Worth Richard: Lawyers and Conveyancers Bill — In Committee 
Worth Richard: Lawyers and Conveyancers Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:629;Page:1521] 
Dr RICHARD WORTH (National) 
: 
 National has an amendment in respect of Part 5 “New Zealand Society of Conveyancers”. It is a simple amendment. It proposes that the whole of Part 5 be deleted. I have had an opportunity to speak very briefly on National’s position towards the New Zealand Society of Conveyancers. I will briefly summarise those arguments against the background that National supports with reservations the Lawyers and Conveyancers Bill. 
It is a pity in the context of the Committee stage of the debate that Labour members have been strangely silent. Sure it has been the case that the Minister at the start of each part has offered a child’s guide to the content of the part but there are on that side of the House presently constituting the Government a number of lawyers including one who sat on the Justice and Electoral Committee and who is strangely silent. That is a pity because Russell Fairbrother I am sure could make a worthwhile contribution to the debate if minded. I express the hope on behalf of members on this side of the House that he will feel free to say at least something supportive or otherwise on a bill that occupied a very substantial period of select committee consideration and deliberation. As one looks through the bill which now runs to 346 pages it is right to say that on most pages of the bill as it was reported back one can see changes to what was originally sent to the select committee. 
Part 5 is in very similar form to Part 4 which is concerned with the New Zealand Law Society. Part 5 is concerned with the New Zealand Society of Conveyancers. So why is National opposed to Part 5? 
Hon Mark Burton 
: A very good question. 
Dr RICHARD WORTH 
: It is a very good question as the Minister in the chair the Hon Mark Burton says. I have a very simple answer by way of response. The select committee heard evidence from the New Zealand Law Society that there might be five or six people who would be qualified to join the society and the faint possibility that Australian conveyancers might seek to join the society although there would be only a few. So the probability was that there might be seven or eight such people in total. That clearly raises questions as to the justification for a highly prescriptive statutory regime and the impossibility of funding a realistic fidelity fund for such a limited occupational grouping. I suggest that one would have to get up very very early in the morning to find legislation other than a private bill that was enacted for the benefit of seven or eight people. Certainly it would be unusual in the context of legislation to provide such a highly prescriptive regime for those people. In Part 5 in addition to provisions establishing the New Zealand Society of Conveyancers there are provisions relating to functions and powers. As I have said they mirror substantially the provisions of Part 4 relating to the New Zealand Law Society. 
One of the most interesting clauses from a lawyer’s perspective is clause 79. Clause 79 applies the Acts and Regulations Publication Act 1989 and the Regulations (Disallowance) Act 1989 to the constitution of the New Zealand Society of Conveyancers. I do not think there is another statutory example apart from that Act of the constitution of an entity being made subject to those provisions. I will comment briefly on what I see as being the implications of that particular change. What this is about in part is a linking provision to the definition in the Standing Orders of the House of Representatives of “regulation” as “a regulation within the meaning of the Regulations (Disallowance) Act 1989”. If one then moves to later provisions in the Standing Orders—I am referring particularly to the provisions related to delegated legislation—it seems interestingly and I think curiously that the Regulations Review Committee has been given a specific jurisdiction to deal with issues relating to the constitution of the New Zealand Society of Conveyancers. That means that those provisions of that constitution will have the status of regulation and it will open them up to the scrutiny of a powerful parliamentary committee. So people aggrieved by the operation of the constitution of the New Zealand Society of Conveyancers will be able—provided that they can bring themselves within the framework of the Standing Orders—to advance a complaint to the Regulations Review Committee which can then act as others have said as a poor man’s appellate court to do justice to that presumably aggrieved conveyancer. That is quite an unusual provision. 
As I said at the outset National is opposed to this part. I welcome a response from Minister Mark Burton the new Minister of Justice to say why Part 5 is truly needed.