Harawira Hone: Legal Services Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading 
Harawira Hone: Legal Services Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading 
[Volume:629;Page:1752] 
HONE HARAWIRA (Maori Party—Te Tai Tokerau) 
: 
 For years Maori have had to go to court without decent legal representation and often without legal aid. The Legal Services Amendment Bill (No 2) says it will change that by making it possible for another 435000 people to get legal aid many of whom undoubtedly will be Maori. The Government is to be commended for its efforts in this regard. The tragedy of course is how many Maori actually wind up in court in the first place. 
We already know that Maori get arrested prosecuted convicted and jailed at much higher rates than non-Maori confirming last week’s report on human rights practices in New Zealand which noted a continuing pattern of disproportionate numbers of Maori on unemployment and welfare rolls in prison among school drop-outs and in infant mortality statistics. In the same week the Ministry of Justice also released its prison forecast which projected that by 2010 Maori will be the most imprisoned people per capita in the world. That was said by our own Ministry of Justice. It is a statistic that bears repeating: by 2010 Maori will be the most imprisoned people per capita in the whole world. So yes like it or not the way things are going Maori will certainly need legal aid like never before. 
So when the Maori Party looks at this Legal Services Amendment Bill (No 2) we ask how this bill will change things for Maori. In terms of the select committee process sad to say only seven submissions were received only four were heard and the whole thing was over in less than a day. That is hardly a good look for a Government promoting access to justice. 
The changes in this bill are intended to increase the number of legal aid grants and the number of people who can get legal aid and thereby give people far better access to justice than before. That principle is important because the Maori Party does not share the view of other parties in this House that stupidly think that filling up the jails is the measure of the success of our justice system. It is our deepest wish to reduce the number of Maori who are arrested convicted and imprisoned. We want to enhance the mana of all people by promoting a system based more on justice that heals than justice that hammers. Sure punishment is part of justice—no question—but what is the value of a system that punishes but does not change the offender except to make him worse? What is the point of a system that actually encourages offenders to be more devious more brutal and less caring the next time they offend? Folks it is not about getting even; it is about getting justice. It is about whanau—the whanau of the victim and the whanau of the offender. Punishing one without properly addressing the other serves no one. It is about taking the next generations into account. 
But every time I think of that statistic—that by 2010 Maori will be the most imprisoned people in the world—I know that this bill will not make any real change at all. Mr Assistant Speaker the Maori Party supports any genuine attempt to help people get access to justice but this bill is really just tweaking a system that is intrinsically unsound. It would be great if we could say that this bill could turn round that damning statistic about Maori being the most imprisoned people in the world by 2010 but I suspect that you me and everyone else in this House knows that it ain’t going to happen. 
Improving the administration and management of legal aid is a step in the right direction but even with the best intentions the lawyers one gets when on legal aid are mainly just the legal bunnies the new lawyers and their enthusiasm does not compensate for their lack of experience. Experienced lawyers refuse legal aid cases because there is not any money in it which means that defendants on legal aid get less value than people with a bucket load of money and how surprising is that? Every Maori in this House has whanau who have been to court with lawyers whose aim seems to be to get their legal aid cases out of the way as soon as they can often by persuading their clients to plead guilty. I know people who have pleaded guilty because they did not know they could get legal aid in the first place. I also know people who have pleaded guilty because their legal aid lawyers told them it was the best thing to do. 
How do I know this? Because I have been to court many many times myself and I have seen the poor the Maori and their Pacific cousins being treated like scum by those who have been charged with trying to help them. I have seen people look despairingly at their lawyers prattling on in the courtroom hoping they will talk to them will simply acknowledge them and I have seen those lawyers simply drone on as if their clients were not even in the room. I have seen people with the desperate look of the innocent turn their heads to the floor when they finally realised that their legal aid lawyers were more interested in their own performance than in the plight of their clients. I have seen people lose their freedom because their bumbling and often uncaring legal aid lawyers were just too bloody lazy to do their job properly. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: That is unparliamentary language. 
HONE HARAWIRA 
: I withdraw and apologise. Our criminal law is based on the private property values of British and Western history. The bill even suggests that the definition of an applicant’s income is subject to the resources of a spouse or a partner or of parents and resources relating to Maori land. The Maori Party rejects absolutely the notion that land handed down through collective whakapapa should be divided for consideration of an individual’s income. It is a racist notion that all decent citizens should be appalled at. 
I also see that the bill aims to determine legal aid based on the likelihood of somebody going to jail. That has to be a little suspect. Does it mean that the Legal Services Agency will be taking over the role of judge and jury and making its decisions before someone even enters a plea? Or is it some screwy notion to deny legal aid to people who may not go to jail—as if that can be determined before pleas are entered? 
I also note that surveys will be used to monitor progress in the legal aid system. That is all right but the real measure is not in the administration and management of the system but in reducing reoffending and improving the situation for those who need it most. 
Of course one of the major areas of contention—and indeed one of the birthrights of the Maori Party—the Foreshore and Seabed Act actually denies Maori access to legal aid. The bill does nothing to change that. The Foreshore and Seabed Act is actually a criminal denial of the rights of a major sector of our community. No other group in our nation—not the unions not the employers not our Asian cousins not our Pacific relations and certainly not our Pakeha whanaunga—except Maori is denied access to legal aid. I repeat: no other group in our nation except Maori is denied access to legal aid. How can we in the House—we who represent what is supposed to be an enlightened and educated society and we who talk about fairness and justice for all—even contemplate an environment where major sectors are denied their rights that generations fought for over so many centuries? Indeed how can we accept such an abuse of our people’s human rights and move by so glibly? 
Those are critical issues that the House must address at this level and at every other level in society. Our courts are monocultural and their language and procedures deny Maori access to justice. If we are serious about real access then one of the key issues we need to address is that of cultural bias. In 1988 Moana Jackson of the Wellington Maori Legal Service reported that Maori cultural values were not reflected in criminal law. That was confirmed when in 1992 Gina Rudland the President of the Maori Law Society told the Minister of Justice that what was needed was a parallel system that allowed justice to be achieved for Maori by Maori. In 1993 Aroha Terry suggested marae trials for child abuse offending. All of those examples suggest that we should explore different justice systems and genuinely take up the idea of Maori practices. Let us face it we can hardly do any worse than what we have got now. 
For more than 1000 years Maori have had their own justice system—one based on concepts of tapu and noa. It recognises people’s responsibility to the wider community and the community’s responsibility for its members. The Pacific practice of ifoga is similar to Maori justice. The Navajo people of Great Turtle Island have their own justice system based on Navajo philosophy and procedure and shared with the State. Over the Tasman Aboriginal courts and systems are being used to reduce their arrest conviction and prison statistics. Indigenous people may not have all the answers but current systems are obviously not working—not for indigenous people nor for society at large. 
The bill is a stopgap—an admirable stopgap but a stopgap nonetheless. The Maori Party opposes the bill because although it purports to address the issue of access to justice it accepts the ridiculous “jail ‘em at all costs” thinking that has led to the spiralling arrest conviction and imprisonment rates that have overrun our system; because it does not address the very real need to reduce the reasons behind the fundamental problems in our society; and because it deals with individual rights while continuing to deny Maori their collective whanau hapu and iwi rights—and in fact their human right—to the same measure of justice enjoyed by all other citizens in Aotearoa.