Chauvel Charles: Legal Assistance (Sustainability) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Chauvel Charles: Legal Assistance (Sustainability) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
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CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour) 
: 
 I hope that the Minister of Justice does not have cause in the years to come after he has left this House permanently to regret the last paragraph of the speech he has given. He gave us an assurance that the Legal Assistance (Sustainability) Amendment Bill would not deleteriously affect those most in need of assistance from the Crown when they are accused of a crime. 
I want the House to be very clear about what we will be doing today if this bill is read a first time. The bill is couched in very comforting terms. It sounds innocuous: “We are just reviewing thresholds.” “We’re applying the civil threshold to minor criminal matters.” Nonsense. We are doing something much more Draconian than that and I will spell out what this bill will do. 
Hon Tau Henare 
: Ooh that’s scary! I’m shivering in my boots! 
CHARLES CHAUVEL 
: Mr Henare might like to read the Crimes Act because when his constituents come to him in his office and say that they cannot get legal aid because the Government has removed their entitlement to it I wonder what he will tell them. 
Here are some of the offences that will now be put beyond the entitlement that people have to legal assistance. All that needs to happen is for someone to be accused of one of these offences and there will be no entitlement to assistance if they earn more than $22000 a year. That is National’s new definition of the rich. Most of the offences in the Summary Offences Act are covered. Crimes Act offences covered include distribution of indecent material indecent acts in a public place criminal nuisance misconduct in respect of human remains concealment of the dead body of a child injury by unlawful act aggravated assault assault with intent to injure assault on a child or by a male on a female common assault possession of offensive weapons or a disabling substance unlawful use of interception devices unlawful disclosure of private communications and the making possessing and publishing of intimate video recordings. The list continues: theft of property worth under $1000 attempted conversion of a vehicle being in disguise or in possession of instruments for burglary the receiving of stolen property worth under $1000 and the making selling distributing or possessing of software for committing a crime. There are many more offences under the relevant legislation. 
These are serious offences and if somebody is accused wrongly of one of these offences—and we all know that it happens—and they are earning over $22000 a year then they will not have anywhere to turn as of right for assistance with their defence. What will they do? They will plead guilty. They will go to jail. Innocent people as a result of this legislation will go to jail—as if we were not locking up enough people in this country already. 
Hon Tau Henare 
: Another conspiracy theory by the loony left. 
CHARLES CHAUVEL 
: I ask Mr Henare again what he will say to his constituents when they come to him and say that they do not have a bean that they are accused wrongly of a serious offence and that they cannot get any help. That is what Parliament will be doing today if we pass this legislation. Let us not be in any mistaken frame of mind about what this proposal will mean in practice. 
It goes further than the criminal side because it deals with civil matters as well and it imposes that savage threshold of $22000 a year in income. Again that is the definition of rich according to Mr Power—I myself think that that is pretty rich. If Kiwis are earning $22000 a year they will not be eligible for legal aid in civil matters unless there are exceptional circumstances. What will happen if someone’s neighbours are sued and they do not earn very much? They will need a lawyer to help them out. If they are wrongly sued if they are named in a civil action but they should not be a party to that civil action they will not be able to get assistance to defend themselves. Again that is what the effect of this legislation will be. It is unconscionable. People who through no fault of their own are caught up in civil proceedings and who do not have enough money to defend themselves will be in no position to avail themselves of the services of a lawyer to get them out of that position. That is not a position that this Parliament should ever countenance putting any fellow Kiwi into. It is shameful and we should reject the propositions contained in the legislation that will advance that position. 
There is another matter that I am troubled about in respect of the civil justice provisions in this legislation. It is in respect of applications for personal care protection or welfare issues when there is a vulnerable person like a child at risk a person at risk of domestic violence a mentally ill person or a refugee. The restrictions already discussed will apply to those people as well when they need to seek legal aid in order to make an application in respect of their personal care property or welfare. Admittedly there are some hardship provisions in the legislation but again let us be in no doubt about the effect of this legislation. Vulnerable people who need to instruct a lawyer in order to seek the protection of the courts—a fundamental right of anybody in New Zealand—will be prevented from doing that by this legislation. 
Hon Tau Henare 
: Thanks mate. Sit down now. 
CHARLES CHAUVEL 
: No amount of yelling screaming and interjecting by Mr Henare will change that sad fact. I hope that he does not vote for this legislation because we all know which most vulnerable New Zealanders will be adversely affected by these provisions. 
If that were not enough a user charge is contemplated in this legislation. We heard from the Minister that it would be $100. The bill provides that if people cannot pay $100 then they will be able to pay interest until such time as they can. In the calculation of people’s net value to determine their entitlement to seek legal aid from the Government guess what will be taken into account under this bill. It is people’s personal items of clothing their household furniture their household appliances and workers’ tools of trade. They will all have to be put into the mix when people fill out the form used to decide whether they are poor enough to get legal aid from the State when they have been accused of a crime and want to defend themselves they have become party to some civil litigation and want advice on how to get out of that or they are vulnerable people who need to seek the protection of the court. I think we should be ashamed of these provisions. Applicants will have to say what their vacuum cleaner is worth what their couch is worth and what their jeans and jackets are worth. This is the sort of level that we have sunk to under this Minister and this Government when it comes to something as fundamental in this country as access to justice. 
Finally there is a provision concerning family law. As members will know when there is a relationship dispute and a child is involved the court appoints counsel to represent the child. This bill will require the parties to family law disputes to contribute to the costs of that counsel. What if they cannot afford to do that? Does this mean that they will have to suffer substantial hardship or alternatively that the child will miss out on representation a fundamental part of the system as we know it in family law cases? 
The Minister talked about a crisis in the funding of legal aid. I sat in the former Minister of Justice’s office 4 years ago when she was meeting with the president of the Law Society after the previous Government had increased the legal aid entitlements available to lawyers for the first time in 20 years. It was not a lavish increase; it was a modest one. It just about kept enough providers in the system to continue to provide the services that were required. 
We can do better than this. We can do better than make savage cuts to the rates of entitlement at which people who need access to justice can with assistance from the State access that assistance. We can do better at recovering grants of aid by treating that aid as more of a loan than a grant. There are many many other ways that we can be fiscally responsible while ensuring that we retain people’s access to justice as a fundamental right. I implore the House to consider those alternatives rather than to pursue this bill.