Little Andrew: Family Court Proceedings Reform Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLittle Andrew: Family Court Proceedings Reform Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 18 September 2013. Volume:693;Page:13512. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]ANDREW LITTLE (Labour): Part 4 of the Family Court Proceedings Reform Bill is a very brief part but it is actually very powerful in its impact. I think that it is very important to draw the Committee’s attention to just what is going on here. This part severely limits access to legal aid for parties to Family Court proceedings. It is interesting to note the advice that was received about this matter—both the officials’ advice that was received and the advice from the expert reference group which talked about this as well. By denying legal aid to parties who are required to participate in the mandatory family dispute resolution process it effectively means that the parties at least those who cannot afford their own counsel will be unrepresented. They will be unrepresented.I will come to submissions about legal aid shortly but it is interesting to see what the advice of the regulatory impact statement was about the impact of this particular provision—the expectation of it. It was that by making legal aid unavailable to this sort of process it will reduce the cost of legal aid for care of children cases which are the bulk of those for which legal aid is granted to the tune of $41.3 million over 3 years. Over $10 million a year will be saved in legal aid. I am sure there will be some Cabinet Ministers who would rub their hands together with glee thinking they can save that sort of money. But the cost as we would expect is likely to be picked up elsewhere.It is interesting to see what the expert reference group said about this lack of legal representation for both the partners who are in dispute and any children involved. The group talks about Family Court cases involving high stress for parties and that for a wide variety of reasons parties struggle to advocate for themselves which is why they typically and traditionally have access to legal counsel throughout the process. This is not about the small amount of advice they can get access to before the mandatory family dispute resolution process but actually about having advice throughout the process. When you are participating—whether it is in a mediation-type or facilitated-type process or in formal court proceedings—you are taking part in something that will have significant legal implications for you and if you have got children for your children for some time to come. So people rightly approach it cautiously and because they want advice on the implications for them and their children.The expert reference group talked about the impact of this measure which effectively denies legal advice when they need it most and that is that there will be other direct and indirect costs to the public purse. It is likely that an additional administrative resource will be required because if people are not sure about the agreements they are entering into or the points they are being asked to agree to and they cannot get advice their best option is to kick it to the court and hope the court can fix it up and sort it out for them. There is going to be a greater call on the facilitators who are expected to be engaged in this process to start providing advice. They will be clear that they cannot provide legal advice but they will be prevailed upon to do so and that is going to bog things down as well.But there is something else going on that I think is even more insidious and that is what is happening to legal aid. Earlier this year this House passed amendments to the legal services legislation including the Legal Services Amendment Act which allowed the Legal Services Commissioner to impose interest on legal aid debt. That has not happened until now. Indeed in many cases where legal aid has been given at least in civil matters there has been a charge or a caveat put on people’s real property but now the Legal Services Commissioner has the power to impose interest on it.And the Committee might like to know that the Legal Services Commissioner has been busily going around imposing interest on legal aid debt particularly historical legal aid debt in just the last couple of weeks. Letters have gone out to a large number of people telling them that they now owe money on their legal aid debt. People who have had a legal aid debt in some cases for 12 years and have never received a single piece of correspondence about it are now being told they have to pay interest on it.This will continue to be an issue under this legislation. This will continue to be an issue under this legislation because if people cannot get advice in this mandatory process they have to kick it off to have a judge sort it out and that is the only basis on which they will get access to legal advice. They will have an incentive to do it but they will now be subject to a further burden. Many people who have an existing legal aid debt are now being chased for it and what is worse they are being charged the usurious and extortionate rate of 8 percent. That is 8 percent interest on a grant of assistance to impecunious people poor people who need legal assistance at a time of great distress and difficulty for them. This Government now comes after them and says: “You’re going to pay a rate of interest that is several times the rate of inflation that is more than you would pay on a first mortgage rate and that is more than the 90-day bill rate.”This is a way that the Government through the Ministry of Justice can fleece poor people and make money. That is what it is about. It will happen to people under this Family Court Proceedings Reform Bill if this bill is passed in this form. Legal aid will be required because more people will seek to have their family disputes kicked off into a court process because that is the only way they are going to get access to legal advicein order to understand the legal implications of the agreement they are being asked to agree to. The Minister of Justice might like to answer just what her expectations are of the demand for legal aid and the cost to people now with this dreadful and insidious interest rate that is now being imposed on it. There is no reassurance in this bill that people are going to be treated fairly and properly over it. This change the limiting of access to legal assistance and legal aid for this important process a very important event in someone’s life is I think an absolute shocker.The expert advisory group went on to talk about depriving children tied up in these matters of counsel and legal advice because that is what this bill does as well. Children will not even be represented in the family dispute resolution process. Previously they would be and there would be assistance for them to do that. There will be no legal aid for children to get access to advice on the implications of any agreement for them and that is a more horrifying prospect. It is in my view as I have already said in this House a breach of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and it goes against the advice of the expert reference group. The very high-powered highly qualified highly experienced expert reference group has also lamented the bill for denying legal advice to children tied up in these events.The group thinks that it is going to put children at risk because the court will not have independent information on the views of the child. The group points out that it is usually only after a lawyer has been appointed for a child that underlying issues things that affect the children are notified for the first time to the court. The truth is that the parents who are trying to do the best they can in their situation are focused on getting their situation sorted and their emotion stabilised. Of course they will want the best for their children or child but their view about what that is will differ from the review of the other parent and indeed possibly of the children themselves.So it is a bad day for this Committee if we go ahead and pass this provision that denies legal aid. Clause 71 of this bill denies legal aid not only to the parents of children going through a dissolution in this context but also to children themselves. It is a bad day for this Committee that we should be considering legislation like this. That is why we are opposed to it and we are opposed to what is happening to legal aid generally.