Katene Rahui: Legal Services Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Katene Rahui: Legal Services Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:653;Page:2394] 
RAHUI KATENE (Maori Party—Te Tai Tonga) 
: 
 I come to this bill with a particular passion passed on from my father the late John Hippolite. Some 36 years ago in 1972 along with Dr Oliver Sutherland he wrote a paper entitled  
Justice and Race: A Monocultural System in a Multicultural Society 
. The basic premise of this paper arose out of a period in which a group of Maori started monitoring the activities of the Nelson Magistrate’s Court out of their concern about the high incidence of convictions of Maori defendants. They reached the conclusion that in order for Maori defendants to have a fair hearing it was necessary to have legal representation. It was their finding that by having this the court’s Maori imprisonment rate was lowered by one-third. Extending that finding to the rest of the country they argued that a third of Maori prisoners should not be in jail. This was radical in the truest sense of the word—getting to the fundamental root of the problem. As I mentioned in my maiden speech—which now seems so long ago—this ultimately led to legal aid being extended to criminal matters and it motivates me in debate on this bill as in every bill to uphold justice. 
The Maori Party is founded on our commitment to honour justice. It was the matter of justice that led Maori to walk in their thousands to oppose the Draconian confiscation known as the Foreshore and Seabed Bill. It is the question of justice that plagues our collective soul as a nation when we continue to see the substantial inequalities between the outcomes for Maori and the outcomes for other New Zealanders. It is our commitment to justice that has motivated us to advocate for this nation to address the shame of a Government that rejected the call to endorse the statement of aspiration for all indigenous peoples—that is the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. And so it is entirely right and proper that in upholding our support for a restorative justice system where victims are empowered we stand in support of this bill. 
This bill stands as a historic hallmark of the action required to ensure that victims do not face any additional stress leading up to the process of legal aid grants. It emerges out of the traumatic administration error of January 2008 when the Legal Services Agency billed the widow of Karl Kuchenbecker for $19000 granted in legal aid for the inquest into his death. We now have terms for this type of situation: “re-victimisation” or “secondary victimisation”. This refers to the way in which early experiences of victimisation can become the precursors to later episodes of victimisation. But what we saw with that particular case might fit better what researcher Pia Van de Zandt describes as “State-sanctioned victimisation” when referring to the impact of court processes on rape victims. This bill then is to address the State-sanctioned victimisation that has occurred when victims of crime attending a Parole Board hearing or a coronial inquest were subjected to financial eligibility testing and in a final blow were asked to meet stringent repayment conditions. 
The concept of victims is not something that sits easily with Maori. We prefer to think in terms of survivors of people determining our own destiny rather than the more passive association of victimhood. Yet the statistics and the commentators persist in presenting a picture in which Maori are reported as experiencing almost twice as many victimisations as non-Maori and that in particular Maori women victims have the highest victimisation rates with an average number of reported offences per victim of 4.8. Of course the State-sanctioned victimisation of Maori is well established as this comment from prominent political analyst Colin James reflects: “… Maori as a race are victims—of in the past colonial rapine and plunder which stripped them of their culture and their economy and in the present for as long as the endemic demoralisation that resulted persists.” At the recent colloquium on Maori and the criminal justice system Ani Mikaere delivered a paper that encapsulates this view. Her paper was entitled  
Three Million Strikes and Still Not Out; The Crown as the Ultimate Recidivist 
. 
The Legal Services Amendment Bill builds on a context of victimhood but it moves us forward in a way in which justice can be seen to be done. We welcome the thinking that any definition of victim—or survivor—will now include the parent or legal guardian of a child or young person and a member of the immediate family of a person who has died or is rendered incapable by any offence. Although there are caveats around this namely that they do not apply if the individual is charged with convicted of or pleads guilty to the offence the intention to ensure a broader definition of family is adopted is one that we in the Maori Party support. 
The issue of costs is another feature that receives our support. In this bill the proposal is that the Legal Services Agency may decide not to recover debt when enforcement of the debt would cause serious hardship to the aided person the cost of enforcing the debt is likely to exceed the debt owed or the agency considers it would be just and equitable not to recover the debt. This is a very significant innovation and we commend the Minister for his insight in this area. 
The Maori Party has been very concerned to ensure that Maori are not disadvantaged in seeking legal aid. We know that there are longstanding concerns about the difficulties that many Maori applicants for legal aid still face. The perceived cost of lawyers’ fees prevents a significant number of Maori from seeking help more so than New Zealanders on average. In the  
Report on the 2006 National Survey of Unmet Legal Needs and Access to Services 
 over a third of Maori with problems—that is 34 percent—felt that perceived costs had stopped them from approaching a lawyer to help them with their problem or to see whether they could get legal aid. So the amendments today which enable the Legal Services Agency to write off legal aid debt when it will be inequitable to seek recovery of that debt are a step in the right direction if we are really seeking to increase access to justice. 
The Maori Party has been solid in our support for a restorative justice system where victims are empowered. We believe that what is required in any assessment of the justice system is a fundamental shift in values. Any assessment of public outrage and media headlines would show that society has at large become more vindictive since the 1980s and what is urgently needed is robust debate about crime prevention and how to create communities where justice means what is morally right and fair rather than the administration of a court sentence. We can take our lead from iwi who are doing things differently. Just up the line Te Wananga o Raukawa has a kaupapa dispute resolution process and over in Kahungunu they have been training people in dispute resolutions and encouraging people to learn to trust the process. These are just two approaches to Maori mediation which is showing us a new way. The crux of the matter is that if we are to believe the Ministry of Justice prison forecast report from 2006 the projections are that by 2010 Maori will be the most imprisoned people per capita in the world. We cannot have that not for the sake of Maori nor for the reputation of Aotearoa. Gaining access to justice through legal aid and assisting Maori to enjoy the rights that all citizens enjoy—to receive the best possible legal representation—is a key means of changing this forecast for ever. 
This bill does not address the issue of quality representation—that is for another day—but it does make some progress in amending the Legal Services Act to improve and increase access to justice. We will certainly be supporting this bill and we look forward to debate around what Ngapuhi / Te Roroa and Ngati Porou researcher Khylee Quince has described as the tikanga around justice—namely “a desire to reintegrate offenders into communities heal victims and maintain a balance between the acknowledgment of past behaviour and moving on.” Kia ora.