Judith Collins

The Honourable Judith Collins MP
Judith Collins
Minister of Police
In office 19 November 2008 – 12 December 2011
Prime Minister	John Key
Preceded by	Annette King
Succeeded by	Anne Tolley
Minister of Corrections
In office 19 November 2008 – 12 December 2011
Prime Minister	John Key
Preceded by	Phil Goff
Succeeded by	Anne Tolley
Minister of Veterans' Affairs
In office 19 November 2008 – 12 December 2011
Prime Minister	John Key
Preceded by	Rick Barker
Succeeded by	Nathan Guy
Minister of Justice
Incumbent
Assumed office 12 December 2011
Prime Minister	John Key
Preceded by	Simon Power
Minister for ACC
Incumbent
Assumed office 12 December 2011
Prime Minister	John Key
Preceded by	Nick Smith
Member of the New Zealand Parliament for Clevedon
In office 2002–2008
Majority	12,871 (34.9%)
Member of the New Zealand Parliament for Papakura
Incumbent
Assumed office 2008
Majority	10,277 (32.6%)
Personal details
Born	(1959-02-24) 24 February 1959 Hamilton, New Zealand
Nationality	New Zealand
Political party	National Party (1999 – present)
Spouse(s)	David Wong Tung
Children	James
Occupation	Lawyer
Signature

Judith Anne Collins (born 24 February 1959) is a New Zealand politician and lawyer. Born in Hamilton and now residing in Auckland, she graduated in law and taxation and worked in this field from 1981 until 2002, including running her own practice for a decade. She entered Parliament in 2002 election as an electorate MP for the centre-right National Party, and became a Cabinet minister when National came into government in 2008. Her Initial ministerial roles were Police, Corrections and Veterans' Affairs. After the 2011 election, her portfolios changed to Justice (including responsibility for the Law Commission), Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) and Ethnic Affairs. With a fifth-placed ranking, she is the highest ranked woman in the current Cabinet.

Early life and career

Collins was born in Hamilton. Her parents were dairy farmers Percy and Jessie Collins of Walton in the Waikato and she was the youngest of six children attending Walton Primary School.^[1] In 1977 and 1978 she studied at the University of Canterbury. In 1979 she switched to the University of Auckland, and obtained first an LLB and then a LLM (Hons) and later a Master of Taxation Studies (MTaxS). She met her husband, part-Samoan^[2] David Wong Tung, at university. He was then a police officer and had migrated from Samoa as a child. They have one son.^[1]

Early in her married life, she and her husband briefly owned a restaurant, Dr Dudding's Restaurant at Hauraki Corner, Takapuna.^{[citation needed]} She initially supported the Labour Party, but joined the National Party in 1999.^[2][3] Collins was previously a member of Zonta International and of Rotary International.^[4]

Professional career

After leaving university, she worked as a lawyer, specialising in employment, property, commercial, and tax law. She worked as a solicitor for four different firms between 1981 and 1990, and then became principal of her own firm, Judith Collins & Associates (1990–2000). In the last two years before election to Parliament, she worked as special counsel for Minter Ellison Rudd Watts (2000–2002).^[4]

She was active in legal associations, and was President of the Auckland District Law Society and Vice-President of the New Zealand Law Society (1998). She served as chairperson of the Casino Control Authority (1999–2002) and was a director of Housing New Zealand Limited (1999–2001).^[4]

Member of Parliament

Collins was elected to Parliament in the 2002 election as National MP for Clevedon. Clevedon, although technically a new electorate, was largely based on the old Hunua electorate, held by National's Warren Kyd.^[5]

In Parliament, Collins became National's Associate Spokesperson on Health and Spokesperson on Internal Affairs. In 2003, these responsibilities were changed for those of Associate Spokesperson on Justice and Spokesperson on Tourism. She was generally regarded as having performed well and when Katherine Rich refused to give full support to the "tough-on-welfare" Orewa Speech by then-party leader Don Brash, Rich was demoted in February 2005 and Collins became National's spokesperson on Social Welfare instead.^[6] Collins then served as spokesperson on Family, and spokesperson on Pacific Island Affairs.

Collins' Clevedon electorate disappeared under boundary changes for the 2008 election. She originally announced her intention to seek the National Party nomination for Howick, which comprises the urban part of her former Clevedon electorate. However, following objections made to the Electoral Commission over draft changes to the boundaries that saw a major redrawing of the adjacent constituency Pakuranga, the draft Howick was redrawn and renamed Botany. Collins then sought and won the nomination for Papakura (which comprises the other half of her former Clevedon electorate) and allowed her colleague, National Party MP Pansy Wong to seek nomination for Botany. Collins won Papakura with a majority of more than 10,000.^[7] The National Party formed a government and Collins entered Cabinet with the portfolios of Police, Corrections and Veterans' Affairs. After the 2011 election she was appointed Minister of Justice, Minister of Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) and Minister of Ethnic Affairs. With a current Cabinet ranking of five, she is the highest ranked woman.^[8]

Opposition

In 2003, while in opposition Collins campaigned for an inquiry to find out whether New Zealand troops were exposed to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War and if so any effect this subsequently had.^[9] Despite previous inquiries stating otherwise, the committee established that troops were exposed to defoliant chemicals during their service in Vietnam, and therefore operated in a toxic environment.^[10] This led to an apology in 2004 from the Government to Veterans and the establishment of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to support veterans.^[11] In 2004 Collins was awarded the Ex-Vietnam Services Association Pin as a result of campaigning for the inquiry.^[9]

Minister of Corrections

In 2009, Collins questioned the leadership of, and later refused to express confidence in the Department of Corrections chief executive, Barry Matthews after a spate of bad publicity.^[12] However after an enquiry by the State Services Commissioner Iain Rennie, Matthews kept his job because Corrections had made efforts to improve and had warned the government of the day and the previous government that under-resourcing was putting public safety at risk.^[13]

Collins increased the availability of work programmes in prison,^[14] and increased funding to widen the availability of alcohol and drug treatment programmes. Corrections built three new Drug Treatment Units and introducing condensed treatment programmes for prisoners serving shorter sentences.^[15] Collins also oversaw completion of the new prison in Mount Eden, Auckland and after recommendation from the Department of Corrections awarded the private management contract for the new prison to the British company, Serco. This was the first prison since 2005 to be managed by a private sector contractor.^[16][17]

In June 2010, Collins announced that from 1 July 2011^[18] smoking and possessing lighters in prison would be banned to reduce the risk that smoking and fire presented to prison guards and prisoners.^[19] This ban was subsequently successfully challenged in court on two occasions, resulting in a law change to maintain it.^[20][21]

Minister of Police

Following a Police trial of tasers in 2006-07, Collins supported their introduction by then Police Commissioner Howard Broad.^[22] In the 2009 budget she announced $NZ10 million worth of funding to complete a nation-wide taser roll out to all Police Districts,^[23] and since then has advocated that the Police be given further discretion about when they can equip themselves with tasers.^[24] She has also supported increased access to firearms for frontline officers, by equipping all front-line police vehicles with lock boxes for firearms, but does not support the full-time general arming of Police officers.^[25]

Minister of Justice

In 2012, Collins moderated the cutbacks to legal aid begun by her predecessor, Simon Power. She reduced the charges for family and civil cases, delayed the period before interest is charged on outstanding legal aid debt and dropped a proposal to make it harder to get legal aid for less serious crimes such as theft, assault or careless driving.^[26] She did however retain fixed fees for criminal work and the rotation of the legal aid to lawyers in all but the most serious cases, which attracted criticism from some lawyers.^[27]

After a two-year investigation the Law Commission produced a report for government with 153 recommendations to reform New Zealand’s alcohol laws. While some legislative changes were passed in December 2012, the Opposition and health sector lobbyists say the evidence based advice from the Commission was disregarded by Collins and her predecessor Simon Power with the result that the final legislation "was a pale imitation of the landmark Law Commission report it was based on."^[28] Examples include Collins originally announcing a ban in May 2012 of RTDs (ready-to-drink) with 6 per cent alcohol or more from off-licenses. However in the face of criticism from the liquor industry, she back-tracked on this ban, and three months later announced that the industry would develop its own voluntary code "to limit the harm to young people caused by RTDs".^[29] The Commission also recommended a 50 per cent tax increase on alcohol (which was dismissed immediately by the Government) and an increase in the purchase age, which was also dismissed after a conscience vote in September 2012.^[28] Collins herself voted to raise the purchase age.^[30] Overall Collins said "the reforms struck a sensible balance by reducing the serious harm caused by alcohol without penalising people who drank responsibly."^[28] The Labour Party and Professor Doug Sellman of Alcohol Action^[31] stated that the changes were weak and would do little to reduce the harm caused by binge drinking. Sellman said: "It's called the Alcohol Reform Bill but it has no reforms in it".^[32]

In December 2012, Collins revealed she had concerns about the robustness of a report authored by retired Canadian Supreme Court judge Ian Binnie, which recommended that David Bain should be paid compensation for the 13 years he spent in prison before being found not guilty at retrial in 2009.^[33] The report had been presented to Collins on 31 August 2012, but the dispute only became public after Binnie threatened to release the report on his own.^[34] Collins had provided a copy of the report to the police and the Solicitor-General and ordered a peer review by a former New Zealand High Court judge, Robert Fisher, sending a "34-point list of issues attacking the case" along with her letter of instruction.^[35] She did not provide a copy of Binnie's report to Bain's legal team. This fact, combined with the circumstances around the peer review by Fisher, led to accusations from Bain's team and from Justice Binnie that Collins was not following an "even handed process".^[36] Collins subsequently released the reports publicly.^[37] A month later, Mr Bain filed a claim in the High Court seeking a review of Collins' actions. The claim alleges Collins breached natural justice and the Bill of Rights Act in her treatment of him and that she "acted in bad faith, abused her power, and acted in a biased, unreasonable and predetermined manner".^[38]

Minister for ACC

In August 2011, a significant privacy breach occurred at the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) following the accidental release of 6700 claimants details to ACC claimant, Bronwyn Pullar.^[39] Following the breach, Collins wanted a change in the culture at ACC to make "privacy and information security" the most important focus. As part of these changes the board chair, John Judge did not have his tenure on the board renewed,^[40] and the chief executive Ralph Stewart resigned the next day.^[41] In May 2012, Collins sued Labour MPs Trevor Mallard and Andrew Little for defamation over comments they made on Radio New Zealand linking her to the leak of an email from Michelle Boag about Pullar's case.^[42] The case was settled after a High Court hearing in November 2012.^[43]

Reputation

Throughout her political career Collins has been viewed as one of the National party's more right-leaning members,^[44][45] however she believes she isn't and instead claims she views issues with a “principle and pragmatic” based approach, putting her across the political spectrum.^[46] In 2009, she was nicknamed Crusher Collins when she proposed legislation to 'crush' the cars of persistent boy racers.^[47] As a result of her Government's 'get tough' legislative stance, including the car crushing and three strikes law, Collins claims to be "the minister who brought back deterrence".^[48][49][50]

New Zealand Herald commentator, Audrey Young, describes Collins as having a "hardball manner [which] has defined her ministerial career" beginning with her refusal to express confidence in former Corrections chief Barry Matthews in 2009.^[51] Her direct manner was evident in her description of University of Otago and University of Canterbury students involved in the Undie 500 student riots as "spoilt little rich kids, who think that they are going to be the future leaders of our country".^[52] She is active on Twitter, and likes to reply personally.^[53]

In 2012, TV3 Political Editor, Patrick Gower, said it was "the year of the ball-breaker" and picked Collins as his personal politician of the year. He went on to say: "She simply smashed her way through the year - nearly everyone who came up against Collins came off second-best." He added that "No doubt this will make plenty of people angry, because "Crusher" has her enemies not just on the Left, but on the Right."^[54]

Commentator Fran O’Sullivan said she has a "take no prisoners" approach and "her biggest strengths lie in her ability to stand her ground when she's convinced she is right, as she has ably demonstrated with the Binnie report; her ability to politically manoeuvre opponents off the chess board with ruthless efficiency, as she showed with Judge and two other ACC directors; and the guts to demolish a Cabinet predecessor's policy positions where she believes he has over-egged the legal response, as with former Justice Minister Simon Power."^[55]

Notes

References

• About Time (PDF). Wellington, New Zealand: Department of Corrections. 2001. ISBN 0-478-11330-7. Retrieved 2 January 2012. 
• Drug and Alcohol Strategy 2009–2014 (PDF). Wellington, New Zealand: Department of Corrections. 2009. ISBN 978-0-478-18061-9. Retrieved 26 December 2012. 
• Hager, Nicky (2006). The Hollow Men. Nelson, New Zealand: Craig Potton Publishing. ISBN 1-877333-62-X. 

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Judith Collins.

• Judith Collins MP official site
• Profile at National party
• Profile at New Zealand Parliament
• Releases and speeches at Beehive.govt.nz

• @JudithCollinsMP official Twitter feed