Henderson Emily; O'Connor GregDr EMILY HENDERSON (Labour—Whangārei): Ka huri ō whakaaro ki te tini me te mano kua mate our whānau in Tāmaki Makaurau moe mai rā moe mai rā.[My thoughts turn to the many the multitudes who have passed away our whānau in Tāmaki Makaurau rest in peace rest in peace.]Our hearts are all at this moment with the whānau and the victims of the shooter in Auckland. I just want to acknowledge that and I want to acknowledge—as all my colleagues have done—the sacrifices and the extraordinary courage of our first responders.I move now to the bill which I stand as a member of the Justice Committee to commend. I want to make a few points. It is always interesting as someone who has spent a lifetime as a practitioner in and out of the courts until coming to this place to be—if I can put it this way—mansplained to and scolded by those who have no practical or even theoretical knowledge of the system whatsoever. There's nothing I like more than a good mansplaining on a Thursday afternoon but let's talk about the reality. Let's talk about the people I dealt with and my firm dealt with day after day and my colleagues in the profession continue to deal with day after day. I want to acknowledge those colleagues because I hear from them day after day as to the strains and the stress that they are under in continuing to pick up this work. I want to acknowledge those who have come to me and said thank you for this increase the first increase they have seen since around 2008. One of the things we have done as part of the package we released in this Budget of which this bill is one is to give them the first pay increase of 12 percent since 2008. I will get to that 2008 figure again when I come to answer the assertion that we should be dealing with the delays in the court because I think it's time we talked about who created them. But talking about legal aid realities one of the arguments made on the other side of the House was that this is about letting people escape responsibility; that they should be being forced to repay their legal aid bills and that it's frankly a bit sloppy of them to not have to pay that $50 contribution. Let me tell you about a few of those people.Let me tell you about Tanya—not her real name. Tanya had a hard upbringing. She had four children. She had an ex who hunted her up and down the North Island to beat the proverbial out of her. Over and over again this woman came back to our office to seek help. She was having to live hand-to-mouth because she had to go into hiding every six months to a year. If you think that it would be possible for that woman to absorb a $50 cost every time she needed not just a domestic violence protection order—which are thankfully free—but help with a custody arrangement or any of the many things that went wrong for her in her life as she was chased and on a number of occasions nearly killed then I suggest that that would be something that needed to be reconsidered fairly promptly. Let me tell you about Sarah—also not her real name. Sarah was a working mum with two children. She worked hard in an office job. She also was fighting a long-term Family Court battle against a man of remarkable persistence and unreasonableness. She had absolutely no ability to pay for lawyers yet she did not qualify for legal aid. Our firm had to effectively subsidise her. She had given up trying to use lawyers because she could not afford it. When a particularly terrible incident happened and she was dragged back before the courts yet again—thankfully something we will doing something about—by a vexatious litigant we stepped in to give her essentially pro bono legal assistance because she could not qualify for legal aid under the previous settings. That is why it is so important that we pass this bill and take away that crippling $50 fee—which I and many of my ex-colleagues in the law profession have paid for their clients over and over again out of our own pockets—and that we extend the eligibility threshold as we have done to cover struggling hard-working ordinary Kiwis like my client Sarah. It is farcical to suggest that we should be trying to claw back money from people who are doing it hard in circumstances that are not of their own making in any way shape or form. So yeah there's nothing I like more than being mansplained to—and on that note I commend this bill to the House.DEPUTY SPEAKER: I'd just like the member to consider the use of that term four times during her speech. I won't ask her to apologise but I will just ask her to reflect on whether that is conducive to the good order of the House. But the member may now sit down.