Courts and Criminal Matters Bill

Part 1 of the Courts and Criminal Matters Bill is in respect of amendments to the Crimes Act of 1961. The principal change proposed in this legislation is to allow bailiffs to execute warrants to collect money owed by fines defaulters.

We heard from Mr Gosche earlier along the lines that if a person who owed a fine tried to leave by plane, that person would be stopped and not allowed to board the plane. That might be what the Minister for Courts told his caucus, but I will tell Mr Gosche what the actual fact of the matter is. It is in respect of the ability to execute warrants under clause 4. The Government introduced a bill that stated that if a person owed $10,000 in fines, and a warrant had been issued for his or her arrest, that person could be stopped at the airport. The pressure of the Opposition in the select committee got that amount lowered, but the Government would agree only to drop it down to $5,000.

What Mr Gosche needs to know is the only people who can be stopped at an airport under this bill are people who owe $5,000 of debt and have a warrant for their arrest. There are about 500 people in the country who fit that category who have a warrant out for their arrest. The Government’s own advisers estimate that they will stop 117 people—that is, they will stop one fines defaulter every 3 days—and those defaulters may be prevented from getting on the plane if they do not pay their fines. The Ministry of Justice officials advised us that $1.5 million would be collected because of this bill. So Mr Gosche was wrong in respect of that.

This provision allows for bailiffs—obviously, someone stationed at the court—to execute the warrant and require someone to pay his or her fines. The level of fines owed is, indeed, a considerable concern to all. At the beginning of 2000 the debt was under $300 million; today our estimate has that debt at $650 million, and it is growing exponentially. It is vital that we stop these fines defaulters. We know from official information provided by the Government that not very many people will be affected by this bill. Even though we are giving bailiffs this power under clause 4, it will be exercised very sparingly.

The Opposition will be moving amendments in the Committee stage to lower the threshold. We want this Committee to focus seriously on whether we should be limiting this measure to people who have arrest warrants out on them. We raised that at the select committee, and the Government said it could not do it because it thought it was administratively burdensome. Why can there not be a provision in this bill that allows the Government of the day, when the system is up and running, to remove that requirement for an arrest warrant? Why can we not have that amendment?

Let us just go through the numbers again. When the bill was introduced by the Government the officials said it would affect 35 people a year. I wrote it down when they said it—35 people per annum. With the amendments made to this bill to have it catch fines defaulters with arrest warrants who owe over $5,000, the estimated number is 117 people. The officials said that the estimated full benefit of fines enforcement in this bill would be $1.5 million. I do not know whether that is the estimated amount of fines recovery, or whether it is just the value of the fines owed by the 117 people who will be stopped from leaving. Maybe the Minister could answer that question. Is the $1.5 million that the officials told the select committee would be the estimated full benefit of this bill the amount of collections that can be expected as a result of it, or the total value of the fines owed by the estimated 117 people who will be stopped from leaving by this legislation? National members think that is something the Government should answer, because the mountain of growing debt is incredible. As I said, we estimate that it will have grown to $650 million by the end of this financial year, and we estimate that the amount that is overdue is probably close to $350 million.

The bill provides for the role of bailiffs, but it also looks at the issue of reparation. The second part of the bill, which will be debated a little later on, deals with providing name and address information of people who owe over $1,000, so that the courts collection staff can go after them, but it does state that if people owe reparation, there is no threshold in terms of that information being made available. What is worrying is that the proportion of reparations being collected, for all collections made by the collections unit, is dropping. There seems to be less focus on collecting reparations, because the proportion of reparation receipts to total receipts collected by the collections unit of the Ministry of Justice is dropping, and we are concerned about that.

This bill is a missed opportunity. We think the Government could have gone a lot further, and we will be moving amendments, which we hope the Government will support, to allow that to happen. Let us just go through the numbers again. This so-called get-tough bill was introduced into Parliament, and the Government’s own advisers said that the bill as introduced would have seen it catch 35 fines defaulters each year. With the amendments that the Opposition encouraged the Government to make at the select committee, we squeezed it up to 117 people per annum—one every 3 days—and the Government did not really want to do even that. The officials’ words were that the estimated full benefit of the bill for fines enforcement is $1.5 million. Is that $1.5 million the value of the fines owed by those 117 people that this bill will stop, or is it the amount of money the Government expects to collect from them? We think that goes to the heart of whether the Government has acted as it should have with this bill.

The way in which the bill will work is that if someone turns up at the airport who is in the computer system as being one of those few fines defaulters with a fine over $5,000 and with an arrest warrant issued against him or her, that person will then be taken to the side and dealt with. If those people say that they have an arrangement, or that it is a case of mistaken identity, the presumption will be that the police will let them carry on. If someone does admit to being the person who owes the money, and if he or she does not have an arrangement in place, that person will deal with a courts collection officer.

What will happen if people say: “Yes, I am going to make a down payment of $20, and I will keep paying it off.”, they leave on the plane, and they do not pay it off? What will happen there? What is to prevent people from saying they are going to make an arrangement, paying a couple of hundred dollars, and off they go? They still owe the debt, and they still have an airline ticket that they paid for with money they could have put towards their fine. What will happen there? Maybe the Minister could take a call to explain to us what will happen if a fines defaulter for whom there is an arrest warrant makes a part-payment of the fine; will that person be allowed to continue on his or her flight?

During this debate the combined Opposition parties will make this point: the Government is saying that this measure will stop fines defaulters from getting on to planes. That is what the advertising campaign will be all about. We will be moving on to that, because this is more about the advertising campaign than the substance.

💬 Heather Roy: How much will the advertising campaign be?

We will be talking about that later on. This is all about an advertising campaign to give the impression that everybody who has a fine will be stopped at the airport and prevented from going overseas. Well, the fact is even the Government’s advisers have said that 117 people will be caught.

I want to make a couple of points, but first I will clarify a mistaken belief of the Opposition that has been repeated a couple of times. I have heard a couple of Opposition speakers say that the Ministry of Justice—the courts department and its collections unit—cannot data match with the Ministry of Social Development and the Inland Revenue Department, and that they will be moving amendments. I say to those members that they do it now, they do it regularly, and they do it thoroughly. Let us not be mistaken about that.

My second point is about the process. I say to the Opposition that this has been an evolving process. When the bill was first mooted 4 or 5 years ago, there was very little data information available on people who were about to travel, because it was not collected. People could simply turn up to a ticketing centre, get a ticket, and climb on a plane within 2 hours and be gone.

💬 Brian Connell: What’s changed?

What has changed is advance passenger information. Not only do airlines have to give us information in advance about people coming into the country, airlines are having to give information in advance of people going out. So we now have knowledge of who is coming through airports before and after their flights. When the bill was first conceived, the airlines made the point that when people front up, they have no idea whether those people are on the Customs Service watch list because they have not gone through customs and they and their bags are treated as they normally would be. If the Customs Service was then going to hold someone, it would have to de-van the whole plane to get that person’s bags off, which would be a great inconvenience to the travelling public and would incur huge extra costs because, as anybody who has been in the airline industry knows, if a plane takes off late it lands late, and there are big costs that go with that.

Now, things have changed. People now have to buy their tickets in advance and the systems are being integrated. So when the airline has ticket information, it then has to be, as advance passenger information, put into the system of either or both the Customs Service and the Immigration Service. So as a result of the courts—the Ministry of Justice—being able to load on to those systems those whom they are interested in, the flag can come up much more quickly. By the time any such people front to the counter, it is known that they are of interest and their bags can be set aside and thee matter can be dealt with much more easily. That is a significant advance that gives us greater ability to deal with these issues. Some procedural issues will be associated with that, and we have to do these things with the cooperation of the airlines and the travelling public. When the members of the Law and Order Committee said that the figures should be lowered, the technology and the systems had moved on and we were able to comfortably say that, yes, we can do that. I think that is a good thing. I support it wholeheartedly.

The second thing the select committee did was to set the level at $5,000 automatically, but the bill was set up so that it can be changed by Order in Council to be lowered over time. As the systems bed in and prove workable, we can move very quickly to change that level. I support that provision, as well. I say, in response to Tony Ryall’s point, that there is zero limit on reparation, although he did not particularly highlight that fact. Before people can leave the country they have to pay any reparation due. Reparation can be awarded for personal reasons or commercial reasons. Very often people think of reparation in terms of damage done to the victim of a crime, but approximately half of all reparation involves a commercial loss—for example, an insurance company might have a claim against it. So half is for personal reasons and half for commercial reasons.

💬 Brian Connell: So that’s not important?

I am not saying it is not important. I am just saying that people quite often think of reparation in terms of personal injury or personal tragedy, and of course that is very important, but a commercial loss is also important.

Mr Ryall is making some play of the fact that there is a rise in the number of fines being issued. The principal driver of that has not been court-imposed fines, as Mr Worth indicated. The number of court-imposed fines has been relatively stable. It has been climbing slightly over time, but is relatively stable. The rise in the number of infringement fees being issued is driven principally by the police infringement programme, which is aimed at reducing speed and reducing the number of road deaths. In fact, there are over 100 people alive today who would not be if there not been that focus on lowering speed. The police are not apologetic about that. The Opposition does not like the campaign against speed. It is saying it is prepared to see 100 families sit down at Christmas without one of their family members because the family member has passed away due to a road accident. The Opposition is prepared to blight another 100 families.

The Government has played a huge role in increasing the amount of fines being collected. We inherited quite a complicated situation when we came into Government. We have introduced a call centre for the public. We have extended the hours, from early in the morning to late at night. We have doubled the time they operate. We have some of the most advanced technology in the world. We have collected record amounts, year on year, of overdue fines. No one can criticise us on that. We collected $40 million in one year and $25 million in another. Those are big sums, and there is a lot more money to be collected from people who are under an obligation to pay.

Some members say this bill does not go far enough, and the point I make to those members is that I accept there is a fundamental problem. The fundamental problem is our infringement system. It is old, out of date, and creaky. In fact, we have over 80 issuing authorities who—[Interruption] The court system, I say to the member, is creaky and out of date, and it has not been reviewed in about 30 years. It is inefficient in the way it collects fines, and there is a long delay from the time the fine is issued—that is, over 3 months—until it is up for enforcement by a court. Another problem with the court system is that when the police issue, for example, an infringement for a warrant of fitness offence or an outstanding registration, the individual cannot pay it off on a “pay as you go” basis then and there. The person has to go through the system and get to the court process before he or she can be granted time to pay. I think we would all say that that is nuts. We need to overhaul that system.

Also, we need quicker supervision and better management of it. No one knows—I have asked on several occasions—how much an individual owes, because no one has complete oversight of the system. So for 3 months there is almost a blanket. No one can tell how much is in the system against a name—for example, Rick Barker or Ron Mark. I think that is a fundamental flaw. Therefore, an overhaul of the infringement system is long overdue. I am very pleased that we will be announcing some process on that in the next few months, and I am sure the Opposition parties will be delighted to have a look at it and add their tuppence worth to try to help. This will be very good work, and I am sure they will do their best. This bill is good legislation and I look forward to the Opposition’s support. I accept that the bill could have gone further in some areas but that is subject to a wider review of the infringement process, which this Government will be doing some time in the near future.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich): We are dealing with the bill part by part. The parts are quite specific and mostly refer to relevant Acts. If members would be conscious of that, it would be appreciated.

I acknowledge your guidance, Mr Chairperson, but, given that the debate has been opened up widely by the Minister in the chair, the Hon Rick Barker, and because unfortunately I will not be here after 2 o’clock to give the Minister any further guidance, I intend just to follow his line.

Firstly, the Minister said that the measures that have been taken at airports are “as much as they can do right now”. He admitted that. I must say it is good to hear that, and I would love to have heard it admitted in question time when we asked about those problems some time back. The Minister also admitted that the Government will have to come back to the House with another amendment bill to amend all those Acts—the Crimes Act, the Customs and Excise Act, etc—and that we will be addressing this legislation again. I ask the Minister then why the Government did not agree to my motion, put earlier today, which would have meant that the bill went back to the Law and Order Committee so we could get stuck in and tidy it up?

Let me give the Minister some guidance. This bill would have been far more effective if the Government had recognised one thing. Having bailiffs stopping people at airports, as Part 1 allows, is the very last thing we should be doing to collect those overdue, unpaid fines. The very first thing, the most important thing, which is not included in the bill, is giving the Ministry of Justice through the courts carte blanche access to Inland Revenue Department records.

At the select committee we asked the officials about that, and the guidance we had was that the Government would not be receptive to such wide and far-reaching legislation, which would impinge upon the Privacy Act. The Government itself is the handicap. The officials quite clearly were gleeful at suggestions from the Opposition that the Ministry of Justice should be given that ability. But, no, the Government sees more importance in strengthening the Privacy Act than in collecting $600 million worth of outstanding fines.

The very last thing we should be doing is stopping people at airports. If our systems were robust, if the bailiffs had the same investigative capability as the Inland Revenue Department or even Baycorp, and if the courts, on finding that an offender had missed one payment, were able to go straight into the computers of the Inland Revenue Department or Work and Income to find the person—whether he or she was receiving a benefit or the dole, where the cheques were being posted to, and which account they were being credited into—they would have that person by the shorts within seconds. But this legislation does not do that. Instead we are focusing on trying to catch people at airports.

Well, we agree: anyone who is trying to have a holiday in Hawaii but who has $5,000 worth of outstanding debts, should not be allowed to leave for Hawaii. We are pleased that the Government has taken that on board. But we think the threshold is too low—

💬 Hon Tony Ryall: You have to have an arrest warrant!

They have to have an arrest warrant. The point is that the failure is occurring at the very front end of the system. Members should look at the answers I got from the Ministry of Justice on 28 May 2003 when I asked how many people had up to $5,000 outstanding. The answer was 199,458 people. So nearly 200,000 people, as at 28 May 2003, had outstanding fines of up to $5,000. The number of people owing fines between $5,000 and $10,000 was 1,903. How could we possibly allow such a system to exist? But it has happened, and I say to the Minister that it is no good throwing the issue back at the Opposition and saying that National had had 9 long years to do something. This Government has had 15 years.

Sitting suspended from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m.

Part 1 deals with the execution of warrants, but I do not think the provision will keep the bailiff very busy. Any legislation whereby there is a chance that someone will be intercepted one day in three, will hardly act as a disincentive for a significant number of people.

In the lunch break I went over some submissions made to the Law and Order Committee, and looked at some advice from the officials. I point out that the National Party’s position has always been that if people owe money to the courts, they pay it. We have always said that if people can afford international travel, they can afford to pay their fines. In the select committee we asked the officials to have a look at lowering the monetary threshold from $5,000 to $1,000 of fines owing, as a starting point. That initiative came from members of the National Party. Our concern was what the cost-benefit would be. I think members might be interested to hear what we were told. The officials said that a full cost-benefit analysis was carried out only in relation to the current proposal—that is, that one person would be stopped every 3 days. That number is the equivalent of people who had a warrant for arrest and owed fines of $5,000 or more. The officials estimated that the proposal would provide the opportunity to resolve approximately $1.5 million of court-imposed fines, reparation orders, and infringement fees each year—charges that would otherwise not be resolved. I want to put that amount in context. Outstanding fines are now in excess of $650 million.

💬 Peter Brown: How much?

It is $650 million. That fact was presented to the select committee.

💬 Hon Tony Ryall: What was that fact?

There are outstanding fines of $650 million—actually, I stand corrected. It is not $650 million. The facts at that point were that there was just over $500 million of outstanding fines. The estimate is now $650 million. The amounts are big. We were told at the select committee that the figure was substantial. If we think that through, it shows that the Labour Government, having understood the scope of the problem, is insisting on a regime that will collect only $1.5 million of outstanding fines. That is about a quarter of 1 percent of the outstanding amounts. Members of the House and members of the public who are listening across New Zealand will wonder just how serious the Government is about trying to capture those people who have outstanding fines, when this is the best it can do.

The officials also provided this advice: “In addition, there is an anticipated increase of $1 million in collections of fines as a result of enhanced voluntary compliance arising from publicity surrounding the initiative.” So there we have it. We have people who thumb their nose at authorities, who continually move addresses, and do not give a damn whether they owe $5, $500, $5,000, or, in some cases, as much as $50,000.

I rise to speak to Part 1, which enables information to be given to the Customs Service. When we look at the commentary on the bill and the statements made by the Minister, as I understand it the situation is that about $650 million is now owed in fines. Of course, everyone agrees that that is an outrage. As Mr Connell said, if people have enough money to be able to afford to go on a trip to Aussie they should have enough money to be able to pay their fines. The logical thing is to swap the information.

But there is another rule that people, when passing laws, think of. It is called the law of unintended consequences. I ask members whether we really want to do what we are doing. I would also like to know from the Minister whether this proposal is being put to us by the Australians. What is the effect of this measure? The effect is that ratbags, people who owe large sums of money, will quickly learn that if they leave the country they will get arrested. Some will decide to go, but most will decide to stay. I understand that every week 700 New Zealanders go to Australia, and the number will probably drop to about 670 as a result of this measure. Thirty ratbags who would otherwise have left New Zealand and been a problem to Australia, will stay here.

I want to know whether any cost-benefit analysis has been done on this. Although we will collect a few fines—not many—those people will be arrested and we will have to put them in jail, and all the rest of it. The real problem is that amongst the ratbags will be the people who commit crime. As bad as crime is, about 90 percent of all crime in New Zealand is committed by fewer than 5 percent of the population. We are passing a bill to guarantee that that 5 percent stay in this country. I am not sure that this bill withstands any cost-benefit analysis at all. I just raise this issue and say to the Committee that I am not sure this was the smartest measure—[Interruption]

The Minister of Finance is shaking his head. But if he thinks about it, the Australian Government must be very pleased indeed to hear about this measure. It guarantees the quality of the people we are exporting to Australia, who already have better qualifications than the average population, and they can now guarantee that they have a crime-free record. The reason I raise this is that I do not think the logic of the Government’s crime policies stands up at all. We ought to be asking ourselves questions such as, how did the amount of fines owing ever get to $650 million? Just having this measure, the effect of which is to make sure that ratbags, criminals, and the like, who owe more than $5,000 in fines, and it is now down to $1,000—

💬 Hon Tony Ryall: 117 a year.

It is 117 a year. If it is 117, why is the whole Parliament so keen to keep them here? When we look at them, they are bad repeat offenders. In fact, they have to be, to have that number of fines. I would like to hear from the next member: where is the great advantage to New Zealand in keeping these people here? I would not mind if we just switched this information to customs, and when those people come back to New Zealand we can then charge them. That would encourage them to stay, after having left New Zealand. But that is not how it will be done. I understand that the penalties are on the people who are leaving New Zealand.

I do not know whether anyone in the Government thought about that before this bill was introduced. [Interruption] Members are suggesting that they did not. Well, now that they have, perhaps they might like to rethink it and ask why we do not do some sort of proper cost-benefit analysis before we bring up a measure of this sort. I understand that the Government thinks it is going to raise very little money. In fact, all it will do is discourage people from leaving the country. If people are going to leave the country, surely we should select who we want to go. This measure seems to me to guarantee that we will continue to lose the best people, and the worst will stay. I would like to know whether any Government members have thought about that. If they have, where is the logic? Where is the compelling national interest in keeping fine defaulters in New Zealand, so that they can continue breaking the law and continue not paying their fines, because everyone accepts that they will do that?

I rise on behalf of United Future to address Part 1 of the Courts and Criminal Matters Bill. I would like to pick up on the point that the Hon Richard Prebble has come up with. It is quite a novel interpretation, which I had not thought of before. The member makes a very good point. We may not want to keep those 117 people here at all. I was under the impression that we could nab them when they come back into the country, but perhaps the Minister in the chair, Rick Barker, would like to take a call on that to say whether that is true.

The interesting thing is that the number “117” has been bandied around. For the life of me, I cannot remember, during the select committee process, where that figure was derived from. It was simply an estimate, but what was the estimate based on? Was there any experiential basis overseas where this sort of legislation has had effect from which they came up with this number, or—as is probably the case—has it simply been plucked out of thin air just to satisfy a desire to put a numerical value on something that is unquantifiable? It would also be interesting to see what the threshold movement would be if it went lower than it is currently.

Clause 4, “Warrant to collect fine or other sum of money ordered to be paid”, amends the principal Act to include a bailiff, a deputy bailiff, or a person acting as a bailiff. It is a pretty sensible measure to expand the number of people who can access and utilise this legislation. I am also quite happy to hear from the Minister that the Order in Council to lower the amount owed, either in fines or in reparation, is a possibility. It would be great if there were an intention to do that, but I do not see that there is any huge desire to do so.

The other point I would like to make regarding that is the basis on which the Government will alter the threshold. Will it even, in fact, raise it if it becomes too cumbersome? If those 117 people become such a burdensome chore for the Government, will it raise the amount? Does it go both ways? It seems to me, though, that the whole point of having legislation like this is that it is for the victims and the law abiding. So in a sense, thresholds ought not to be much of a consideration. It is the interests of victims that should dictate the threshold.

I understand that one needs to test new technology. We need to test the efficacy of the kind of legislation we put into place, in case there are huge expenses and delays that occur as a result, but once we know that it is working and that there are not any delays, we should lower the threshold in the interests of the assertion of law, of victims’ rights, and of justice. I would like the Minister to take a call on that, in order to hear whether that is the case. Nothing that I have read states that the basis of the threshold level will be changed depending on the interests of victims, rather than the usefulness to the Government in being able to obtain some extra funds when it sees the potential for doing so.

I move, That the question be now put.