Penk Chris; Goldsmith Paul; Brooking RachelCHRIS PENK (National—Kaipara ki Mahurangi): Thank you Madam Chair. I wonder if the Minister in the chair Rachel Brooking could respond with her view on whether it would improve legal access even within the realm of legal aid to actually increase its applicability for example to victims of crime or those involved in the coronial system where eligibility doesn't currently exist. Would that not be a better use of the equivalent resources as compared with allowing those to access services without any cost or co-payment or interest payable whatsoever?Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you Madam Chair. I suppose the first question is the question of the impact of removing interest on legal aid debt. Just for the background of people tuning in to this debate on the Legal Services Amendment Bill when people go before the courts it's an expensive business. I think one of the first things that one learns from reading Dickens or anything is to try and avoid going to court if at all possible because it's never a good situation whether it's a civil case or criminal.There are sort of three categories: those who just are on their own—they pay for it—then there's another category of people who qualify for legal aid based on income and the ability to pay and that legal aid covers the cost of all their work and it's a grant. So they are helped to defend themselves if they need to or if they're wanting to take some sort of case and they meet that threshold. So that's the most vulnerable group who don't have the resources and they get a grant of legal aid to help pay their defence or whatever the case may be. The intermediary group are people who have a higher income and a greater ability to pay and so the legal aid that they get to pay for their defence or their lawyers is given by way of a loan with the expectation that it should be paid back. Currently there is some interest that is applied to that in order to encourage people to pay back that debt.This bill does away with that interest and of course there is a real cost in that. I'd be interested to hear from the Minister the best estimates of the cost. Of course it's more highly relevant at the moment because interest rates are going up because inflation is running amok and that's a broader topic around economic management which I won't go into.If you look at it in the context of student loans the rule of thumb was that every $10000 that was loaned out had to be written down immediately by about 40 percent on the Government's books because that was the cost of it being paid back over a long period of time and the value of that $10000 reducing in purchasing power because of inflation. I would've thought that with interest rates rising again then that cost will be going up and so the write-down will be more significant.So in terms of the many—and you know we spend a lot on legal aid; I haven't got the figure right in front of me but a couple of hundred million a year springs to mind or something in that vicinity. So the amounts that are loaned out—if we're immediately writing down 40 percent of that loan because there is no interest applying then that becomes a problem.The simple question is: is that the best use of scarce resources in the broader justice system? Because I don't think anybody would deny that there is a huge amount of need in the broader justice area for well-targeted and well-focused interventions. So my fundamental question to the Minister is: how has she assured herself—and of course if you look at the documents it was Kris Faafoi who kicked this all off as Minister of Justice and then it was Minister Kiri Allan that I think introduced the bill to the House and now Ginny Andersen trying to ram it through in the very dying days of this Government.So my question to the Minister in the chair is: how is she assured that this is the best use of spending? Our basic proposition is that actually the better thing for the Government to be focused on is actually the much broader and more difficult issue of speeding up the process of the courts. So it's a question of priorities there and that's my first question to the Minister.Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Minister for Oceans and Fisheries): Thank you Madam Chair and thank you to the Hon Paul Goldsmith for referencing Dickens and a number of other matters in his contribution. Going to his point I think the main question there was around the interest and the cost of that. Of course those decisions were made in the Budget because at the moment the Budget has already provided since the start of this year that there is no charge and no interest but the cost of that will be about $600000 per annum. The decision goes back—as the member noted a number of different justice Ministers have been involved and there was the 2018 review and this piece of legislation goes back to that review. Of course it is as I've already said narrow in scope.The previous speaker Chris Penk was asking about the coroner's court and I'm told that in fact legal aid can be assessed in coronial matters if the coroner declares an inquest.