Legal Services Amendment Bill

I move that the Legal Services Amendment Bill—sorry. Firstly, I present a legislative statement on the Legal Services Amendment Bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

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

In line with the Government’s commitment to restoring law and order and improving the quality of Government spending, this bill puts an end to the Government funding of section 27 reports. It’s clear that in recent years, the use of section 27 reports has evolved beyond what was intended when the legislation was first introduced. The result is a report-writing industry funded by taxpayers. The legal aid funding for section 27 reports has increased from approximately $40,000 in 2017 to more than $7 million in the past financial year, and this cannot be justified.

The bill amends the Legal Services Act to prevent the commissioner from being able to approve claims for payment or costs relating to reports or statements made by a person called on under section 27 of the Sentencing Act. However, importantly, the bill does not change any other aspect of the Legal Services Act. Offenders will still be able to call a person they choose to provide background information to the court under section 27. This information can, for example, be provided by a family member or a friend, in person or in writing, without any cost. The court will still be able to take such information provided under section 27 into account at sentencing.

Putting an end to the current funding arrangement for section 27 reports will mean that savings can be used to improve support for the victims of crime. We will monitor the impacts of the law change closely to inform decisions in that regard. The Government is focused on delivering on our wider law and order policies with the ultimate goal of improving public confidence in the justice system. This short bill is being progressed under urgency through all stages so that we can deliver on the commitments we were elected to do. I would like to thank MPs for their support of this important bill. Thank you.

The question is that the motion be agreed.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. The Minister of Justice spent two minutes talking about this significant change to our justice system, so it’s a sad day when a Minister really just doesn’t address or come back to the House after the committee of the whole House stage to give us a fair summation of what’s happened there, which is his function, and takes such a dismissive approach.

The guts of it is this: the National Party and its coalition partners have a view of equal treatment before the law which is one-dimensional. It takes no account for the distinctions of people, where they come from, their circumstances, and their financial and wider ability to wrestle with the justice system. Only last week, we had the Minister and the Ministry of Justice in to talk to us about the ministry’s programme to ensure better outcomes and experiences for Māori when they engage with the justice system. This makes a mockery of that; there’s utter mockery of any suggestion that parties on the other side of the House have any interest whatsoever in addressing the gross inequities in our justice system and the fact that the statistics show that outcomes for Māori are worse, that the system is tilted, the playing field isn’t even.

These reports, which had quality issues, you know, might have had budget issues, but, by and large, played a very important role in giving information to the courts. On the other side of the House—and I know there’s members over there who are wincing and I get it, right? I understand that; they don’t like what their Minister’s doing and yet they’ve got to suck it up because the Minister is running the show, and their coalition partners—the likes of the ACT Party—are taking a “hard on crime” approach and they’re not willing to listen to officials. They’re willing to dog-whistle to their fringe elements which just want to bash down on the most vulnerable in our society.

But the Minister did say one thing I want to latch on to and he said that the savings to be made here—we know it’s about $7 million a year—now, in the National Party’s Real Consequences for Crime election document, it said that every penny of that money would go to victims. So I want to hold you to account on that. I want you to make sure—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Not “you”.

I want to hold that party and that Government to account on that because they’ve made a promise to the electorate, and the Minister was very clear when he was challenged time and again as to why he wasn’t listening to his officials. He said, “We’ve gone to the electorate with a promise, we won, now we’re delivering.” You won; you made more than one promise, and I want to make sure that that Minister delivers on his promise to victims to take every penny of that funding, the $7 million a year, to put it directly into victims—not into the back pocket of landlords, not to offset the roads they want to build, but to victims in the criminal justice system.

It’s very frustrating to see the very good advice of officials utterly ignored. Officials do a great job of saying, “Look, we’ve given you the view of the direction of travel. You’ve stuck with the direction of travel. But if you’re going to go down that road, here’s what we think you should do to make it the best outcome possible, to achieve the policy objectives.”, because the policy objectives we probably agree on: safer communities, lower reoffending, better reintegration, better outcomes for victims. We all agree on that and, as an aside—secondary, I would hope, but perhaps primary for this Minister—a cost-effective approach, one which is good value for money.

Now, the fact of the matter is the ministry gave great advice as to how that might be achieved with a number of different tools, whether it be regulating the way in which these were provided, accrediting providers, placing caps on the amount that could be spent, having them provided only on request—a raft of really useful tools to say, “We can get your policy objectives across the line and still retain the valuable benefits of these reports.” And what did the Minister say? “No, nah, we’re not going to do it, because we’re not interested in good policy outcomes; we’re just interested in a really dogmatic approach without nuance.”

You know, I can see Mr Meager there is looking down, and I would too, because you know as well as I do that these reports are useful. You’re a man who’s of the law. You know these reports are useful. You know that judges rely on advocates to present the best evidence before them, whether it’s in deciding the case or making a sentence, and this is depriving a judge of evidence.

I was really frustrated with the dog-whistling in terms of the “cottage industry” comments—time and again, cottage industry. Cottage industry this; cottage industry that. The Minister was not being fulsome with the House, because, as I said in the committee stage, I asked him: who was receiving this money? What was the identity of the people to whom he was objecting and calling part of a cottage industry? The response is there in parliamentary questions for anyone to read—under the written questions part of the webpage. He did not know; he was actually making that up. I asked him in this House, “How many reports has Harry Tam or his companies written?” He did not know. It’s utterly inappropriate for someone of the stature of a Minister of the Crown to come to this House and cast spurious, groundless allegations around to someone who isn’t in this House, can’t come and defend themselves, and to then just have a blanket “cottage industry” is utterly, utterly wrong.

💬 James Meager: How dare he sully the name of Harry Tam!

No, I’m not a defender of that person at all, but what I am a defender of is of the dignity of the office of a Minister, who should have a foundation for a statement before he comes to this House and makes it, and that Minister knew that his statement made to this House was utterly, utterly groundless. He should be ashamed of himself.

So what’ve we got? What’ve we ended up with? Well, time will tell, but it’s pretty clear from the advice that costs will rise, the length of trials will rise, incarceration rates will rise, and—I think it’s important to say this—needlessly rise; rise not because people belong in prison, but because judges don’t have the information to provide a more appropriate sentence which is better and safer for the community and more likely to lead to less offending. So what we’ve got is a Government that’s so committed to dog-whistling politics that it’s actually having the opposite effect. This “hard on crime” approach—yes, you’re going to make life worse for these criminals, and you might be happy with that. I get that. But the real tragedy is you’re going to make life worse for their victims and, quite possibly and most tragically, future victims. You’re going to make their life worse for their families, because you’re going to be taking people out of the family home needlessly.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Government or the Minister; not me, Mr Webb.

That’s what they’re going to be doing, Madam Speaker—thank you for pointing out that those members, that Government is going to be needlessly taking parents out of the family home. We know that children of prisoners are much more likely to be prisoners themselves. That’s what you’re doing. That’s what this is doing.

We came to this House with genuine suggestions about how this bill might be improved, and, you know, I believe that the Minister does want good outcomes and he’s been somehow led down the garden path and thinks this is the only way to do it. But he wasn’t prepared to listen to us. He wasn’t prepared to make an amendment so that young people—at least someone under 18 years old—could be funded to get a report about what led to this offending and therefore inform the judge as to what the most appropriate measures might be, what the best reintegration framework might be, how to keep them best connected with whānau and community connections. That’s the kind of material that a judge needs, but no.

So, ultimately, what we have here is a two-track justice system: those that can afford it and those that can’t. The Government on the other side has reinforced inequities that already exist, made it easier for the wealthy to get a good outcome in the justice system and harder for those without means. It’s shameful, it’s sad, but that’s where we are today with this Government.

Tamatha Paul—ha, ha, that was close! Just a warning to members that if that pause happens again, I could actually take a vote. So please be quick on your feet and call out. Thank you.

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. During the committee of the whole House phase, I was going to suggest, when we were talking about the title of this bill, that we could consider this the “Legal Disservice Amendment Bill” because this bill is a disservice to our communities, it is a disservice to our society, and it is a disservice to victims of harm and serious crime. But I was too slow. But I know now!

Everything has a whakapapa. Every thing and every person has an origin story, and all of us here in this House have a whakapapa that describes and explains how we came to be the people that we are and why we do the things that we do. We know that because, when we first stand in this House, we craft our maiden speeches, in which we honour that whakapapa and we talk about our lives and the trials and tribulations that we’ve overcome that have allowed us to come here.

In the same way, those cultural reports are about whakapapa; they’re about understanding what kind of an upbringing somebody had, what kinds of challenges they face in their everyday lives, whether they have health disabilities, whether they struggle with addiction, whether they have experienced abuse in their upbringings or in their lives, whether they have experienced abuse at the hands of the State. Understanding this allows us to understand what the rehabilitative pathway forward is for that individual, and that’s something that we need to understand in order to stamp any issues out at their root cause.

Moana Jackson said that a justice system does not exist in isolation from the society it serves, and that’s exactly what these cultural reports aimed to address and what they sought to understand. What are the parts of our society that we all enable that are contributing to the reasons why people are causing harm? And, similarly, an individual and their actions do not exist in isolation from the society in which they live and were raised. And, as I just said, without those cultural reports, we won’t ever fully grasp the extent to which our society is responsible for the harm that is experienced in our communities. I wonder whether that’s because some of us and some of the rules that we’ve made in this House are culpable for creating the conditions in which crime happens and harm happens in our communities in the first place.

I wanted to raise a point that my Te Pāti Māori colleague Tākuta raised in the Justice Committee when we were able to question the Ministry of Justice, Corrections, and Police on a whole range of matters, but specifically on these cultural reports. Tākuta raised the point that when Moana Jackson wrote his magnum opus He whaipaanga hou and when he exposed the racism that is baked into our justice system and the way that our justice system disproportionately incarcerates and impacts Māori, at the time of that being published, Māori women made up a very small percentage of the women’s prison population.

💬 Hon Member: 67 percent now.

Yeah, exactly—over the span of just a few decades, we’ve seen the representation of Māori women in prisons balloon to the point where Māori women are the most incarcerated indigenous group of people in the world. And that is not because there is something inherent within our whakapapa that makes us criminal; it is because our criminal justice system has racism baked into it, and this bill bakes it in even further. It’s also because of the wealth inequality that our country has enabled to grow since the 1980s. We know that poverty is a driver of crime as well, but the thing is that we’re not going to understand those drivers of crime, because we’re taking out that important mechanism by which we can understand that more.

I wanted to talk, too, about the way that this House and in this debate today that we have talked about, written about, scrutinised, and, ultimately, objectified Māori and Pacific people as criminals. I think that in itself is criminal. There have been mountains of research that have pointed to the many ways that colonisation has contributed to a justice system that disproportionately incarcerates Māori, Pacific Island people, and poor people, and those are the communities that will be most deeply impacted by the removal of cultural reports.

When you turn on your TV, and when you grow up in a place like I did, like Tokoroa, and you switch on your TV, all you see is the representation of Māori as criminals—whether that’s on the TV, whether that’s in films, whether that’s in television shows, we are represented as criminals. That’s something that we have to understand because you can only be what you see, and if all we’re seeing on TV is ourselves being represented as criminals, then of course there’s going to be an element of living up to that. But we’re never going to understand that, because we’re removing the element that helps us to understand the cultural influences on why people commit crime.

So it seems that we only search for the causes of outcomes in every other area in life except for crime, the prime area that will impact the trajectory of somebody’s life the most. It is time for a new way to approach the justice system, and that is by incorporating humanity and empathy into our processes and to allow for us to honour each person’s right to seek justice in our system. In order to do that, we have to understand where somebody comes from, who they are, and what has driven them to do what they have done, because we have to. Our justice system is at breaking point. Our prisons are overpopulated. Corrections are struggling to recruit staff to even service the enormous prison populations we have—both the remand population and the sentenced population.

So this is just kind of funnelling more people into the justice system for longer periods of time and doesn’t get to the root cause of why that crime was committed in the first place. I’m sure that there are also many victims of crime that may be able to move towards a space of healing by understanding why the person committed that crime towards them, as opposed to never knowing, never having that closure of understanding why that was committed in the first place. And that’s not to justify their actions, but it is to acknowledge that these cultural reports do help in the healing process for somebody to understand that background as well.

The Minister said today in the House that his mandate for rushing this bill through urgency was based on their election win, and that people on the doors were saying they just want to feel safe in their community and they wanted some law and order, and I think that’s perfectly reasonable. It’s perfectly reasonable that everybody should be able to live free from harm and free from assault and harassment and discrimination—I absolutely accept that. But what I don’t understand from today’s debate is why the Minister saw this bill, in particular, as the key thing that would make communities feel safer. Because we know, based on evidence and the lack of evidence underpinning this particular bill that this is not going to make our communities any safer. In fact, like the Hon Duncan Webb was saying, it actually creates more future victims of crime and of harm. So, yeah, that’s all I’ve got to say on that. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to speak in support of this bill. Let me be clear—I’ve heard a lot of discussion tonight; let me be clear one more time: this makes no changes to section 27 of the Sentencing Act. Those provisions are still available for offenders to make submissions to the court. That was what it was intended to do. What we are simply removing is the funding for reports, often written by people with no connection to those offenders. I commend this bill to the House.

Look, in a sense, I’m surprised we even have to legislate for something, essentially, as small as this. This is a very simple bill. What I’m hearing from the Opposition is that it’s as though these reports will not exist anymore. Of course they’ll exist—it is simply who is going to present the reports. Actually, I would say that it is much more valuable for the judge to get a report from people—the whānau, the friends; the people who know the offender rather than somebody who needs to be paid for it. Remember, these paid-for reports did not exist until 2017, and then only barely. So we are still going to have access to those reports; it is merely that they are not going to be paid for. I commend this bill to the House.

Tēnā koe e te Pīka, otirā tēnā tātou. Moumou te pango. Koinā te kupu kōrero a te iwi Māori mō tēnei momo mahi, tētahi mahi kāore ōna tino take, tētahi tangata kāore ōna tino take. Moumou te pango. He moumou anō hoki te kōrero, i te mea ahakoa te nui, te whānui, te whārahi, te hohonu rānei o te kupu whakamārama kia mārakerake te kite atu, kei te taka ki te hunga taringa turi. Te taringa turi o te Kāwanatanga hou kua ara ake mai nei, e mea nei ahau he aupēhitanga. He aupēhitanga i runga i te iwi Māori, e kore te iwi Māori e whiti ki te ora, te oranga nuitanga i whakaarohia, i wawatahia, i ōhākīngia e ō rātou mātua tīpuna i roto i te Tiriti o Waitangi. Moumou te pango.

Ara ake nei au ki te waha i ngā ōhākī me te tū a te Pāti Māori mō tēnei o ngā pire e tuku nei i te iwi Māori kia mauherehia i roto i ō rātou whenua ake o Aotearoa.

[Thank you, Madam Speaker, indeed greetings to all of us. Waste of black. That is the phrase of the Māori people about this type of action, an action that has no real purpose, a person that has no real purpose. Waste of black. It is also a waste of a phrase, because despite the magnitude, the breadth, the length, or the depth of the words of explanation so that it can be clearly seen, it is falling on people with deaf ears. The deaf ear of the new Government that has risen, that I am saying is an oppression. An oppression of the Māori people, the Māori people will never make the transition to good health, the magnificent health that was considered, that was aspired to, that was bequeathed by their forebears and ancestors in the Treaty of Waitangi. Waste of black.

I rise to give voice to the parting with and the position of the Māori Party with respect to this bill that allows the Māori people to be incarcerated in their own land of Aotearoa.]

Indigenous incarceration is well understood right around the world. In post-settler colonial societies, the indigenous people of those nations are overrepresented in incarceration, in discrimination in justice, in police and corrections—in every possible place you can be exercising authority. This is well understood. If people in this House don’t understand that, you need to catch up quick. Because what you are doing today, what you are doing in this bill, is extending—extending—that history. You are doing nothing to address it.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Can we refrain from the word “you”, please. Don’t bring the Speaker into the debate; talk to the Government.

TĀKUTA FERRIS: Kia ora. Well, they are doing nothing to find any solutions. As my tuahine has said, the work of Moana Jackson was dedicated to understanding the nature of the justice system—not only in Aotearoa but across the world—and the profound impacts that these types of justice systems established in post-settler colonialist societies have on the indigenous population. It is unequivocal—it’s unequivocal—and I see, hear, feel none of it in what’s been presented.

Young Māori men, young Māori, rangatahi Māori, who arrive in courtrooms around this country, they come largely unsupported, feeling a sense of whakamā—whakamā, for they have strayed from where the ethos and the heart and the kaupapa of their culture for ever hoped that they would be. So they often arrive under-supported, they often arrive with no economic backing, and they are fodder into a minefield that sees them sent to jail five times faster than anyone else. These are not things that are up for contest; these are not things that need to be researched. And here we are, taking away one of the remaining available supports for those young Māori, for their families, as they come into the justice system in our country.

I can speak to this firsthand, and it’s a real shame that the Minister of Justice isn’t here just to listen—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Just one of the things in this House: we don’t refer to members who aren’t in the House. So a lot of learnings going on tonight.

TĀKUTA FERRIS: Well, i runga i ō mātou marae, ka tū atu me te kōrero mō te hunga nā rātou ēnei kōrero i taka. Nā ki te kore e tae ā-tinana mai ki te hua me te whakarongo ki ngā kupu whakahoki, ērā o ngā kōrero, e mea nei he kupu mana-kore. Engari kei te pai, tēnā rā koe.

[Well, on our marae, one stands and speaks about those who made these statements. Now, if they do not appear in person to consider and to hear the words of reply, those types of statements, it is considered words with no authority. But that’s OK, thank you.]

But I can speak to this from firsthand experience that a young person in our whānau found themselves, unfortunately, before the justice system and at the behest of, obviously, legal aid—the minimum requirements to get them through the court procedure. Had we not been there to support that through, this young person would have been straight to jail. The information that was able to be gleaned from the whānau members and presented in a manner that’s acceptable to the court and made available to a judge—to provide context for that young person—had an impact on the ruling. That is now gone with this decision. You might say it’s still there, but it’s not, because these whānau can’t afford to pay for it.

So I reflect again—for the person that I’m not supposed to talk about—and his view that, on the whole, colonisation was a good thing for Māori. And here he is, extending the reach and the impact of colonisation into the next generation of young Māori, who will arrive in justice, in courts around the country, under-supported, under-resourced, and at the mercy of a court that, by its very nature, over decades of time, has incarcerated those people.

Thank you. The speaker’s time has expired. I let the member run over because I rang the bell a little late.

Thank you, Madam Speaker, I appreciate the call. So the Government MPs have been at pains to clarify that this Government is only removing the legal aid funding for cultural reports. That is exactly the point, though. In actual fact, we have looked at commentary that saw the relevant Ministers actually seeing value in the cultural reports, in their own words, understanding the value of the wider context, that whakapapa that is brought to the courtroom to be able to service and meet other needs that have happened in the pathway of harm being caused. And the Ministers themselves have vocalised how they see the value in that, and then have quickly said, “All we’re doing is removing the funding.”

So what they are, essentially, saying, then, is some victims are being focused on and others are not. Some privileged offenders are going to be able to have broader context and the rest are not. So that is the point that this side has been proving for the entirety of the passage of this bill through this House. And I’m glad that we’ve made that clear, because there were some earlier futile attempts to try and pin this legislation to being tough on crime. And that quickly got removed, I see. I see that they’re no longer going down that road because, actually, they’re still available, but just for those who can afford it. So this cannot be called “tough on crime”, because it’s only tough for some—only tough for some—and for those who do not have privilege already, it’s not. So I can see why the Government members wisely chose to zip that narrative right up.

So then we are left with: what does actual accountability to victims look like? And a holistic, whānau-centred accountability to the harm that has happened is exactly what this removal of funding does not do. So the real enduring solutions for authentic accountability, an accountability to harm caused that often is not met by a jail cell—how is an offender supposed to feel direct accountability for the harm they have caused when it is in a place that means nothing to them, from a person and an institution that means nothing to them? So there too these cultural report funding removals are not even about victim-centred accountability processes. So we’ve put that to the moenga, to the bed, as well—we’ll put that to rest also.

So what we are left then with is simply just shallow election promises that have no basis or grounding in enduring justice solutions, especially for victims. And anybody who has spent any time looking into what happens to victims, including family violence and sexual violence victims who have been harmed by people who use violence—anybody who has spent any time looking into that knows that funding cultural reports is not what is the problem.

So then we are left with simply just shallow, dog-whistling legislation that will not benefit victims and will continue to perpetuate the inequities and the privileges of some people in the justice process. Now that has been happening for far too long. The funded cultural reports were actually an attempt to try and allow for a voice from marginalised and oppressed groups of peoples without the privilege. That’s what the cultural reports were actually doing: trying to bring a voice in for people who have none, instead of just privileging people who have access to power and resources and networks. And that, unfortunately, is this justice system that we still currently have, that people can get away with harm and crime, depending on if you have privilege. That is why I strongly oppose the shallowness of this legislation. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Kia ora, Madam Speaker. The implication from members opposite is that if they were approached by an offender who asked them for help, they’d say, “Yes, but only for a fee.” That is shameful. Reports remain; use them well; do it for free.

The Hon Ginny Andersen—[Interruption] Just a moment—I’m calling the Hon Ginny Andersen, thank you.

Thank you very much, and thank you to that member James Meager for that wonderful contribution to the debate tonight! In fact, the quality of this debate reflects which side of the argument has the stronger case, because when I think about what is the best way of characterising what we are seeing, just this bill is a really good example of the overall theme that this Government has been carrying over the past couple of months. The word that resonates the most with me is “hypocritical”, because when we look at what “hypocritical” actually means, it means—

💬 Hon Member: Hey, you can’t use the “H” word.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, you can’t call someone a hypocrite, but you can call a policy—

Hypocritical—I can say it is.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yes.

It is behaving in a way that suggests one has higher standards or has more noble beliefs than is the case, and I think this is a good example, because to talk tough on crime but to actually have a bill that makes more victims and more offenders is hypocritical. Also, to talk big about the cost of living crisis that all New Zealanders are currently going through but to bring here a bill to this House under urgency that will increase the costs on the taxpayer—that is hypocritical. So this bill is a wonderful example of the overall demeanour that this Government is bringing to New Zealand, and my prediction is that that demeanour will continue for the next three years.

The first point I’d like to make is access to justice. We hear that access to justice is important, but the reality is that this bill removes access to justice. It stops people having access to reports that will enable judges to make better decisions, and that is a real loss to our justice system.

The two areas that it really affects the most, and that concerns me, are the victims of crime. So we have a Government that has spoken about how important it is to put victims at the centre of our justice system, but we have a bill now that is passing under urgency where no victim’s voice is being heard, where there’s been no victim adviser involved, and where there’s been no advocacy groups able to have their voices heard. So if there is a view that the victims’ voices should be heard and put front and centre of our justice system, would you not give them the ability to speak on a bill that directly affects them? But still we are told that this Government puts victims at the centre of our justice system. When victims do not get a voice, we will have judges making decisions that do not take account of the impact on the victims because the funding for section 27 reports has been removed.

The other point that is important to make is to reduce reoffending. This is where it gets really hypocritical, because, only in the last few days, we’ve heard this great news that the corrections system is going to have increased rehabilitation—there’s going to be, hopefully, more funding to go along with the increased rehabilitation—and heard how that’s going to help there be fewer victims of crime and less reoffending. But in the same breath, they’re passing a bill that actually stops judges having the type of information before them at sentencing that will prevent reoffending, and that is exactly what Waikato University research published in 2020 actually said.

So there’s not been very much research going on in this bill. We’ve heard that the advice already provided by officials to the Minister was ignored and that they were directed to go for option two—we know that from the debate earlier today—but the research that we have got from Waikato University that was published in 2020 found that lawyers who used section 27 reports had experienced positive results, including better sentencing outcomes. It was a way to give the offender a clearer picture of the patterns involved in their offending and was reconnecting them with whānau and community, it was educating the judiciary and court practitioners on cultures such as tikanga Māori, and it reduced reoffending. So we do have some evidence there, but that evidence clearly wasn’t taken into account by this Government when passing a bill which they’re claiming is going to be helping victims and also getting tough on crime.

It’s really important that we go to the costs of this bill, and we’ve discussed this at the committee stage. There’s been some excellent work—Newsroom, one of them that’s picked up on this; there’s been some other really good reporting on this space: that back in December, the Minister received very clear advice that the long-term outcome of passing this legislation would, in fact, have a heavier burden on the taxpayer. So, in the long run, we as taxpayers are paying more for a system that is broken. That is why this is hypocritical, because to say that cost of living is number one; to say that we need to be assisting New Zealanders with the cost of living crisis, yet passing a bill that is unable to be funded under current budget—given there’s also a 6.5 percent budget cut—that is quite clearly hypocritical.

The Legal Services Amendment Bill will remove legal-aid funding for a report or a statement. What strikes me the most is just the sheer entitlement that we can hear members from the other side popping up and saying, “Well, they’re still there; we’ve still got them. Just whip out your Visa. Haven’t you got one?” So it is actually quite shocking to hear that we must have a justice system—if you want access to justice, you need to pay for those, and if a person cannot afford to pay for that, then tough luck; that’s tough. Maybe that’s where tough on crime comes in: it’s tough on those who can’t afford to pay. That’s the tough on crime that this Government has.

💬 Hon Willow-Jean Prime: A war on the poor.

It is a war on the poor, that if you can afford your good lawyer, if you can afford a section 27 report, that will help the sentencing outcome for your case.

It saddens me—it deeply saddens me—that the bills this House is passing under this Government just create a further divided New Zealand society; a two-tiered society where if someone can pay, if they have access to funding, they get better access to legal services, they get better access to a pathway in life. But if somebody cannot afford, then that’s tough luck; that’s tough on crime. That is a real concern for the future generations of New Zealand. Because let’s be honest: this disproportionately affects Māori, and it is Māori who will see the real detriment from this bill when those factors are not able to be taken into account at sentencing.

It’s a common theme of this Government to have disregard to those obligations under the Treaty of Waitangi to have consultation with a Treaty partner when there is a clear obligation and there’s a direct impact on te Iwi Māori, there is an absolute disregard for those obligations that are underpinned within the partnership of the Treaty of Waitangi. Maybe one of those principles will be reviewed when we see the next bill come through the House on that one.

I would like to conclude by saying that the real sadness going forward in this bill is: where does it set up our justice system? What is the future of our justice system if this is one of the first bills out of the gate for law and order that there will be a simple striking of the pen and the only justification, the only rationale, the only evidence, the only info that we got through the whole debate was that this was an election promise, this is in the 100-day plan, “This is in our coalition agreement, and therefore we’re just going to go ahead and do it.”?

There is no requirement to consult te Iwi Māori; there’s no requirement to consult victims of crime; there’s no need to consult anyone in in the legal profession because, going back to it, that is what hypocritical really is: it’s behaving in a way that suggests one has higher standards or more noble beliefs than is the case. That is the problem with this Government. There is a holier-than-thou approach that proclaims to make law on behalf of others that directly impacts the wellbeing and the outcomes of other people in New Zealand without any regard to those.

So I congratulate the members opposite on ticking the 100-day box of the 100-day plan and I look forward to all the commentary that comes in the weeks and months that pass as this Government once again hypocritically rides roughshod over the rights of New Zealanders and democracy; of people having a voice and being able to say that this bill is just damn wrong.

Members, the time has come for me to vacate the Chair. The House is suspended until 9 a.m. tomorrow.

Debate interrupted.

Sitting suspended from 9.58 p.m. to 9 a.m. (Wednesday)