Legal Services Amendment Bill
Thursday 10 December 2009; 5.50pm
Rahui Katene, Justice Spokesperson for the Maori Party

This is an extraordinarily apt time to be considering the effectiveness of the legislation that governs our legal services.

The Government is, of course now involved in a consultation process to to improve government agencies’ responses to victims of crime. The point of that process is to find solutions about how to enhance victims’ rights and role in criminal justice processes.

This consultation process itself comes hot on the heels of the release of the Legal Aid Review. The report ‘Transforming the Legal Aid System’ states as one of its basic premises that an efficient and effective court system is central to the effective access to justice. And within that, having a more satisfactory process for victims and witnesses is critical.

But there was a statement in that report which is particularly relevant to this Bill today. In the section on customer service the report noted that the court system tends to focus on perpetrators of crime, and only to a lesser extent, victims.

The families of perpetrators, however, are generally ignored. This is part of the tragic context of a justice system which insists on defining and separating people out as victims, as perpetrators, as children, but rarely as members of a family.

The shame of that approach, Mr Speaker, is that the potential for families to live better lives, and to wrap loving arms around an offender, to avoid patterns of offending into the future, is effectively neglected.

The Bill introduces a new definition of victim.

To be a victim now also includes a parent or legal guardian of a child or young person and a member of the immediate family of a person who has died or rendered incapable by an offence.

This is very significant in that it is moving towards a justice system which reflects and responds to the community rather than isolating out individual offenders.

All of us will know someone who has had a brush with the law –indeed in the life of this Parliament there have been Members who have had various encounters with the police, the Courts or the Corrections system.

And so all of us also have the potential to empathise with the families and loved ones of offenders. We understand the traumatic impact of incarceration upon a family; we know the toll taken.

The Maori Party knows also the heavy burden borne by far too many of our people.

Māori have a higher risk of victimisation across all offence types and this is especially so for Māori women. In statistical terms, a massive 47% of Māori; basically one in every two Maori are victims of crime, compared with 37% for those categorised as European.

Māori are also far more likely to be victimised multiple times.

The risk of victimisation for Māori is particularly high for serious offences, such as sexual violence and violence by partners. One of the most staggering statistics to my mind is that 18% of Māori women who had a partner were victimised at least once, compared with five percent of all Europeans.

These results are too disturbing to table in this House without doing all that we can to address them.

Faced then with this situation, we are now looking at legislation which is to respond to the situation of victims facing additional stress when facing up to the front of the justice sector.

The Bill will ensure that victims of crime attending a parole board hearing or coronial inquest will not be subject to financial eligibility testing.

It stipulates also that any grants made will not have repayment conditions attached.

Another factor of this Bill is that the Legal Services Agency will write off legal aid debt where the "individual circumstances" of persons who have received legal aid make it "inequitable" to seek recovery.

And again I think about the disproportionate numbers of Maori who are seeking legal aid and are struggling to make their way through the seemingly insurmountable barriers.

Maori and Pasifika persons feature strongly amongst those most likely to experience groups of problems in accessing legal assistance.

In Dame Margaret Bazley’s opinion, if the legal system fails Maori, it fails altogether.

One of the key recommendations in her report is that the legal system needs to focus on the legal needs of Maori and Pasifika peoples, and the barriers they face in accessing legal aid, with a view to enhancing their access over time.

And I would add to that, let us in this House make sure it is in quick time, not dragging on for decades to come.

I have been looking over a report dating back to 1973, by John Hippolite and Oliver Sutherland, which reported on the first year of a comprehensive legal aid scheme for Maori offenders appearing before the Nelson Magistrate’s Court.

That report concluded that there are two standards of justice in the courts of New Zealand. It was their analysis that Maori offenders are at a disadvantage in the courts and in the main do not receive just and fair treatment.

As they stated, and I quote,

“the administrators of justice in New Zealand will have to recognise that in this regard, they themseves, rather than the Maori offenders, are the problem”

36 years later then, Mr Speaker, what are we doing to properly address the difficulties which many Maori applicants for legal aid still face?

In the report on the 2006 National Survey of Unmet Legal Needs and Access to Services: Results for Māori it was revealed that the perceived cost of lawyers’ fees prevents a significant number of Māori from seeking help, more so than New Zealanders on average.

Over a third of Māori with problems felt that perceived cost had stopped them from approaching a lawyer to help them with their problem or to see if they could get legal aid. This figure represents about 14% of all Māori aged over 15 years (or an estimate of about 46,000 people).

The problem area where cost was the greatest barrier to accessing such services from a lawyer was in whanau or relationship break downs. For consumer related problems, a category where Māori are least likely to seek help, cost is also a relatively significant issue.

Mr Speaker, this Bill, the Legal Services Amendment Bill, in itself will not magically address longstanding issues dating back over decades, about the inequitable treatment Maori within the justice system.

It is also a Bill which is being debated in the context of considerable upheaval within the sector, and particularly related to the Legal Services Agency.

The Maori Party will support this Bill as it is an important step in setting a direction for the justice system. And of course we will always support any attempt to ensure that people gain adequate access to justice.

However, there are many other issues that we want to see addressed; including the aspiration of a justice strategy based on kaupapa Maori and within the context of Maori cultural values.

These are issues that my colleague, Dr Pita Sharples, is pursuing in the Drivers of Crime work programme; as Minister of Maori Affairs, and as Associate Minister of Corrections.

In the context of the future work ahead, the Maori Party is delighted to support this Bill as a move in the right direction.

ENDS

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