Courts and Criminal Matters Bill

The National Party, as the Government will know, is keen to facilitate the passage of the bill, and we are pleased that a number of amendments put forward by the Hon Tony Ryall were accepted by the Minister and have made this bill stronger in two respects. The Minister acknowledges that fact, and I thank him for being one of the few Ministers, in my time in the House, who has sat in the Committee chair and genuinely looked at amendments being proposed by the Opposition. The Minister has, although not always to the liking of the Leader of the House, engaged in the debate with members and managed to get off his seat and debate some of the issues, and to be fair to the Minister, I note that he was convinced on two points, I think. Those are now incorporated into the bill and will be forever known as the Ryall amendments.

I say in conclusion that there are aspects of this bill that the National Party has tried to amend on the way through the Committee stage; two of them were successful, many were not. Tony Ryall put a lot of effort into making sure that those issues were addressed. I see latterly that New Zealand First has agreed to support those amendments, and the National Party thanks New Zealand First. On that basis, we look forward to the third reading debate, although we do note that under urgency the Government was unable to move this matter through the Committee stage. We would like to indicate our cooperation in expediting the Committee stage this afternoon.

In speaking to clause 1, I guess now that after a speech like that we could aptly rename this bill as the forerunner to the “Grand Coalition National-Labour Coalition Government Bill”. I have to point out that the honourable member—and Simon Power is an honourable member; a good, hard-working member, from what I hear up in the Rangitaiki—is wrong. The Minister presented an appalling bill to the select committee. [Interruption] The original presentation of the bill was appalling. It took a lot of work in the select committee. In fact, most of the ideas surrounding the use of the Inland Revenue Department and the Department of Work and Income were all New Zealand First’s suggestions at the select committee table.

We acknowledge the hard work of the staff who went back and convinced the Minister that he could get a lot more traction than he thought he could, by amending this bill. But sadly, as we have gone through the part by part exercise, exactly what New Zealand First predicted has happened. All the substantive amendments that would have improved this bill were knocked back by the Government. The Government consistently refused New Zealand First’s motion to grant leave to have the bill sent back to the select committee so some steel and some spine could be shoved into it. It is appalling.

This bill should be titled the “Oh We Missed a Great Opportunity Bill” because we have not put into this bill the ability for the courts to access the Inland Revenue Department information that would so easily wrap up all these little ratbags who deliberately hide from their bills. The consequence of that? Well, I will use Labour’s own words. Without this sort of revenue coming in, we forgo a lot of cataract operations, hip operations, and opportunities to improve road safety. The $650 million sitting on the back-burner, not being recovered, is nothing to be sneered at. It is a lot of money.

By allowing that sort of debt to build up, we are undermining the very work that this Government puts police officers out there on the road to do, and that is an issue: infringement notices. I ask the Minister what point there is in targeting an extra 30 percent of infringement notices in 1 year—this is from the statement of intent last year for the police—if one has no intention of actively going out and getting the money from the fines that have been issued. One is actually directly undermining the work of the police. To then come into this Chamber and tell people that the Government is standing up to support the police is a load of—to quote the words of an up and coming leader—“baloney”. It is baloney. It is rubbish.

New Zealand First intends putting this bill back to the floor to give it some teeth, to give it some spine, when we are in Government. My only message to the Labour Party is that it is nice to see that some of the arrogance has gone, and people now realise that they probably will not be in Government. But if one is expecting an opportunity to be in Government, one had better get ready to put some of the issues that we tried to discuss at select committee, in respect of the Privacy Act, off to one side and deal with the issues of Inland Revenue Department information and Department of Work and Income information, and making that available to the courts.

We tried desperately to get amendments to the bill. We tried desperately to get this bill back to the select committee so we could toughen it up and strengthen it. We know that the advisers are telling the Minister that a lot more could be done, and the Minister himself in one of his speeches acknowledged that more can be done. Indeed, he went further, to say that he sees the need to readdress some of these issues.

I will come back to what I said. New Zealand First thinks this bill could have been titled the “Oh We Missed a Golden Opportunity Bill”, because the Government seriously has. It has not read the mood of the public, in respect of these issues, at all well; but then, that is nothing new. We are seeing that daily, are we not?

I certainly wish to endorse some of the comments from Mr Mark. I cannot resist a small comment before I pass to the substance. Yes, arrogance does seem to have been thrashed out of the other side. Those members are a lot more humble. But the mantle of arrogance seems to have moved. It has not got lost in the Chamber; it has just shifted across to the kingmaker, but never mind. We will see how it goes in 2 or 3 months’ time. But in looking at this bill, which increases the collectibility of fines, I certainly endorse the comments about missed opportunities that Mr Mark made.

Progress reported.

Report adopted.