Coleman Jonathan: Lawyers and Conveyancers Bill — In Committee 
Coleman Jonathan: Lawyers and Conveyancers Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:629;Page:1537] 
Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (National—Northcote) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to be addressing Part 6. I do so not as a member of the legal profession and I will not be engaging in any of the legal sophistry that some of the Government members have engaged in in justifying some of their approaches to this bill. But I do think that there is indeed a need for a conduct of practice by legal practitioners to be set down in legislation because there is no question that the public expects and deserves such protection. Speaking as a layperson the part of Part 6 that really concerns me is clause 105 which refers to the removal of references to Queen’s Counsel and King’s Counsel. We could engage in various legal arguments as to why this should be so but as a layperson the thing that immediately strikes me—as Mr Woolerton has pointed out—is that this seems to be just an exercise in political correctness. 
R Doug Woolerton 
: Republicanism. 
Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN 
: It is republicanism by stealth and I think it is really part of a wider agenda. If one removes enough of the trappings of the monarchy little by little one erodes the public support for it and there is no question that members of the Government would very much like to see the monarchy done away with and republicanism instituted at the earliest possible opportunity. I put it to members that there are people in the Government who find that the use of the title King’s Counsel or currently Queen’s Counsel in New Zealand is a real offence to them. I can tell those Government members that most New Zealanders do not want to have republicanism by stealth. They want to have a proper debate on these issues. It annoys people in this country—the public—when we do not have proper consultation and when they wake up tomorrow and read in the  
Dominion Post  
or the  
New Zealand Herald  
that in Parliament at 9 o’clock at night a handful of people just suddenly decided to do away with the title Queen’s Counsel or King’s Counsel. 
Hon Pete Hodgson 
: Why King’s Counsel? 
Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN 
: Well when we have a king again we will once again have the title King’s Counsel. 
I think that there is also the issue of talking down the profession and trying to remove some of its aspirational nature. The one thing Labour members hate is for people to have something to aspire to and there is nothing that those members hate more than to see lawyers have something like the title Queen’s Counsel—or King’s Counsel—to aspire to. They would rather that we were all dumbed down. 
Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m. 
Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN 
: I wish to resume talking on Part 6 of the Lawyers and Conveyancers Bill. As members know Part 6 deals with the conduct of practice by practitioners. Prior to the dinner break I spoke about clauses 105 and 106 which deal specifically with the removal of the title Queen’s Counsel and when appropriate at a later time eventually the title King’s Counsel and their replacement with the title Senior Counsel. I was making the point that this is in fact republicanism by stealth and that really there is no public appetite for this change. We do not hear anyone talking about the need to remove the title Queen’s Counsel or we did not used to hear about the need to remove the title King’s Counsel. As my colleague Mr Worth noted there is no appetite within the legal profession for this change. In fact in surveys of the legal profession up to 90 percent of company lawyers—those who would be engaging the services of a Queen’s Counsel—say that they do not wish to see a change. One of the reasons for that is that the title Queen’s Counsel signals a very important piece of information to the market for legal services. The title signals that when we have a Queen’s Counsel before us we have someone who is at the very apex of his or her profession. So if we do not have a legal degree ourselves or if we do not know the local legal personnel we can be assured that we are retaining the services of someone who is at the very top of his or her profession. That is called transparency in the market for legal services. If we changed that title to Senior Counsel it would effectively be a dumbing down at the highest rank of the legal profession. 
There are about 8000 barristers in New Zealand but only about 80 of them are Queen’s Counsel. I cannot see why we would want to tamper with that. We have an excellent legal system based on British law and it has served this country well since its inception. The roots of that legal system go back centuries and it is a legal system that is the envy of many countries in the world. I put it to the Committee that there would be few other places in the world that would want to start tampering around the margins of their legal system in the way that we are seeking to do here. 
When I get back to this point of republicanism by stealth I think it is important that in this Committee we listen to what people want. The people of New Zealand woke up to find that they no longer had the right of appeal to the Privy Council. That was decided here. It did not go out for public consultation— 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: No select committee hearing! 
Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN 
: It went through a select committee but it was not something that met with a great deal of approval in the public domain and I do not think there will be any appetite for this change either. 
But there is another part of Part 6 that really concerns me. If I refer back to Part 5 when we talked about the National Party being opposed to the establishment of a New Zealand Society of Conveyancers and I went through in detail why were opposing that I see that clause 85 is headed: “Certain practice rules in relation to conveyancing practitioners” and I think that serves to illustrate the points I was making in talking on Part 5. Clause 85(1) states: “The rules made under section 83 by the New Zealand Society of Conveyancers—(a) must provide educational criteria to be met by candidates for practising certificates as conveyancing practitioners:”. I think the point is very much that if one is going to establish a profession one has to provide a facility for continuing education. As I think has been pointed out if we are going to have seven or we said maybe nine but certainly not even 10 new practitioners of conveyancing how on earth will they provide the facilities and the structure for continuing legal education and continuing conveyancing education? It really makes a farce of the notion of a new profession and a new society. 
Clause 85(1)(b) states—and if there is a laugh in this bill maybe it is this or maybe it is not—that the rules of the New Zealand Society of Conveyancers “must provide for or include mechanisms providing for the recognition of foreign qualifications registration and experience:”. I think that shows what a load of nonsense having a New Zealand Society of Conveyancers would be. How on earth would we recognise foreign qualifications when frankly there are none to recognise? Furthermore who will administer this system and say who is fit to be a conveyancer coming from overseas with these foreign qualifications? The answer is that if we have only nine people at most practising this they will all be out trying to make money trying to take income away from qualified solicitors by practising conveyancing themselves. So there will be no mechanism for that. 
Finally clause 85(1)(c) states that these rules in relation to the New Zealand Society of Conveyancers “may require conveyancing practitioners or any class of conveyancing practitioners to undertake ongoing education relating to the law or the practice of conveyancing.” It is really hard to say which comes first the chicken or the egg. If there is no Society of Conveyancers and we think that is right and if we then talk about establishing the practice and the profession of conveyancing one cannot follow without the other. We would be quite happy that the practice of conveyancing as envisaged under this new structure does not come to pass. But it also goes on about ongoing education relating to the law to do with conveyancing. As I think has been illustrated this will not be able to be carried out by those nine or so conveyancers because they will not be in a position to legally educate their peers. There will be a situation where there are nine people around the table each taking turns.