Goldsmith PaulHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Well I'm afraid to say that was 10 minutes trying to justify the unjustifiable. We had Ginny Andersen explaining why the Labour Party is not supporting this bill the Lawyers and Conveyancers (Employed Lawyers Providing Free Legal Services) Amendment Bill which does something that I think most New Zealanders would say makes sense which is to allow lawyers and conveyancers currently barred from offering pro-bono legal services because they are an employee and opens that up so that they can provide community law. This has been put together by—an excellent bill—my colleague Chris Bishop and the Labour Party is opposing it purely and simply because they don't want to give Chris Bishop a win and that's what it all boils down to. They don't want to allow a National MP to do something useful in this Parliament and pass a piece of legislation that will make the lives of New Zealanders better. So she spent 10 minutes trying to come up with all sorts of waffle to explain why they are opposed to this; none of it made any sense and it was quite embarrassing to watch. I just hope that they'll get a chance to reflect on that.So what we're trying to achieve here with this bill—and most people would be flummoxed that this is the case but you know there's plenty of lawyers across this country many work in law firms of course and many don't work in law firms. Many are in-house lawyers for Government departments or companies corporates right across the nation. Currently under the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act they are guilty of misconduct if they provide free legal services to the public outside of their employment with only the exception of doing it through community law centres or Citizens Advice Bureau. So what that means in practice is if you know you're the in-house lawyer for Fletcher Building or something like that but you're also a member of the local tramping club—is an example that Chris Bishop uses—but you know you could be active in the local church or synagogue or something like that and a legal issue comes up and they don't want to go engaging Russell McVeagh to deal with it but they just want some advice you're there you could give some advice. You can't do it at the moment. You know look there's some history behind that. But this bill is trying to open this up and free what 8000 lawyers in this situation across the country in order for them to be able to do pro-bono work. All sorts of people come up with all sorts of reasons why this would be difficult but none of them are very robust. What it could do is to provide better access to justice for the many community groups across the country.And what do we got? We've got a Labour Party opposing it for no good reason. I just think they should reflect on that. It's quite disgraceful really given the opportunity that we've had through the select committee to make some changes if required. No bill that's introduced into this House is ever perfect and the select committee process is the opportunity for laws to be improved. But then to go through that process and say Oh yes there is an issue here but we should probably do a bit more work on it down the line and let's think about it and carry on." is a very insulting way to handle the situation.The other thing I would say is you know speaking more broadly I think there are a couple of key issues in the justice sector. Of course there's the rise in violent crime and the doubling of violent crime which is a massive issue and increasing gun crime in Auckland and the sense of lawlessness. That's a number one justice issue that needs to be dealt with. The 50 percent increase in gangs in New Zealand. Sadly there hasn't been much focus by this Government on that and that's a real shame and something that is of concern to many New Zealanders.The second issue is around this access to justice. Now part of that is the dysfunction in the court system which is taking so long for people to get trials heard and justice delivered. But related to that is the affordability of access to justice. That's why there are some real issues around the legal aid situation at the moment. Legal spending on legal aid has gone up by 70 percent since this Government took office. We're spending about $230 million a year on legal aid; huge sums. And yet the whole system is still gunged up and delivering no more in terms of outcomes than it was many years before. Actually less work is actually going through the system because of the gunged up nature of our court system. And so you know getting access to legal advice and justice is a colossal issue that you would think that the Government would be focused on. Now when you look at the priorities of this Government in the justice area well you see that they're not very focused on those issues of the rise of violent crime and access to justice. They're more interested in: the next things coming up is hate speech banning that; dealing with screwing the scrum on electoral finance; cancelling three strikes; and a whole lot of things all related to ill-thought through promises sometimes in Labour manifestos and other variety of issues that are of particular interest to Labour Party activists and not necessarily middle New Zealand.So the point I'd make in relation to that is you would think that there would be a focus in the mind of the Minister of Justice and of the Government at the moment to do everything that they can to increase the accessibility of justice and legal advice to New Zealanders. This bill was one step in that direction which is to say we've got 8000 lawyers across the country they're working as in-house lawyers in firms and companies and Government departments who could on the weekends or in the evening from time to time offer some free legal advice to the community groups and clubs and places of interest local schools maybe—I don't know—that may be useful. Currently they're stopped from doing that in a very arbitrary way.This bill was set out to rectify that and it has faced the great clunking fist of the Labour caucus which I think for rather mean-spirited partisan reasons have decided to oppose this. That to my mind is a great tragedy. I'm sure many of those 8000 lawyers out there working away in their Government departments or at their firms right now who have found this a frustrating bar on their ability to help might have been looking with hope towards this House this morning and instead will be filled with frustration and questioning why on earth would Labour be opposed to this bill. We didn't hear much from Ginny Andersen on the topic but I'm sure some of the subsequent speakers might like to come up with some slightly better reasons than put forward so far. Thank you.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The question is that the motion be agreed to."