Goff Phil: Legal Assistance Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGoff Phil: Legal Assistance Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 11 June 2013. Volume:691;Page:10969. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill):This bill was introduced initially by the former Minister of Justice Simon Power. It would be easy to blame him for the absolute disgrace that that original legislation represented. It would be easy to blame him but for the fact that every member of the National Party in Government and its disgraced acolytes that support it in this House voted for that bill. That bill went to the Justice and Electoral Committee and it received first of all the regulatory impact statement which said that the legislation introduced by that National Government would have denied people the basic right that every individual who lives in this country should have which is about access to justice. Legal aid is designed to ensure that those with insufficient means are not denied access to justice.You see it is probably pretty hard for the National Party to understand that justice is not a commodity. It is not a commodity that can be bought by those who can afford it and be denied to those who cannot afford it. But that is exactly what the Legal Assistance (Sustainability) Amendment Bill would have done. And what we have here in this legislation the Legal Assistance Amendment Bill is a nine-page apology from the National Government about the nature of the changes that it originally sought to make which would have denied justice to people in this country. It would not only have denied justice to those who could not afford it and not only put at huge disadvantage one person of lesser means in a civil proceedings against somebody of greater means but it would have ended up clogging up the system and costing more because when a person is forced to be a self-represented litigant that requires more costs at every stage of the justice system.What is more the regulatory impact statement pointed out that this would put huge pressure for example on social agencies. It would increase the level of stress on people who were facing domestic violence and those problems would not be resolved because there was not a mechanism to resolve them. It said that the fundamental principle of a decent society which is justice available to all would be taken away.Judith Collins in the second reading of this bill and Simon Power before her said that the reason that this bill was being introduced was that the cost of legal aid had soared. The cost had gone up. It had gone up because in 2007 for the first time in 20 years the rates of payment to legal aid providers were actually adjusted. Of course the cost went up but the result of this legislation as introduced and probably as it still is amended by the committee is that fewer and fewer providers will be willing to lose money by representing people on legal aid and that would create a huge injustice in this country. It is not that legal aid is generous. To qualify for legal aid as a single person you have got to earn less than $22000 a year. That is about $425 a week. It is $10.60 an hour. Do you know what this bill and the requirements of the threshold of legal aid do? They prevent any working person earning more than the minimum wage from being eligible for legal aid.Hon David Cunliffe: That is outrageous.Hon PHIL GOFF: That is outrageous as my colleague has just said. It is outrageous because the people who cannot afford the cost of legal representation are often those really hard-working people on low incomes and they would be denied the right to get legal aid. This would be a system purely for those who were on social welfare benefits and I believe that justice should not be denied to those low-income people who cannot even though they work hard actually afford legal representation.So what we saw in this bill was a measure that would make our society growing in inequality even less fair by denying more and more people the right to justice. You know it is not about unaffordability at all Minister; it is about your priorities. This Government’s priority was very clearly that it would cut tax on those on the highest income levels. So you can give the Prime Minister a six-figure tax cut a year but you refuse to give people who cannot afford legal representation the right to have their position represented in court. And we are talking about people who are often in no situation—no situation—to be able to represent themselves. This was the bill as introduced—John Hayes: Not true.Hon PHIL GOFF: —Mr Hayes and you know it and it was so appalling that even the National members on the Justice and Electoral Committee had to take a knife through most of the provisions and cut them out. I want to know in the Committee of the whole House from the Minister of Justice why it was that every one of her colleagues voted for that bill as introduced why they did not do their homework and why they did not give a damn about justice.I was sitting on the plane this morning between two businessmen—nice guys actually—but they were talking about their kids going to the school ball. They were saying it was terrible. One of them said: “You know my daughter’s dress cost $3000.” He said it was $3000 for her dress for the school ball for St Cuthbert’s College. I thought to myself and I actually pointed it out to them that that sounded a bit strange to me representing a low-income electorate that here we have people who cannot afford to put shoes on their kids’ feet and that businessman was spending $3000 on his kid’s school ball dress.I want to say this: the bill as introduced was going to take into account in terms of asset testing things like your refrigerator and your washing machine and your vacuum cleaner. You know it was so mean and miserable that it was going to take into account the value of your electric wheelchair if you were disabled. What a disgrace. I want to know why it was that the National caucus approved this bill and the National Cabinet put it to the House to come in. Only at the select committee deliberation did they run away with their tail between their legs and say that even a hard-hearted cold-heartedNational Government could not possibly produce the injustice that this original legislation was going to produce.But I have got to say that there are still things that are wrong with this bill even with the changes that have been made. An application can be turned down for example if a person getting legal aid is in arrears. Well the nature of poverty and the nature of being on a low income is that you live from wage packet to wage packet. If you have got a bill owing because you are paying for legal aid because it becomes a loan rather than a grant you are not going to be able to keep that up and still meet the other costs that you are struggling to pay out when you are living on the edge. You know ask any reasonable parent and they will say that they will put shoes on their kid’s feet and food in their stomach before they will pay the arrears in the legal aid bill. So this Government in its wisdom says that if you are falling behind in your arrears and you cannot pay them then we will deny you further legal aid and therefore we will deny you justice. Well they had to qualify that by saying that maybe there should be an interests of justice argument and a test there but there is a very clear rule that should be set in this and that is that you do not deny people legal aid if they are not paying their arrears because of the hardship they are facing. For God’s sake the members of the National Party surely have enough humanity to see that there are situations of gross injustice that will arise from their legislation.Then they decided that the user charge that they brought in of $100—another discredited idea that they took from the Ruth Richardson years—was not really going to work because that would be a barrier to people so they made it $50. Well why is $50 right if $100 was wrong? Why are they nickel-and-diming that sort of thing when even the select committee report to the House indicates that that could still be a barrier?And not only were they going to deny people who were in arrears of legal aid any further access but they were going to charge interest on arrears of legal aid and that is still in the bill. Again they have left some room for discretion but there should be some more clear-cut test that that should not be required if hardship would result. What they have done effectively is said that even in the event of hardship—