Clendon David: Annual Review Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeClendon David: Annual Review Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 03 May 2016. Volume:713;Page:10682. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID CLENDON (Green): I am keen to take a call on this justice segment of the debate. We live in a constitutional democracy. We have a robust judicial system apparently. We respect the rule of law. It is unfortunate however that in recent times particularly in the last couple of years the whole question of access to that justice system has gone to the forefront of a lot of people’s thinking particularly in terms of the cost of accessing the justice system and issues of geography. The fact is that where you live in New Zealand—your physical location—can be one significant determinant of whether or not you can get a fair shake from the justice system. I think that is unacceptable.The justice community—the judiciary the legal fraternity and the like—is an inherently conservative community. By the very nature of what they do they are conservative which makes it all the more significant that some of the language emerging from that community of interest has been arguably quite radical and quite outrageous in some views. We have been hearing from lawyers themselves and from judges we are hearing from people who work in the courts we are hearing from probation officers and we are certainly hearing from the people who are endeavouring to engage for whatever reason with the justice system that the cost is simply too high. There is insufficient support for the least well-off who often have the highest needs. We are in real danger of finding a situation where New Zealanders will get the best justice that they can afford. That is an untenable situation for a country like ours to find itself in.One example of that is legal aid. Most people if you ask them will assure you that “Yes for those who cannot afford a lawyer we have a good legal aid service.” The threshold for legal aid is set at such a rate that if a person is working on average more than 30 hours a week on the minimum wage then they are above the income level for legal aid assistance. That is a ridiculous proposition. For somebody who will be barely surviving 30 hours a week on the minimum wage puts you above the income threshold to qualify for legal aid. That is a ludicrous proposition. It is not only the least well-off; even middle-income families are finding it increasingly difficult. Where you get separations and the like and you need the intervention of the courts it is becoming extremely problematic for people to get into that justice system and that is unacceptable. It is a result directly of policy and of budget decisions. We need to do better; we can do better.Even in terms of legal aid a lot of the larger partnerships that historically have done a significant amount of work—some of it pro bono—are starting to back off because they simply cannot afford the level of contribution that they are making to subsidise the inadequate budget that is going to the judiciary to the justice system. Smaller partnerships particularly around Family Courts and the like are simply struggling. They cannot take on work where they will be constantly losing money—that is an unacceptable situation.One of the safety nets the community law centres—and I have engaged with a number of them in just the last 4 to 6 weeks—are all over-stretched and under-resourced. They are working on goodwill and inevitably that pool of goodwill will diminish over time when they have simply reached the point of exhaustion and cannot continue to meet the level of demand. In fact they are not meeting the level of demand now because their funding is often insecure and insufficient and it really leaves people with nowhere to go.I think our Labour colleague Jacinda Ardern was commenting on the Family Court issues particularly the matter of self-representation. That is a very real and growing problem as is the phenomenon that so many more people are now claiming urgency in order to have legal representation when they enter the Family Court. That is a perverse outcome but an entirely predictable one of the poorly thought-out reforms that we saw in 2014—18 months to 2 years ago. We need to do a lot better in that sense if we are going to continue to be a country with an accessible and a robust justice system. We need to put the resources where they need to go and stop pretending and stop denying that there is not a problem. Sadly that is largely this Government’s response—“There’s nothing to see here. Everything’s roses.” When talking to people on the ground in the community and in the judicial system we know very well that is not the case.I would like to speak briefly about the Department of Corrections. Again I make it my business to visit the prisons regularly—[Bell rung] Mr Chair.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): David Clendon.DAVID CLENDON: Excuse me Mr Chair I will finish there.