Faafoi Kris: Legal Assistance Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFaafoi Kris: Legal Assistance Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 02 July 2013. Volume:691;Page:11583. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana):Taloha ni and tēnā koe Mr Chair. It is a pleasure to take a call on Part 2 of the Legal Assistance Amendment Bill. This is an issue that has played quite largely in my electorate of Mana. There was a quite well-attended public meeting around the issue of access to legal aid organised by someone who I think knows the Minister in the chair the Associate Minister of Justice quite well and who has I think lobbied him on many occasions around her concerns with many of the provisions in this bill.Pointing directly to Part 2 I want to also head towards clause 27 I think it is as I think my colleague Andrew Little did. This is the insertion of some new sections sections 131A to 131C around the advocacy for children. One submission during the select committee process that I did want to highlight was from the Children’s Commissioner Dr Russell Wills where he had serious concerns about where this bill was heading in terms of looking after children. In point 21 of the submission that Dr Wills made to this bill he said: “In addition I note that the Bill makes no reference to the best interests of the child in the explanatory note to the Bill despite the fact that it will clearly impact upon children and young people who are involved in Family or Youth Court proceedings.” He goes on to say that “These children and young people areamong the most vulnerable in our community and it is therefore imperative that their interests are given primary consideration.”I think that is very interesting—I think that is probably one way to put it. But it is quite a damning statement from the Children’s Commissioner the fact that this bill has not really taken the best interests of children to heart both within the explanatory note and also within the provisions of this bill. That was in essence the substance of the meeting that was held in Porirua. There was a lot of concern from the legal community from a lot of agencies who deal with children in this situation about the ability to advocate properly for children in these situations where you have families who are separating especially because there is a lot of legal assistance offered in this situation. A lot of the families that these lawyers are acting for do find themselves in serious hardship.Just as Andrew Little did I want to point to I think new section 131A(6) inserted by clause 27 of this bill and ask whether the Minister in the chair could try to clarify for us the definition of “serious hardship” as it is in the bill as it stands at the moment. As it stands section 131A(6) says that “serious hardship” in relation to a party or a dependent child of that party: “(a) includes significant financial difficulties that arise because of—(i) the party’s inability to meet minimum living expenses according to normal community standards;”.For any judge to try to make sense of that I think would be difficult. If that judge were to be sitting in the Porirua District Court that would be difficult because I would say that most of the families appearing there would meet that test and would therefore be able to get some kind of compensation or get legal assistance but some others may not depending on where they were at the time or which court they were being seen in. Could I ask the Minister in the chair whether he could clarify that for us; that request comes from me and also from Andrew Little.I did want to make the point just before my 5 minutes is up that we do not believe that the best interests of the children are at heart here. We can look at the change in the title—and we will get plenty of opportunity to debate that. It was originally the Legal Assistance (Sustainability) Amendment Bill; the title has been changed. But we believe that the real driver of this bill is in its original title and that is to make in the eyes of the Government legal assistance much more sustainable which in “real speak” is to cut costs to the detriment of justice and access to justice and unfortunately in this case to the detriment of the ability of families to get access to justice for their children in these situations.That was certainly made clear by the Children’s Commissioner and I just want to read that quote once more to make the point. In that submission the Children’s Commissioner said that “the Bill makes no reference to the best interests of the child in the explanatory note to the Bill despite the fact that it will clearly impact upon children and young people who are involved in Family or Youth Court ...”. That also goes back to the access to justice issue which I know we have already debated in Part 1 but this is very much related to it around the fee that some families would have to pay to access legal aid. I understand and I may stand corrected that it was originally $100 but I think the select committee process has brought it down to a fee of $50. But I know certainly from the people in my area that they have been saying that if they have someone who comes along arrives at their reception area whom they have dealt with in the past—they have a history they have a relationship with that family—they are very reluctant to turn them away just because they cannot afford to perhaps pay $100 as it originally was or $50 as it stands now. So what they will do is more than likely accept the case because they know that the family does have a very important case to be heard and as I said there may be children involved.There are three options that could potentially happen in that situation. The provider will simply just pay that fee itself and wear the costs; all the clients will end up wearing the costs over that financial period or that financial year if they just aggregate all those fees; or in the end the legal provider will just end up slapping another $50 or what could have been potentially $100 on the bill that the Crown gets. We do not think that is necessarily the cleverest situation to be in especially when it is asking a lot of legal firms many of which are considering getting out of the legal aid arena to wear the additional costs of getting over the first hurdle for many of these families in order for them to access legal aid.So that was one of the concerns that were certainly raised in the Justice and Electoral Committee by a number of submitters and again it was raised by one very strident legal provider in my area who again knows the Minister in the chair quite well and who I am sure has had a conversation with him about it.We are concerned around the ability of this bill to look after the best needs of the children—that has been made pretty clear in the quote from the Children’s Commissioner that I have used twice—and the ability of families to access legal aid in that situation in order to get the best advocacy for children. Then on the other side of things we are also very concerned about the access and I guess some of the barriers that have been put up under this bill to access to justice for a lot of families.Just before I finish off I want also to commend the select committee. As I have said in a previous contribution on this bill I think the committee has taken what was an awful bill and made it just bad which is an improvement because I think the committee has taken into consideration some of the submissions that it heard through the process. I guess members on this side of the Chamber have tried to make some changes and there has been some movement from the Government to support changes around first of all reducing the fee from $100 to $50. That is an improvement but it is still we think a hindrance to access to justice. I do not want to be too harsh on that select committee because it has made some changes that make the bill better but we still do not think it is a very good bill in terms of making the legal aid arena more efficient and I guess a little bit more sustainable and also in terms of balancing that up against access to justice and fairness especially for those vulnerable families.I will leave it there and hopefully the Minister in the chair can answer some of those questions especially around section 131A in clause 27 in terms of serious hardship—if he could try to explain to the Committee what the spirit of that clause means where it says “the party’s inability to meet minimum living expenses according to normal community standards;”. If the Minister in the chair could elaborate on that for us it would be quite useful for this side of the Chamber.