Franks Stephen: General Debates 
Franks Stephen: General Debates 
[Volume:613;Page:10154] 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) 
: 
Today we saw another performance from the Minister of Justice—and performances they are. This was not one of the vein-popping shrieking attacks from the Minister of Justice on the people he calls “scumbags”. This was not one of the Minister of Justice’s attempts to tell the rest of us how staunch and how tough he is by beating his breast while he tells the Hon Margaret Wilson that her concern about human rights and the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act did not matter. This was the Minister of Justice in his “I am a statesman” mode where he tells the rest of us what huge respect he has for procedure for the proper role of the Legal Services Agency and himself and for the role of the courts. This is the Minister of Justice faced with the outcome of his legislation of the last 3 years having to listen to the description from the Hon Tony Ryall and the other Opposition parties of a case that must outrage every New Zealander.  
Yiyu Zhang was sentenced for serious violent offences for the sort of conduct New Zealanders used to think never happened in New Zealand—kidnapping extortion and ransom demands. This offender we are told by the  
Waikato Times 
 and by the  
New Zealand Herald 
 was let off 2½ years of the sentence he would have otherwise got because his family put up $64000 to properly make amends to some of the victims. Mr Goff could have explained as he failed to do last time such a matter was the cause of outrage that every offender should be making amends; that the courts should not be giving a discount to someone who makes amends they should be adding a premium—an extra 2½ years—to the sentence of everyone who does not make amends. If it had been explained like that New Zealanders would see that that is fair and proper because it is perfectly right that the courts should take account of the fact that someone makes amends and take account of the fact when someone does not.  
However that passed 3 weeks ago and today we find from the  
Waikato Times 
 that Yiyu Zhang was granted more than $40000 of legal aid to go through a 3-week trial before he decided that his defence was hopeless and changed his plea. All that money could have gone to helping victims to helping the police or to helping New Zealanders in the many things that this Government says it gives priority to. Mr Goff when asked whether he would review the law that results in this outcome said that he does not do reviews if Mr Franks wants them.  
He also failed to explain why the review of legal aid eligibility could not cover this. Legal aid eligibility has been a weeping sore in the justice system for the entire period of this Government. How do we know that? Because the Government said it was. When the Labour Government took over from National the Minister of Justice vowed that he would review eligibility terms. In fact we heard that it was on the work programme for the first year in office. Well it never appeared. The Labour Government was going to do some marvellous things. It was going to make sure that it was easier for Maori claimants to get help from the legal aid system. It was going to make sure that environmental groups could find easier access to block landowners from using their land in accordance with property rights guaranteed to them in any civilised country.  
Of course the Minister started to get cold feet. It may be what he believes in but it was not what the electorate wanted to see. The electorate is far more concerned about abuses of legal aid by the hundreds of people who make fruitless futile unjustified appeals against sentence. In our Court of Appeal which is so overworked more than half of its workload is related to appeals against sentence of which less than one-quarter get anywhere and 90 percent of which are on legal aid. The Minister could have reviewed legal aid. He now has a perfect reason to have a proper look at legal aid and to review his programme but he will not.