Boyack RachelRACHEL BOYACK (Labour—Nelson): Thank you Mr Speaker. It's a pleasure to take a call on the Legal Services Amendment Bill this afternoon. I want to reference at the beginning of my contribution this afternoon the story of one of my close friends who has had a significant amount of interaction with the justice system through the Family Court—having left a violent relationship—and the impact that aspects of the legal aid system had on her over a long period of time. It's my view that the changes in the bill today would have had a positive impact on her alongside some other changes we are making to the Family Court system.The particular situation for my friend was that she entered a relationship and as a result there was subsequently relationship property and because the matter presented itself in front of the Family Court on so many occasions she did end up picking up a substantial legal aid bill. The terrible result of all of this was that when the relationship property was finalised she had to pay back her legal aid bill and it was such that there was no further financial support for her from that point; she lost all the money that she had invested in that property.So a young woman with three young children who had relationship property but as a result of our legal aid system—and the family court system subsequently—is now a woman who is renting property and has done so since. So the security that her family would have had has been lost. So there are some changes in this bill that are really important particularly around the removal of the interest penalty because that was such that it did impact on her particular situation. I also note that the increased thresholds and eligibility for legal aid will also benefit a number of people who are in my friend's type of situation where they're having to make difficult choices: it could be around whether they can actually do things like leave a relationship because unfortunately we know that for many women and men who are affected that in choices to leave a relationship sometimes there are financial elements. So everything we can do as a Parliament to make the legal aid system fairer and more available to people is very very important. I have had representations made to me by lawyers—I just want to reference the comments from the previous speaker who doesn't seem to think this is a priority. Lawyers who work in the legal aid system have made representations to me prior to my entering Parliament and also while I have been an MP specifically seeking this type of reform to legal aid. I want to note one in particular: Nelson lawyer Steven Zindel who picks up a significant part of the legal aid workload in Nelson with people who often would struggle to get representation. I want to acknowledge those defence lawyers. They are often defending people who others wouldn't wish to do so but those people—everybody has the right to have access to justice has the right to a fair trial has the right to access defence.So everything we can do such as the changes in this bill to ensure people have greater access to legal aid—and waiving the $50 fee is a big part of that. It that might seem to us parliamentarians to not be very much money but for people who are potentially facing significant criminal charges; significant issues in the Family Court where they do need to access legal aid where they do need that support of the State to ensure they have good access to justice—any barriers we can remove to ensure they have that right upheld is something that I think this Parliament should take very seriously; that is our role. Our role is to ensure that New Zealanders have that good access to justice. Alongside other changes that the Government has signalled such as removing the ability for people through the Family Court to take things like vexatious litigation where they repeatedly return to the Family Court there are other changes such as including changing and adding judicial officers to help ease the backlog through the Family Court—all of these pieces of work are things that we are doing to ensure that we make the Family Court work as best as we can for people.So this is excellent law; it covers a range of parts of our judicial system it is one small step in supporting some of our most vulnerable people and people who sometimes may have committed a terrible crime but who—regardless of that—under our laws and our principles and values in this country deserve the right to have justice and a fair trial and access to the legal support that they should have. So I want to congratulate the Minister on bringing this bill through the House and thank the Justice Committee and officials for their work on it and I commend it to the House.