Legal Services Amendment Bill

I seek leave to present a legislative statement on the Legal Services Amendment Bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Leave is sought for that motion. Are there any objections? There are no objections.

💬 Matt Doocey: Point of order. Sorry, I’m just seeking clarification: seeking leave for—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Tabling a legislative statement.

💬 Matt Doocey: Yeah. Why are we seeking leave?

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): I believe it was because it was not presented by the time it was supposed to earlier on this morning, which was 11 a.m. No objections? Go on, Minister.

I move, That the Legal Services Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

Legal aid is an important service that the Government provides for people on the lowest incomes. It supports people who need legal services but cannot afford to pay it on their own. Unfortunately, inflation and wage increases have resulted in many people—despite being on very low incomes—still earning too much money to qualify for legal aid. For those who do qualify, the user charge and interest payments are a barrier—if not entirely prohibitive—to accessing legal aid. A higher proportion of people are required to pay back their debt. Also, some lawyers are now not taking on legal aid work due to remuneration rates, leading to a shortage of providers and a very stressful experience for applicants.

Budget 2022 allocated funding to address these pressing issues by increasing eligibility and repayment thresholds, removing the requirement to pay a user charge and interest on unpaid legal aid debt, and increasing provider remuneration. The Legal Services Amendment Bill supports this package of work by removing references to the user charge and interest from the Legal Services Act. This will give enduring certainty to users of the legal aid system that they will not be faced with these unnecessary charges, and make the legal aid scheme fairer.

Before I discuss the bill in more detail, I’d like to acknowledge and thank the Justice Committee and the chairperson, Vanushi Walters, for their thorough consideration of this bill. I would also really like to acknowledge those that took the time to submit and have their views expressed. I’m pleased that there have only been two minor and technical changes to the bill recommended by the select committee.

The user charge—which was $50 prior to 1 January this year and is now zero—was charged to some people before legal services could begin, and was designed to make people think carefully about whether or not to engage a lawyer. Not only do we know that people who are eligible for legal aid are on such low incomes that they are likely to be very sure of the decision to take on debt and pursue legal proceedings without needing to be prompted by a charge, but this charge was actually prohibitive and stopping some people who needed to access justice from applying for legal aid in the first instance. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: for people on low incomes, being charged to access legal aid services can literally mean making a choice between putting food on the table or exercising their right to access justice. The user charge can also delay justice when people are required to pay it off in instalments and are unable to progress their case in the meantime.

Finally, legal aid lawyers may choose to waive the charge, but then they just absorb the cost themselves instead of passing it on to their clients, which isn’t necessarily always tenable. I want to acknowledge those lawyers that frequently have put themselves in that position in the interests of justice.

This is an inherently unfair process that is not achieving its intended outcome and instead causes stress for legal age recipients, and it is a substantive administrative burden for lawyers. Interest on unpaid legal aid debt was charged at a rate of 5 percent per annum prior to 1 January this year, and it is now zero. Charging interest on legal aid debt is unfair. It penalises people who need that support, which is the exact opposite of what the legal aid scheme was intended to achieve.

Charging interest can also trap people in debt, because while other debts to Government are collected first, the legal aid debt is left to continue to accumulate interest. A system that essentially punishes those on low incomes for exercising their right to access justice by charging interest on debt that they will struggle to pay down is a system that we do not consider is fair, just, or right.

The cost to Government of removing interest on legal aid debt really is relatively small, but it will make a substantive difference to those who will have that debt. As I mentioned earlier, the wider package of work this bill sits within does more than remove the user charge and interest payments. We have, of course, increased the eligibility thresholds for legal age, which means that more people will qualify for legal aid. We’ve also increased the repayment thresholds—which means people on the lowest of eligible incomes are no longer required to repay that debt—and we’ve raised the remuneration rates for private legal aid lawyers. These changes, in all, aim to reverse some of the erosion that has happened to the legal aid scheme to make it fairer, equitable, and more accessible, though we know that our work here is not done.

The legal aid scheme is a key way the Government provides access to justice for those who simply cannot afford it, and more changes are required to update it. The submissions to the select committee highlighted that, but I know that the changes in this bill will mean a great deal to the people who need that legal aid support. This is an opportunity to address a pressing need faced by many people, and I’m proud to commend this bill to the House.

That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website. The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you. The National Party won’t be supporting this bill. We believe that it’s another example of a kind of band-aid approach to governing that the Government has exhibited over the past five years. Rather than deal with the underlying issues, they’re just putting a band-aid on here and a band-aid on there.

The core issue, if we want to help New Zealanders get better access to justice, is to deal with the incredibly slow processes of the court system and the years of delay that New Zealanders face getting access to justice and to getting an outcome—whether it’s in a criminal setting, and thereby having a sense of justice; or in the civil setting, such as the Family Court, getting matters resolved in a timely way; and when it comes to commercial matters, getting things sorted out so that the parties can get on with their lives. These very long delays that we’ve seen over the past few years balloon into years are the primary problem that needs to be sorted when it comes to improving New Zealanders’ access to justice. Indeed, certainly, the interminable delays and stops and starts and meetings all add to the legal bills that people have to face on both sides.

So rather than focus on that more effectively—and, yes, there are programmes; there are a dozen programmes throughout the justice system focused on trying to speed up the courts. But, in our view, there hasn’t been the real focus on that as is required, because there’s about 20 things that need to be done to deal with his longstanding issue more effectively. Some of them are indeed related to the rules of the court, which are very laxly dealt with, where people who are meant to be turning up to a hearing or a part of the court process don’t turn up, there are no consequences and so legal bills are paid but nothing happens, and for another two months they’re waiting for something else to happen, and then they don’t turn up and there are no consequences, and another two months of delay occurs.

So there are so many more fundamental things that need to be dealt with. Then when you look at the priorities that this Government has had in the justice sector over the last six years, rather than really focusing on this issue, they have preferred to focus on things like banning hate speech, and screwing the scrum on electoral finance, and a whole bunch of other things, which, I think, they would have been better to have kept focus on the issues of access to justice.

So what they’ve proposed in this bill is a couple of things—some of which we’re happy with: removing the user charge of $50 for legal aid; fine, not the end of the world. Maybe it provided some way of dealing with the cost of the system. What people have to realise is that there are sort of three categories of people in this context: people who just pay their own way through the court system, who have the resources to do so; then there is another category who can access legal aid but it is in the form of a loan that needs to be repaid because they have been judged to have the means to do that; and then there’s another group of New Zealanders without the means to do that, and they are granted legal aid directly and they don’t have to pay it back—it’s a grant; it’s a gift.

So this bill is focused on that middle group who do get legal aid but are required to pay it back because they are judged to have the means to do so. The proposal here is that they should pay no interest. Now, of course, the primary problem with that is that it will mean that people will pay back that loan even less than they are at the moment, because there’s no incentive to do so whatever. Inflation—which is ripping in the economy at the moment at 6 percent and has been over 6 percent for a couple of years—is steadily eating into the value of the debt.

So all that means is that money that could be used to deal with other issues, such as increasing the rates further of legal aid payments to lawyers, to make it a more attractive proposition to them, or money that could be diverted to one of the many, many issues that need to be resolved to speed up the overall process of justice, and thereby increase people’s access to justice and also limit the amount of cost in the system in the first place—instead of focusing on that, they are indulging in what we would call a “band-aid solution”.

So, on that basis, we think the Government could have come up with a better response and should have come up with a better response. So we don’t support this bill today.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to take a call at the second reading of the Legal Services Amendment Bill. Can I start just by joining with other colleagues who’ve expressed their deep sympathies at the atrocious events that have happened in Auckland this morning, but also joining with colleagues in commending the work that the police force do for us and have done today.

I had the privilege of spending nine years in Community Law, where I frequently came across the saying, “The opposite of poverty isn’t wealth; it’s access to justice.” That was very much our day to day. We saw young people under 25 coming in seeking legal advice, and on a number of occasions we would see their eyes light up and the sense of recognition when we gave them advice that showed they had a potential case. Then you would see that look of hopelessness as they realised they weren’t going to access justice; they could not apply for legal aid because it was too prohibitive to pay the fee—the user fee—but also take on the interest payments.

Yes, some of these were people who were judged to be able to take on that interest payment as well, but they were often young single parents—they had a series of expenses to deal with. So it just wasn’t going to be an option for them. So it is very surprising to me that the Opposition aren’t going to be coming to the party and supporting this very important bill today.

But before I respond to the arguments made by the Hon Paul Goldsmith, I did just want to make a side note and give almost an ode to regulations. Regulations have a truly special quality about them—some might say an almost magical quality—because in this instance, we’re passing law that has actually already changed in regulation. So the regulations relating to the $50 user charge as well as the interest rates are contained in the Legal Services Regulations 2011, and the amendments to those two aspects to the regulations actually came into force in January this year. That is already law.

What this law does is ensures that there’s consistency between our primary legislation and those regulations. So it just does give me a certain amount of delight that while Opposition members might believe that they’re arguing against a legal change, they are not; they are simply arguing against consistency between our primary legislation and our secondary legislation.

But I will address the arguments made by my colleague across the floor, as well, in substance—although the law has already changed. So one of the arguments that Mr Goldsmith has spoken to in the past was the user charge. While it’s wonderful to hear that he’s come around on that point, I believe their differing view states that they disagreed with that because their sense was for most types of loans, you are required to pay a user charge to access the service. But that’s not always the case, and there must be a sense that there’s a public interest test that applies.

In fact, the Hon Chris Finlayson often spoke beautifully about access to justice and this idea of a principle of equity being one of the things that you should turn your minds to when you’re looking for guidance on when fees should be imposed. Indeed, we also have OECD Guidelines and our own Office of the Controller and Auditor-General guidelines on fees for services which say that equity is a first principle. This is not unusual. So it’s absolutely acceptable to remove that $50 charge.

Mr Goldsmith also made the argument that if there’s no interest, people won’t repay—it removes the incentive. But at select committee, to the whole committee, we were advised that if people do not pay their legal aid debts, the Legal Services Commissioner has the power to issue deduction notices directly to their employer or bank. So the commissioner also has the option to secure debt by placing a charge or a caveat on the legal aid recipient’s property as a condition of the grant. There are consequences. We were advised this in the room. That is not an argument for not supporting this bill.

The third argument that was raised—a substantial amount of the start of Mr Goldsmith’s speech was around the most powerful thing that the Government could do, which is speeding up the legal system, ensuring that people have timely access to justice. I agree wholeheartedly with Mr Goldsmith on that point. However, he has been part of processes where we’ve proven that the Government is doing just this: in the coronial space and in the Family Court space.

So to be honest, I just remain puzzled at why our National Party colleagues aren’t supporting this critical bill in its entirety. Those last two arguments simply don’t fly. This is an essential bill and I commend it to the House.

If I might, as an Auckland MP, in joining with other colleagues in the House to acknowledge, obviously, the tragic circumstances and action today in central Auckland, and acknowledge, obviously, the victims—those who have died but also the injured. If I might, as well, I acknowledge our police, particularly the Armed Offenders Squad and the Special Tactics Group teams, and the St Johns Ambulance, but also all those who were present and witnessed what had occurred. These are horrific events that we don’t expect to see here, and again I just want to put on record my thoughts with all involved, particularly the loved ones who are mourning the loss of a loved one.

We’re standing here today to debate and discuss the second reading of the Legal Services Amendment Bill. Look, like a suite of other justice or legal bills which the Government has put forward, it looks good and it sounds good, but it’s actually really not enough within the justice space to actually change the dial or change where things should go.

The previous speaker Vanushi Walters mentioned changes within the Family Court and coronial court, and, as I said on those two bills, there’s nothing particularly wrong with them. To some degree, there’s nothing particularly wrong with this one either, although there is one point I’m going to particularly raise. But it’s just not making the necessary and substantial changes which are required in our justice system, because if you’re anything like myself, an electorate MP who has to deal with constituents happily, day after day, they are coming in with major, major issues: slow access to justice, a sense of an ever-going process which is broken, and, often too, results that they are not happy with.

Again, this may look to the public as a whole set of positive changes—yep, maybe they are—but they are only minor. They’re tinkering, for want of a better word.

The way I look at this—and I heard the debate between the Hon Paul Goldsmith and Vanushi Walters, point and counterpoint, but mine is much more simple. The changes proposed here around both the levy and interests are going to cost just shy of $4 million, and, for me, if I had $4 million in the justice space, would this be the area I would apply it to, being the change around legal aid? The simple answer is no. There are so many needs within the justice system at the moment that that money could be better spent elsewhere.

We have always paid, to a certain degree, for access to justice. I don’t think it’s overly onerous. As I said, the fundamental point to me is with that $4 million, we could do so much better. Something as simple as providing some video feeds for those who need to present to the courts—particularly for the prisoners, actually, or those on remand—would be a good step forward.

So it’s only a simple argument, this, on a Thursday afternoon, but I think the fundamental point that the public needs to understand—and I’ve come across it and spoken to it time and time again—is that nothing is free in this country. Every time a Government chooses to waive an interest or a fee, the taxpayers in New Zealand are having to foot that bill. This is not free; this is another cost that the Government is wearing, which means more taxes are required from hard-pressed New Zealanders. As I say and have said, for that almost $4 million that this is going to cost, I could think of many other and better spends in the justice system right now, and therefore we’ll be opposing this bill.

Ka huri ō whakaaro ki te tini me te mano kua mate, our whānau in Tāmaki Makaurau, moe mai rā, moe mai rā.

[My thoughts turn to the many, the multitudes who have passed away, our whānau in Tāmaki Makaurau, rest in peace, rest in peace.]

Our hearts are all at this moment with the whānau and the victims of the shooter in Auckland. I just want to acknowledge that, and I want to acknowledge—as all my colleagues have done—the sacrifices and the extraordinary courage of our first responders.

I move now to the bill, which I stand as a member of the Justice Committee to commend. I want to make a few points. It is always interesting, as someone who has spent a lifetime as a practitioner in and out of the courts until coming to this place, to be—if I can put it this way—mansplained to and scolded by those who have no practical or even theoretical knowledge of the system whatsoever. There’s nothing I like more than a good mansplaining on a Thursday afternoon, but let’s talk about the reality. Let’s talk about the people I dealt with and my firm dealt with day after day and my colleagues in the profession continue to deal with day after day. I want to acknowledge those colleagues, because I hear from them day after day as to the strains and the stress that they are under in continuing to pick up this work.

I want to acknowledge those who have come to me and said thank you for this increase, the first increase they have seen since around 2008. One of the things we have done as part of the package we released in this Budget, of which this bill is one, is to give them the first pay increase, of 12 percent, since 2008. I will get to that 2008 figure again when I come to answer the assertion that we should be dealing with the delays in the court, because I think it’s time we talked about who created them.

But talking about legal aid realities, one of the arguments made on the other side of the House was that this is about letting people escape responsibility; that they should be being forced to repay their legal aid bills and that it’s frankly a bit sloppy of them to not have to pay that $50 contribution. Let me tell you about a few of those people.

Let me tell you about Tanya—not her real name. Tanya had a hard upbringing. She had four children. She had an ex who hunted her up and down the North Island to beat the proverbial out of her. Over and over again, this woman came back to our office to seek help. She was having to live hand-to-mouth because she had to go into hiding every six months to a year. If you think that it would be possible for that woman to absorb a $50 cost every time she needed not just a domestic violence protection order—which are, thankfully, free—but help with a custody arrangement or any of the many things that went wrong for her in her life as she was chased and on a number of occasions nearly killed, then I suggest that that would be something that needed to be reconsidered fairly promptly.

Let me tell you about Sarah—also not her real name. Sarah was a working mum with two children. She worked hard in an office job. She also was fighting a long-term Family Court battle against a man of remarkable persistence and unreasonableness. She had absolutely no ability to pay for lawyers, yet she did not qualify for legal aid. Our firm had to effectively subsidise her. She had given up trying to use lawyers because she could not afford it. When a particularly terrible incident happened and she was dragged back before the courts yet again—thankfully, something we will doing something about—by a vexatious litigant, we stepped in to give her essentially pro bono legal assistance because she could not qualify for legal aid under the previous settings.

That is why it is so important that we pass this bill and take away that crippling $50 fee—which I and many of my ex-colleagues in the law profession have paid for their clients over and over again out of our own pockets—and that we extend the eligibility threshold, as we have done, to cover struggling, hard-working, ordinary Kiwis like my client Sarah.

It is farcical to suggest that we should be trying to claw back money from people who are doing it hard in circumstances that are not of their own making in any way, shape, or form. So yeah, there’s nothing I like more than being mansplained to—and on that note, I commend this bill to the House.

I’d just like the member to consider the use of that term four times during her speech. I won’t ask her to apologise but I will just ask her to reflect on whether that is conducive to the good order of the House. But the member may now sit down.

I would also like to pay my respects and say thank you to the members of the Auckland Police who attended the tragic incident this morning. It makes me proud to be part of the blue whānau.

I rise, on behalf of ACT, to take a short call on the Legal Services Amendment Bill, a bill that was pushed through under urgency at the end of last year. With the urgency which was mentioned just before, it doesn’t seem to have been quite as urgent. But it is a bill that has been supported by ACT. I wasn’t on the Justice Committee, and the consultation process seems to be all pretty amicable. There were 10 submitters, and they all supported the bill, with six making additional suggestions about the legal aid system. It seems like some of those suggestions have already been addressed, from what I heard before.

The $50 user charge, which is payable by most applicants for civil or family legal aid, has been identified as a barrier to accessing justice, especially for those on low incomes. This barrier doesn’t seem to serve any purpose. People who receive legal aid are already assessed as to whether they are eligible or not, so the $50 charge does seem unreasonable or unnecessary. The amount makes it hardly worthwhile to actually administer. The other part, removing the 5 percent interest on the legal aid after six months: many legal aid clients often have debts, and interest adds to those debts and just compounds the legal difficulties. Often the spiral will begin from there.

ACT were concerned that removing the interest from the legal aid debt would mean that people have no incentive to pay that debt back, but we understand that, if people refuse to pay the debt, the Legal Services Commissioner has the power to issue a notice and deduct it from the person’s bank or pay, or place a caveat over the property for the repayment of that debt.

National opposes the bill because they are wanting a more substantive bill on legal reform, and we get that; it’s a good objective. They also point out that, under Labour, the court system has become significantly slower, and the average number of days to resolve criminal cases, in the District Court, has gone from 114 days to 176 days. It’s a problem and highlights the need for a new Government that will reform the court system. But that’s something we can look at in October.

I note that Duncan Webb’s first reading contribution was 24 words; half of that was about the Opposition. It really is just tinkering. But, anyway, we have a bill in front of us. The reality is that a $50 charge is a deterrent for poorer people, as is the 5 percent interest. The ACT Party prefers Government that delivers services simply and equitably, and the charge and the interest rate just do seem unnecessary. We will support this bill.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise in support of this bill. Though, as others have said, it is a small change proposed by this bill, in some cases it will go far in the context of the lives and the financial situations of those who are impacted by it.

I remain on the legal aid roster as a barrister and I worked in that system for years. So I know that, actually, $50 is quite often a very real barrier to those bringing civil cases, as others have spoken about, such as in the Family Court where the most egregious of those cases that may be barred by this fee would be those seeking, for example, a protection order to be safe from violence, and others who would be bringing other cases to do with the care and protection of children, for example—some of the most basic of our rights as they are touched upon by the substantive right, which is access to justice in the context of this bill.

But I do want to also talk about the criminal cases, because they seem not to be the ones that people want to talk about as much, and they are affected by the introduction under a previous National and ACT Party Government of this obligation to pay back legal aid and the interest that’s accrued by that. It is an obligation of us as a Government to provide for the right to justice, and that means an equal access to justice. The components of that right include the right to mount a legal defence, to have that provided for by the State and resourced by the State if a defendant can’t afford it, but also that that legal service or legal advice is of a high quality and that it is, in fact, provided for freely.

No one in New Zealand should be choosing between whether to challenge detention in a prison, challenge search and seizure rights that may have been breached, challenge a use of force by the police, or, in fact, defend themselves against a criminal charge that will have some of the most dire and serious of consequences on their rights and their liberties because they’re choosing between paying rent, paying a mortgage—and I did know people who had to sell the family home to defend themselves against charges sometimes, and you never get that money back—or, in fact, given the cost of living crisis that we live in, the basics, like food. We shouldn’t be living in a society where someone may choose to plead guilty and go to prison rather than rightly challenge a case against them because their family will be obligated to pay off a debt even after they have been assessed not to be able to afford those legal services.

Therein lies the aspect of this bill that absolutely does not go far enough, which is that we live in a justice system where legal aid is not, in fact, legal aid. It’s not free at all; it’s just a debt. It wasn’t always the case and it isn’t the case in other similar judicial systems. Legal aid is the recognition that justice shouldn’t be up for sale and available only to those who can afford it.

In fact, when the amendments and when the changes to the legal aid system were brought in under that previous justice Minister—and I remember it because I was a member of the executive of the Criminal Bar Association, it was the Hon Judith Collins. We mounted a challenge—the criminal bar represents judges, prosecutors, and defence lawyers, including also police prosecutor—to that legal aid system that is the one that’s under scrutiny and is being changed somewhat by this bill. The case went all the way up to the Court of Appeal, and the legal aid provisions and the changes that were put in place, that system, were found to be unlawful. That judgment still stands.

So the reforms that are needed that this bill tries to address are not just rectifying a system or progressing it somewhat; it’s actually to bring our legal aid system in line with the law. The legal aid Act says that policy should only be made, for legal aid, by the Minister, in terms of their discretion, for the purpose of providing high-quality legal services for the accused in terms of that criminal legal aid service. The court found that, in fact, the policy that we’re still talking about right now was unlawful because it was made for the purpose of cutting costs. That’s not a legal purpose that the Act provides for, and we really should be aware of that because the right to justice is one of the fundamental rights that makes this a democracy.

The rights that are taken away and touched upon if people can’t access justice in our criminal courts, as well as in Family Court and other civil proceedings, are some of the most fundamental. Equality before the law is one of the most fundamental ways that every other right can be undermined or upheld.

So these changes are good and they will mean something to those who are impacted. The $50 isn’t nothing. The interest on legal aid debt is absolutely crippling for the families who are dealing with it, and you absolutely don’t get a cent of it back if you’re found not guilty, if you’re acquitted, if you win your protection order case—that’s just gone; so you are choosing between a debilitating debt or justice or protection or safety or freedom. But they absolutely also don’t go far enough.

Our legal aid system does need an overhaul, at the very least to bring it in line with the empowering legislation. It absolutely needs to focus on providing high-quality legal services, equality before the courts, and access to justice that’s substantive. But I do commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m pleased to take a very short call on this one. You’ve heard from people that have been working at the front line for quite some time about just making sure that we’re doing everything that we can to allow our fellow New Zealanders, that may be trying to navigate the legal system—as tricky and as complex as it is—to be able to access justice.

I mean, I’m not a lawyer, but, I’ve got to say, when I talk to colleagues that are, when I talk to people in my community about legal aid, especially from the lawyers, they kind of reel, and then they start telling you what’s wrong with the legal aid system. There seems to be a wide acknowledgment in the House today, especially from this side of the House, that we are definitely making moves to try and improve our legal aid system to make sure that we are not burdening our communities with debt.

Debt is heavy. Debt is even heavier if you’ve got no money to be able to service that debt. For those people that are on the breadline or living in complete poverty, actually having debt hanging over them is a very, very heavy thing and a heavy burden for them to bear. Knowing that—for applying for legal aid—you’ve, up until this point, had the system where you have a debt and then there’s this interest that gets accumulated on it, as you’re trying to navigate the legal system, just sounds ludicrous.

So, you know, I think about those people in this time when we’re facing a cost of living crisis—increasing prices for everybody, but the people that feel it the most are the people that have got nothing in their pockets; there’s not enough money coming in and they’re having to make ends meet. If they happen to also be navigating the legal system, then that kind of stuff can be a big pressure in their lives. So I think about them at times like this.

I’m just so unsure about why some members of the House aren’t supporting this, because it doesn’t sound right—it doesn’t sound right—that there are members of this House that think that we should continue to charge, to put a tax on these people as they’re trying to access justice, and that they are OK with the fact that any kind of debt then should continue to incur that extra interest charge as well. Some of these people that access this fund, they are the most impoverished people in the country, and, usually, you know, maybe with a criminal record, maybe trying not to get themselves a criminal record as well.

Surely—surely—we as a House must come together on this one to support it for our fellow New Zealanders, for those people that are doing it tough out there at the moment, so that they can actually try and navigate the legal system, get the access to justice that we all expect, we all want, we all demand—if we need it—and to make sure that we we’re providing legal aid with no hooks, no caveats, to people that really need it in this community and this country. For that reason, I commend it to the House.

This is a split call—five minutes. Tama Potaka.

Yes, can I first acknowledge the tragic events in Tāmaki-makau-rau this morning. Haere pai, oti atu, rā.

[Go well, as your journey ends.]

And I also acknowledge the welcome appointment of legendary of Māori land law lecturer Caren Fox as the first wāhine to be the Chief Judge of the Māori Land Court. Ka pai hoki ngā kōrero.

[The comments are very good.]

After the mansplaining lecture, it is with great enthusiasm that I can talk to this second reading on the Legal Services Amendment Bill, and no doubt Chief Judge Fox would be very interested in this proposed legislation, given that she was instrumental in the establishment of the Māori Legal Services here in Wellington many years ago. I’m reminded of the pithy quote of Francis Bacon, a former Attorney-General of England—and often attributed with writing some Shakespearean plays—who stated, “If we do not maintain justice, justice will not be maintained.”, and justice is what we’re talking about today. National is concerned that our justice system is becoming Dickensesque, like something out of Bleak House and the infamous case of Jarndyce v Jarndyce.

The bill implements the Government’s decision to strengthen legal aid through the removal of the user charge and the interest on unpaid legal debt. Overall, this will have a multimillion-dollar impact on a taxpayer over four years—moneys that we believe could be better used to improve court processes for parties, including those in the Māori Land Court, which has been seriously underfunded and under-serviced for IT and other matters for applicants for years.

Now, Kiwis are struggling to access justice on a daily basis under the current Government, especially victims. Dysfunctions, delays, frustration with court users, with the increase in waiting times, and criminal cases being particularly unjust—46 percent more than the victims than prior to the pandemic. But the best thing that we believe the Government could do right now is actually improve access to justice through expediting the slow court processes that they continue to preside over. Using audiovisual and other methods more effectively could help that and, effectively, use the enormous taxpayer resources which have been hoarded and accumulated over the last five years to deliberately enhance productivity from a sluggish judicial system.

Submitters unanimously supported this bill, with many noting that $50 is a significant amount of money for those on low incomes. Kei te tika hoki.

[That is very true.]

This is appreciated. However, the Labour-led Government could actually better address the fundamental poverty issues that beset those folks by giving a bit of tax relief, making housing more affordable, and ensuring educational attainment by school leavers rather than this well-meaning and sometimes misguided reform.

Importantly, all the submitters have commented that the wider reform of the system is absolutely necessary, and it was not unnoticed by my learned colleagues in the National Party. It’s that very reform that we seek, not the nickel-and-diming that the Government continues to perpetuate through this type of legislation. The purpose of having interest is an incentive to people to pay their unpaid legal aid debts. Without incentives, debts will remain unpaid. Today, it’s legal aid, Mr Muller; tomorrow, maybe it’s speeding fines, and next week court fines also.

💬 Todd Muller: That’s right.

There’s an existing exemption pathway for legal aid debt on the basis of financial hardship and just inequitable reasons, and that’s set out in the legal aid legislation right now. But this legislation, in our view, is superfluous to the substantive issues that undermine our justice system. The futility of “Bleak House” has beset the courts, including the Kooti Whenua Māori—the Māori Land Court—albeit the Shakespearean comedy The Merchant of Venice continues to provide us with some theatrical hope about mercy, and I quote, “The quality of mercy is not strained. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath. It is twice blessed. It blesseth him who gives”—or her who gives—“and him [or her] that takes.”

I look forward to hearing from other members of this fine House on their learned views on access to justice in the context of a failing justice system. Kia ora tātou.

Mr Potaka, just before you sit down, your comment at the start was noted. Can I just say that the comment about the good order of the House—being flippant around a Speaker’s comment is not assisting that, so I’ll invite you in future just not to comment on other matters that have taken place. Thank you.

💬 Tama Potaka: I didn’t hear that, Mr Speaker—part of your comment there.

The member’s comment at the beginning of his speech, which was pertinent to a previous comment by the Speaker. So, for the member, I’ll invite him to go back and have a look at Hansard if he wants further explanation, or come to my office—either way. But flippancy of that sort does not assist the good order and running of the House.

It’s my pleasure to be taking a short call on the Legal Services Amendment Bill. But before I begin, I would like to acknowledge the victims of the shooting up in Auckland. While the cordons may lift over time, the pain that the families will have to endure will go on and they will need a lot of support for the community.

I’d like to also just touch on the comments from my colleague Vanushi Walters, who was at the coalface of Community Law and she took use through a lot of the challenges that she faced when she was working in that space. It’s a shame to say that some of those challenges are echoed in the Waimakariri electorate, where I live in. There’s some harrowing stories in Kaiapoi—Kaiapoi Community Law—and when you when you sit down with them and have a chat to the challenges that some of the people that access their services face, there is definitely a need for this bill.

It’s also echoed out in Rangiora with the budgeting services out there. The one challenge that they always face is around the cost of justice and how it impacts the ability for a lot of their clients to get on to their feet. So this is an important bill.

It repeals sections from the Legal Services Act 2011 that require a payment for a user charge and interest on unpaid legal debt. These proposed changes will mean that thousands of people who could otherwise not afford a lawyer will be able to have proper legal representation, and that’s hugely important. The justice system can be a stressful place for people who are not familiar with it, and financial barriers and stresses that come with that can make the experience much more overwhelming, not only for the individual but also these families that are trying to shepherd them through the process.

This bill responds to the Ministry of Justice’s findings in a 2018 review of legal aid, and these changes are part of the Budget 2022 package of $148.7 million to strengthen the legal aid system. So this is much needed, and I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a call on the Legal Services Amendment Bill this afternoon. I want to reference, at the beginning of my contribution this afternoon, the story of one of my close friends who has had a significant amount of interaction with the justice system through the Family Court—having left a violent relationship—and the impact that aspects of the legal aid system had on her over a long period of time. It’s my view that the changes in the bill today would have had a positive impact on her, alongside some other changes we are making to the Family Court system.

The particular situation for my friend was that she entered a relationship and, as a result, there was subsequently relationship property, and because the matter presented itself in front of the Family Court on so many occasions, she did end up picking up a substantial legal aid bill. The terrible result of all of this was that when the relationship property was finalised, she had to pay back her legal aid bill and it was such that there was no further financial support for her from that point; she lost all the money that she had invested in that property.

So a young woman with three young children who had relationship property, but as a result of our legal aid system—and the family court system subsequently—is now a woman who is renting property and has done so since. So the security that her family would have had has been lost. So there are some changes in this bill that are really important, particularly around the removal of the interest penalty, because that was such that it did impact on her particular situation.

I also note that the increased thresholds and eligibility for legal aid will also benefit a number of people who are in my friend’s type of situation where they’re having to make difficult choices: it could be around whether they can actually do things like leave a relationship because, unfortunately, we know that for many women and men who are affected that in choices to leave a relationship, sometimes there are financial elements. So everything we can do as a Parliament to make the legal aid system fairer and more available to people is very, very important.

I have had representations made to me by lawyers—I just want to reference the comments from the previous speaker, who doesn’t seem to think this is a priority. Lawyers who work in the legal aid system have made representations to me prior to my entering Parliament and also while I have been an MP, specifically seeking this type of reform to legal aid. I want to note one in particular: Nelson lawyer Steven Zindel, who picks up a significant part of the legal aid workload in Nelson with people who often would struggle to get representation. I want to acknowledge those defence lawyers. They are often defending people who others wouldn’t wish to do so, but those people—everybody has the right to have access to justice, has the right to a fair trial, has the right to access defence.

So everything we can do, such as the changes in this bill to ensure people have greater access to legal aid—and waiving the $50 fee is a big part of that. It that might seem to us parliamentarians to not be very much money, but for people who are potentially facing significant criminal charges; significant issues in the Family Court, where they do need to access legal aid, where they do need that support of the State to ensure they have good access to justice—any barriers we can remove to ensure they have that right upheld is something that I think this Parliament should take very seriously; that is our role. Our role is to ensure that New Zealanders have that good access to justice.

Alongside other changes that the Government has signalled, such as removing the ability for people through the Family Court to take things like vexatious litigation where they repeatedly return to the Family Court, there are other changes such as including changing and adding judicial officers to help ease the backlog through the Family Court—all of these pieces of work are things that we are doing to ensure that we make the Family Court work as best as we can for people.

So this is excellent law; it covers a range of parts of our judicial system, it is one small step in supporting some of our most vulnerable people and people who sometimes may have committed a terrible crime but who—regardless of that—under our laws and our principles and values in this country, deserve the right to have justice and a fair trial and access to the legal support that they should have. So I want to congratulate the Minister on bringing this bill through the House and thank the Justice Committee and officials for their work on it, and I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’ll just take a quick, short call to conclude the National Party’s contribution. As you’ve heard this afternoon, we have consistently opposed the Legal Services Amendment Bill. There were elements of it that were worth consideration, but typically, for this Government, the harder job of actually reframing and investing in our judicial system in a way to speed up court procedures and to enable justice to be served—which is the harder job—has been kicked to the side, and a very sort of forensic focus on the issues around cost and debt. There are already exemptions for legal aid in the original legislation. There’s a cost to this and, from our perspective, we see there’s a huge amount of House time and select committee process for very marginal benefit.

There would have been an opportunity—which we had called for and would have supported—for a more substantive approach from this Government, assessing where the bottlenecks are in our judicial system, where the opportunities and investments could go to actually speed up that court process so people can actually have justice served in this country. But instead, as I said, the Government chose to prioritise a different area. So we have made our point; I think it has been very clear—good contributions from Paul Goldsmith and, more recently, Tama Potaka—around our point of distinction. We will continue to oppose this this afternoon.

Kia ora, Mr Speaker. As I have sat here this afternoon and listened to some of this debate, it’s been really interesting to hear people’s perspectives; to hear and understand why different parties and people think the way that they do. Part of it, I sometimes wonder, is around lived experiences or things that have or haven’t been experienced by different members. I’m not one to judge or to know each of our experiences, but I know I have my own reflections and experiences on this.

I’ve been involved, not as a lawyer, but as a support person on many occasions, through our legal system—our justice system here in New Zealand—whether that be through youth justice or in the mainstream court system. It’s always been interesting to be walking alongside an offender, and to go through the experience of sitting in the foyer of the courthouse, of lining up to meet with the duty lawyer—which is a service which again I’m grateful we have here in New Zealand, but it has it has its limitations—and to go through that process often with young people or with people who haven’t experienced it before, or have little expertise in the justice system, or little money, which I guess very much is what this legislation is about.

What I’ve heard several times as I’ve been listening this afternoon, is that we need to ensure that justice be served. That is important—that is really important, and so often you look at the headlines in the newspaper or on the TV, and sometimes as we watch it’s hard not to get cynical when you see those who have money and those who have resources, those who have been born or found spaces where they know the justice system, they know lawyers, or they have money to pay for those good, for those effective—not always good, but those effective lawyers that can actually do the mahi for them. So that’s when, for me, there’s been times going through this process, having to fill out forms, having to advocate to ensure that justice is served.

This legislation, I believe, is a step to continue to open up that space for justice to be served. It seems like a little, but for many, $50 is a lot. So to remove the $50 user charge that’s currently payable by most people, this makes a difference. This makes a difference. For some, it seems so little; it seems like nothing. But for some of us, and for many of the people in our communities, that is a lot.

When we talk about the 5 percent interest charge on unpaid legal aid debt, again, by removing this, it just makes it more accessible. Again, another thing I’ve had many times is the inability to pay, and then the letter comes and the letter gets filed in the bin, or on top of the fridge with all the other letters because they know what’s in it—they know that there’s interest on what they’ve already expected to pay. They know that it’s going to rise and it’s going to move. So often—because they can’t afford to pay it, it’s put on the back burner, or it’s completely ignored. Which shouldn’t be, but it’s the reality for many people when you’re struggling financially. So to remove the $50 user charge is important, to then get rid of the 5 percent interest charge makes justice far more accessible for people.

So that’s why we, on this side of the House, are moving this legislation through this afternoon. That’s why the Justice Committee has been in that space, and has heard submissions, and has got to where we are today. That’s why I want to thank our Minister of Justice for making sure that we stand up, because us as a Labour Party—it’s about the $5; it’s about the $50; it’s actually about making sure that everyone in this country has access to justice. If that means having to change legislation to move things forward, if that means having to have debates and push it through this afternoon, and have the other side not support us, well, that’s what we’re here for.

We’re here to stand up for those on the margins, stand up for those at the grassroots, and stand up to ensure that justice is served. I commend this bill to the House.