Of course it has aspects we are less happy about. In many ways it does not go far enough. We expected that. This Labour / Alliance government is not a radical government. It is not a trailblazing government. It is a moderate, even fairly conservative, left leaning minority government with Green support. I would like to focus on one particular aspect of the budget - the justice initiatives contained in it. And I would like to begin by congratulating the Government on their commitment to restorative justice.
$5 million for restorative justice. $5 million to give victims of crime the option of restorative justice. All those people who ticked yes to the Withers petition because they supported restorative justice and more rights for victims will be pleased that the government is doing something about it.
This funding for more pilot projects and the expansion of community-managed restorative justice systems is good news for victims of crime and the whole community. It will also help reduce reoffending. And I am pleased that Mr Goff has also confirmed his support for marae based justice in answer to an oral question in this house.
It is strange though, that this commitment to restorative justice goes hand in hand with plans for a new prison at Ngawha in Northland. I was at a hui about the proposed prison in Kaikohe on Friday and people there were confused about where the government was coming from. They were confused that a Minister with Matt Robson's qualities was prepared to give the go ahead for a prison at Ngawha, against the wishes of so many local people, against the wishes of Nga Puhi, and against so much evidence that, if you did want to build a prison in Northland, Ngawha was probably one of the worst places you could choose.
The Greens are adamantly opposed to this plan and I hope that the Minister might still reconsider.
Finally I would like to talk about the Green budget package.
Among the proposals put forward by the Greens is one for environmental legal aid. This is something the people of NZ have waited a long time for. When the original Legal Services Bill was introduced to the house in 1989 it provided for environmental legal aid,, as recommended in Te Whainga I Te Tika (In Search of Justice). That provision was removed in select committee under the National government in 1991.
It is clear there is a real need here. Often local community groups are pitted against well funded developers in their struggle to protect their environment. This, coupled with the very real threat of having costs awarded against them, even when it is recognised that their case has merit and is being pursued in the public interest, means that important cases that do not get challenged in courts simply because the local people do not have the money to take on big companies. Making grants available for environmental legal aid helps restore the balance.
Under the proposal put forward by the Greens, grants would be available through the Ministry for the Environment, from a $1million contestable fund. This is not a huge amount of money. But it will be a significant amount of money for those community organisations that wish to save their local environment from some of the criminal destruction that sometimes takes place in the name of development.
Labour, the Alliance and the Greens all went into the election with a policy of supporting legal aid for community groups. This Green initiative is a beginning, and we hope that when the house considers the question of eligibility for legal aid later in the year, that environmental legal aid for community groups is expanded.
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