Harawira Hone: Legal Services Bill — First Reading 
Harawira Hone: Legal Services Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:666;Page:13518] 
HONE HARAWIRA (Maori Party—Te Tai Tokerau) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Assistant Speaker Roy. Kia ora tatou katoa e te Whare. 
Paul Quinn 
: Kia ora. 
HONE HARAWIRA 
: Kia ora I say to Mr Quinn. Tomorrow marks the occasion of 20 years since the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act landed on the New Zealand judiciary. That is important because the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act together with the 1993 Human Rights Act and the nation’s founding document Te Tiriti o Waitangi provides the framework for a strong and evolving constitutional discussion which the Maori Party will proudly lead over the next few years. Alongside all that of course the Maori Party is also proud to claim responsibility for this nation’s signing up to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples providing Aotearoa with a set of international benchmarks regarding indigenous people and the law. So as we come to the Legal Services Bill the Maori Party does so looking for the same positive reform that Dame Margaret Bazley noted in her report highlighting a range of deficiencies within the legal aid system including the poor quality of legal aid services and serious service delivery issues. 
Dame Margaret made some far-reaching recommendations including the following: ensuring aid is available equally across the country taking into account geographical social cultural and economic factors; extending social services into the courts to reduce the social deprivation of court users and their families and whanau; and creating a better focus on legal needs for Maori and Pacific peoples and on the barriers they face. Dame Margaret also made the point that if the legal aid system fails Maori then the system fails altogether. 
The stories of delays and deferrals are legendary. I note the situation of 19 people caught in the 15 October police terrorism raids on Tuhoe whose applications for legal aid were not even looked at by the Legal Services Agency for 4 months. All Maori electorate MPs know of people who have made complaints about incompetent and corrupt lawyers dragging out the legal process to maximise their fees or recommending that their clients plead guilty because they are too lazy to do the necessary groundwork to defend their Maori clients properly. So we welcome the proposal in this bill to have lawyers sit competency tests before going on the legal aid roster. 
Mind you I note that comments about bad lawyers at the Manukau court in particular need to be balanced alongside the reality of the huge workload and woefully inadequate resources provided for the high numbers of defendants appearing before that court. I quote from an email we received just after the Bazley report was released: “There’s no doubt that the Manukau Court is known as one of the most difficult courts in the land to work in. This does not mean however that it attracts the worst kind of lawyer. Quite the reverse. One has to be very dedicated to work in this court. Many of our finest lawyers have worked and continue to work in this court—Karina Williams and Eddie Paul to name just two. I was appalled to find that some of Ms Bazley’s findings were based on ‘anecdotal evidence’. In common terms this means gossip. There is so much work in the Manukau Court that I can’t see why any lawyer would even need to be ‘gaming the system’ as she puts it. The majority of hard-working lawyers in the Manukau Court don’t need this kind of publicity.” The Maori Party also supports the right of all people to have access to justice as proposed in this bill. Indeed the denial of that access to justice was one of the main reasons behind Te Hikoi Takutai Moana the birth of the Maori Party and the drive to repeal the Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004. 
One major point of concern that I have comes from a meeting held last year when Maori tribal and legal leaders expressed their concern to the Minister of Justice about the number of lawyers appearing before the Waitangi Tribunal and the consequential loss of tribal control to lawyers acting on their behalf. It was proposed that the Legal Services Agency and the Waitangi Tribunal develop options that retain the benefit of legal aid but place controls on the number of lawyers the cost of lawyers and the domination of lawyers over Maori issues. However I note that much of that will be blocked by this bill denying legal aid to those negotiating settlements with the Crown. In our view that simply adds another problem rather than dealing with the original one. We do not support proposals to deny legal aid to those negotiating Treaty settlements. 
My gut feeling is to not support this bill. Although it addresses general issues that impact on Maori it does little to address the specific needs of Maori. Given the number of Maori appearing before the courts I note that there is nothing in this bill to support the reopening of the Maori Legal Service either. However the Maori Party will support this bill in its first reading to allow time for groups and individuals who have a stake in this matter including Maori legal practitioners Maori involved in the legal aid process people who have worked for the Maori Legal Service in the past Maori who have been ripped off by legal aid koretake in the past Maori involved in Treaty settlements Maori social service providers and others to tell the select committee what they think of this bill and how they think it might be changed to improve services to Maori in the future. Our vote beyond the first reading will be determined by what we hear through the select committee process. Kia ora tatou katoa.