Marlborough Express - Weekend Express
It’s too hard to resolve minor money disputes
■ The Disputes Tribunal is for everyone
■ Do not fear to take a case
■ You can take a support person to help you
and winning does not mean you get paid, as the tribunal can’t make people pay, only order them to.
But these are issues that can be fixed, and it’s a wonderful mechanism for fighting back against lower-level rip-offs and shonk by the likes of tradies and retailers.
However, while access to justice researcher Bridgette Toy-Cronin, director of the Otago Centre for Law and Society, says lifting the tribunal’s cap to $100,000 was a good move, it wouldn’t help many people.
She was involved in a study of unmet legal needs analysing calls for help to the Citizens Advice Bureau.
It estimated CAB received 84,000 legal problem inquiries each year ranging from trying to keep a roof over their heads to a squabble over a fence, to being treated poorly by a business.
These were often lower-income people, people who spoke English as a second language, or people who had a less-thanaverage education. To many, the court system felt alienating, intimidating, eurocentric and bureaucratic.
These are people for whom even filing in a form to start a case at the tribunal is a hurdle that’s too high.
If they deserve civil justice, something far more radical than lifting the Disputes Tribunal case cap is needed.
Exactly what that might look like, is something that needs to be discussed, but it has to involve actually setting aside enough taxpayer money to adequately fund community law centres, and advocates, to help people who need help to take cases.
The Rules Committee report said the Disputes Tribunal was ‘‘currently considering a change to its current te reo
Ma¯ ori name to better reflect the tribunal’s role in restoring balance and resolving disputes.’’
A nice thought, but I couldn’t find even its current te reo Ma¯ ori name on the tribunal’s website.
That seems to say a lot about how far we have to go.