Simpson Scott: Legal Assistance (Sustainability) Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSimpson Scott: Legal Assistance (Sustainability) Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 16 April 2013. Volume:689;Page:9379. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): As chairman of the Justice and Electoral Committee it is a great pleasure for me to rise and stand in support of the second reading of this Legal Assistance (Sustainability) Amendment Bill this afternoon. In so doing I would like to congratulate the Minister of Justice the Hon Judith Collins on her very good introductory comments because prudent fiscal management lies at the very core of this John Key National - led Government. It is about ensuring that hard-earned taxpayers’ money is well spent while at the same time making sure that the investment that is made by the Crown of taxpayer money in tight economic times extracts absolute maximum value.Andrew Little stated—and I thought wisely so given that he is from the Labour Party—that the State’s coffers are not bottomless but he absolutely chose to ignore any kind of attempt at providing a solution as to how the State might fund a bottomless legal aid requirement and especially so given our difficult financial times. Legal aid expenditure increased by a massive 55 percent between the years 2006-07 and 2009-10 and this growth had it not been focused upon would have resulted in a massive $402 million legal aid funding gap over 5 years. So the current legal aid system in this form was unsustainable and National has taken action to bring it under control. We are committed as a Government to ensuring that the legal aid system remains affordable in the future and that legal aid is available for those who need it most. We want to make sure that legal aid is available for those who need it while also ensuring that it remains absolutely affordable.Our proposals are designed to save $138 million over 4 years. These changes will not as the Labour Party implies affect cases involving vulnerable parties. They will not make any changes where care and protection of children are involved or where there are serious criminal matters. The bill is designed to get parties to resolve more minor legal matters between themselves rather than through the courts and that is a very good premise upon which to work. And although we make sure that legal aid is there for those who need it most this bill strikes a very good balance between ensuring that the viability of the current legal aid scheme is continued and at the same time prioritising funding to people who have the highest need for legal help.So what have we done so far in terms of legal aid reform? Well this Government has started to reform legal aid to improve the quality and to reduce costs after eligibility and lawyers’ fees were expanded previously under the last Labour Government which did so without any real regard to the cost of that scheme. We passed the Legal Services Act which amongst other measures established performance standards for legal aid lawyers. We expanded the Public Defence Service to take up to half of all criminal defence cases. We made victims of serious crime eligible for legal aid for coronial inquests and parole hearings.This Legal Assistance (Sustainability) Amendment Bill provides greater flexibility to adjust eligibility into the future and improvements in the assessment of eligibility. The reforms include a tightening of the merits test for family cases by no longer needing to take into account the interests of other vulnerable parties. The bill adjusts the special circumstances consideration in the means test for family and civil cases so that it focuses on the expensive cases. There are a raft of other measures in the bill that have been addressed and worked through by the Minister of Justice’s Supplementary Order Paper 134 and by the Justice and Electoral Committee and I want to congratulate and thank members of the select committee for the work that they have done. This is a good bill. The Hon Judith Collins made excellent comments in her introductory remarks. I absolutely commend the bill to the House.