O'Rourke Denis: Legal Assistance (Sustainability) Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeO'Rourke Denis: Legal Assistance (Sustainability) Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 16 April 2013. Volume:689;Page:9385. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): I am afraid I would have to say that the Legal Assistance (Sustainability) Amendment Bill as introduced was a thoughtless attack on the legal aid system in New Zealand. It was basically a quest to save money without regard for the legal aid needs of people who cannot afford to pay a lawyer. The Government was willing to do serious damage to the system. In respect of criminal legal aid people with less serious charges to face but still needing a defence would have had to defend themselves often with disastrous consequences for justice and good court procedure. The availability of aid for lawyers for the child and for youth advocates would also have been seriously reduced and proceedings for which aid could be granted could have been removed through legislation.Predictably there were a large number of submissions on the bill especially in respect of those matters. To her credit the Minister of Justice has listened to the chorus of protest and has shown a willingness to amend the bill. In October she introduced Supplementary Order Paper 134 to undo some of the harm that the bill would have done. That Supplementary Order Paper does indeed address many of those matters. Firstly and in particular it does retain the existing appointment framework for lawyers for the child. [Interruption]I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. There seem to be a lot of interjections from one side of the House to the other.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I am the—[Interruption] Order! I am the judge of that.DENIS O’ROURKE: I hope that members on both sides of the House will observe the rule that if there are to be interjections then please by all means address them to me but not to each other.That was the first issue that was addressed. I agree in fact that the lawyers for the child and youth advocates were indeed absolutely necessary. Those people cannot represent themselves and the courts would be constrained in delivering justice without the assistance of lawyers. The second issue is this: the removal of the proposal to use Order in Council to alter the proceedings for legal aid eligibility. It is something that is called a “Henry VIII” clause and it is good to see it gone.The tighter financial means test for less serious criminal cases has also been removed. I approve of that and also some common-sense stuff like removing household goods from the calculation of eligibility for legal aid which is just that—a good common-sense deletion.The Minister of Justice has indicated changes to be introduced in regulations. New Zealand First approves of the reduction of the user charge from $100 to $50. We think that is fair and sensible. Also we are glad to see the provision that says that interest will not be charged for the first 6 months on legal aid debts. We do think however that it would be better still if no interest was charged on legal aid debts.The Supplementary Order Paper also introduced several new propositions including increased ability to refuse to grant civil or family legal aid in certain circumstances. That is still being worked through through the Family Court Proceedings Reform Bill and again there are many protests so we will wait and see how that turns out. The point is that it is another attack on the accessibility of people to lawyers to legal representation in this country.I did want to comment on the provision that requires an applicant in arrears for repayments on previous legal aid debts to be subject to a test under which they could have legal aid for a proceeding removed. The point about that is that that is not a fair and proper legal aid system. That provision should have been removed altogether. If there is any concern about people not paying their legal aid bills—[Interruption]The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! I am sorry to interrupt the member but there can be no reference to the public in the gallery.DENIS O’ROURKE: If there is any genuine concern about people not paying their legal aid debts then that can be addressed better in other ways not by removing legal aid altogether. That is not consistent with the purposes of the Act and that provision should have been removed altogether. The members opposite may laugh about that but in fact there are people out there who will not laugh when they are denied legal representation by a provision that is completely against the purposes of the Act.Another issue is this: charging interest on legal aid debt. I am glad that the Justice and Electoral Committee recommended what I asked it to do which is to delay the imposition of interest for 6 months. It would have been better however if interest on legal aid debt was removed altogether. Clause 12 of the bill as introduced requires a payment of interest from the beginning. The delay of 6 months is a good provision but better still would be no interest on legal aid at all. The reason for that is simply that too many people—too many low-income people—will be affected by that provision. It does not provide any real encouragement for those people to repay their debts sooner. In fact many may give up. An interest-free provision I believe is a proper Government contribution to legal aid in this country and interest should not be required at all.I also approve however of the reimbursement of costs for lodging a caveat over property to secure legal aid debts. That is already done in fact as a condition of the grant. However it is perfectly proper I think for the new legislation here to put that into law to regularise that. Concerning additional eligibility for legal aid New Zealand First disagrees with allowing the commissioner to refuse legal aid as I have said if there are arrears. We think that is very unfair.Overall we think that Supplementary Order Paper 134 amends this bill to improve it very significantly but in the end it has not done enough to address some of the problems especially those that I have mentioned. So taken together with the availability of legal assistance which is already not easy to get in this country and the proposals for the Family Court legislation that are going through at the moment the problems with this bill mean that New Zealand First cannot support it. The bill’s genesis was penny-pinching. There have been some good amendments now proposed but none of them go far enough to make this good law or a bill that we could support.