Chauvel Charles: Lawyers and Conveyancers Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Chauvel Charles: Lawyers and Conveyancers Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:667;Page:14470] 
CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour) 
: 
 Part 2 of the Lawyers and Conveyancers Amendment Bill which has just been described by the Associate Minister of Justice contains some quite sensible provisions but because of the appalling provisions in Part 1 there is no way that Labour can support this legislation. With this bill the National - ACT - Maori Party - Peter Dunne Government leads us boldly back into the 19th century. We go cringing back to our colonial origins. 
Hon David Parker 
: Bring back fingerless gloves. 
CHARLES CHAUVEL 
: Yes fingerless gloves would be in order. The Attorney-General was the original sponsor of this bill although I see that it has been mysteriously taken over by the hapless Associate Minister of Justice Nathan Guy who just read the notes on the bill that were provided for him by the Ministry of Justice. It was a very good recitation of the departmental speech notes. 
It is interesting first of all to pose the question of why Chris Finlayson is no longer the sponsor of this legislation. I ask whether he wants to avoid the suggestion of a conflict of interest having returned the nation to this cringing colonialism and Queen’s Counsel so that when eventually he procures his own appointment to the rank he cannot be accused of such a conflict of interest. 
The Government has also restored knighthoods and the title of Right Honourable to the three senior officers of the State which is a total constitutional nonsense given that they are not members of the English Privy Council. They are just holders of this title which is redundant in this country without any meaning whatsoever. Maybe it will be good for the odd upgrade on a plane when they are retired from this place but that is about all it means. [ 
Interruption 
] I see that Ms Collins responds well to the idea of an upgrade. But the House needs to ask the question of how New Zealand can be taken seriously in the world as a multicultural Pacific nation while this Government is so addicted to colonial cringe. [ 
Interruption 
] I say to Nikki Kaye that this will not go down well in Auckland Central because people in Auckland Central are really proud to be multicultural and part of an independent country in the Pacific and here we have this Government going back to this colonial cringing. 
This Government must have our historical links to the Crown recognised. We must return to using English titles. We are not good enough on our own; we have to have Queen’s Counsel we have to have knighthoods and we have to be Privy Counsellors. It is just appalling. We cannot have the external trappings of an independent State. Under this Government we have to go back to the old colonial titles. We must be the only place on the planet that has abolished colonial titles like knighthoods privy counsellorships and Queen’s Counsel only to restore them by legislation in this case. 
It is bad enough that we are going back on this cultural cringe trip and that Nathan Guy has been put up to this job by the Attorney-General so that the Attorney-General can have the coveted title of Queen’s Counsel at last which has been so long denied him but worse is that the justifications advanced in the Associate Minister’s speech which he read so diligently for us do not stack up. 
Let us put the colonial cringe arguments aside. The bill is said to be all about preserving the independence of the legal profession and correcting what is said to be an overly rigid approach to the appointments process for Senior Counsel. There is nothing in the independence point—absolutely nothing whatsoever. The proof of that is in the fact that the Minister conceded when he read the notes from the department that the Governor-General retains the discretion to appoint members of the legal profession from law firms from time to time to the rank of Queen’s Counsel. There will still be the ability to do that. Given this legislation I ask how independence will be preserved if that extraordinary power continues to exist. It just proves the lie in the argument. 
The appointments process and the rigidity that is said to exist in it is also a complete nonsense. I will read into the record of the House something that was said in 2003 by one of New Zealand’s leading litigators. Jack Hodder was a barrister and a law commissioner and is now a partner in one of our major leading law firms. Incidentally he happened to be one of the inaugural appointees to the rank of Senior Counsel although at the time he could not have known that that would have been in the offing. This is what Mr Hodder said about the Queen’s Counsel appointments process which we are going back to: “This form of State patronage perpetuates a misleading and damaging two-tier perception of the legal profession. It empowers the State apparatus (currently the Attorney-General and the Chief Justice) to discriminate between lawyers advantaging some and (by implication) damaging others. All this is done under a secret and non-accountable process. That process cannot be sensibly reformed. The current and future holders of the offices of Attorney-General and Chief Justice should not be distracted nor placed at risk of charges of favouritism by involvement in such a process in which they must rely on secondary sources. The critical independence of the legal profession can only be impaired by any such selection process.” The truth of those words is manifest. Rather than enhancing the independence of the legal profession this legislation will take us back to a system where the Attorney-General and the Chief Justice from time to time under a secret process relying on secondary sources can elevate some members of the profession to exalted status enabling them to charge much more than they could have previously by way of fees and all this is said to be somehow enhancing of the independence of the legal system when in fact it will produce the opposite result. 
The other interesting observations made by Mr Hodder in his  
Independent 
 article are as follows. I agree with them and I want to make sure that the House takes note of them. Firstly he said: “The rank is of no assistance in maintaining or enhancing professional standards in the practising legal profession. The rank is not well understood by the public. Indeed it implies - quite incorrectly - that the beneficiaries of the rank are able or entitled to advise or speak on any legal matters with greater authority than others. The rank creates an unnecessary and unhelpful division between those few favoured with the rank and the rest of the profession who are implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) relegated to junior rank. For nearly 90 years only a fraction of the New Zealand Bar has been able to apply for the rank—the vast majority … practising in the fused profession as barristers and solicitors. … The rank has not been available to leading lawyers who practise in areas other than advocacy. The rank represents characteristics of the legal profession of England and of the past which are damaging to the New Zealand profession of the 21st century: adherence to archaisms; retention of elitist divisions; secret procedures; and a mistrust of market forces.” They are all hallmarks of the rank. Finally “the rank is not necessarily reliable as an indicator of skill as an advocate. While the current leading Queen Counsel are among the leading advocates in the country there are advocates in law firms who are their equals and there are Queen’s Counsel who are at best marginal candidates for any ‘leading advocates’ list.” 
This is bad law. It represents a colonial cringe that many of us thought we had grown out of in this country but clearly the actions of this Government show that we have not. It nullifies attempts to harmonise with the Australians in the legal market. The Australians have done away with this rank in all but one jurisdiction and they will laugh at any jurisdiction that actually goes as far as restoring it. This is bad law it is bad for New Zealand it is elitist and at the earliest opportunity a future Labour Government will repeal it.