Worth Richard: Lawyers and Conveyancers Bill — In Committee 
Worth Richard: Lawyers and Conveyancers Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:629;Page:1539] 
Dr RICHARD WORTH (National) 
: 
 I would like to pick up an issue that has been fleetingly referred to and which is enshrined in an amendment I am proposing that I hope New Zealand First will support. It is numbered 272 and it relates to clauses 105 and 106. As has been said National supports this bill although we have some reservations about some of the parts. Sadly we think that the New Zealand Law Society should have pushed the Government harder than it did and that the Law Society has been too quick to yield. 
Mr Finlayson has spoken about clause 104 and how as drafted it is meaningless. Clause 104 states: “Subject to this Act barristers of the High Court have all the powers privileges duties and responsibilities that barristers have at law.” It is meaningless but the good point that Mr Finlayson made is that if we look at the 1982 legislation—which we are asked by way of footnote to compare with clause 104—we will see that it was meaningful but by deletion it has become meaningless. If we look at the roles that barristers have across a range of common law jurisdictions—Canada Australia and the UK to name three—we can see that each one of those countries has slightly different rules. He has explained that. 
My amendment to clauses 105 and 106 is quite simple. First it proposes the deletion of clause 105. I guess the crunch point about clause 105 is that it contemplates that there will be Queen’s Counsel within firms. We went through that in a period at the close of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. I had a great-grandfather who was a Queen’s Counsel in a law firm. 
 That experiment—if I can call it that—ran for about 8 years and was then scrapped. I think there was good reason for making that change and now the Government is seeking to creep back to what was a discredited plan. 
That is not the main point though; the main point is probably in clause 106 and that is the issue of Senior Counsel and Queen’s Counsel. This bill proposes that those who to date have been Queen’s Counsel—and when we had a king King’s Counsel—would now become Senior Counsel. We had a debate within the Justice and ElectoralCommittee to which the bill was referred—and what clever people there were on the committee I say gazing for a moment at the Minister currently occupying the chair the Hon Lianne Dalziel—as to how appropriate that change is. The point is that the term Senior Counsel is used loosely to describe senior lawyers who are not in fact Queen’s Counsel. It is commonplace in the courts to talk about someone being senior counsel but that person is not armed with the letters of patent that have come from the Queen. So we will have senior counsel who are not Senior Counsel because they are not Queen’s Counsel and we will have senior counsel who are Senior Counsel by dint of their seniority. 
One of the earlier speakers—I think it was Mr Coleman who has made a hugely promising start in his venture into the legal arena despite his very substantive medical qualifications—made the point that what we are really looking at here is the creeping advance towards a republic. And he was right because one can look at a whole lot of illustrations of how this Government since 1999 has embarked on that particular path. I will mention the abolition of the Privy Council and the fact that the honours system has utterly changed. If one asks a person on the street or in this Parliament for example what the difference is between ONZ and ONZM— 
Dr Jonathan Coleman 
: What is the difference? 
Dr RICHARD WORTH 
: Well that is a very good question. Here is a member right alongside me who is not completely sure of the difference. But when we degraded the honours system we produced an outcome whereby we crept towards republicanism. The Oaths Modernisation Bill is another illustration of what we are doing. That is why I say that we should stay with the title Queen’s Counsel.