Chauvel Charles: Legal Services Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Chauvel Charles: Legal Services Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:659;Page:8354] 
CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour) 
: 
 I want to take a call to follow up on what was said by my friend and colleague Lianne Dalziel in her earlier contribution on the Legal Services Amendment Bill. Although the Minister of Justice took a call in response to what she said it was only a partial response. I see that the Attorney-General is now the Minister in the chair and he might be interested in these comments. I see that he is taking a keen interest in what I have to say which is always gratifying. 
The opportunity this legislation presents is that it comes to the House a week after we received the Bazley report into the legal aid service. As Lianne Dalziel said it presents a golden opportunity for the Government to stay its hand in implementing the reforms that are contained in this bill and allows for the opportunity to send the bill back to a select committee to have the legislation embrace those parts of the Bazley recommendations that the Government decides to proceed with. They are recommendations that in broad thrust are supported by members on this side of the House so it seems to me that the Government has an opportunity to progress quite an important aspect of reform as far as legal aid and general legal services are concerned without undue delay. I urge the ministry to consider this opportunity and to not just dismiss it out of hand. 
The other opportunity that I think debating the legislation tonight affords the House is another one that I hope the Attorney-General will appreciate. I think the lawyers in the Chamber—Amy Adams Simon Power and others who might be present—will remember the important case law about commissions of inquiry. Under our system commissions of inquiry are not designed to find fault with individuals. They are not criminal processes. If this country did not learn that lesson from the Erebus tragedy it should have learnt it from earlier cases that I know the Minister in the chair will recall. I think the authority is  
Cock v Attorney-General 
 as opposed to  
Clough v Leahy  
the contrary New South Wales authority. It says that when we have a commission of inquiry it is not there to find fault with identifiable individuals. 
One of the problems that exists with the Bazley report is the findings Dame Margaret made about lawyers practising out at the Manukau District Court. They are lawyers who work hard in what are probably some of the most difficult conditions in the New Zealand legal system. They have been described as car-boot lawyers and it has been said that 80 percent of them could be gaming the system. It does them a disservice to describe them in pejorative terms and to say that if anything were to be done about them they would just take vigorous legal action so there would be no point. 
I urge the Minister to use this opportunity—the earliest opportunity the Government has had—to reply to those allegations to dissociate the Government from them and to restate the position that these people are deserving of respect from the House because they are an integral and important part of the provision of justice in one of the hardest legal markets that exists in New Zealand. It would be a real shame if the Government did not use this opportunity. It is the earliest opportunity since the presentation of the Bazley report which dealt with matters that are intimately connected with this bill as my colleague pointed out. It is an opportunity to make a definite statement—which I hope that we will hear from the Minister in the chair the Hon Simon Power—that these lawyers are well respected that the Government does not associate itself with the pejorative comments that were made about them and that Dame Margaret had no evidential basis on which to make those comments. They should be rejected. 
John Hayes 
: Don’t you speak about my constituents like that. 
CHARLES CHAUVEL 
: Mr Hayes may well think that he knows something that everybody else does not know but the fact is that these are hard-working people who deserve better from the Government and from the executive than this sort of adverse comment in a commission of inquiry report. I hope that we will hear a definitive rejection of those pejorative comments from the Attorney-General.