Borrows Chester: Lawyers and Conveyancers Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third Reading 
Borrows Chester: Lawyers and Conveyancers Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third Reading 
[Volume:648;Page:17638] 
CHESTER BORROWS (National—Whanganui) 
: 
 I rise in support of the Lawyers and Conveyancers Amendment Bill (No 2). The bill essentially extends the type of organisation that a lawyer is permitted to provide services to during the course of his or her employment. I agree with my parliamentary colleagues who in previous speeches on this bill have described it as highly technical. However as is often the case the devil is in the detail. Technical as it may be this amendment has important ramifications for those lawyers currently employed by unions employer organisations and health professional organisations to provide in-house advice to their employer’s members. Under the Law Practitioners Act corporate lawyers were prohibited in their capacity as in-house lawyers from providing legal services to anyone other than their employer. When the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act 2006 was passed Parliament decided to retain the status quo. The effect that that had on members of unions or members of organisations was that they then had to pay serious money to obtain the advice they needed given their circumstance. 
The Lawyers and Conveyancers Amendment Bill (No 2) will reverse the position stated in the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act. The bill seeks to regularise the position of lawyers employed by unions and other employer organisations that provide advice to their employer’s members. Up until now many in-house lawyers have been operating under the misconception that they were able to provide their employer’s members or clients with employment legal advice. In practical terms the benefits of this practice are fairly self-evident. The arrangement provides the in-house lawyer’s employer—say for instance the Engineering Printing and Manufacturing Union or Business New Zealand—with easy access to quality and cost-effective legal services for its members. 
I am pleased to see that with the cooperation of the House this matter has been clarified and will provide certainty to those lawyers who are employed by unions employer organisations and health professional organisations. I am equally pleased to see that during the Committee stage the House agreed to amendments allowing lawyers to provide legal services to members of an organisation or union only in so far as they relate to their membership of that organisation. That amendment clears up the anomalous situation whereby it could have been possible for a union lawyer who dealt primarily with employment matters to provide advice to members on anything from a drink-driving charge to a breach of a protection order or for anything else that they might find themselves before the beak on. 
Although I did not have the benefit of sitting on the Justice and Electoral Committee while it was considering the bill I understand that it was considered under a very tight time frame in order to pass it before the principal Act comes into force on 1 August. I have to say I am surprised and a little concerned that we are debating this issue on the day before the principal Act comes into force. 
The Lawyers and Conveyancers Bill was introduced into Parliament in 2003 and it received its Royal assent in March 2006. The Government has had over 2 years to clarify this issue yet here we are still debating this matter on the afternoon of the very last sitting day before the Act comes into force in order to rush it through. 
One has to cast one’s mind back to other pieces of legislation that have been rushed through this House in an attempt to perform some particular whim of the Government—not necessarily this legislation but others like the Electoral Finance Act which will be the hallmark of the term of this Labour Government and we will be pleased to see it go.