Collins Judith: Legal Services Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third Reading 
Collins Judith: Legal Services Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third Reading 
[Volume:630;Page:2375] 
JUDITH COLLINS (National—Clevedon) 
: 
 I rise on behalf of the National Party. We will be opposing this bill and we do so with quite heavy hearts because many of us here are lawyers. I would like to have my interest as a lawyer noted in this area. I am one of the lawyers in this House who has undertaken legal aid work for people—mostly in the family and employment areas and also in the civil area. Certainly I know that there are some other members of the House who have been criminal legal aid lawyers as well. Legal aid is one of those political hot potatoes that will never get us a vote anywhere and I think we can all agree on that as MPs. But what we do need to know and to keep in mind is the fact that legal aid is an absolute necessity if there is ever going to be any sense of justice when someone is involved in proceedings particularly when the other side of the proceedings is in fact the Crown or in other words the State. 
Of all the areas of legal aid criminal legal aid is the one that many people in society feel is a rip-off. In one sense they are right. It is a rip-off in that the people who actually have to undertake the work are ripped off badly by the system. Why is it important that people who are accused of being criminals—and in some cases are the most desperate criminals—are properly represented? It is a matter of access to justice. It is an issue that requires us to consider the costs to society the costs to us as a country and the costs to the person himself or herself when an innocent person is convicted of a crime. Those costs are huge and that is one of the reasons that the National Party is opposed to this bill. We do not think it goes far enough. 
National members do not think the bill addresses the very real issue which is that in both the civil and the criminal legal aid areas lawyers are simply voting with their feet and saying they do not want to be part of the legal aid system. It has a lot to do with the bureaucracy. Having done some work in that area I can say that the bureaucracy is huge. It has quite a lot to do with the fact that payments to the lawyers often come many many months after the bill has been rendered. In fact often the attitude towards the lawyers is that they are being done a favour when actually in many cases the lawyers are undertaking work for well below the cost of running a business. They do so because they have a very very real intent towards doing the best for their clients. I think that is something that is often forgotten by those who have only a very cursory experience in the matters of the law and the legal profession. It is a profession in which a lot of people give an awful lot and are just about sick of doing so. 
What we do know is that this bill aims to increase the number of people who will be eligible for legal aid to some 1.2 million New Zealanders. That is a huge figure. It is about a quarter of the population. It is a very very large figure and someone has to pay for it. Unfortunately in this bill it does not seem as though there will be enough money to pay for it adequately. The top rate for Crown solicitors—those with all the power all the expertise and all the resources of the State behind them—is $192 per hour plus GST and that is updated every year. I ask members to compare the rate of $192 an hour plus GST with what is currently paid and is available to our top legal aid criminal lawyers which is $130 per hour inclusive of GST. So that is where we are starting to get down to it. It is $121 an hour. 
People might think that is quite a lot of money. However the way the criminal legal aid system works and the way the civil legal aid system works an hour does not necessarily mean an hour. An hour may well mean a day. I say that because particular rates are allowed for particular jobs. So in other words somebody in the Legal Services Agency has made a decision at some point that a particular job should take only X number of hours. But if a lawyer is acting for a client who is mentally distressed who has been traumatised by being brutalised by family members for years—by a father or husband or whatever—sometimes it takes significantly longer to do the job and do it properly. If a lawyer is acting for someone who is having his or her very first brush with the law in a criminal matter that person may need significantly more assistance and aid than the current legal aid requirement will allow. 
I understand that in a State-paid system a taxpayer-paid system one cannot please everyone and cannot always have all the money that is there for paying for oneself. But unfortunately what does tend to happen is that any incentive or ability for the lawyer to be able to do anything to help that client is something that the lawyer must pay for. For that privilege—for helping out the client in a pro bono way for the good of the client and for the good of the justice system—the lawyer does not get treated as though he or she has done something good for the legal aid system; those lawyers are often treated as though they have done everything bad and are trying to claim for something they should not claim for. So quite clearly we have a situation at the moment which the New Zealand Law Society has made very plain to this Government where lawyers are saying: “We will not do this work anymore.” Many of them do not want the hassle and are prepared to work less for more by doing work privately. Frankly as one of them in this House I cannot blame them. 
I also wonder about what has happened about the great public defender scheme and how that will be affected by this bill. So much was made of that in the Counties-Manukau area yet my contacts in the criminal lawyers’ association tell me— 
Russell Fairbrother 
: The criminal law fraternity voting for projects for criminal lawyers. 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: Oh yes Mr Fairbrother remembers them does he not? But they did not think much of him. They in fact tell me that that scheme is one that should be looked at and looked at very very carefully. I wonder how their costs are being looked at or how they are being judged against the people who are having to pay for their own offices their own telephones their own parking and everything else. 
This is a bill we would like to support if only it went to the very heart of the issue—which is that access to justice will not be served by extending legal aid to 1.2 million New Zealanders but not putting in proper provision for lawyers to actually do the work. That will make legal aid even worse than it is now because more and more people will feel that they can bring civil claims more and more people will feel that they will be able to have their time in court and there will simply not be lawyers prepared to continue to fund Government policy. That is why we are not voting for this bill—it does not go far enough to address the issues.