Barnett Tim: Lawyers and Conveyancers Bill — Second Reading 
Barnett Tim: Lawyers and Conveyancers Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:624;Page:19383] 
TIM BARNETT (Labour—Christchurch Central) 
: 
 As chair of the Justice and Electoral Committee I am delighted to be I think the closing speaker in the second reading debate on the Lawyers and Conveyancers Bill. The select committee went through a fascinating process. If one looks at the statistics at the back of our report one will see that they give some indication of two particular elements of our consideration of this bill. One was that we heard 54 submissions over 25 hours which means an average of half an hour a submission which indicates that the submissions were often more in-depth more thoughtful and more lengthy than many that select committees look at. Following that we spent another 25 hours considering the bill. The effect of that is to point out that this is highly complex legislation and it was really born quite rightly in a situation of close cooperation between the New Zealand Law Society and Ministry of Justice officials. That is a very proper process as essentially this is the constitution of the legal profession in our nation. 
I must admit that the select committee talked long and hard about the particular shape of the legislation. When we look at other regulatory devices passed by this Parliament with broad cross-party support in recent years I think we could say that this is a lot more complex and prescriptive than many other models. Indeed there were those on the select committee who I suspect would have preferred a much simpler piece of legislation that left a whole lot of the detail to be decided by the Law Society. But having said that I note that the New Zealand Law Society made the clear decision to go for something that was detailed and complex. Therefore the role of the select committee was not so much to deal with the fundamentals of the legislation but instead to make sure that in the course of ministry staff and the Law Society doing a lot of the detailed work the interests of others were also considered. For example the accountancy profession made some very powerful points about the extent to which the legislation would impact on them and as a result of some of the changes they proposed—which will be further refined in the Committee of the whole House—better legislation will emerge without unintended negative consequences on accountants in New Zealand. 
Community law centres were concerned that the legislation could impact negatively on them. They are in my view a treasured network of agencies in our nation that look to legislation and Government arrangements to make sure that they provide help to large numbers of people who otherwise lack effective access to justice. 
At the same time we were trying to make sure in the legislation that the policy intent—for example the avoidance of multidisciplinary practices—was actually delivered by the wording of the legislation and that led to a whole range of changes which are laid out in the report back. We looked for example at the concerns of patent attorneys. In the process of the legislation being produced patent attorneys had had their interests maybe rather neglected so we wrote them back in. We looked at the use of law libraries and decided to make some changes that will make sure that law libraries can take some time to transition to the new environment. On the basis of those changes and others made by the select committee I am delighted to commend the legislation to the House.