Ardern Jacinda: Legal Services Bill — Second Reading 
Ardern Jacinda: Legal Services Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:670;Page:16761] 
JACINDA ARDERN (Labour) 
: 
 It is my pleasure to speak on the second reading of the Legal Services Bill. I begin by agreeing with the comment made by my colleague Paul Quinn about the way that the members of the Justice and Electoral Committee really worked together on this bill as it does on most bills that come before it. I also express my sadness that I am no longer a member of that select committee. I really enjoyed the opportunity to be on a committee chaired by Chester Borrows who always conducted himself with integrity and I will miss his good grace. But I was a member of the committee when it considered the Legal Services Bill. 
As has been pointed out this bill probably would not exist in this form had Dame Margaret Bazley not completed a scathing report on the way that legal services were provided in New Zealand. I think it is important that as a Parliament we responded to that report with speed because one of the important pillars of our justice system is that people continue to have confidence in it. In particular when it comes to people accessing the justice system which so often is eased by the availability of legal aid it is important that people have confidence that they are getting a high-quality service and that at the same time we are getting value for money for the taxpayer dollar. 
I will touch on one particular point first off. The committee heard very early on from the Legal Services Agency board that there were concerns amongst the legal fraternity in Manukau that the report had cast a dark shadow across all of the legal profession in that area. We need to keep in perspective that of course not every lawyer working in that area was rorting the system. However Dame Margaret Bazley made the statement and I am not sure it was backed up by evidence that 80 percent of lawyers working in legal aid were gaming the system and that approximately another 200 she believed were rorting it—“gaming” being using procedural points within the court system to delay proceedings and therefore draw down further legal aid payments. Labour members called on the Minister of Justice to meet with the Bar in South Auckland in order to smooth the way forward and in particular to ensure that when these changes are implemented it is done smoothly and we do not allow a perception that all lawyers working in the legal aid system are rorting it because that certainly is not the case. 
I will touch on a couple of things that my colleague David Parker has already talked about. We are pleased to see the extension of the Public Defence Service; that was something Labour raised in 1999. Via a pilot scheme we found we could save up to a million dollars by having salaried lawyers available as public defenders and we could also have standardisation of high-quality defence. I am pleased that that will be rolled out in other centres. I would not mind though if the Government could explain something. Dame Margaret Bazley made suggestions about where the scheme should be rolled out. The Government has responded by rolling it out in only Hamilton Wellington and Christchurch. I believe Palmerston North has been left off the list and I would be interested to know why that is the case. 
I am also pleased that the Government and the select committee were able to work through some of the very important issues raised by the community law centres; I will come back to that. Also I will very quickly make the point that it was frequently raised with us that when we bring in an agency that previously sat independently of the Ministry of Justice we should ensure that the lines of reporting are transparent and have enough separation from the Secretary for Justice and the Government to allow the public to have confidence that there is good separation of powers. I think we managed to ensure that in the end. 
There is one area where I continue to have a couple of concerns. The Legal Aid Review Panel is disbanded under this bill and the legal aid review function will be carried out by the Legal Aid Tribunal. The board that existed specifically to give the community law centres access to the Minister of Justice has also been disbanded. There was concern amongst the community law centres about their lines of communication with the Minister of Justice. We reached a middle ground I guess. We assumed that the requirements in this bill of the Minister of Justice essentially capture a requirement to continue to liaise and communicate frequently with the community law centres. But that is not explicit in the legislation. Although we might be confident that the current Minister Simon Power would conduct himself in that way because he has continually expressed his support for the centres and has demonstrated it in times of funding shortages that conduct cannot be guaranteed when we move through Ministers of Justice. I am still of two minds about whether we have written in enough protections for the community law centres but at this stage I am willing to proceed. There are protections in this bill; whether they go far enough will be tested. That is something I would encourage the community law centres to continue to monitor and I encourage them to come back to Parliament if they find that that relationship is inadequate. 
We have heard David Parker talk about the select committee’s discussion of the preferred lawyer issue and I would like to put it on record again. On the face of it removing the ability for defendants to choose who should represent them in low-level criminal cases—and I want to make that distinction; it is only in low-level criminal cases—may seem a backwards step. But it was very interesting for the select committee to hear evidence that demonstrated to us that a person having a preferred lawyer does not necessarily mean that he or she has the best lawyer available. In fact Dame Margaret Bazley’s report demonstrated that backhanded payments were going out for referrals to particular legal aid lawyers. Often there was a cycle of those who were most frequently used becoming the preferred lawyer by default when in fact they may not have been any more competent than another lawyer who was used far less often. 
Also we were satisfied that there was discretion built into the legislation as David Parker said to allow for continuity of lawyers in cases that involve domestic violence or children where continuity is important and also in cases where it may be important to make sure that defendants who have a language barrier for instance are appropriately paired with lawyers who can communicate with them. We felt there was enough discretion in the bill to make sure that that could still occur and we were satisfied by that. That coupled with the fact that there was a threshold which meant we were talking about not serious criminal cases but lower-level cases meant we were satisfied that removing the preferred lawyer at that level was an appropriate measure. 
I will spend my final few moments reflecting on the concern brought before us by the community law centres in relation to legal education. It struck me by the end of our hearings that perhaps there was a misconception about the level of change between the current Legal Services Act and this bill. The definition of “legal services” in the Legal Services Act includes provision of legal education. This bill does that as well but it is slightly separated out. So I will point out for the record that the definition of “community legal services” in clause 4 of Part 1 states: “ ‘community legal services’ means any 1 or more of the following services that a community law centre provides … : (a) legal services: (b) law reform and advocacy work”. The clause further on defines what legal services can include. The definition of “legal services” states that “in relation to legal aid [it] means legal advice and representation” etc. then states in paragraph (b): “legal advice and … the provision of legal information and law-related education”. So although it is perhaps not as succinct as the current Act there is still a connection in the definitions. 
To make it even clearer the select committee which did hear the concerns of the community law centres added under the functions of the Secretary for Justice in clause 68 a specific measure paragraph (fa) which states that one of the secretary’s functions is to “undertake or fund law-related research and education;” as well. So not only does it sit under the definition of services provided by the community law centres but we have made it a specific task of the secretary as well.