Legal Services (Distribution of Special Fund) Amendment Bill

on behalf of the Minister of Justice: I move, That the Legal Services (Distribution of Special Fund) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

This bill amends the Legal Services Act 2011 to broaden the use of the Lawyers and Conveyancers Special Fund. Money in the special fund must be paid to the Secretary for Justice for the purpose of funding community law centres. The special fund serves an important role to ensure that people can access free legal help in the community. However, there is ambiguity around whether special fund money can be used to meet expenses incurred by community law centres when delivering community law services. This is because the current law is narrowly framed.

This bill makes a minor change to broaden the use of the special fund. This will enable the Secretary for Justice to enter into contracts to also fund, facilitate, and otherwise support the provision of community legal services by community law centres. It is important to support the long-term funding of organisations that deliver community legal services and ensure people are able to access the legal help they need.

To conclude, I’d like to thank members for their support of this bill. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. What a momentous day it is as we add 12 words to the Legal Services Act! We’ve made our position clear: we’re not going to stand in the way of this bill passing—well, not for very long anyway—because community law centres are really important.

I must say it’s good to know that there’s cross-party support for the continued existence—and, hopefully, the flourishing—of our community law network, because, as the Minister pointed out and other members have observed, community law centres fill a really important gap in access to justice. Access to justice is essential to the rule of law, and the ability to not only go to court—which is only one aspect of access to justice—but also just to know your rights and also to know how you can sort your stuff out in a legal sense is actually really, really important.

To a large part, it’s that second aspect that community law centres fill. They are able to talk to people and say, “Well, look, we think you’re in the right”, or “You’re in the wrong”, or “There’s some middle ground”—but also navigating how then to vindicate those rights. Many a time people say, “I want to go to court and sue”, and so on, and, look, maybe that’s the right course, but many a time there’s another way, whether it be through an alternative tribunal, one of our many ombudsman dispute resolution schemes, or the disputes tribunal.

That kind of information and just that helping hand—because, I can remember, I both used to volunteer at the community law centre, I used to be a supervising solicitor at the community law centre, and I’ve sat on the board of a community law centre. Quite often, people might think their issues are trivial—“I’ve bought this appliance, this washing machine, for $600 and it’s broken.” Now, for some of us, that would not be a particularly troubling thing, but for other people in the community, that is catastrophic because the weekly surplus that they have is so small that that sets them back in a very significant way. To be able to sit down and say, “Well, look, that retailer might have given you the brush off, but the first step is to go back to the retailer and let them know a few things.”—the first thing you need to let them know is that you’ve clearly taken some advice, just on the lowdown. The second thing is that you know what your rights are; that you can’t simply be told, “Well, it’s two years old, so it’s out of warranty.” The third thing is to let them know that, if you don’t get satisfaction there, you know where to go next.

Nine times out of 10, equipping an ordinary New Zealander with those three facts will be more than enough to solve their problem. All of a sudden, the person at the counter doesn’t dismiss them out of hand; they go and get their manager and their manager knows that there’s a thing called the Consumer Guarantees Act. That is really empowering, so our community law centres do need to be funded properly. The Canterbury community law centre does a great job down there in Christchurch, but one of the things that is really important—and perhaps this bill will make sure continues—is making sure those lawyers stay up to date and they’re well resourced. Recently, I know they went through and reviewed all their salaries to make sure they’re paid on a scale which was not derisory—which arguably had been the case—and also to make sure they get further education so that, when the law does change, they can make sure they’re giving up-to-date law; and also that they have all the research tools they need, that they can go online and look at the legal commentaries and the statutes and so on and so forth, which will cost money.

If that’s what this bill does, all well and good. We think it was probably the case anyway, but we’ve been told it’s not, so that’s why we’ll be supporting this bill further in this House. I mean, if you think about it—and there is that problem: I’m disappointed that, in the committee of the whole House, the Minister in the chair, the Hon Penny Simmonds, didn’t really give a great deal of comfort as to contracts which were already extant. It may be that the Crown Law advice that she won’t let us see says that this doesn’t affect existing contractual arrangements, but there is a question about that. The definition of “legal services” in the Legal Services Act is a little bit narrower. I had thought that it was relating to the lawyers and conveyancers definition, which is a very broad definition. It, essentially, says what services are regulated services, and legal services there can be all kinds of services, but a slightly narrower definition, I think, in the Legal Services Act.

Look, it’s a piece of legislation which is saying it’s necessary, but again, I just want to really make sure that, across all parties, we ensure that the special fund that this bill talks about is properly resourced. One of the things which has happened recently is that interest rates have been relatively high. We can talk about that in other contexts later, but one of the upsides of that is that the money going into the special fund has actually been pretty good. We were in a very low-interest environment; the Government actually—and it was the Labour Government that did it—had to top up the special fund. That hasn’t been necessary recently, but it’s perfectly possible that, as interest rates do go up and down, that will need to happen again. It’s good to see that, from what I have heard in the relatively short speeches from the other side, there is a commitment to ensuring that lower-income people do get free legal services, and therefore I’m inferring they will be properly funded.

Of course, the other thing is that it’s not just low-income people. Community law centres generally have an open-door policy. Community law centres don’t tend to seek as customers middle-class and wealthy people who can get their own legal advice and pay for it, but they also come in, particularly in the kinds of clinics that they have where you can have a drop in and ask a few quick questions. It’s not just low- and super-low - income people; it’s a wide range of people that come in.

Also, just recognising that, in terms of early intervention, the work the community law centres do in the family space is really, really good, because when people break up and have property issues and care of child and children issues, getting to sort that out at an early stage, before it gets tangled and acrimonious, can be a really, really useful thing. What perhaps we don’t understand is that, many a time, people split up and no lawyer sees it—often ever—but that’s not a good outcome sometimes for the children in particular in the relationship, because it’s always better to have some kind of structure around how that child is cared for; how the child is funded, right? Child support either within the IRD system or outside of it is an important part, and our community law centres funded through the special fund are a really good part of that. I’m sorry if I’m boring you Vanessa Weenink, but, you know—

Rima Nakhle: No, no. You’re not boring us; not at all!

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: Wakey, wakey. It’s been a long day. I must say the other thing that we need to address about the special fund is the proportion of it that goes to community law centres, in terms of the interest on trust accounts, whether it remains appropriate that banks keep 40 percent of the interest on trust accounts. You’ve got to remember that’s clients’ money. The general rule should be it goes back to the client, but, in this case, the legislature has intervened and said, “Let’s use it for community law centres”—and then said—“and let the banks keep 40 percent of it.” That’s a pretty significant share. As I think I said earlier, perhaps in the second reading, that’s about $10 million of interest that would go to clients or the special fund that the banks are getting. I mean, of those three people—clients, poor people needing legal services, and banks—I know where I think it should go, and I know the least deserving of it. But there you go; that’s something we can address on another occasion.

This is a bill that’s not urgent, that could have gone in a statutes amendment bill, that’s probably unnecessary and doesn’t address all of the problems it needs to address, but we’re generous people on this side of the House; we’ll probably support it anyway.

The time has come for the dinner break. The House will resume at 7 p.m.

Sitting suspended from 6.01 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Good evening, members. When we broke for the dinner break, we were debating the Legal Services (Distribution of Special Fund) Amendment Bill. We are up to call No. 3 in the third reading; it’s a Green Party call.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Green Party to support this bill in its third reading. As I’ve mentioned in my second reading speech, this is a bill that was originally introduced under Budget urgency, and it was something we opposed initially but, through a very thorough select committee stage as well as engagement with the submitters, we have now supported this bill.

This bill was something that we did go through in the select committee stage, and I want to just highlight some of the key points during the committee stage that deserve some attention on this bill. Understandably, this is a small bill—only four clauses—yet we were able to have a good discussion on each of the clauses. I think, particularly, let’s start with clause 1 from a title perspective; we did have quite a robust conversation around the title. I would really like to thank the member Camilla Belich, in particular, as well as Vanushi Walters, who gave a very good and an insightful history of the context of Community Law Centres Aotearoa that brings this bill to us. It’s now been wrapped into the Legal Services Act 2011.

It is unfortunate that the Minister did not take on board my title amendment, and the main reason for that is because the main reason I’m putting the amendment is because I do believe that “distribution”, in this case, is not the appropriate word to use. I think it might have been the member Camilla Belich’s suggestion that “clarification of distribution of special fund” would have been much more insightful, or “clarification of special fund”, because it simply is not actually to do with the distribution of the fund itself. In that sense, the title can be interpreted as a little bit misleading.

In terms of the commencement date, we saw that the commencement date has changed: it’s now the day after Royal assent. The original commencement date is 1 July 2025. There is a level of significance because, as I mentioned, this is a bill that was introduced under urgency in May, but only the first reading was introduced under urgency, and there was no motion that had been brought to the House at the time that it was going to have a shortened select committee stage. It was a question that we raised with the Minister—we weren’t able to get that in select committee, but it was a question we raised with the Minister during the committee stage—on how they’re intending to have this bill and this Act come into force on 1 July 2025, when they were still in the process of the select committee.

Also, at the same time, members asked the Minister questions around whether, between 1 July 2025—considering that it was introduced under Budget urgency; therefore, understandably, there will be some Budget implications—but considering that, with the Budget implications, what has changed, if anything, and what impact does it have to the Government or to the implementation or the commencement of this bill now that, even after Royal assent, you’re looking at a four-and-a-half month delay in terms of the commencement, and whether there’s any significant issues?

Then we moved on to the principal Act of this bill, and that is clause 3. I think this is the area that we did spend a little bit of time on during the committee stage. It’s important to highlight the fact that this bill—and I’ll talk more about clause 4—but this bill is a very small bill that could have been wrapped into the Statutes Amendment Bill, which was something that the Hon Dr Duncan Webb has mentioned, but instead it’s being introduced as a separate bill. We did check with the Minister to see if it was going to be wrapped into its individual bill that that deserves a select committee process and everything separate, beyond what we see in the Statutes Amendment Bill; whether there has been any thoughts about wrapping in other things from the Legal Services Act into it as part of a package, particularly when we are looking at the fact that the community law centres part of the Legal Services Act—it occupies Subpart 3 of Part 3, “Administration of legal services system”, specifically sections 93 to 96, and section 94 is what’s being amended here—whether there’s been any consideration on expanding the scope and potentially looking at separating out the community law centres into its own part within the Legal Services Act.

The rationale for that is—well, there are two reasons for that. Number one is, in terms of sections 93 to 96 on community law centres, it doesn’t necessarily fit nicely under the definition of “Administration of legal service system” , similar to other subparts of that Part 3 of the principal Act. Also, other legal service providers—legal aid, for example—have their own section: it’s Part 2 of the Legal Services Act. If legal aid has its own section, then presumably there is a possibility that community law centres should also have its own section within that particular Act. Also, another important part is that this particular bill deals with special fund, and “special fund” in principal legislation is only applicable to community law centres. By embedding it as a subpart of a major part, questions were raised on whether that is going to mean expanding, or whether we’re still going to be able to maintain the integrity of the ring-fencing of that particular fund within that particular subpart.

Finally, the crux of the bill is clause 4, which has the most significant amendment. Now, this is something that I think the member Vanushi Walters has raised a number of really significant tabled amendments around, which weren’t accepted, and it’s a shame because a lot of that actually came from the submitters themselves in terms of the amendment. It came from legal experts in the New Zealand Law Society; it came from the Community Law Centres Aotearoa themselves, which is the most affected by this particular legislation—so it was unfortunate that the Minister wasn’t receptive of some of these amendments.

I do want to mention my specific tabled amendment, as well, that the Minister didn’t really consider as a part of that, which I actually think is an important one, because the current wording of clause 4, amended section 94(1)(b), does say “fund, facilitate, and otherwise support” in the context of the secretary. The clarification I have—and this also came from the Community Law Centres Aotearoa’s submission—is that it should state that the secretary is “funding the functions that enable, facilitate, or support the provision of community legal services”. The reason I want to raise this as a particularly important aspect is the way that we’re looking at a succession of sequential verbs—of using “fund, facilitate, and otherwise support”—also, then, would imply that it’s also the secretary’s role to facilitate and otherwise support the provisions, when, in fact, my assumption is that the secretary’s role is to fund, and the functions of that remains with the Community Law Centres Aotearoa, which then ties into the “facilitate, or support the provisions of community legal services”. This is something that the Minister wasn’t able to support, but I’m hoping that, by mentioning this particular nuance, it does give a scope for, potentially, both Crown Law and the Ministry of Justice, but also provides some sort of clarification in terms of interpretation for the Community Law Centres Aotearoa, as well.

To conclude, the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand does support this bill. We do recognise that, although this is a small bill—and we’ve heard a lot of murmurs from the Government side as we were debating this bill during the committee of the whole House stage—but it is a bill that has been introduced. It is, out of a lot of the bills that have been introduced by the Government, reasonably benign, or actually completely benign. If we’re going to be able to see more bills being introduced like this, this is something that we could actually encourage and have something that is reasonably benign that everyone could support. With that, the Green Party commends this bill to the House.

I rise in support of the Legal Services (Distribution of Special Fund) Amendment Bill. This bill makes a change to how the special fund can be used. People sitting at home who watched that last speech could be forgiven for having no idea what this bill is about or what anyone’s talking about, but it’s pretty simple: lawyers and conveyancers up and down New Zealand, for various reasons, have trust accounts where they hold their clients’ money for a period of time. Fans of that iconic New Zealand show Outrageous Fortune may recall that Jethro got in trouble for abusing or misusing money in the trust account, and Gary Savage actually blackmailed him and stiffed him on a property deal as a result. A lot of lawyers have these trust accounts; most of them don’t misuse it.

What’s interesting is that they sometimes accrue interest when they are put in the bank, and that interest goes to the special fund and the Secretary for Justice—that is, the chief executive of the New Zealand Ministry of Justice—uses that money to fund community law centres. I actually think that’s quite a nice feature of our legal system, because community law centres help a huge number of people and it’s not obvious what else would happen with that interest that could be better than this.

But there’s a small problem. The law, as it stands in the Legal Services Act, says that it has to be used for “community legal services”. There’s some dispute as to whether the depreciation, the maintenance, the electricity, the rent on a community law centre counts as a “legal service” or another use of money. What we’re doing with this legislation tonight is saying, actually, the Secretary for Justice can make some rules about what exactly is included, assuming they’ll use their common sense to ensure that the money does actually go to providing community law services, even if the precise use is not paying for a lawyer to sit in a room.

It’s pretty sensible stuff—not difficult to explain—and, you know what, maybe if Lawrence Xu-Nan learnt to do that, we’d put up some more agreeable bills for him. I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to support the Legal Services (Distribution of Special Fund) Amendment Bill. I’m going to take you back to Budget night, because I spoke to this bill also in urgency on Budget night—I was the last speaker of that session before the clock ticked over to 12 o’clock, and I remember saying, as I was talking about the rest of the Budget, that that Budget was a game-changer for business, in some ways. The policy that we’d announced that day in the Budget was Investment Boost, which was a game-changer, but when you take it back to this bill, this is a game-changer for access to justice and access to legal services, and that’s why this bill is so important to community law services.

In the speeches that I’ve given through the first and second readings, as I said, I sat on the Justice Committee, heard the submissions, and we got that substantial submission from the Community Law Centres. The services they provide throughout New Zealand—those 24 centres—provide access to so many vulnerable New Zealanders. As we heard also, they gave over 27,000 education sessions in their last year. They give access to justice and to information that people require. New Zealand First supports this bill as very much a tweak so the funds can be accessed more. It also shows New Zealand First’s commitment to sensible and cost-effective solutions to improving service delivery. It’s about using funds that are there and not using taxpayers’ money. I commend this bill to the House.

This is a split call. I call Tamatha Paul.

Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. Nō reira tēnā tātou katoa. E tū ana ahau ki te kōrero e pā ana ki tēnei pire, ko te Legal Services (Distribution of Special Fund) Amendment Bill.

Ka parakitihi ahau i tōku reo rangatira, te reo o ō tātou tīpuna. E mihi ana ki ngā kaiwhakamāori reo Māori i roto i tēnei Whare. E mihi ana ki tōku kaiako reo Māori, ko Devon Wikaira tōna ingoa. Ko Whītiki te ingoa o tāna kaupapa.

Ko te Legal Services (Distribution of Special Fund) Amendment Bill te ingoa o tēnei pire. He whakaaro nā te Pāti Kākāriki ēnei kupu. I te pānui tuatahi o tēnei pire, i whakakāhore mātou i tēnei kaupapa. Ko te mea tuatahi o te whakakāhore nā te whakaiti o ētahi pūtea mō te legal aid funding ki ngā community law centres anō hoki.

E 24 ngā tari o te motu o te kaupapa o community law. I te komiti whiriwhiri, e tautoko ana a Community Law Centres of Aotearoa i tēnei pire. Arā kua whiti i tā mātou whakakāhore, kua whiti i tā tātou pōti o tēnei kaupapa, o tēnei pire.

Kua tautoko mātou i te pire ināianei, i tēnei pō. I tēnei pō i te pānui tuatoru o tēnei pire, e tautoko ana mātou i tēnei kaupapa. Ko te kaupapa o tēnei pire, ka toha i te pūtea ki ngā hapori o te motu ki te tautoko i ō rātou tāngata me ngā mahi ture.

I te wāhanga 298 o te Lawyers and Conveyancers Act i te tau 2006, ko ngā ture ki te toha i aua pūtea e noho ana i roto i te special fund, ka whakautu i te Secretary of Justice i ngā tāra nā te special fund. Ko te mahi a te special fund ko te koha pūtea ki ngā tari o community law o te motu.

I te wāhanga 94 o te Legal Services Act i te tau 2011, e kōrero ana i taua wāhanga e pā ana ki ngā tikanga o ō rātou kawenata. Ko te mahi a tēnei pire, ko te Legal Services (Distribution of Special Fund) Amendment Bill, he mahi whakapai i te Legal Services Act i te tau 2011 ki te whakaae i ngā kawenata nā te wāhanga 94 o taua ture. Ko te kaupapa o taua wāhanga ko te mahi tahi, ko te mahi tahi a ngā tari e mahi ana i ngā mahi ture.

So āe, arā kua whakamana i tēnei pire, kua tautoko ahau i tēnei pire. Nō reira ngā mihi ki ngā kaiwhakamāori i tēnei Whare Miere, kia pai tō koutou wiki-mutunga. Kua ea tāku kōrero nō reira tēnā koutou e te Whare.

[Thank you, Madam Speaker. Therefore, greetings to us all. I stand to speak about this bill, the Legal Services (Distribution of Special Fund) Amendment Bill.

I will practice my noble language, the language of our ancestors. I would like to thank the Māori language interpreters within this House. I acknowledge my Māori language teacher; his name is Devon Wikaira. Whītiki is the name of his programme.

The Legal Services (Distribution of Special Fund) Amendment Bill is the name of this bill. These words are the thoughts of the Green Party. At the first reading of this bill, we opposed this initiative. The first rationale of our opposition was the reduction of some funding for legal aid funding for community law centres.

The community law initiative has 24 national offices. At select committee, Community Law Centres of Aotearoa supported this bill—i.e., it made it past our opposition, and it made it through our vote of this topic, of this bill.

We are now in support of this bill, tonight. At the third reading of this bill tonight, we support this initiative. The purpose of this bill is to distribute funding to the communities of the nation to support their people and their legal activities.

In section 298 of the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act 2006, the legislation for the distribution of those funds sits within the special fund, and the Secretary of Justice pays the dollar amounts for the special fund. The purpose of the special fund is to grant funding to the community law offices of the country.

In section 94 of the Legal Services Act 2011, that section speaks about the provisions of their covenants. The purpose of this bill, the Legal Services (Distribution of Special Fund) Amendment Bill, is to improve on the Legal Services Act 2011 to endorse the covenants in section 94 of that bill. The purpose of that section is cooperation—the cooperation of the offices that work on legal matters.

So yes, we have supported this bill, I have supported this bill. Therefore, I would like to thank the interpreters in this Beehive; have a good weekend. My speech is concluded, so greetings to you all in the House.]

Thank you, Madam Speaker. One of the select committee recommendations was to change the starting date of the Act, because the original date has already passed. Therefore, it’s important that we get this bill passed this evening, and I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise also to support this bill, as we said we would throughout the speeches this evening. It’s true that it is a very simple bill to understand. I think the two key questions that we’ve been asking through the committee stage are whether clarification is really needed, which is the first one, and our view is that it wasn’t—our view is shared by Community Law Centres Aotearoa—and the second question is: even if clarity was needed, is this the most important work that the Government should be doing for the people of New Zealand? Again, the argument was that, no, it could well have been part of a Statutes Amendment Bill, it could have been part of work that I mentioned Sir Geoffrey had suggested in terms of the review of laws that should be repealed that are on the statute book, but we are going to support it none the less.

I did notice through the course of the speeches that, on this side of the House, we had a number of people stand up and speak to their personal involvement with community law, whether it be volunteering or as members of staff or as members of the board, and it is a fantastic thing to do in terms of contributing to our community. [Interruption] I didn’t quite hear that from the Government side, so just some gentle encouragement that it’s not too late—lawyers or non-lawyers, there are plenty of things you can do to contribute to access to justice.

Where I started my speech on the second reading was a comment on why we’re in urgency. I do think that’s relevant here at the third reading as well. I was recently contacted, as I’m sure many of the other members were, by a group called Improving Urgency, who have a set of recommendations that they’re arguing for. They’re doing it precisely at this moment in time because, as we all are very familiar with, our Standing Orders are under review and this is the time when parliamentarians across the House will get to decide whether those provisions relating to urgency are good, or perhaps where something ought to be done so that we avoid the situation that we’re currently in, where we see ourselves in urgency to clarify a law that community law says doesn’t need to be clarified.

Improving urgency suggests that we look at a set of criteria that would be applied to determine when urgency is needed: the presence of a genuine emergency, imminent deadlines that are linked to international commitments or legal obligations, and when the issue requires immediate legal action to prevent significant financial or reputational damage—this is what they suggest in terms of where we could go. If you are fond of reading this fantastic book McGee, you will also get some direction in terms of what urgency ought to be—the suggestions in there are legal reasons, emergency or unforeseen events, and political situations—so it does allow for the fact where you campaigned on an issue and you are wanting to move that quickly through the House. But, again, I’d just suggest that the stretch of the use of urgency is getting a little bit ridiculous.

I do worry: a few people have said to me, “Urgency will end at midnight, and at least that’s a limit on it.” In fact, we could, if the Government wanted to, go into extraordinary urgency, which, as the members on the Government benches will know, I will have a lot to say about that as I know my colleagues will on the next bill. I have certainly had a steady stream of coffee throughout the day. If we were to go into extreme urgency, as I’m sure the members will want to know in advance before they make this call, the House only breaks between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m., so we’ll, essentially, be going all the way through to 8 a.m., which will potentially be quite entertaining and perhaps we could see if the speeches on that side get longer, or if they get any shorter, if that’s even a possibility.

I do want to acknowledge community law. They are an extraordinary service, and they did a study when I was there with them, back in 2018, that looked at value for money. Even back then, they had a return on investment of $50 million of free legal services each year. It cost $11 million but it was said to deliver $50 million, and that’s because issues were resolved at a very, very early stage, which is fantastic. I did also want to speak to one issue, which I do think is one the House needs to continue to be mindful of—

Hon David Seymour: Extraordinary urgency ends on Saturday.

VANUSHI WALTERS: It does end on Saturday, as Mr Seymour has said.

Hon David Seymour: We finish at midnight anyway.

VANUSHI WALTERS: That would be true for today. The opportunity is lost for this week, but why do I suspect that urgency is in our imminent future, again, but moments away? Perhaps the public can watch and see whether that might be the case, in preparation for the next lot.

I did also want to just acknowledge the history of the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act in 2006. When I was going back to the Hansard to look at that bill and the changes made, I came across this beautiful quote from Nandor Tanczos. They were considering the percentage of money that the banks kept, and it looks like the select committee interrogated, even back then in 2006, whether the banks should be holding as much of the percentage of money as they are—of course, currently, it’s 40 percent on law. I will make the point that I understand that negotiations have happened with a number of banks who are looking at reducing that margin voluntarily. My view is very strongly that that should be reduced in statute. Nandor said, “The bill as it was introduced originally sought to amend that provision so that the banks would retain 45 percent, and community law centres would receive 55 percent,”.

The only amount that they managed to negotiate that down to was 5 percent, and they got it down to 40 percent in community law, retaining 60 percent, but he also made this point: he said, “The question of the true cost”—

Hon David Seymour: I woke up and she was back on the bill.

VANUSHI WALTERS: I’m very much on the bill, and I’m quoting Hansard into Hansard about an issue that is very relevant to the bill. This is so good. He said, “The question of the true cost of the service has never actually been resolved to anyone’s satisfaction. This is the service that the banks provide in setting up and maintaining those accounts. I am moving to amend the proportion the banks would now retain from 40 percent to 30 percent. The concern about that proportion is that if we get it wrong, the banks may cease to provide the service.” He was acknowledging that it couldn’t be too low, that it shouldn’t be too high, and that even at that stage, they hadn’t truly analysed what that appropriate amount was. I do think that that’s a matter for this House to consider at some stage, because what we know is that, at the moment, there isn’t sufficient free legal advice and certainly not free legal representation for people who need it, so it’s something we should look at.

I did want to acknowledge one more time Te Ara Ture, which is also a community law centre initiative trying to help address that gap where pro bono lawyers assist community members with legal issues. An interesting fact from last term was that Chris Bishop had a member’s bill that attempted to allow lawyers to provide free legal services without necessarily that funnel, if you like. Our view was very firmly that community law plays a very important role in terms of directing that capacity to precisely where it’s needed. The other interesting service that they started was the legal information bot, where people could type in questions and have those answered, which is fantastic, especially for young people.

Many people have been acknowledged today, and names dropped and such. I did want to mention one more in closing, Piers Davies, who’s been a significant part of the community law movement and who in one week’s time will step down from the YouthLaw board. He told me about 10 years ago that he was going to step down, and he’s really pushed and done everything possible to ensure access to justice, but especially for young people, so to all our heroes in community law, but today, especially to Piers Davies, I commend this bill to the House.

Madam Speaker, happy Tuesday! Where else would you want to be on a Tuesday in urgency, Madam Speaker? Isn’t that great? I wish to wake the House up after that 10 minutes of nothing. This will be refreshing. Extraordinary urgency? Well, that sounds exciting, so I say to the member Vanushi Walters, “Bring it on!” This bill, the Legal Services (Distribution of Special Fund) Amendment Bill, is a great piece of legislation, great for our community law, and therefore I am going to commend it to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker, for this opportunity to speak on the Legal Services (Distribution of Special Fund) Amendment Bill. This is not a bill that I’ve participated in before now, so it has been interesting to hear the debate on this third reading.

Of course, I was a lawyer for one part of my life and was very much involved with the ins and outs of the trust fund. As David Seymour said before, this is a very important function that law firms hold, because, of course, if you are doing a conveyancing or a much bigger transaction and your lawyers hold your funds for you, if the lawyers do something bad, that’s going to end badly. That may have happened in the past, so one of the things that we’ve been doing in New Zealand for a long time is using some of the money that’s made from those funds, as David Seymour said, to fund community law. We know, also, that community law centres are great organisations that help people in need.

I want to pause on that for a moment, because now I am not a lawyer and I am a constituent MP. The phenomenal work that the Dunedin Community Law Centre does is just so helpful to so many people, and I want to commend all of them for the work that they do. Be it on immigration cases or when people are having civil disputes and need a little bit of help, community law is there for them, so it’s very important for many of our citizens that community law is able to operate as effectively and as helpfully as possible.

I’m also the member for a university town, which, of course, has law students, and many of them volunteer at community law centres, or they certainly did in the past when I was a younger lawyer and would help at Dunedin Community Law Centre. It turned out that somebody who’d studied a lot of trade regulation and international environmental law and the Resource Management Act wasn’t that helpful! Luckily, most of my colleagues had done things like family law and more property law papers, and they were much more helpful than I ever was. I do want to make that shout-out to community law.

We’ve heard from the various speeches that the drafting of the current law could be read to be very narrow and not include costs such as the lease for the premises that, of course, these community law organisations have to operate out of. Everyone is agreed that it’s good to fix it. It says in the bill: “Where the Special Fund cannot be used to meet costs, Crown funding is required instead.” Noting that I haven’t been part of this bill, that does look, to me, like this is a move away from Crown funding for any community law functions and that this is another way to help the Government’s books by, really, more levies. We’ve seen that with the waste levy for instance: that it gets used for a whole lot of different things.

That is a negative, but we’re trying to focus on the positives here, because, as the member before me, Tom Rutherford, said, it’s Tuesday night in Parliament’s time and Friday evening in other people’s time. I wanted to pick up, though, on some other points that were made in the discussion of this bill—

Hon David Seymour: Tell us about it.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: David Seymour is asking me to tell him about it, and I’ll tell him about his speech. He said something along the lines of, “If the Opposition speeches were clearer or shorter, then perhaps the Government would put up more agreeable bills.” We are seeming to be in agreement tonight, so I’m wondering if that is a promise that—

Hon David Seymour: Unfortunately, the member hasn’t qualified.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: The member hasn’t qualified for being unclear or clear?

Hon David Seymour: She could improve her average performance if she sat down before time.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: Well, I’m wondering about this statement that David Seymour has been making about the Opposition speeches and if there is some sort of promise here that, rather than taking us into urgency time and time again and looking at bills in all stages, this Government will commit to the sorts of bills that all members of this House can agree on. I’m hoping that that is what he is saying. I can’t quite hear him.

Hon Kieran McAnulty: No, of course it’s not.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: Oh, I’m hearing that it’s not what he’s saying. Well, a challenge to you, Mr Seymour—

The member’s time has expired because that is the end of the speech.

E te Māngai o te Whare, tuatahi e mihi ana ki te mema o te Pāti Kākāriki mō tāna kōrero i te reo taketake mō te wā tuatahi. E mihi ana ki a ia. Ka rere te reo o te whenua i tēnei Whare, ka piki te ora. Ahakoa ko tēnei te kupu hou mō mātou i tēnei pō: “whakaupa”.

[Madam Speaker, first I would like to acknowledge the member of the Green Party for her speech in the indigenous language for the first time. I congratulate her. When the language of the land flows in this House, we feel better. Despite that, this is the new vocabulary for us tonight: “prolong”.]

“Whakaupa” means “to delay, prolong, or protract”, and I shall do none of that. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to be able to take a slightly longer call—a full call; I only had a part-call in the last reading. Community law is a very interesting subject matter, and I did touch on some of my experience in community law. I volunteered there. I was also on the management committee of the Wellington Community Law Centre before the community law centres were merged into a national body, which is a change of structure. I did go back to volunteer as a lawyer in community law once that structure was in place.

The issue, really, is that this is an extremely special and important part of the way that we provide legal services and legal advice to the community. I think it’s the people who work in community law, like my colleague Vanushi Walters, who was heckled somewhat during her speech—I think we need to acknowledge that Vanushi Walters studied at Oxford University and is a qualified lawyer, and instead of going to earn the big bucks at one of the major firms, she ran YouthLaw for many, many years in community law centres and has done more pro bono work than, I think, probably anyone in this House who’s legally qualified. She has made a massive contribution to community law and also to the spirit of free legal services and access to justice. I just wanted to acknowledge that, Vanushi, because you are an exceptional lawyer and an exceptional citizen in the sense of your commitment towards access to justice. It’s important for us to remember that and also your long experience with community law and your contribution there, too.

I do agree with some of the speakers on the other side who acknowledge the way that community law is funded. It is, as we’ve traversed, a very interesting funding mechanism, where all of the very, very wealthy trust accounts—I don’t know whether an account can be wealthy, but anyway, they usually have a lot of money in them. That’s because lawyers hold money on trust for a number of different important transactions, and that’s to ensure that they get paid on time. It’s also to ensure that they’re safe, and it’s to uphold different contractual agreements. For whatever reason, sometimes your personal money can be held by your lawyer in their trust account, and there are lots of rules associated with running a trust account. As qualified lawyers, anyone who’s ever gone through that process, there’s a lot of training and education that you have to go through in order to be able to legally manage one of those in a responsible way. These are significant functions of the way that our legal services are provided.

One of the ways that the legal community and, in fact, Governments of the past and successive Governments have decided to utilise the function of that is through allowing the interest that accrues on those trust accounts, rather than just being kept by the bank—although there is a percentage which is kept by the bank, and this has been mentioned a few times, and I’ll just park that there for now while I finish explaining how the trust account works—that money then, or 60 percent of that interest, goes to this community law funding. We’ve got 24 community law centres throughout New Zealand. I visit a few of them, certainly not all of them, but I do know—

Hon Kieran McAnulty: Wairarapa?

CAMILLA BELICH: I haven’t been to the one in Wairarapa, but I’d love to attend the one in Wairarapa. I think all of them that I have visited have been incredible services, and I mentioned it very quickly in one of the contributions that I made, but I think it’s worth saying again: members of this House will know how useful community law centres are because of the number of times they refer their constituents to those services. It could be that they refer them to attend and see a lawyer, or it could be that they refer to their very excellent community law guide.

Before there was a plethora of legal information on the internet, this was, really, the one free area that you could find very, very good, solid legal advice. This community law guide is kept in most public libraries, I think, still today. It’s usually distributed for free and updated, and it’s a hugely important resource that community law provides and has done for many, many years. That is an example of something that community law does. I think that would fall within the current definition without this bill, and the reason I say that is that, if you look at the Legal Services Act, the definition of legal services actually covers education. I think that particular area would probably be fine without this change, and that’s reassuring, because that has been something that has been funded for a very long period of time.

I think community law could do more, and I think the frustration with this bill as it’s gone through the House is not that there is huge disagreement on what this bill does but that there is disagreement as to whether it’s necessary or whether it’s the best use of Parliament’s time or whether, in fact, the due diligence has been done to ensure that previous spending of community law centres has been for the right cause. I think the frustration has been that, actually, the potential for our community law—and when we look at the funding, which is the subject of this bill, this doesn’t fundamentally change the percentage of interest that goes to community law. This could have been something that could have been looked at in this bill. I know that’s a policy area perhaps for the Government or an incoming Government to look at, but certainly I think there’s more that community law could do and more that they could provide. I think there’s an appetite for that. I think there’s also a need for that, too.

My own experience of working in community law was that, a lot of the time that people would come in and seek legal advice, often they were wanting common-sense advice, and to be that first person there when they come through the door and have a problem and to be able just to point them in the right direction is something that you can do as a lawyer. You don’t necessarily have to be a lawyer, and that is why I think it’s great that, within the suite of legislation that this bill is a part of, we allow law students to work at community law centres, and it forms a part of their training as well. I’ll use one example from my time providing advice in this particular type of circumstance. I had a woman come and see me. She said to me, “I’ve been sacked.” I talked to her about it, and she wasn’t going to go into work the next day because she was so upset about having lost her job.

When I went through it with her, I found out she hadn’t actually been dismissed and that there was every indication that her employer was expecting her at work the next day. It had just been a miscommunication around something that she had done at work that, she’d been told, was wrong, but she’d taken it entirely the wrong way. I think that shows the value of being able to access that type of advice. She was feeling incredibly vulnerable. If she hadn’t turned up to work the next day, it’s very likely that maybe she would have ended up losing her job, but just going through “What’s happened? What documentation have you received? This doesn’t look like a dismissal to me. It looks like you’ve just had a performance issue raised with you.” was enough for her to feel much better and, within a very short period of time, go back. I didn’t see her again, but I assume, hopefully, she was able to go back to work. These types of services can provide very meaningful help and advice for people when they access them, too.

In relation to this bill, our general view is that we’re supportive of it. We wish it would go further in order to fully bolster and support community law. We think there’s probably ways that it could do that. We’re not 100 percent around the need for it, just due to the fact that it’s quite a difficult concept to think of how legal services would be able to be provided without all of these other utilities, as some other speakers have talked about, in terms of the rent for the premises, the other items that you need in order to provide advice—the photocopiers. These things, as I understand, have been paid for by community law centres under this agreement. This bill probably will clarify that, so one thing I can say about this bill is that it makes it clear that the services that have been provided to date are very well within the law due to this clarification. It could have gone further, and there could have been other things that we focused on too. It’s reassuring to know that community law centres also support this bill.

I thank the Government, really, for allowing us to discuss the important work that community law centres do, and I would encourage them to think about the really amazing contribution that it makes to the community and what we collectively as a Parliament can do to support that important work moving forward. I think it helps not only us as parliamentarians in our job, it helps the members of the public who access those services. There could be even more benefit if we were to truly fund and support community law within New Zealand. I do appreciate the opportunity to speak on this bill, and I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to be, technically, the last person to contribute on this bill. Speaking of technicality, I think it’s very important to clarify, because there’s been some interesting opinions, from the other side, that the current law is unclear with respect to whether the special fund can cover indirect costs. What we’re doing here is clarifying this discrepancy. I commend this bill to the House.

Madam Speaker.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Scott Willis—you were very quick off the mark that time.

SCOTT WILLIS: Thank you, Madam Speaker; it is very much appreciated. It’s my pleasure to be able to take the last call on this bill tonight, and certainly nice to have the little bit of angst from opposite as well, or the gaslighting that we typically get, because it does indicate that I think the members opposite are feeling a little bit angsty. They want something else.

We want to be here. We appreciate this opportunity—[Interruption] We certainly appreciate this opportunity—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I can’t actually hear Mr Willis. I don’t know if he’s speaking to the bill or not because I can’t hear him. We’ll have some quiet so I can hear what he’s saying.

SCOTT WILLIS: Thank you, Madam Speaker—because politics does not have to be adversarial. [Interruption] This bill, as minor as it is, is something that we are all agreeing on—we’re agreeing on. Really, the amount of heckling I’m getting for agreeing to a bill is quite surprising, but not so surprising, really, when we consider the nature of the Government on the other side because we do have a Government that is pushing and has desired to push such a minor bill through urgency. Sir Geoffrey Palmer has called the extreme use of urgency “a shambles”—a shambles.

We’ve heard the value of community law. We’ve heard from Rachel Brooking—I did not know that Rachel had volunteered in the fantastic Dunedin Community Law Centre, but I do know that this is a great place for people to contribute. We’ve heard about the need to think about how to best resource community law and this bill is doing a little bit there, but really not very much. I’m really in support of the Hon Dr Duncan Webb, Vanushi Walters, and Camilla Belich that we look at a review of how that funding works in the future, because this bill isn’t really going anywhere near far enough and it’s not doing anything very much.

Those are things that we think are valuable and we shouldn’t just stop here. Given we’ve got this sense of bonhomie, when we’re all getting on, why don’t we look for other places where we can actually make some progress? Why don’t we look for some other places where we can actually make some progress because the bitchiness might come with fatigue, but it is not necessary.

It’s good to hear that we’ve got students involved. One of the things that I’ve particularly enjoyed with community law, or understanding in community law, is the many kaupapa community law services designed by Māori for Māori. They are really important to give Māori decent legal advice to help fight the Crown on land and Te Tiriti issues, for example. Particularly important at this juncture of our Parliament—we certainly need to give assistance to people who are concerned if Te Tiriti rights are being ignored. This is really important—there are a whole lot of things that are happening in community law that we don’t necessarily see, but it’s the type of thing that really gives confidence to people to be able to take their concerns to somewhere they can get some professional advice, and it doesn’t cost the earth.

This bill is a minor bill, and we should be mindful that we don’t waste Parliament’s time on minor bills. However, given the opportunity to speak on bills while we have the luxury of being in Parliament—and we are grateful to the Government for keeping us here—we want to make sure that this bill moves forward but we want to also make sure that there’s not the use of urgency for little purpose. That is our equal concern because we have seen, from this Government, a shambles of process which really limits Parliament’s ability—

The member’s time has expired. The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Hon Member: Waste of time.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Who spoke during voting? Don’t do that again.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a third time.