Harawira Hone: Legal Services Amendment Bill (No 2) — In Committee 
Harawira Hone: Legal Services Amendment Bill (No 2) — In Committee 
[Volume:630;Page:2231] 
HONE HARAWIRA (Maori Party—Te Tai Tokerau) 
: 
 First of all I have to say that it sounds a bit strange to hear members of the National Party speaking up for the rights of the poor and the oppressed but having made that comment I shall move on to the matter of the title. I also heard those members talk about changing the title to “Legal Aid (Access to Justice) Bill” which is a lovely title. When we look at this bill along with some of the others we see it is more like the “Legal Aid (Let’s Grease the Machine) Bill”. There are suggestions in other bills about getting rid of juries and just having judges and about getting rid of lawyers and defendants and just having videos. This year we are trying to make the whole thing flow easier but in fact we are greasing the machine to put more people through and they will all end up in jail. The jails are already full. Soon the rugby clubs will be full and the vans parked outside Mount Eden Prison will be full. All those sorts of things are happening yet no fundamental change is being made to the way in which we treat one another in society that could reduce the need for us to need any of that kind of stuff. 
Legal aid is necessary—there is no question about that. I know that heaps and heaps of my whanaunga would already be in jail if it were not for legal aid. In fact I had a phone call not an hour ago from one of my whanau who is to appear in court tomorrow and who is looking for a legal aid lawyer. But I do not know that more money as has been suggested by the National Party is the answer. All that will do is ramp up the cost. Lawyers will say that they charge so much and then there will be a request for more. The amount of money can be reviewed every year but that will not change the basic need of the people at the bottom. 
I hear talk about lawyers of choice. As a person who has been in a situation where I needed legal aid—although I have never used it—and who has seen other people wanting legal aid I can tell folks that people do not get to choose their lawyers. That is not how it works. A person will get whoever is silly enough to put up his or her hand. Most of those lawyers are the young ones the bunny lawyers. Often they are the lawyers who are not particularly good at law. Then of course there are the conscience-driven ones—the good ones like Russell Fairbrother and others. There are some good ones around. I throw in another name Mr David Sayes from Whangarei who is a very good legal aid lawyer. But there are not a lot of them. I know for a fact that all the really good lawyers just turn those cases down because there is not enough money in it. 
So how does one get around the issue of money being the matter that determines whether one gets a good lawyer? There are other ways and my suggestion is that everybody who holds a lawyer’s licence must agree to do a certain number of legal aid cases per year so that there will be a quota system for all lawyers. I am talking about lawyers at the most basic level all the way up to the QCs so that they all have to do at least some cases. Then it does not become a matter of money; it becomes a matter for all. I hear lawyers talking about the importance of public service—they do it for the public good etc. etc. But when it comes right down to it they run away from it; they do not do it. I am suggesting that instead of ramping up the money to pay for more so-called good lawyers lawyers need to be in a quota system in terms of how many legal aid cases they do. I am not against annual reviews but I just think that getting every lawyer into the game will make it a lot easier for people at the bottom to make the choice. 
I shall give an example of a suck-arse lawyer—another lawyer from Whangarei. He was representing a 61-year-old kuia. It was the first charge she had ever had in her whole life and he let her go to jail. There are bad lawyers. We need decent legal aid and decent lawyers.