Penk Chris; Goldsmith Paul; Brooking RachelCHRIS PENK (National—Kaipara ki Mahurangi): Thank you very much Madam Chair. I'm delighted that we've reached the stage of the urgency business of the House that we're discussing Charles Dickens. For newer members who might not have watched my maiden statement—or those who did or forgot or were not paying attention at the time—I referenced no fewer than four Dickens novels. I sort of wove them into it and Great Expectations was an obvious one. Bleak House too which kind of feels quite appropriate right now and I forget the others. In any case I think what we have reached is the stage where the Minister has explained the current regime and the justification for it but what I think is important for everyone who is listening to the debate to note—anyone who may be listening to the debate. I don't know how many there are outside the Chamber; I don't know how many are inside the Chamber either for that matter. But there already exists a mechanism for just and equitable reasons"—that there can be an exemption of legal aid debt already so this relates to grounds of financial hardship or any other reasons the applicant believes should be considered. So I wonder if the Minister can explain how—with such a mechanism already available—it should be necessary to apply a blanket rule such as this whereby the application of a waiver or an exemption can effectively be applied to all and therefore miss the opportunity to narrow down that assistance to those cases where it is most needed?Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Look the only other question I have is around the Minister's confident assertion that it will cost about $600000 a year—I question that. And I suppose the obvious place to start is the impact that it may or may not have on behaviour: firstly in taking on more debt because it doesn't necessarily have to be paid back or there are no consequences for taking much longer to pay it back. And then secondly the changing attitude towards paying it back if there is no incentive to do so. Then I look at the regulatory impact statement and it says "We've included analysis done on the second option"—but the basic constraint that the reviewers said was that there was a limited and unreliable data is collected on legal aid applications and recipients which seemed like a pretty broad statement. So we've got a very confident assertion that it's going to cost $600000 which doesn't sound like much but we've also got statements saying that you know basically the analysis is done on limited and unreliable data collected on legal aid applications or recipients. So I'm just wondering how confident the Minister is in her assertions because ultimately—like I say it's just a question of judgment. Are you better to spend the money even further changing the thresholds for example for people to get access to legal aid? Or is a Government—really if it's interested in dealing with this problem—better to be focused on the core issue which is speeding up the processes of the courts? And I suppose our fundamental critique of the Government's justice policies—or one of the fundamental critiques—is that a question of priorities and the priority on speeding up process of the courts and the efficiency of the courts hasn't been as high as we would have liked it. They've been distracted with such things as hate speech reducing the voting age and a whole bunch of other things which may not be of interest but are not fundamental to the way the justice system works as this is.Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Minister for Oceans and Fisheries): Thank you Madam Chair. I think again—obviously I repeat that the scope of this bill is narrow and does not go to the speed of the justice system as the member's just been discussing and realises—Hon Paul Goldsmith: Context context.Hon RACHEL BROOKING: Yeah giving the context! And both the previous speakers are really asking the same question and that is about the justification for spending the money on not having the interest cost versus other things within the justice system. That question was looked at by the Legal Services Commissioner in 2018 in the report and they determined that "removing the requirement of the payment of interest for all users of the legal aid scheme—rather than writing off more debt—best met the objective of reducing financial barriers to legal aid so that people of insufficient means could better access justice"."