Goff Phil: Third Readings —Text is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGoff Phil: Third Readings —[Sitting date: 09 July 2013. Volume:692;Page:11834. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill):It is amazing how you can misuse the English language. The word “flexibility” which the member who has just resumed his seat Paul Foster-Bell used actually translates to cutting $138 million out of ensuring access to justice for those who are least able to pay for it. He calls it flexibility.Hon Maryan Street: Orwellian.Hon PHIL GOFF: It is. It has tones of 1984. It is Orwellian. The Legal Assistance Amendment Bill was such a bad bill that it was voted for by the National Cabinet in 2011 then supported by the National caucus and introduced to the House that year with the unanimous support of National and it comes to the House now as the Legal Services Amendment Bill with more deletions than any bill I have seen in recent times because the National caucus and Cabinet got it so absolutely wrong. They are prepared to be shameless but not so shameless that they could sustain a bill that fundamentally denies the right of justice to so many New Zealanders.It is not simply the minority report in the report back of the original bill that condemns it; it is the majority commentary from the Justice and Electoral Committee that constitutes in this report back a nine-page apology for getting it absolutely wrong. Let me give you an example. This is on tightening the means test for people defending themselves against criminal charges. The majority of the committee said that this “would restrict access to justice too severely and could breach a person’s right to a fair trial”. How much more basic a breach of fundamental human rights could that admission actually own up to? The bill which is designed to save money taking it out of the hides of those least able to look after themselves constituted a fundamental breach of justice and the member who just resumed his seat described that as flexibility. On and on it goes.You know the original bill was even going to means test people under the Protection of Personal and Property Rights Act. Do you know whom that means? It means mentally disabled people who have no ability to look after their own rights. Of course when the submitters came to the select committee the National Party members bowed their heads in shame and knew that they had to cut that out of the bill.You know what else the bill was going to do? It was going to set up a means test on disposable capital. Does the member Mr Foster-Bell know what that involved? It was going to means test things like the family refrigerator and washing machine. It was going to means test the basic tools of trade of people who relied on those tools to go out and work. Most shameful if you were in a wheelchair the bill was going to means test the value of the wheelchair. That is how miserable this Government was. Why did every member of that National caucus come into this Chamber and vote for legislation that looked like that? No concept of social justice. No concept of the understanding that the decency of any society is based on whether you accord those people the right to justice.You know National also had an approval framework that it was going to change for court-appointed lawyers representing children and it was going to charge foster parents for parenting orders that they had to get from court. The select committee to be fair to the select committee said that it could find no justification at all for changing a framework that was working well. I want to ask the Minister of Justice why it was that her Cabinet got it so wrong that it recommended things that the select committee including her own backbenchers on that committee threw out. How did it get it so wrong? Why was it so mean-minded that it was going to take it out of the hides of people not capable of protecting themselves?You know what else the report back says? It says that this bill would increase the number of self-represented litigants. Well as Lianne Dalziel said that meant actually having no representation at all. People who do not understand the principles of justice who do not understand the court procedures were going to be denied the right to proper legal advice so that they understood what the principles of justice required and understood the procedures that they were going through in court. In the end does that save money? No it costs money because it takes extra court time because the judge has to go through at each step and tell the person who is supposedly representing themselves what the court requires of those people.One of the other things in the original bill and National has not even changed this is that if you had previous legal aid debts that you were not able to meet you were going to be denied legal aid. If a person was sitting on their hands and sitting on their bank account and simply refusing to pay the debts fair enough. But I guarantee to this House that most of the people who had legal aid debts had those debts because they did not have the means to pay that money back. Any decent parent when it came to choosing between putting shoes on the feet of their kids and clothes on their back or repaying a legal aid bill would put the priority on their own kids. So here we have this Government saying: “You are already so poor and downtrodden that you cannot repay the bill. Now we will deny you legal aid because you are not able to afford to repay the bill. And what is more we will charge you interest on the arrears.”You know I think I can understand why a Cabinet of 20 people each on at least a quarter of a million dollars a year has so lost touch with the situation of the average working New Zealander that it cannot understand that a low-income New Zealander cannot afford the thousands of dollars or the tens of thousands of dollars that legal bills require. I want to remind Mrs Collins and her Cabinet colleagues of what the regulatory impact statement on the original bill says about legal aid. This is what it says: “The purpose of the legal aid scheme is to provide access to justice by providing legal services to people of insufficient means.” The situation with legal aid is not that generous. I think the means test for a single person is $21000. That is below the minimum wage. So a single person on a minimum wage cannot get access to assistance under this legislation. If you have got family dependants it is a little bit more generous as the threshold is about $51000.The regulatory impact analysis goes on to say this about legal aid: “It contributes to fairer outcomes by ensuring that parties with unequal financial resources have equal access to justice.” You know at the moment the justice system too often works only in the interests of the wealthy. The wealthy person who can afford to go out and pay the QC will get off the charges sometimes without regard to the merit of their case. The low-income person will not be able to afford anyone to represent them at all unless they are so ground down that they are right at the bottom of the heap. How Mr Foster-Bell can that mean access to justice? How can that mean fairness in the system? Why is it fair that the wealthy person can escape charges or the wealthy person can push down the person whom they may be up against in court who does not have resources and does not even have representation? That is fundamentally unfair. It is fundamentally wrong. That is why this party is opposing this legislation.The other thing the regulatory impact statement says is that “legal aid helps underpin confidence in the justice system.” Well this legislation undermines confidence in the justice system because it puts cost cutting ahead of the interests of justice. You know it is not simply that the Government cannot afford it. The Government can afford to give tax cuts to the most wealthy. John Key the Prime Minister had several hundred thousand dollars a year in tax cuts but that is on the backs of the people who lose access to legal aid who cannot afford to be represented in court. I ask this Government where its priorities lie. I ask this Government where its sense of justice is. This legislation lacks it.