Little Andrew: Lawyers and Conveyancers Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Little Andrew: Lawyers and Conveyancers Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 13 November 2012. Volume:685;Page:6522. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
ANDREW LITTLE (Labour) 
: 
 Again I express my disappointment that at a time when the country we like to think is rapidly modernising when in every sphere of the labour market we are looking to diversity and we are looking to inclusive means to grow and nurture and develop the relevant workforce this bill the Lawyers and Conveyancers Amendment Bill takes us backwards. It takes us back to an age of privilege to exclusivity to focusing not on those who may be the best legal minds but on those who have the right connections and can persuade the right people at the right time in order to achieve the right appointment. 
This bill might be better titled the “Lawyers and Conveyancers Return to Exclusive Privilege Bill” or the “Lawyers and Conveyancers Return to Inexplicable and Undeserved Exclusivity Bill” because that is what is happening with this bill. The legal profession is very important and those who practise at its most senior levels those who are most experienced are those whom we need to retain because—let us face it—many lawyers many senior practitioners suffer the same temptations and are often offered the same blandishments as those in other walks of life. The prospect of early retirement of spending one’s twilight years on the golden sandy shores of various beaches of the nation—those sorts of things—is very tempting and yet they are people who have much to offer in the practice of law and in the prosecution of the very important role that they play in the courts of this land. 
Yet this bill says that we are now going to go back to a time when a small number of people a small coterie—the Attorney-General and those who are close to the figures of the establishment and the Government of the day—will select those who have chosen to go to what is I think now incorrectly named the Independent Bar because the independence at least in some cases is open to question. Those who are in the Independent Bar will qualify whereas those who are senior practitioners and excellent advocates in other parts of the profession will not qualify and that is such a bad step. 
At a time when the legal profession is reorganising itself into a more coherent organisation offering up better oversight and greater discipline amongst the profession and setting ever higher standards this legislation will take us back to an age and an era that did not promote and encourage that. It promoted the rubbing of the right shoulders—that is to say shoulder to shoulder not the massaging approach that might otherwise have been suggested by that turn of phrase. 
Those in the gentlemen’s clubs of the nation who knew each other well and could speak highly of each other—often with the correct accent nurtured by King’s College or even Christ’s College and those elite schools of the nation—could well find themselves as candidates to be a QC if they had those contacts and those connections. Because of the exclusivity of the nature of the appointment it gave them a market advantage. That is what it was often seen as—as a marketing advantage—and they could charge a higher fee. Well that is not what we want to see in the senior ranks of any profession much less the legal profession. 
That is why we need to know if we are going to see true development and the application and the prosecution of the rule of law in our courts that in our courts of justice and our tribunals the people who are operating at the most senior ranks represent the diversity that we are seeing in so many other spheres in New Zealand. That is why it is important if we are going to have this bill—and it looks like there is an inevitability about it—that it properly reflects what is happening. But this bill represents a retrograde step a backward step. It is not embracing modernity and the modern approach we would expect in a modern profession in a modern country that is seeking to fight its way and find its way through the world. 
For that reason we will oppose this bill disappointingly and grudgingly as that may be because it will not improve the profession or those who operate within it or most important those who aspire to its senior ranks and to be the senior practitioners of tomorrow.