Clendon David: Third Readings —Text is incorporated into the Bound VolumeClendon David: Third Readings —[Sitting date: 09 July 2013. Volume:692;Page:11829. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID CLENDON (Green):It is no great pleasure to speak to the third reading of this legal assistance legislation. There is a great deal one can discover about the legislation simply by looking at the evolution of the naming of the legislation which of course started out in life as the Legal Assistance (Sustainability) Amendment Bill and has now been divided into a number of other bills.The reason why that name was dropped and why the word “Sustainability” dropped out is quite remarkable and it is reflected in the report back from the Justice and Electoral Committee. This is not the minority report; this is actually the report from the majority—from the Government members. The recommendation in that report recommends a change in the name of the bill to the “Legal Assistance Amendment Bill”. It goes on to say: “The intention of this change is to reflect extensive amendments proposed to the bill in response to submissions.” That is a good thing for a select committee to do clearly but it goes on to say: “These proposed amendments reflect the refocusing of the bill on the outcomes for legal aid clients rather than solely on the financial savings to be achieved.” I commend the honesty in that statement but what an extraordinary admission for a Government to make—that in fact this bill was first drafted solely in order to save money to make some short-term financial cost saving with no thought to the outcomes for legal aid clients those people who are in need of the services in order to see that they are fairly represented in court.As I say that is a very honest and open admission but it just reflects a very narrow scope a lack of an integrated approach to lawmaking. Sadly it is a theme that runs through a great deal of the legislation we are seeing from this Government: an absolutely singular focus on cutting costs in the short term with no recognition of the longer-term consequences of the fact that in fact you are making false economies and that saving a dollar in one place is very likely to lead to increased cost elsewhere. And it is not only financial costs. In this instance the social cost the cost in terms of access to justice is simply unacceptable. It is a very thoughtless piece of drafting focused on that singular attention to saving money and that is a very poor way to make legislation.The fact is that the original drafting contained what is known of course as a “Henry VIII” clause—that is effectively a power for the Minister to actually change the law to make amendments in a way really to exercise the power of Parliament. Again to me that reflects—with no ill will towards the drafters clearly those very hard-working officials who do the work—the fact that the public sector is being driven down to a point where it is scarcely able to fulfil its core functions. Again it is this short-sighted narrowly focused cost cutting which simply leads to poor outcomes in the longer term.Access to justice clearly is going to be limited by the fact that people will increasingly have difficulty getting access to legal aid. In respect of the fixed fee that is introduced in this legislation—the application charge of $50 or so—we know that will mean there will be fewer companies who are actually interested in providing legal aid services. We are hearing this already from larger legal practices—that they simply will not bother with legal aid work. I think within the legal profession there is a degree of corporate responsibility. There is some pro bono work done and all that but frankly these people are running businesses and on the fixed-fee scale that is proposed in this legislation or regulations it simply will not be worth the candle for companies to involve themselves. There will be increasing demand for legal aid a reducing supply and fewer people who are able to get the representation in the courts that our constitutional basis really requires that they should have.We will get this very unfortunate situation. We will have the best access to justice that money can buy. The quality of the representation people will receive in courts will be a function of their ability to pay for that. That is a very unhappy situation for New Zealand to be in. This country over the last 20-odd years has seen a widening inequality gap: a few people are doing very very well and more people are actually not doing well at all and in fact are struggling simply to survive. Some members may have seen a presentation earlier this evening on a new book edited by Max Rashbrooke that has been published recently called Inequality: A New Zealand Crisis. Chapter after chapter describes how across the board in society in all sorts of sectors and all sorts of ways that inequality gap is opening up in New Zealand. And now we are seeing unequal access to justice and that is simply unacceptable in a modern liberal democracy.We know that as that inequality gap widens it disadvantages not only those at the bottom but even those who are best off in that situation financially. They are actually overall worse off because the quality of the norms of society degrade and that is to nobody’s advantage. Everybody is worse off as we allow this inequality gap to expand and to open further. Unequal access to justice unequal access to representation in our courts is a serious matter. Unfortunately this legislation makes that situation worse.We have heard from one member at least who talked about this legislation striking a balance between saving money cost cutting efficiency—however you like to describe it—and access to justice. In fact this legislation fails miserably in terms of balance. It is very unbalanced legislation. We can go back to the original point I made. The point of this legislation is to cut the cost to take dollars off one or two lines in the justice budget not actually accepting that what we are really doing is relocating cost. We are saving money in one point; we are upping the cost somewhere else. A lot of that will be felt by the most vulnerable by the poorest. It will mean fewer people get decent representation more people stay longer in the justice system and an increase in people being convicted paying fines even being imprisoned who ought not to be arguably. This is a very poor piece of work. It is not a balanced approach to lawmaking. It is not a balanced approach to justice. The Greens will continue to oppose this.Debate interrupted.