Courts and Criminal Matters Bill

I will talk about Part 2, and in particular about driver licence stop orders for the non-payment of fines. We have a longstanding problem in this country of drivers who continue to drive, seemingly with impunity, while having a large number of outstanding fines. Previously there was no means of reconciling that; no means of connecting the privilege of driving to the number of fines that people had.

This issue came to a head when I received a letter from someone I knew whose mother had been badly injured in an accident. He had gone to court and the young driver was charged with careless driving. During the court hearing it somehow came out that this person owed $42,000 in outstanding fines and had a very long list of other issues. The letter writer said to me: “Surely someone must have known that this young man was a menace on the road. This young man’s driving was erratic, this young man was driving against the law, and he was an accident waiting to happen, and it was my mother who was the one who had the accident. Why are the people in authority not taking effective action against these young drivers?”. It was a good question, it was a fair question, and the question was right on the button.

This measure of driver licence stop orders seeks, in part, to address that issue. It says to people who accumulate an excessive number of fines that if they do not take responsibility for them, do not pay them, and do not learn the lesson of their bad driving behaviour, their licence will go—no question about it. I think this is a very powerful message to send.

It is one that is long overdue, and there were some technical problems about getting it introduced, in terms of the legislation. There were technical policy problems that took some time, and it was whilst I was in Government that a lot of the work was done. I am very pleased to see that the Hon Georgina te Heuheu and this Government have introduced this legislation, because it is long overdue.

I do not know where the change of attitude has come from, but there was a time in this country when, whenever anybody got a fine, the first thing they did was to front up to the court and pay it. One did not have outstanding debts. That was the nature of who we were as a people, but somehow over a generation or two we have lost that belief. Some people have this view that they can simply have outstanding fines to the Crown, and it is of no consequence whatsoever.

This legislative change says that that time is over. There will be a consequence, it will be swift, and it will be very effective. Everybody knows that if they get caught driving without a licence, they will be in even deeper trouble.

The message in this legislation to those who incur fines is that they should pay them, or the State will take effective action against them. They are given the privilege of driving on our roads. The roads have rules for the safety of others, and those people, as drivers, are obliged to follow those rules. If they do not, there will be effective action taken against them.

The second bit, which I think I have missed—in part because I was distracted—but which I want to speak to briefly in the Committee stage, is about the change in the credit that people have. This issue runs in a similar line to the one about driver licensing and outstanding fines.

A number of young people have their cars—quite expensive cars—and for whatever reasons they have a pile of debts against them, and they get their cars confiscated. The very first thing they do is to go to a car yard that will sell finance to them, and they finance the fines back into the car. The person who lends them the money knows that there is a substantial amount of money outstanding to the State—not directly, but they know who these people are and what they do—and they finance the car. When the car is seized by the Crown, the person who gets the money first is the finance company, under the old arrangement. So the finance company is more than happy to sell them the car on finance because they know that if it gets confiscated, it is going to get its money back, and the Crown can wait in the back of the queue.

This legislation will change the priority so that when a car is confiscated and sold, the first priority will be the payment of fines. We will do this by making sure that the information about people’s debt is available to those finance companies. If the finance companies sell a car with finance to a person who has outstanding debts to the Crown for outstanding fines, they will know that they are second in the queue for the money, and that the priority for receiving that money will be the Crown. I think this will be a substantial handbrake on those people making decisions about selling cars to people who are irresponsible with their vehicles and the way in which they drive and accumulate fines.

So there is a pincer movement here. The pincer movement in this legislation is, firstly, that if any outstanding fines are left unattended, a person will lose his or her licence. The second part of the pincer movement is that we will attack their ability to finance themselves into a car if their car is stolen.

We will do this with a very serious intent. Our serious intent is to say to the person who wrote the letter to me some time ago about his mother being injured by someone who had a massive list of outstanding fines that we took the matter seriously. Yes, I say to the person who wrote the letter, we should have known that that person was a menace on the road, and we should have taken action against them. This legislation does that in two ways. I think in all good conscience that I can then, sometime in the future, say to the person who wrote the letter that their matter was taken seriously, it was heard, and it was done effectively.

A number of the finance companies tried to quibble with this legislation by saying that the Crown was somehow using its superior weight and power to go past them and to get the money first. Well, I want to say to them that sometimes one has to have a batting order. Someone is No. 1 batsman, someone is No. 2, and someone plays at three, four, and five. The Government is entitled to set the batting order. It is entitled to do so not only for its own interests but also for the interests of the community and the people who drive on the road.

This change in priority is to signal to those people that the Crown takes this seriously, and our priority is not to stop people getting financed—we do not want to do that—but to say that if a person has a huge number of outstanding fines, he or she should not be treated in the same manner as a person who has no outstanding fines. We want to say to the person who has a huge list of outstanding fines, and to the people who want to finance them into a car and put them back on the road, that they cannot do that with impunity, and that they risk their money. That is because the person they are selling a car to, and financing into a car, is a liability—a liability measured by the number of fines incurred and the number of outstanding fines not paid.

This Parliament is entitled to take a dim view of that. This Parliament is entitled to act, and act decisively, and we do so. I think this is very good legislation from that point of view. It is here to serve the public interest of those who drive on the road, and it is not necessarily here to be about collecting fines.

Let us deal briefly with the issue of collecting fines. I know it is beyond the ambit of this legislation, but the point needs to be made that if people do not want fines, they should not speed. If people are complaining about the Government and the State using fines as a collection mechanism for finance, well, the simplest way to cut down the income flow is to not speed and to not break the law. I am sure this country would be very pleased to see its revenue from infringements for traffic offences fall to zero, because if it fell to zero we would have a law-abiding citizenry.

Some may see a fine for speeding as simply a tax; a tax imposed for the privilege of speeding. Well, I say to them that if one speeds, one has to pay a fine. I must admit that I have had a few speeding tickets; Triumph motorcycles sometimes have a mind of their own, I must say, but I do my best to control it. I have had fines, and I readily accept that if I have broken the law and sped, then I have to pay the fine—I have no problem about that. But one does not always do it wilfully and wrongly. However, the fact is that I cannot blame the State for my getting a fine; I blame myself, and I have to take responsibility for myself.

I just want to commend this legislation and say that Parliament has done fine work here.

My colleague Rick Barker has outlined a lot of the rationale behind the Courts and Criminal Matters Bill. We live in a society that is based on fairness. If there is one thing I have learnt about New Zealanders, it is that we do not ask for much at all, but it really annoys us if we think we are being treated unfairly or if people are getting away with stuff that they should not get away with. This is why I really back this measure, and I back my colleague Rick Barker and the words that he has said. Traffic fines are imposed for a reason, which is that the driver has broken the law. As Rick Barker said, and as many of us know, we can read in the paper about characters who get arrested for something, and they have, as Rick said, $40,000 worth of fines—or it might even be $400 worth of fines. But they act as if they are immune from the law. It is simply not good enough in this day and age to run roughshod over the law, to have no accountability and no responsibility, and, actually, to treat the law with contempt. I think the bill deals with that pretty well, actually.

The process under which a driver licence stop order must be served is actually quite robust. There is no excuse—there is no excuse whatsoever—for people to say no one had told them about it, so they did not know, because what happens first of all is that a warning is served. I will let people know where we are at. I am talking about new section 91AB, to be inserted by clause 43, “Ways in which warning notice or driver licence stop order must be served”. This is a legislative requirement. What must happen is that an employee or an agent of the Ministry of Justice—so we are talking about a policeman or a bailiff, I assume—must deliver the notice personally to the defendant, or, if the defendant refuses to accept it and all reasonable care has been taken, they may deliver it to the defendant’s place of residence and give it to another person who appears to be over the age of 14. This is a warning—this is a warning. That is what can be done; it can be left at the place of residence.

These people are under no illusion that they have been given a warning. But then they have the ability to pay. They have a warning, and there is a decision to pay up when they realise they need their licence, perhaps for work. The person has done wrong and must pay up, because that is the person’s contribution to society, and it is about taking responsibility. It is about time that some of these people took responsibility for their actions. They have 14 days.

💬 Dr Cam Calder: This is a National Party line, Mr Nash. Come on over.

Believe me, I say to Mr Calder, the Labour Party believes in individual responsibility more than the National Party. We believe it is about time that people from the very top, whether they are dairy farmers paying tax or whether they are people who have broken the law on a motorbike, took responsibility for their actions and paid up. People have 14 days. Someone who has received a warning has 14 days to write a cheque—let us hope it does not bounce—pay the fine, and there it goes. The stop order will not take place if the fine is paid. There will be no problems whatsoever, which is only fair.

But after 14 days, if people have not paid up, if they have not accepted responsibility for their actions, then the imposition of a driver licence stop order can be made. It actually says in new section 91D(1): “… the chief executive of the Ministry of Justice may impose a driver licence stop order”. To tell the truth I would have liked to see the “may” be changed to “must”, because “may” implies there is no legislative requirement there for the Ministry of Justice to impose a stop order; it just says it is within the ministry’s discretion. “Must” means that there is a legislative requirement, and I think that would have sent a very strong message. There would be no excuse then. There may be a little wriggle room in new section 91D, because when the 14 days is up there will be the question of whether the period should be taken out to 15 days—maybe that is the reason for “may”. But I think it is really about time that people started to take responsibility. I do not know how much money is outstanding. Perhaps the Minister in the chair, the Hon Jonathan Coleman, one of the other National MPs, or even one of my colleagues will be able to tell me how much money is actually outstanding in motor vehicle fines.

💬 Jacqui Dean: $672 million.

That is outstanding? What is that for?

💬 Hon Member: Yes, it is outstanding.

That is unbelievable—$672 million. That is why I would have liked to see a “must” here, because there should be a legislative requirement. Thank you.

Taloha ni, Mr Chair. I am grateful for the opportunity to speak to Part 2 of the Courts and Criminal Matters Bill. I hope that this part will, as my colleague Stuart Nash mentioned in his contribution, change the attitudes of drivers.

Far too many drivers are racking up all these fines—I think I heard just a few minutes ago that $672 million is outstanding—and far too many simply do not care about the fines they are racking up. I mentioned in my earlier contribution the level to which young drivers get themselves into a spot of bother in terms of not being able to pay some of their fines. With $672 million outstanding for fines, I hope this bill changes the attitude of those drivers who have a significant amount in unpaid fines racked up in their name and under their licence, and who do not care at all whether that is paid off.

I want to talk about an experience I had in my own electorate when I spent a night with the traffic police about a month ago. We pulled over a young driver on the main road. I will not do anything to identify him at all, but when he was pulled over—

💬 Michael Woodhouse: That’s lucky for Rick!

It was not a motorbike, so it was not—

💬 Stuart Nash: He said “a young driver”.

It was a young driver. He only just passed the breath alcohol test, and after some investigation into the computer system it was found that he had a significant amount in unpaid fines under his name. His licence was suspended as well, which was another issue, and he would have been pinged for something else, not necessarily under this bill. His attitude to the fines was that he could not afford them, they were too much, and he would keep driving until he was caught—as he was that night.

That kind of driver is someone whom this part will address, because of those attitudes. We need to make sure that if people have a significant amount in unpaid fines racked up under their name, there is a process through which they will be, I guess, frightened into making sure that those fines are paid.

As Stuart Nash said in his speech, there is a robust process covering how these driver licence stop orders are imposed on drivers who have significant amounts of money outstanding with the courts. This bill sends a message to those drivers that unless they make an arrangement to pay off some of their fines, they will be taken off the streets, and if they do not take any action themselves to pay them, the courts will take action against them.

As Stuart Nash said, there is a period after a warning is issued in which people have 14 days to sort themselves out. If they do not make an arrangement to pay the fine, do not pay the fine at all, or do not take any action at all, these stop orders will be imposed on them. After that, if they do not act, they will be suspended and will stay suspended until they take some action. It is my understanding that the licence will be taken off them and, unless they make some kind of arrangement to pay off the fine, they will stay suspended. They will not get back the licence until they have made the payment.

There is also the ability under this bill for cars to be impounded for 28 days. I think that is a positive move. These people who are flouting the law with absolutely no regard for the fact that they owe money should have some serious action taken against them.

As I said, it is an attitudinal change we are trying to address in those drivers who do not care that they might have a number of outstanding fines against them. Along with the fines goes behaviour. These people obviously do not care about the fact they owe a significant amount of money, and for the most part they are probably some of the ones who are acting dangerously out on the roads, because they have racked up a significant amount of trouble through the fines they owe. Along with streamlining the process in Part 1, this Part 2 takes action to change some of the attitudes of those drivers who have racked up these fines, who do not care, and who flout the authority of the courts to take action against them through fines.

This is a positive move. As I say, $672 million is a large amount of money outstanding. We support this move to try to get some of those fines back into the coffers.

It is a pleasure to speak to Part 2 of the Courts and Criminal Matters Bill, which, as others have said, is about amendments to the Land Transport Act 1988. In particular, people have focused on the provisions on driver licence stop orders. As others have said, we think this is a very sensible provision. It inserts a number of sections into the Land Transport Act to authorise the imposition of these driver licence stop orders. It will mean that people can have their driver’s licence suspended if they have not made arrangements to pay overdue traffic penalties.

It is important to note that that measure was not seen as the penalty in itself. The driver licence stop order is not a penalty in itself, as in some overseas regimes, but an incentive for the proactive resolution of overdue traffic fines. I understand that similar schemes have been operating in Australia and have been working successfully. It is always good, I have to say, to find examples of similar jurisdictions where something has been tried out and we can weigh up whether it is beneficial. That is a very positive thing and it is good to see that we have been able to pick up this idea.

The measure has the following features. A warning notice will be given to people so that they have 14 days to resolve traffic penalties before their licence is suspended. Hopefully that will give people a major jolt. Living as I do in Auckland, I say that being without a car in the current environment of limited public transport options would make life very difficult. Most people are still, I am afraid to say, reliant on their car to get to their workplace and therefore to earn the income they need to live on. That is, of course, if they are lucky enough to have a job; sadly, too many Aucklanders and too many New Zealanders do not, because of the unemployment situation and the lack of Government action on jobs.

I come back to Part 2 and its amendments to the Land Transport Act to allow for the suspending of driver licences, including limited licences, held by people in default. So, on the point I was making about work, this would also suspend licences that people in other situations might get to be able to travel from their home to their workplace and back. Those would also be suspended, and people would be prevented from obtaining a licence during the time they were subject to the driver licence stop order.

The good thing is that if the person pays the overdue fines, their driver licence will be immediately restored to them, unless during that period it expires, and then obviously they will not have a licence at that stage. Importantly, a person driving in breach of a driver licence stop order will have his or her vehicle impounded for 28 days. Again, that is quite a stiff penalty, and I think it will make people think seriously about whether they will infringe.

One of the things I thought was quite interesting was that apparently members of the Law and Order Committee were interested in the advice of the New Zealand Police, and the fact that its policy was to waive infringements for expired warrants of fitness, or outdated registrations of 1 month or less, when the fault was remedied in a timely manner. The committee felt that that policy of compliance incentive—encouraging a person to go and get their warrant of fitness or registration—was a very good practice.

I agree with that. I think that the committee is absolutely right on that. Apparently, the same is true for parking infringements, although I do not quite understand how that works. Somebody who was on the committee might like to tell me.

I understand, though, that a difference of opinion came about on this matter, when the Labour members wanted to use the legislation to regularise the waiver policy we have just talked about. That seems like good common sense, but unfortunately it seems that that idea was opposed by the National members. I believe they went on to signal, though, that they might advance such a provision in future legislation. We would certainly like to ensure that that happens, because it seems a very sensible policy to give people that little shove or incentive, if you like, to become compliant.

These changes to the Land Transport Act 1998 are actually quite significant ones. They are quite well structured, and they also provide fairly major signals to people about the seriousness of paying their traffic fines.

I noted earlier that my colleague the Hon Rick Barker, who, as others have noted, played a very major part in this Courts and Criminal Matters Bill, and who deserves congratulations for that, has had traffic fines, as have I. It would be interesting to hear about the experiences of others.

Along with my colleagues, I will stand and take a call. As we in Labour have said, we support this Courts and Criminal Matters Bill, although we are disappointed that it is not as comprehensive as it would have been, had all the recommendations that Labour put forward come into effect.

I will also talk about driver licence stop orders, because that is what Part 2 is about. Along with my colleagues who have talked about those orders, I think that they are really important, and a very good and effective way of addressing the new measures in terms of the non-payment of fines. What will happen is that liable persons will be sent a warning notice, which will give them 14 days to resolve their traffic penalties before their licences are suspended. That is very sensible.

I note from the select committee’s report that 69 percent of debtors are aged between 20 and 39 years of age. Members have not made any mention of the fact, but I would probably put money on it that the vast majority—certainly, a majority—of them would be men. Given that 69 percent are within that age group, improving compliance for the payment of penalties is a very sensible and desirable thing to do; if nothing else, it will set people on the right track, so that they do not have penalties or debt just continuing to stack up because of some misdemeanours. Those infringements may be for parking, speeding, or any of those sorts of offences that have led to fines.

Under the process, if a warning notice is served by any means other than personally on a defendant, the service will be deemed complete only after the driver’s licence card has been returned to the Ministry of Justice. If, for example, a driver licence stop order was served electronically, and the defendant failed to return his or her licence card, or to make arrangements to pay the fine—either by paying the fine itself or by making a fine payment—then that driver licence stop order could be reissued and personally served on a defendant by an authorised officer. So it is a very appropriate way of dealing with what is a very real problem.

I know that Kris Faafoi talked about the amount of $672 million in unpaid fines. That is a substantial amount, and, goodness me, what a lot of good could be done with that. We could certainly see the reinstatement of early childhood education funding, and a number of other things.

💬 Melissa Lee: $1.4 billion in early childhood.

Maybe the Government’s contribution to KiwiSaver could be reinstated—goodness me, we have a little bit of interest from Melissa Lee over there. Perhaps with that sort of money we might not see the slash-and-burn approach to housing in New Zealand. That is certainly an astronomical amount of money to be tied up in fines, but to see it tied up in unpaid fines is really, really terrible.

I think it is very appropriate that we support this bill. I think that the driver licence stop order will be a very effective tool, which in a worst-case scenario will lead to tougher sanctions in terms of cars being impounded, etc. It is a good step towards getting people on the right path to taking their debts seriously, so that that debt does not continue to grow and ruin their lives.

I have a couple of questions on Part 2 of the Courts and Criminal Matters Bill. They are really practical process questions, and I would not mind if the Minister in the chair, the Minister of Immigration, answered a couple of them.

I will talk about new section 91C, to be inserted by clause 43, “Warning notice to be served on defendant”. It may interest people in the gallery, or wherever they are watching, that initially this provision was called “Warning notice to be sent to defendant”. But the Law and Order Committee changed it to read “served on defendant”. The interesting part is what was crossed out. New section 91C(1) initially concluded: “by delivering it to the defendant or by sending it to the defendant by ordinary post or by electronic means.”, but the select committee obviously decided that that was not a robust enough system to ensure compliance, or to ensure that defendants could say, with hand on heart, that they had received this message. An opening was left for someone to slide on through and deflect his or her responsibility. As I was saying before, this is all about accepting responsibility.

There are a couple of practical issues here that I would not mind the Minister answering, because they are quite significant. We have heard that there is $672 million in outstanding fines. That is an astronomical amount—$672 million in outstanding fines. But we have also heard—again, this comes down to new section 91C—that now that warning notice has to be served on the defendant. I am assuming that a policeman or a bailiff has to go—well, it states it in the bill—to the person’s place of residence and hand the person that notice. If the person is not at his or her place of residence then the notice has to be handed to a person over the age of 14, and if the person refuses to accept that notice it has to be proven that the official reasonably tried to deliver it. So there is no excuse for not having it delivered. New section 91C(3) actually states that “No driver licence stop order imposed on a person is invalid merely because a notice … was not received by that person or was received …”, but that is beside the point.

My question is how will that actually be done? If $672 million is outstanding, we are talking about a lot of people. How will this process be resourced? Will the police dedicate a certain team of people? I assume it is all retrospective, as well. If someone has a fine outstanding as of now, once this bill is passed into law then that person will be liable for one of these driver licence stop orders. They do not know when they will get them. I wonder whether the Ministry of Justice has a process in place or has a suggested time line on how long it will take to police this. How long will it take to get the resources needed to deliver every single one of these notices to the perpetrators’ places of residence, and sign off and say that they have been delivered?

I also would not mind knowing what the payback is. Let me give an example. The Inland Revenue Department has estimated that for every $1 spent on debt collection it gets back about $62. The department chases hard. That is not a bad rate of return, we must admit. When we questioned the Minister of Revenue in the last Finance and Expenditure Committee he said that $62 might be a bit high and that it might be closer to $35 or $40. But it does not matter. If we are spending $1 and getting back $35 or $40, that is an amazing rate of return. I wonder whether the Ministry of Justice has done a similar analysis for this process. For every $1 it spends issuing notices or chasing outstanding fines—$672 million of them—I wonder what sort of return it will get.

The reason I ask is that it comes into the benefit-cost analysis. If the ministry puts 10 people on to serving this, will 10 people over the space of a year be able to recover $50 million or maybe even $100 million? I am not too sure. This is simply a lot more than putting a letter in the mail to the person and saying: “OK, in 14 days you’re stopped.”

As my colleagues Rick Barker and Kris Faafoi have outlined, there are many instances of young men and women—well, I assume there are some older ones as well—who believe they are immune. They believe that they can drive and it does not matter. They will get pulled up, they will get a ticket, and they will keep driving. That is simply not good enough because, as we said, it is about taking responsibility. But I am assuming—and I could be wrong—that if a young man, like Kris Faafoi in the example he gave, is pulled over by a policeman—

💬 Lynne Pillay: You’re a young man like Kris Faafoi.

—OK, let us not the stretch the truth here—and it is proven that he has $10,000 worth of outstanding fines, is the policeman allowed to issue a warning on the spot? That would make it easier. That would make the process a lot easier. As Kris Faafoi said, the man was not drunk under the legal definition. Legally what happens is that the policeman or policewoman issues an infringement notice, and the offender drives off. What do they do with that ticket? Well, $672 million worth of outstanding fines shows that they rip up the ticket and throw it in the back seat. They forget about it until they are pulled up next time, or perhaps until we find them and they can go to court. They get a fine in court, but they go out, keep driving, and keep committing these offences. It is simply not good enough.

Are the police allowed to issue a warning on the spot, there and then? Obviously a name has to go on the ticket. After 14 days the policeman will register the ticket, and then the Ministry of Justice can go around and take the person’s licence off them or impound their car, which I think is a very sensible solution. This guy has $12,000 worth of fines, so take his car, for goodness’ sake. He has to take responsibility for those fines. These people have broken the law. That is what our democracy operates under.

I ask the Minister in the chair, the Minister of Agriculture, to give us a bit of an idea how this process will be policed, and the sorts of resources that will be put into it. This thing will have no teeth. We all support it—well, I do not know whether the Greens do—but it will have no teeth if it is seen as just another piece of legislation on the law books to be filed away, without the necessary resources to chase it up and follow it up. That is what is absolutely necessary. That is what will send the message. If a guy walks along to a drag race and all his mates ask where his car is, and he says that the police came around and the new enforcement team they have in place came and took his car, his mates will say: “Oh, goodness me. That’s rough.” All his mates will have fines, and if that is not enough impetus then it will happen to the second chap and the third chap until these young offenders start getting the message that they have to take responsibility for their fines, for the $672 million worth of fines outstanding.

There are some resourcing issues. This system will not have the teeth that we want it to have, it will not have the consequences or the outcomes that we would like it to have unless the police have the ability to issue something on the spot or the Ministry of Justice diverts some resource into it. A benefit-cost analysis would be good; I assume the ministry has done it. It may well allow it to up the staff and up the resource. As I said, for every $1 spent the Inland Revenue Department collects about $40, and I suspect it is just as high with this system. It may even be higher. It is not as if we are chasing fraud. We are chasing people who have committed an offence. It is there in black and white. We do not need to take them to court. They have been to court, they have been issued a fine, and there it is. But that is a slight concern I have—it is a concern I have.

I think members have heard that every Labour member supports this bill. It is a really good measure—it is a good measure. We are talking about $672 million. As my colleague Lynne Pillay said, we would not have to sell a power station if we got in $672 million. We could have early childhood education back, or even night classes. But I think everyone agrees it requires extra resourcing; there is no doubt about that. There could be more jobs, maybe through the Youth Guarantee scheme, but I suspect they will have to have a little bit of training in this area.

It is good law. There are a couple of questions that I would not mind the Minister answering. Thank you very much.

I move, That the question be now put.

I am happy to take a brief call on Part 2 of the Courts and Criminal Matters Bill, which deals with the introduction of driver licence stop orders. It is a part that I support. I think it is a useful initiative that will certainly help to collect overdue fines.

I do want, however, to draw the Committee’s attention to a comment made in the Law and Order Committee’s report on this part. I quote from it: “The committee was interested in the advice of the New Zealand Police that it was their policy to waive infringements for expired warrants of fitness or for outdated registrations of one month or less where the fault was remedied in a timely manner.”

I am particularly interested in that comment, which is all to do with overdue fines, because effectively it says that in New Zealand we have a 7-month warrant of fitness. In fact, we do not. We have a 6-month warrant of fitness or a 12-month warrant of fitness, depending on the age of the vehicle. I have always been under the impression, so this was a surprise to me, that the obligation was on the owner of a vehicle to have the warrant of fitness renewed before such time as it expired.

This bill is saying that we can extend the life of the warrant of fitness by an additional month by simply running the risk that if we get caught, then whip our car in to get a warrant of fitness the next day, we will get away with not having renewed the warrant of fitness.

💬 Jonathan Young: No, you don’t; it’s retrospective. They don’t start from that day.

Warrants of fitness do start from the day they are issued. Jonathan Young is a little mistaken. Registration is different, but a warrant of fitness takes effect on the day on which it is issued. This policy that is in place by the police now effectively tells people to take the risk and wait until their warrant of fitness is a month overdue, then go and get it. If people get caught in the interim period, they will be able to whip their car in, get the warrant of fitness, and be deemed to have remedied it, and the fine that they might have otherwise received will be waived.

I think that sends the wrong message to people. I think responsible vehicle owners should make sure their vehicle has a current warrant of fitness. If we want to say as a Parliament that the vehicle warrant of fitness should be for 7 months, then let us change the law and say that it should be for 7 months. It is not; it is for 6 months. This policy that is in place by the police, and as mentioned by the select committee, effectively gives a 7-month warrant of fitness. I think that is something the Committee may want to give some attention to.

I move back to the driver licence stop order, which allows somebody’s licence to be effectively taken away if the driver has outstanding fines. I think that is a useful thing. I was concerned, when learning of this, however, about how it can apply to a limited licence—to somebody who relies on their licence for work. How will this impact on them? We could see a situation in which someone gets themselves into debt, they have a licence for work, and suddenly that licence is taken away and they cannot earn any money. Therefore, how do they earn the money to pay the fines in order to get the licence back again?

I was reassured by the comment from the select committee that the person involved did not necessarily have to pay all of the fines; they needed to enter into an arrangement for the payment of the fines. Had it been the other way around, I would be very reluctant to support this bill, because I think it is really important that we do not rob somebody who has got themselves into a bit of financial difficulty with outstanding fines of the means to earn the money to pay those fines back.

A person might get themselves into that difficulty and that vicious cycle, and they might have all these outstanding fines and suddenly find that their licence has been taken away, but, providing that they negotiate an arrangement over time to repay those fines and the debt that they owe, they will be able to get their licence back. I think that is really important, otherwise we run the risk of giving ourselves more difficulty in collecting the fines than we have intended to, with this particular part.

The other thing that is really important is that people are sent a warning notice giving them 14 days to resolve their traffic penalties before their licence is suspended. I think that is really important. Again, we have this issue now whereby somebody is caught, they have received these fines, and they are given 14 days, first up, to sort themselves out. Even if they do not, and they lose their licence after that period of time, they still have the option of entering into a repayment arrangement, at which point, if they do that, they can potentially get their licence back, as I read it.

If I am mistaken on that point, it would be useful to have that clarified, because I think it is quite critical, and it is certainly part of my comfort with the bill, and one of the reasons for supporting it. If that is not the case, I would certainly like for that to be pointed out to me.

Overall, I can see the value in this provision. It is a good bill.

I will make just a couple of points on Part 2 of the Courts and Criminal Matters Bill. I will follow up on the point made by Stuart Nash, then come back to the point made by Chris Hipkins. Stuart Nash pointed out that the clamping of vehicles is a very effective means of getting fines paid. This legislation strengthens that means. I bring to the attention of the Committee Ministry of Justice analysis that was done on the amount of outstanding fines. It found that there was a significant group who owed significant amounts of outstanding fines, who had very expensive cars, and who had the means to pay their fines, but they chose not to because there were no consequences. The moment there was a consequence, the fines were paid.

I have a couple of classic examples from the Ministry of Justice. One example was when a very expensive new Mercedes-Benz was clamped in Auckland with a substantial amount of fines outstanding against its owner. The moment the wheel clamp went on, the chequebook came out and the fines were paid. Similarly, the Ministry of Justice found itself temporarily in the possession of a very flash Italian car—a brand well known to many, with a prancing horse on it. It was also clamped, and I say to members that a chequebook moved faster than the car was capable of ever travelling. The fines were paid. This person had the money, there is no doubt about it, but they ignored the fines because they felt that they could do so with impunity. Well, the wheel clamp is out and those with outstanding fines have got the message loud and clear. I think it will work a treat.

I think the point that Chris Hipkins made is a problem that we have in the way in which we register and warrant our vehicles. It is also an issue that I do not think this legislation addresses as well as it could have. Fines should be used in some ways to change behaviour, rather than to penalise. The difficulty we create by making our cars’ warrants of fitness contingent upon having a registration means that for a number of poor families it is very difficult to find the money for a lump-sum payment for the registration. If a car is unregistered, it cannot get a warrant. This is a coupling of the two things. There was a strong discussion within the Law and Order Committee that we should give people the opportunity to clear their outstanding registration and warrant of fitness, and on at least one occasion to not suffer the penalty of a fine. The select committee was not of a mind to do so, on the basis that the police and the local authorities told the select committee they had a policy that if a registration or warrant was outstanding by a month, and if it was a first offence, they would give people the opportunity to rectify it and they would not incur the fine.

Only one local authority had that advice clearly marked on its website. It was clearly understood that this was the policy of the councils, but it was hidden. The select committee was assured by the territorial authorities that the policy was active and alive, and that they would action it. I put on the record for this Parliament that the select committee will come back to look at this matter in the future. I think it is important that when people have overlooked, as it is quite easy to do, the registration of the motor vehicle and its warrant of fitness that for the first offence—for repeat offenders there is no excuse—some leniency should be given. We were given an assurance by all of the parties that that leniency would be given. If it comes to my attention and the attention of the select committee that this is not the case, and that the policy is not being applied fairly and evenly, then I think it would be time for Parliament to act. Parliament would be asked to change the law, because I think it is a pretty tough thing.

I had in my office on one occasion a young solo parent mother, who had virtually no money. She had been in Napier with an unregistered and unwarranted car, got tickets for both offences, went back to Hastings, and got a ticket for both offences again on the same day. It was a substantial amount of money and there was no attempt by any of the authorities to waive either ticket. I felt that to be deeply offensive—two tickets for the same offence on one day. The poor woman had to then go to the courts. She asked to be able to make an on-time payment, and was told no. She was told by the local authorities no and by the police no. So she then had to let the debt go into the hands of the court, and she incurred a $30 fine on each of them and had to enter in a time to pay. This is another problem that we have to resolve somehow, in some way, because for a number of people the substantial fine is simply too much to pay off at the time, and we should give them the opportunity to pay.

So there are two unresolved issues here. The first is the ability to waive the fine to change behaviour. I think that is a good principle. It is one that is supposed to be in policy and in practice; if we find it is not, it will come back to be legislated for. The second issue is to give people the opportunity to pay as they go, according to their means. I do not think that is unfair or unreasonable. With that, I conclude my remarks and say that I support this legislation.

I move, That the question be now put.