Parker David: Lawyers and Conveyancers Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Parker David: Lawyers and Conveyancers Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 25 September 2012. Volume:684;Page:5605. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour) 
: 
 We all know that if National had its way it would be abolishing the Supreme Court and taking us back to the Privy Council but the only problem with that is that actually we would need the permission of the British Government to do it and it would not have us. The reason National is doing this is that it does not need anyone’s permission. It is a nonsense that we are going back to this old-fashioned term of Queen’s Counsel rather than Senior Counsel. 
Charles Chauvel 
: Embarrassing. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: It is embarrassing is it not? You know have we got no more important political agenda in this country than changing the name of senior lawyers back to Queen’s Counsel? 
Worse than the name change is the change in principle being made here to restrict those who can be Senior Counsel—now to be called Queen’s Counsel—to those of the separate Bar. You cannot be appointed a Queen’s Counsel under this Lawyers and Conveyancers Amendment Bill unless you are a barrister sole. What does that do in the provinces? It effectively means that very few people in the provinces can ever be Senior Counsel because those smaller towns generally cannot support people with an adequate living who are at the separate Bar alone. Generally the best lawyers in provincial centres—and this is a generalisation but it is true of a lot of smaller centres—are actually the lawyers who are in firms. The barristers sole are more often in the smaller centres confined to the criminal legal aid roster. On some occasions they are doing Family Court work but predominantly they are doing minor criminal work on the legal aid roster. They are not the top lawyers in the regions—not always the top lawyers in the region I should say because I do not want to insult some of them; there are some very good barristers in smaller towns. But the general rule is that the top lawyers would be in firms of barristers and solicitors and they would be both. They will never be able to be under this legislation appointed Senior Counsel despite the fact that they might be the best practising barrister in the whole of the province. What a nonsense that under this legislation those people will never be eligible to be considered to be Senior Counsel! 
It is not a problem in just the smaller centres. You know there is not much doubt that one of the most capable barristers in this country is Jack Hodder at Chapman Tripp the former editor of  
The Capital Letter 
 a leading legal publication that was produced by Jack Hodder for many years. He wrote the editorials as well as putting it together. He is the leading counsel still in many cases in New Zealand’s highest courts. Under this legislation because he is in a firm of solicitors and operates as both a barrister and a solicitor he can never be appointed Senior Counsel. That is true of a number of other barristers and solicitors. In my own city of Dunedin the most senior barristers and solicitors were every bit as competent as the people who were appointed Queen’s Counsel. It is a nonsense that the list of people is limited to those from the Bar alone. 
What is the idea behind this? National says that those people are the only people who can be truly independent. Well if that were the case we would not allow people who were barristers and solicitors in legal firms to be appearing in courts in the first place because somehow they would be bringing an inferior level of independence or service to the courts. It is just not true. 
So this is a retrograde step. In market analysis of course if you limit the market of any good or service you actually drive up the price or you are going to decrease the quality. So assuming here that you have got the same number of Queen’s Counsel as there would have been Senior Counsel under the old system you are actually going to jack up the price for Queen’s Counsel. Queen’s Counsel are very very expensive to employ in New Zealand in part because we have too few of them. We drive up the cost of Queen’s Counsel services by not appointing enough of them and this bill will further entrench that extra revenue that goes to Queen’s Counsel to the detriment of their clients. It will not be improving the quality of justice; it will actually again be limiting the pool of Queen’s Counsel and I do not think that is appropriate. 
The other point which Charles Chauvel has already made well is that the appointment process is now going to become less transparent. What is wrong with transparency? What is wrong with transparency? Some bad things have happened in this country under this Government in terms of the standards that we have in various institutions and I am going to list them because this is part of a long list of things where standards are declining in New Zealand. We had this Government appoint the chairperson of John Key’s electorate committee to the Broadcasting Commission which is also known as New Zealand On Air. A political appointee to that role is inappropriate. Those people should be apolitical and he showed his politics when during the election he tried to influence the timing of a programme on child poverty. That was a black mark for this Government along the lines of this lack of transparency around Queen’s Counsel. It was a lot worse than this in fact. 
Then we had the National Party using the police against the media during the election—the teapot tapes. After the election when the case was going to go to trial the Prime Minister found it convenient to drop the prosecution. He said that he did not want it to proceed and that Mr Ambrose had been deemed guilty by the police. That was a terrible thing to do. He was never tried by a court and he had defences. The reason that it was dropped was that it would have been embarrassing for Mr Banks and Mr Key to turn up in court and try to allege that it was illegal. 
David Bennett 
: Get out of the gutter and speak to the bill bro. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: What is that? Speak to the bill? Actually I am speaking to the number of examples Mr Bennett of things that your Government oversees that are inappropriate. Then we have got the lack of— 
David Bennett 
: You’re lost now are you Parker? 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: What is that? Then we have the lack of transparency around other processes like giving contracts for extra pokie machines in Auckland. 
David Bennett 
: Oh you would know about that. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: I would know about that would I? Actually I am not a gambler Mr Bennett so I would not know about that. What I do know is that it is inappropriate to effectively sell regulatory favours to get a convention centre built and if you are going to do that you should put it out to tender so that other people can actually have a crack and say: “Well give us a regulatory or tax holiday and we’ll build you a convention centre without the pokies.” [ 
Interruption 
] They are still carrying on with that Mr Horomia. Now we have this additional lack of transparency. 
What else have we seen recently? We have seen the Government in respect of the State-owned enterprise legislation put mixed-ownership model companies beyond the purview of the Official Information Act which has been criticised by the Ombudsman as being inappropriate— 
Darien Fenton 
: Don’t believe in transparency. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: No it does not believe in transparency. Then we had this Government vote down a member’s bill that would have in respect of council-owned companies that are port companies brought those companies into the Official Information Act as well. Again the Government does not like transparency and it voted against that notwithstanding the fact that in any case where there was commercial sensitivity or other things to be kept confidential there are already defences under the Official Information Act that stop that information being made public. 
Again we have a process here that is going to become less transparent. Why is that? Well it probably suits the club of existing people who are more likely to be appointed Senior Counsel because they come through a certain route. That is not to demean their capability; our Queen’s Counsel in New Zealand are very capable. But it really should be more transparent so that justice can be seen to be done rather than there being a club of insiders who can always get the nod. I do not think there is any reason to move away from the transparent process that the prior Labour Government set up. 
So in terms of some of the changes to conveyancing we agree on this side that they are appropriate. We are not speaking against those. But there are fundamental problems with this bill and for that reason the Labour Party is opposing this.