Ardern Jacinda: Legal Services Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Ardern Jacinda: Legal Services Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
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JACINDA ARDERN (Labour) 
: 
 I am pleased to rise to speak on behalf of Labour on this important bill the Legal Services Amendment Bill. I would like firstly to thank the Minister of Justice for acknowledging the work that Labour had already done on this bill prior to the election. In the same vein I acknowledge in particular the Hon Annette King who was the first member of this House to progress this bill in her capacity as the then Minister. I also acknowledge the work of Chester Borrows as the chair of the Justice and Electoral Committee who took the bill through the select committee phase. I acknowledge the officials who serviced the select committee and provided very good advice. I also acknowledge the submitters who choose to come forward and speak to this bill. Many of them or their families had been the victims of a crime. They provided heartfelt submissions not only on the substance of the bill but on the wider issue of victims’ representation in the criminal justice system. A lot of what they said to the committee resonated quite strongly with members on all sides. Of course we were limited as to what we could address within the scope of this bill which is reasonably narrow. 
In this third reading or final stage of the bill I will cover off what this legislation attempts to do. I will highlight the changes that the committee made to the bill and also the wider context of victims’ rights in the criminal justice system. I think we have some way to go in what is a shifting environment in terms of victims’ rights and I will touch on that issue later. 
Firstly it is interesting to reflect on the context of the Legal Services Act which this bill amends. The purpose of the Legal Services Agency is to promote access to justice. There are three quite key principles. The first is to provide a legal aid scheme that assists people of insufficient means to pay for legal services—to none the less have access to them. Legal aid has become a matter of great controversy recently and it is an issue that I am sure the House will debate further in the future. The second key principle is to provide other means of legal assistance. The third is to support community legal services by funding community law centres education and research. The continuing instability of funding for community law centres is a fraught area and this House has already dealt with that this year. I am pleased that there is a good working relationship on both sides of the House via Minister Power to make sure that community law centres continue to be well funded. But they are quite key areas that the Legal Services Agency deals with and they have become quite politically fraught recently. 
This bill is however one that has had support from all sides of the House and I think that is because it responds to an issue of natural justice. Everyone will recall the outrage from the public when it dawned on people that we had a system that would allow quite unjustly victims to be hit with a significant bill for just taking part in legal proceedings that involved the death of a loved one. It is quite right that the amendments made in this bill have been done in such a swift way. 
The purpose of the bill has already been touched on by the Minister but I will highlight it again. The bill ensures that the victims of crime are able to attend stages of justice proceedings such as Parole Board hearings or coronial inquests and are not subject to financial eligibility tests—not necessarily in all cases. It enables the Legal Services Agency to write off legal debt at any time during legal proceedings rather than only when proceedings are concluded. That is something I touched on in the Committee stage. Of course as we are all aware in this House going through the full process of perhaps even appeals etc. could mean that the family of a victim would be waiting a considerable amount of time before they were aware of what kind of legal aid debt might be pursued by the Legal Services Agency. If it is clear from the outset that that is not something the Legal Services Agency is likely to do it is best that that is known up front. Of course as a preventive measure—and I think this is a smart move by the House—a new regulation-making power is given to the Minister to enable extra classes of people to be added in terms of the financial eligibility test and repayment conditions at any time. That means that we will not go through a full parliamentary process to add any extra categories of people; it will be done through a regulations review process. I think that is fitting. 
In my speech in the Committee stage I touched on the amendments that the select committee had made and I think they were useful amendments. They might be considered to be somewhat technical but they clarified that our intention in this House was to allow victims to have this measure apply to them through all stages of a criminal justice process where they had the right to be a part of proceedings. That includes Parole Board hearings and of course there was the discussion around coronial inquests as well. 
I come back to the issue that I very briefly touched on at the beginning of my speech which is the changing context in which we have been debating this measure over the past years—right back to from my recollection as early as 2002. The environment in which we now debate victims’ rights in New Zealand has changed. It was in 2003 I believe that I had the privilege of working for the Hon Phil Goff when he was Minister of Justice and I recall that at that time the Sensible Sentencing Trust was just beginning to emerge as an advocacy body in New Zealand. Since that body has begun to grow it has highlighted for me an issue that I believe all of us in this House should be concerned about. All of us should be champions on behalf of victims. We should also be champions on behalf of a fair and equitable justice system. I fear that in this country at present there is exploitation going on of victims. I do think it is the role of parliamentarians to ensure that if there are concerns—and there still are of course—in our criminal justice system about the way that victims are treated as they come through that system then those concerns should be addressed. But I think that victims at present are being used as part of a lobby for something quite different from that and that it will be to the detriment of this place and of our justice system. We must keep that in mind as we continue to debate additional provisions to enhance the role of victims in our criminal justice system. 
I highlight again that members on both sides of this House hold these issues very dear to our hearts. I think it is unfair that sometimes we hear consideration of these issues as though there is almost a hierarchy of parties with some regarded as being more adequate than others to deal with such issues. I think that is grossly unfair. Although this bill may have been a response to a very specific case we have seen many pieces of legislation during the 9 years of the previous Labour Government that were proactive rather than reactive. I have named some of them before: the Sentencing Act 2002 which introduced the presumption in favour of reparation and resulted in that sentence being used much more frequently and which was something we heard about when we discussed the Sentencing (Offender Levy) Amendment Bill the Victims’ Rights Act 2002 and the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims Act 2005. They were not just pieces of legislation; they were policies that were intended to give a greater footing for victims and a greater awareness of the place of victims in our criminal justice system. We should be proud of those policies. 
But I highlight again that there is always a balance to be struck and I fear that at present a lobby is exploiting victims in this country rather than making sure that we have policies in place to genuinely assist those who find themselves in the horrid and unfortunate situation of being a victim in New Zealand.