New Penal Laws Next Year

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31563, 28 December 1967, Page 1

New Penal Laws Next Year

Several Acts passed by Parliament during 1967, mainly in the legal field, will come into effect on Monday.

Under the Police Offences Amendment Act maximum fines for more than 50 petty offences will be at least doubled.

The move is partly a legislative acknowledgement of recent inflation and partly one aspect of the official campaign to cut fast-exanding prison populations by emphasising alternative penalties.

After Monday, courts will no longer invoke the 13-year-old sentence of preventive detention except for second or subsequent sexual offenders.

This is one provision in the Criminal Justice Amendment Act, which also comes into force on January 1. Those still serving sentences of preventive detention at the turn of the year will generally not be affected.

Another aspect of the enactment will give courts power to suppress publication of the names of defendants previously convicted of any

offence punishable by imprisonment.

Those who, from Monday, are disqualified from driving for more than 12 months will have to pass a fresh driving test before their licences again become valid. That requirement, a provision of the Transport Amendment (No. 2) Act, will thus have no direct effect for a year yet. An Animal Remedies Bill, revising and consolidating the former Stock Remedies Act, 1934, now repealed, also applies from next week. It regulates the import, sale, manufacture and use of drugs and other substances used to counter diseases not only in farm animals but also in birds, fish and any reptiles kept in captivity. Of wider impact is the Local Government Commission Act, which reconstitutes the commission and requires it within five years to review the structure of local government, district by district, and to prepare “area schemes” covering the country and blueprinting the future structure of local government within each region. In New Zealand local government is constitution-

ally a delegation of central Government powers and the Legislature will be taking great interest in the latest bid to reform existing arrangements.

But although the new law has force from January 1 there will be no flying start on the task. Warrants of the last local government commissioners expired in September and three new commission members have yet to be named.

Legislation this year made some significant additions to the long list of executive or advisory committees, councils, commissions, corporations, board authorities and various agencies with which the Administration has surrounded itself.

This has been done partly as a matter of political principle—to fragment the concentration of administrative power—and partly out of political expediency—to absorb, establish as institutions, and inhibit pressure groups. The 1967 crop of statutory bodies, apart from the reconstructed commission on local government, includes councils for training new technicians, an Agricultural

Pests Destruction board, an Electricity Distribution Commission, Natural Gas Corporation and a National Water and Soil Conservation Authority, with its subordinate groups.