King Annette: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
King Annette: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:648;Page:17484] 
Hon ANNETTE KING (Minister of Justice) 
: 
 First of all I thank the very good people in the Ministry of Justice for the work they do on behalf of New Zealanders. I could not let this moment go by however without saying that I am rather confused by the speech that I have just heard. Before I became Minister of Justice I used to sit in this House and watch the previous speaker rise and ask why there was not more money for legal aid and say that legal aid services could not be provided and the system was collapsing. She said this mean Government was not giving additional money. She used to say the Government should be paying more yet she has just said there is a blowout in the amount the Government is paying for legal services. I am not sure what the member wants other than to have 5 minutes of a good old moan. 
I say to the member that the 2008 Budget gave a 10 percent increase in payments to lawyers who provide legal aid and at the same time speaking as Minister of Justice I said that the Government would undertake a review of the services provided that use legal aid funding including opportunities for cost saving reprioritisation and innovative delivery of services. I tell the member that the Law Society has not only welcomed that review but praised it. It is not a matter of alarm bells starting to ring; it is a matter of the Government saying that it puts a considerable amount of money into legal aid and that is the way the Government gives access to justice for people who are poor and we do not resile from that. But we need to ensure we get the best value for money out of that funding. 
The previous speaker has gone up and down the country campaigning for more money for legal aid but I say it would have been really nice today if she had said: “Thank you Government for increasing legal aid funding by 10 percent in this last Budget.” It would have been nice if she had said that she welcomed the review to make sure New Zealand gets value for money. I thought the National Party said it stood for value for money to ensure we get innovation and the best use out of the funding that is put into legal aid. I say to the previous speaker that her story is kind of mixed up: either there is too much funding or not enough. Which one is it? Then she went on to talk about the Government’s muddled approach to organised crime. I tell the member that until we became the Government there was no approach to organised crime and do not tell me there was no organised crime in this country before we became the Government. Organised crime has been around for years. We set out to put in place in a comprehensive way all the building blocks needed to tackle organised crime. We put in place the Organised Crime Strategy and the organisation needed. We are putting in place the legislation and also the personnel to undertake a proper approach to organised crime. 
This Government has done incredibly well in this respect. There is a lot of work to do as we see those involved changing from the old idea of a few gang members wearing patches to becoming highly sophisticated groups of people whom one does not recognise as gang members because they wear flash Gucci suits or recognise as organised criminals. But those people purvey drugs launder money and are involved in paedophile rings and so on. The agency that this Government is putting together with the support of other parties in this Parliament will certainly go a long way to address those issues. 
The previous speaker also mentioned liquor. Debates in this House about liquor really frustrate me because I often hear the most terrible cant. Some members stand up and make heartfelt speeches about the supply of liquor but they were the very ones who trailed out to the lobby to vote to allow younger people to drink. Then they make speeches about how important liquor laws are but when it comes to the crunch in this Parliament when trying to make changes to liquor laws we find great difficulty in getting them through. 
I tell people who are listening to this debate that this Government has done a lot of work on liquor laws and I say to those members that my colleague Lianne Dalziel will certainly be presenting the next part of the picture when it comes to tightening up the supply of liquor in this country.