Bridges Simon: Legal Services Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Bridges Simon: Legal Services Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Volume:670;Page:17002] 
SIMON BRIDGES (National—Tauranga) 
: 
 Bridges. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: Bridges; sorry. 
SIMON BRIDGES 
: Thank you Mr Chair I have been brought down to size. 
Hon Member 
: You need to get your profile up. 
SIMON BRIDGES 
: I do. I need to do more breakfast television or something. 
I will start in the same vein that Charles Chauvel did by acknowledging Simon Power who is currently the Minister in the chair in this my first speech since the announcement of his decision not to stand at the next election. Stuart Nash was in the House and still is in the House and he was telling me a little while ago that I was one of the more regular speakers in Parliament. He had some research done and found that that was the case. The reason I mention this is that I reflected on why that would be the case and it is simply for this reason: I am on the Justice and Electoral Committee. I think I am right in saying that our committee has considered about 40 percent of the legislation that has gone through this House in the last couple of years. That is obviously a real testament to the Minister of Justice and his work output. I also add that if we go through those laws the quality of them and the common sense of them which is not always something to be— 
Grant Robertson 
: Is this a job interview? 
SIMON BRIDGES 
: No it is a serious contribution I hope about a Minister who has done in 2 years the work of many more years than two. 
I want to talk about clause 3 “Purpose of Act”—funnily enough a lot members do not want to talk about it—because it seems to me that clause 3 is quite significant. It states: “The purpose of this Act is to promote access to justice …” and of course that is fundamental. I think that having access to justice is something that everyone in this Chamber would agree on. I will not talk about the bill debated earlier today in this House and some of the arguments there about access to justice but it is fundamental. Clause 3 goes on to state that the bill does that “by establishing a system that—(a) provides legal services to people of insufficient means;”. 
I have already talked about how fundamental that is for a legal aid system. The reason is perhaps quite obvious but it is worth remarking on. In a lot of family cases where legal aid is provided it is the State that is bringing the case and it is absolutely right that if people can pay for it they do so. But in criminal cases if people cannot if they do not have the means and if as is of course the case in criminal cases they may well lose their liberty the State does have a mechanism by which it can pay for and provide people with legal services. I think it is important that the purpose clause states that the State is providing legal services for people with insufficient means. The converse of that is that we do not want to provide legal services to people who have the means to pay for legal aid or lawyers. 
Clause 3 goes on to state that we are establishing a system that “(b) delivers those services in the most effective and efficient manner.” As I understand it we have not seen those words or anything quite like them in a legal services bill—or in many if any justice bills—in the past. I touched on this in the second reading debate. 
Grant Robertson 
: Quote yourself. 
SIMON BRIDGES 
: Maybe I will. I cannot quote myself word for word but I said then that some people say that it should be justice at any cost. They say that we should be spending billions and billions more and sometimes in court cases we get the feeling that that is the way things have been run. Some people believe that if another witness can tangentially touch on something that he or she may have seen or heard and it draws the case out for another day then that is fine but there needs to be some proportionality.