King Annette: Lawyers and Conveyancers Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
King Annette: Lawyers and Conveyancers Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 24 July 2008. Volume:648;Page:17434. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon ANNETTE KING (Minister of Justice) 
: 
 I move  
That the Lawyers and Conveyancers Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a second time 
. The majority of submissions supported the objective underpinning this bill which is to ensure that members of employer organisations and unions continue to be supported by cost-effective quality in-house services from their employer organisations and unions. I would like to thank the Justice and Electoral Committee for its careful consideration of the bill within a short time frame. 
The Lawyers and Conveyancers Act 2006 is due to come into force on 1 August 2008. This Act significantly reforms the way in which legal services are provided. As enacted the Act will prevent unions and employer organisations from continuing their practice of using in-house lawyers to provide legal services to their members. This is because the Act makes the provision of legal services to the public by in-house lawyers—that is lawyers employed by non-lawyers—an act of professional misconduct. However employment organisations and unions have a long-standing practice of providing cost-effective accessible legal services to their members through their in-house lawyers. This practice has enabled integrated prevention and advice services including legal services. 
Section 9 of the Act contains a list of exemptions to this general rule. This bill amends Section 9 by adding to the exemptions listed in Section 9 the services that unions and employer organisations provide to their members. Alongside this the bill also protects consumer interests by providing that lawyers providing legal services as employees of employer organisations and unions will be guilty of misconduct if they provide legal services to any person other than to the organisation the union or its members. This will ensure that the employer organisations and unions continue to provide a timely practical financially viable and relevant service to their members while maintaining the principle objective of protecting consumer interests. 
The select committee has recommended that health professional organisations as defined under the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act 2003 be included within this list of exempted organisations and I support this recommendation. In their submissions to the committee a number of health professional organisations raised concerns that the current prohibition in the Act would prevent them from providing legal services to their members similar to employer organisations and unions. They noted that a withdrawal of this specialised and cost-effective service could lead to a potential shortage in the number of health professionals particularly independent midwives given the high indemnity cover and legal expenses that health professionals would have to bear on an individual basis. The committee has recommended the inclusion of health professional organisations within the list of exempted organisations after careful consideration of these submissions. 
Once again I would like to thank the select committee members for the work they have done on this bill. It is important legislation that will ensure members continue to benefit from the long-standing integrated prevention and advice services provided by employer organisations unions and health professional organisations. 
My colleague Charles Chauvel who in a former life worked as a lawyer within the union movement has had considerable experience of just how it works and how it ought to continue to work in the future. This bill will enable that to happen not just for unions as I said but for employer organisations and also for health professional organisations. I commend the bill to the House.