA TE HEUHEU (Minister for Courts) Link to this
I move, That Standing Order 299(1) be suspended to authorise the Committee of the whole House on the Courts and Criminal Matters Bill to consider and, if it thinks fit, adopt the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 202, as amended by Supplementary Order Paper 244, to the following Acts that were not included in the Courts and Criminal Matters Bill as introduced—the Crimes Act 1961, the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act 2009, the Disputes Tribunals Act 1988, the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975, the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Act 1978, and the Residential Tenancies Act 1986.
The Courts and Criminal Matters Bill strengthens the processes for the enforcement of fines, including reparation, and the recovery of civil debt. Supplementary Order Paper 202, as amended by Supplementary Order Paper 244, refines and extends these reforms. The amendments to the six additional Acts listed in this motion form a small, but important, component of this legislation. The Courts and Criminal Matters Bill establishes a consistent definition of “fine” that covers any amount of money that a person is required to pay under a sentence or order of a court. The term will include all court-imposed fines, reparation payments, and associated court costs, and the new offender levy.
The bill also establishes a consistent order of priority for allocating the sale proceeds of seized property towards outstanding fines. The first priority will be to reparation. Currently, five different Acts apply to the enforcement of fines. This makes the applicable law difficult to locate and understand, and has allowed inconsistencies to develop and be perpetuated over time. In the late stages of drafting the bill, parliamentary counsel highlighted inconsistencies between provisions in the various Acts, most notably between the Crimes Act, the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Act, and the Summary Proceedings Act 1957. However, it was not possible to complete the necessary policy development, including consulting the judiciary, the Law Commission, and other Government departments, and to draft the necessary amendments, before the bill concluded its select committee examination. If adopted, these amendments will largely align the High Court fines enforcement powers and processes with those of the District Courts. Among other benefits, this will free up judicial time by allowing court registrars to undertake some of the more administrative fines enforcement functions.
Following the introduction of the bill, it was also realised that the Misuse of Drugs Act’s cross-references to the vehicle confiscation provisions in the Sentencing Act were out of date and that, additionally, there were inconsistencies between the forfeiture regimes in the Misuse of Drugs Act and the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act. The additional amendments to the Misuse of Drugs Act and the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act will align the two forfeiture regimes. The amendments will also align the allocation of sale proceeds from forfeited items under both Acts with the approach for seized property and confiscated vehicles in the bill. In particular, the amendments will enable payment under sentences and orders of reparation, as well as offender levies, out of the sale proceeds of forfeited property.
Part 1 of the Courts and Criminal Matters Bill amends the District Courts Act 1947 to, among other things, facilitate attachment orders, which are mandatory deductions from wages or benefits, to resolve a judgment debt. I propose these amendments be extended to allow disputes tribunal referees and Tenancy Tribunal adjudicators to record details of attachment orders in their orders where the parties to the proceedings are present and agree to this course of action. This proposal requires amendments to the Disputes Tribunals Act and the Residential Tenancies Act. These amendments will complement the amendments to the District Courts Act and will benefit judgment debtors and judgment creditors alike.
In conclusion, all parliamentary parties have been consulted on these additional amendments and I thank all parties for their willingness to engage on these proposals. Unfortunately the Green Party has not been able to support my request for leave to introduce the amendments to the six additional Acts. It is because the amendments to the additional Acts are so closely linked—indeed are vital—to the objectives of the current bill, that I make my present request.
The principal amendments are set out on Supplementary Order Paper 202, which I publicly released on 14 February 2011. They are consistent with the scope of the bill, and, although it is not a formal requirement, the Crown Law Office has advised the Ministry of Justice that the amendments are consistent with the requirements of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990. I have moved that Standing Order 299(1) be suspended to authorise the Committee of the whole House on the Courts and Criminal Matters Bill to consider and, if it thinks fit, adopt the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 202, as amended by Supplementary Order Paper 244, to the following Acts that were not included in the Courts and Criminal Matters Bill as introduced—the Crimes Act 1961, the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act 2009, the Disputes Tribunals Act 1988, the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975, the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Act 1978, and the Residential Tenancies Act 1986.
CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour) Link to this
As the Minister for Courts presaged in her speech supporting this motion, the Labour Opposition will support this motion. For those who are still processing what it means, essentially it suspends a Standing Order, which is necessary because leave cannot be obtained, because one party objects to leave being granted for an omnibus bill to be amended in a substantive way. So there is a slightly arcane point of parliamentary procedure here. Basically, the House is being asked to suspend the Standing Order so that the House can simply vote either up or down on what is desired here. Labour will be supporting the suggested course of action that the Minister has put forward—to suspend the Standing Order and to allow a substantive amendment to an omnibus bill. That is an unusual procedure, so I will take some time to explain why we have differed from our friends in the Green Party, which is not something we do terribly often, and have decided to proceed in this way.
The Courts and Criminal Matters Bill is essentially machinery amendments, technical amendments, to legislation relating to enforcement matters. This bill will complete work that was begun while the fifth Labour-led Government was in office. The provisions are sensible, in the Opposition’s view. The substantive legislation will introduce a mechanism into the Land Transport Act 1998 to authorise the imposition of something that will be called a driver licence stop order. This will allow the suspension of drivers’ licences if people have not made arrangements to pay overdue traffic penalties, and they are essentially acting as scofflaws—they are saying “Look, we’ve got these fines, but we’re not going to pay them.” In respect of a certain group of people, it will be the only effective way to enforce the payment of traffic penalties—essentially, stop the licence, take away the right to drive, and until the fine is cleared keep that right in suspension.
There are some technical changes that the bill will introduce in order to ensure that this very sensible further enforcement type of action will be available to the Crown. The Minister has foreshadowed two Supplementary Order Papers: Supplementary Order Paper 202 and Supplementary Order Paper 244. Supplementary Order Paper 202 makes a number of drafting and technical changes to the bill. It will consolidate some statutory provisions about the enforcement of fines and reparations. It will streamline the procedural challenge process for unpaid infringement fees that have been filed with the court. It will provide for the resentencing of an offender where the previous sentence or order of reparation becomes unaffordable or unenforceable. It will align the provisions of the Sentencing Act 2002 with the Summary Proceedings Act 1957 concerning vehicle seizures. It will set the maximum period that an offender can be detained in the custody of the court in order to complete some administrative tasks, such as making a declaration as to financial capacity. It will enhance the civil enforcement processes relating to the payment of judgment debts through attachment orders and the seizure and sale of property, and it will update and align the property forfeiture regimes by amending the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act 2009 and the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975. Supplementary Order Paper 244 will make further technical changes in the areas of the powers of parking wardens, owner liability for stationary vehicle offences, the issue of infringement notices, and the discharge of asset forfeiture orders by the official assignee.
As I said, these are technical matters. They have had broad, cross-party support. The issues began to be grappled with in the tenure of the previous Government, but for essentially technical reasons these sensible changes were not carried through into the substantive legislation, so this motion is a mechanism by which that can be made to occur. It is a sensible mechanism. It is one to which the Opposition could raise a technical objection and frustrate the Government from getting its business through, but on this occasion we choose not to take that approach, because we do think the substantive legislation makes sense, and we would like to see it enacted.
Having said those things, there are one or two points I will make about the general programme of the Government in the criminal justice and the general justice areas. The Minister will recall that last week at the Justice and Electoral Committee I asked her whether she was concerned about the state that the sector would be left in following her departure from the portfolio she holds—Minister for Courts—in just over 5 months’ time. Of course, we all wish the Minister well in her retirement, but we on this side of the House are concerned that she is going, that the Minister of Justice is going, and that the Secretary for Justice, who I think served 10 years in that role, left a couple of weeks ago, and there are major reforms being progressed in the justice sector by this Government. And “progressed” is the operative word, because those reforms will not be completed in the term of this Parliament.
Extremely important issues are being put forward for consideration by this House, such as reform of the sale of liquor legislation, which has now been put off to the never-never because the select committee will not be reporting until 30 August. There is no hope that that legislation will pass in this Parliament, despite all the hopes that have been raised out there amongst the public for some meaningful action on that issue. There is a bail review, and I could go on at length about how unnecessary that bail review is, given that the previous Government fixed most of the problems in the bail area. In fact, the legislation we have in respect of bail is largely pretty good, but none the less there is a review, and the Minister of Justice told the select committee 2 weeks ago that he might like to have legislation introduced into the House as a result of that review. We have had major changes to the legal aid system progressed, without much consultation with the legal profession. Again, the Minister of Justice told us 2 weeks ago at the select committee that he would quite like to see another legal aid bill introduced to the House prior to Parliament rising on 6 October. And there are many other live matters before both the Law and Order Committee and the Justice and Electoral Committee.
My concern and the concern of members on this side of the House, given the departure of two senior Ministers and the departure of the Secretary for Justice, the fact that there is an acting secretary in place, and the fact that the Minister who has just spoken could not tell us much—
Jo GoodhewI raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I ask for your guidance in a matter before the House such as this as to how closely the speeches should bear relevance to the matter under discussion.
Speaking to the point of order, this motion concerns a bill that is within the purview of a Minister who is about to depart. It is perfectly relevant, my having stated the general position of the Opposition, which is supportive of the motion, to talk about the concerns we have about whether this bill will be able to be passed in the current Parliament, given the logjam of legislation and given the mess that the sector is being left in by this Minister and her colleagues.
Hon Rick BarkerI wish to make two points. The first one is that it has been the practice of this House for a long time that when a member takes a point of order about order, the member makes the point that the member speaking has done something to contravene the Standing Orders. It is not a point of order to ask the Chair whether a rule has been enforced. It is not a point of order to ask the Chair to give the member some guidance on the matter. That is not a point of order. The second point I wish to raise is that the Government sought the Opposition’s cooperation in getting this motion through the House. We did not play procedural politics, as we could have, and I want to say to the Government whip that if we are going to be very narrow in our interpretation, then we might change our attitude—
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) Link to this
I am on my feet. It is a wide-ranging debate, given the motion that has been outlined by the Minister. But the member has nearly finished his speaking time, so I would ask him to heed the request.
Sandra GoudieAs I said earlier, the Opposition has chosen to seek to assist the Government, despite its ill grace on this occasion, by allowing it to progress machinery reform in the justice area. My points in the last minute or two have been designed to alert the House to the real danger that, despite this courtesy and despite this matter being put on the Order Paper, there is no guarantee that this legislation will pass in this Parliament, because there is no guarantee that it will be accorded appropriate priority on the Order Paper and because there is an enormous amount of other justice legislation that this Government says it will get through that it plainly will not be able to get through. With those comments and that warning, I say to the Minister that we have sought to assist, because we think these are minor matters, but it would be very disappointing if this legislation was not to be progressed through all its stages. There is a real concern, which I hope Ministers and others hear, about the state of justice legislation on the Order Paper, and the mess, frankly, that will be left by Ministers for their successors in this area.