Locke Keith: Legal Services Bill — Third Reading 
Locke Keith: Legal Services Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:671;Page:17777] 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party at the time of the first and second readings of the Legal Services Bill voted against it and there were good speeches illuminating why we were doing that from Gareth Hughes and Kennedy Graham. Unfortunately Kennedy Graham cannot be here today to present a speech on behalf of the Greens. He has been the Green member of the Justice and Electoral Committee but like many other Christchurch MPs he is otherwise detained. 
This bill has several good points as have been outlined by previous speakers. The public defender system is a step forward and we want that to be reinforced. But we are concerned like the earlier Labour speakers that to some degree this legislation has been driven by the Margaret Bazley report which as has been pointed out has been highly criticised by lawyers particularly in the Manukau area as an unwarranted attack on them without sufficient evidence to back up the accusations of somehow wrongly benefitting from the legal aid system. The main reason why the Green Party opposed the bill at the earlier stages still applies in that we are not sure whether disestablishing the old Legal Services Agency and putting the administration of the legal aid services under the Ministry of Justice will preserve the necessary independence that a legal services body requires. Putting in a supposedly independent statutory officer the Legal Services Commissioner will not necessarily solve that problem. 
The report back from the select committee says: “It is important that while the Commissioner would be accountable to the Secretary for Justice the Secretary should not be able to interfere in the Commissioner’s performance of his or her independent functions as set out in the bill.” That is all very well but as we have found in other areas when an officer is reporting to someone above them in the hierarchy their responses are a bit conditioned by the responses of the higher-up officer. That issue was raised as part of the debate on the bill that merged Archives New Zealand and the National Library and put them under the Department of Internal Affairs. Even though there is an independent Chief Archivist the Chief Archivist has to report to the head of the Department of Internal Affairs. A similar situation will constrain the real independence of the Legal Services Commissioner particularly when monetary matters are involved as they are with legal services and as they are in the case of the Chief Archivist and the Department of Internal Affairs. Budgets can be restricted and so on so we do not think there is sufficient independence in the system. 
The other question raised in the report back from the select committee when talking about submissions was the question of people being able to get a lawyer of their choice. As was pointed out in the report back the previous board of the Legal Services Agency took away the right of defendants to choose their own lawyer in category 1 and category 2 criminal cases which involve lower-level criminal offending. But it is difficult in the Greens’ view to make a distinction between lower-level offending and higher-level offending in terms of access to legal aid. One might say that the matter is not as important if the person would receive only a small punishment so it does not matter that they cannot choose their own lawyer. But as we know the very first offence even if it involves low-level criminal offending can be very important for people. It often sets them on the road to a criminal career repeat offending and so on. If they had had a good lawyer at the beginning stage it might have made a difference. People often feel a great injustice if their lawyer is not up to scratch even in the smallest case. If they are wrongly convicted the sense of injustice can carry over into more criminality. So that is not a good thing. 
There were submissions from community law agencies for consultation to be written into the legislation so that there was a statutory requirement for consultation by the agency. Unfortunately the select committee decided that such a requirement should not be written into the legislation. Again although it is good to trust that people will have the right motivation and will engage in consultation because that is the thing to do I think it is always good to write a requirement in because some officials and some Governments are not very keen on consultation with non-governmental organisations. We have currently a Minister of Foreign Affairs Murray McCully who is not very keen on consultation with non-governmental organisations in the foreign affairs and aid sector so I think it is good to write in those kinds of provisions. 
With those few comments noting as I indicated that the public defender system and other aspects of the bill are quite useful I say that on balance the Green Party will stick with its position of voting against it. Thank you.