Ardern Jacinda: Legal Services Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Ardern Jacinda: Legal Services Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:653;Page:2400] 
JACINDA ARDERN (Labour) 
: 
 It is pleasing to hear so much universal support from around the House for the intention of the Legal Services Amendment Bill. 
However I want to rectify something that Mr Ardern implied perhaps inadvertently about the introduction of this bill. He implied that Labour whilst in Government somehow had known all along that this particular situation existed in law and had ignored it until a high-profile case arose. That is not the case. It is quite obvious from statements made by Minister Annette King at the time that the Graeme Burton case came up that it was a situation that had Labour known about it it would have rectified. In fact on 28 January Annette King stated: “If the legal aid system is producing this sort of result for victims it has to be changed urgently.” That is what the Labour Government proceeded to do at that time. It moved swiftly to review what had happened in that situation and I am pleased the current National Government continues to take this bill through the House. 
 I also want to endorse the statements made by my colleague the Hon Lianne Dalziel when she highlighted the importance of victim representation at coronial inquests. I thought she also raised an interesting issue for the select committee to consider in relation to civil cases and I think it will be interesting for the select committee members to report back to the House their view on that issue. 
In reflecting specifically on the bill itself it is an amendment to the Legal Services Act 2000 which established as we all know the Legal Services Agency. That agency has an overarching primary goal that is quite simple and that is to promote access to justice. There are three fundamental ways in which the Legal Services Agency ensures that happens. The first is through the provision of a legal aid scheme that assists people who have insufficient means to pay for legal services to none the less have access to them. That is probably the primary role that we all know the Legal Services Agency exists for. The two other mechanisms are providing other means of legal assistance and supporting community legal services by funding community law centres education and research. I want to come back to that third point later on. 
As core purposes go I think the House will agree that these ones are well intentioned and well structured. Last year those three objectives ensured that over 58000 people had access to legal services which is something we can rightfully be pleased about. But the Legal Services Act as it stands has a fundamental oversight and that was highlighted in the tragedy that arose around the Graeme Burton case. The amendments before us now seek to deal with that oversight. 
What do they explicitly do? They amend the Act to ensure that victims of crime attending a coronial inquest are not subject to financial eligibility tests. Secondly the amendments give the Legal Services Agency the ability and the discretion not to recover debt. But there is a probably more important layer here. In the particular case of Graeme Burton the Legal Services Agency expressed a willingness to look at the circumstances of the victims but it was the timing that was problematic. As it currently stands debt can be written off but only at the end of a case. This bill gives the Legal Services Agency the ability to make a decision at any time and I think that flexibility is really important as a preventive measure to ensure that situation does not arise again. 
The third issue that this amendment bill seeks to address is that it gives the foresight to ensure that such a situation does not arise again. As members of Parliament we all know that changes to Acts of Parliament take a long time and exemptions from the Legal Services Act which we are looking at currently are able to be enacted only through changes to primary legislation. This bill introduces regulation-making powers which will enable the Governor-General to make further amendments and to allow further discretion as required. The Minister of Justice Simon Power however must first be satisfied it is in the public interest and of course the Regulations Review Committee will have a role in reviewing whether those powers have been used appropriately and I think that is very fitting. 
It is clear that this amendment bill enhances what the Legal Services Agency is there to do which—as I have already mentioned—is to promote access to justice in line with the principles of fairness and also public expectation. The public would have expected flexibility in this case and we are making sure that that happens. 
I think this is an opportune time to reflect on whether other aspects of the Legal Services Agency could be enhanced. If we reflect on the access to justice issue we find that it is important that this House and its members continually reflect on the judgment call that is made around whether an individual has insufficient means thereby giving that person eligibility to use legal aid. The Minister today announced in question time that he would be reviewing legal aid. We have not yet seen the scope of that review—what the review will explicitly cover—but it would be helpful if the Minister considered the access to justice question not just around legal issues that are prompted by a charge or conviction but also around access to legal services that may have an element of discretion to them. 
A good example of that might be a victim’s access to and use of protection orders. We hear a complaint within the sector that works with protection orders that there are access issues because of the cost of going through the legal process to have a protection order enacted. I would be interested to hear about that and I would encourage the Minister to use this example as a bit of a test case to demonstrate to what extent financial eligibility tests at the current level are prohibitive and perhaps lead victims particularly in the case of domestic violence not to access justice. It is an interesting question because if we look at the specific example of protection orders in the context of the amendments that we are looking at right now we see that this bill lifts financial eligibility tests for an individual who becomes a victim but a quite harsh fiscal test is still used at the point at which we are able to prevent someone from becoming a victim. That is the very point of protection orders but because of the cost of having them enacted they may not be accessed at the point when they are necessary. That would be an interesting point for the Minister to consider. 
I ask what other issues the review intends to look at. I think it is relevant in the context of this bill. The Minister stated: “I don’t need to tell you that in the current fiscal environment legal aid systems are likely to face increasing challenges in achieving their objectives.” He is absolutely right. It is for two reasons though. The first is shrinking budgets and we are not talking about just legal aid directly but community law centres. The second is the increase in demand for services and this is no more obvious and apparent than in the situation of community law centres. We have already seen them face decreasing budgets because they are reliant on the special fund that is administered by the Legal Services Agency. The community law centres rely on decent interest rates in order to ensure they have decent funding levels. As I have already outlined one of the core three objectives of the Legal Services Agency is to ensure that community legal services are available. It seems inconsistent to me that that is one of its core functions yet the funding for those bodies is reliant on a fund’s interest rate which can fluctuate rapidly. We have seen that happen in this financial year. So I would also encourage the Minister to include more stable and consistent funding—perhaps through Vote Justice—as part of his review of access to legal aid and access to justice. 
Having said that though I commend this bill to the House. I am pleased to see that we are progressing it at this point. I think it will achieve the core principles that the Legal Services Act is intended to ensure.