Sepuloni Carmel: Legal Services Bill — In Committee 
Sepuloni Carmel: Legal Services Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:671;Page:17680] 
CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour) 
: 
 I want to speak on the Legal Services Bill but I also have to acknowledge that I am a newbie on the Justice and Electoral Committee. I have some questions but I will not pretend I am an expert like my colleagues Charles Chauvel or David Parker on this particular issue. Before I get on to Part 4 I need to say that Labour believes that reforms are necessary with an emphasis on the public defender system community law centres and a focus on quality assurance. However we have concerns about this bill and the Government’s overall direction in regard to its justice policy which seem to inhibit access to justice. 
I will get on to Part 4 “Transitional and savings provisions amendments to other enactments and repeals” and Subpart 1 “Transitional arrangements for transfer of Legal Services Agency to Ministry of Justice”. The Legal Services Agency will no longer exist the public advisory committee will be disestablished assets and liabilities of the agency will be transferred to the Ministry of Justice and employees of the agency will be transferred to the ministry unless they do not consent and the terms and conditions of their employment cannot be any less favourable than those before the transfer. In the transition legal aid granted by the old 2000 Legal Services Act is not affected by the enactment of the new legislation. Some of the non-legislative changes we see here as well as the changes outlined previously include the Government’s decision to expand the Public Defence Service to Hamilton Wellington and Christchurch and to work with community law centres to develop a uniform set of standards. 
The Public Defence Service was launched in 2004 by the then Minister of Justice Phil Goff in the Auckland and Manukau courts as a 5-year pilot and in August last year the Legal Services Agency made the service permanent. The Public Defence Service has its origins in Labour’s 1999 manifesto which I think is important to point out. There have been two independent evaluations of the service and both found it offered savings and lawyer costs. When compared to the estimated cost of equivalent private providers there was a saving of $985000 over the period of the pilot. Those savings were achieved with no difference in outcome for the client as measured by overall conviction rates. Simon Power announced in April that the Public Defence Service would be expanded to Hamilton Wellington and Christchurch. 
I will turn to the Bazley report. In April 2009 the Minister of Justice Simon Power appointed a panel chaired by Dame Margaret Bazley to review the legal aid system. Dame Margaret produced a discussion document in September last year which outlined some concerns and then a final report in November of last year called  
Transforming the Legal Aid System 
. The report was damning and prompted the Government to announce an overhaul of the legal aid system. What were the findings of that review? It found variable-quality legal aid services including a number of lawyers who were poor performers and some who were alleged to be acting in a corrupt way. Dame Margaret found that around 200 lawyers were apparently rorting the system. The review found that some practitioners paid backhanders to duty solicitors who recommended legal aid applicants to them. Some practitioners demanded top-up payments from clients over and above the remuneration they received from the Legal Services Agency. There had been complaints of dishonest behaviour to the Law Society that were not acted on. Lawyers and defendants colluded to make sure cases took as long as possible a mutually beneficial arrangement under which the lawyer racked up fees and the defendant delayed conviction and sentencing—I am just going through the findings of the review here. The quality of legal aid lawyers was variable and many of them showed up at court unprepared or late. Some lawyers gamed the system apparently by delaying a plea or changing pleas part-way through the process in order to maximise legal aid payments. Specifically Dame Margaret was told that up to 80 percent of lawyers practising at Manukau District Court could have been gaming the system. That is what she was told. 
I would really like to hear the Minister’s thoughts on that issue particularly in relation to what is being proposed in Part 4 of the legislation. A lot of the questions I had on the bill were around Part 3 but Part 3 went by and we have moved on to debate Part 4 now. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: I remind members that we are on Part 4 which is a pretty narrow debate. It is not a peroration of the review.