Chauvel Charles: Lawyers and Conveyancers Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Chauvel Charles: Lawyers and Conveyancers Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 13 November 2012. Volume:685;Page:6504. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour) 
: 
 Part 1 of the Lawyers and Conveyancers Amendment Bill contains particular clauses that the Opposition takes objection to. Part 1 is the part of the legislation that will restore the archaic title of Queen’s Counsel. But actually worse than that it will do two other things that we particularly object to. I can see that there are members on the other side with whom I have discussed this matter and I hope that they will make a contribution in this debate and that we will hear from the Minister in the chair the Hon Amy Adams as well. 
The view has been put to me including by members opposite that going back to the title of Queen’s Counsel is something that honours our traditions that the move to sever the title and to replace it with the title Senior Counsel was something that was done by the previous Labour Government without a mandate that it disrespected those traditions and that therefore we should be supporting this move. What I want to say is that I am unconvinced but I do understand the point. 
Here are our objections to going back to the old title. First of all it is archaic. Secondly we are in the middle of a constitutional review—the Maori Party concluded an agreement with the National Party some time ago; I think it was after the 2008 election—and that review is to look at our constitution and questions like whether or not we should have Queen’s Counsel or Senior Counsel what the place of the Treaty should be in our constitutional arrangements whether we should eventually become a republic what the status of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act ought to be—all these matters. 
I can see that Dr Sharples is in the Chamber. I hope he is going to take a call during the debate on this legislation. I have put the question to him and to his staff as well as to Peter Dunne the self-professed republican over there who chaired the last constitutional review that we had in this country. Mr Dunne came up with all sorts of brave recommendations and told his electorate of Ohariu that he was a confirmed republican and wanted to see New Zealand take the inevitable step toward becoming a republic and severing our ties with the Crown. Perhaps today he is off to a dinner party or some other sort of social event with the Prince of Wales because it seems to me there is no consistency of principle amongst those people. 
Dr Sharples you cannot support this legislation and be acting in good faith about participating in a constitutional review. This legislation is pre-emptive of that exercise. Mr Dunne you cannot tell people that you are a republican on the one hand and support this legislation restoring a royal title a rank conferred by royalty to lawyers in New Zealand on the other. As was famously said by the Prime Minister in the House a week or two ago there is a word for that sort of positioning and it starts with “h” and it is hypocrisy. 
Let us just assume that the National Party and its allies have the numbers to go back to the title Queen’s Counsel. That is democracy and if that is the case members on this side will accept that. What I am keen to do is have the argument across the Chamber about the other matters that are dealt with in Part 1 because let us face it titles matter. What we call things matters in the end because symbolism matters but actually it is the reality of practice that matters even more. 
That is why I have put an amendment on the Table today that would make a couple of changes to this legislation. These changes would leave the title Queen’s Counsel in place. They would not disturb Chris Finlayson’s ardent desire and his electoral promise of 2008 to the legal profession to restore the title Queen’s Counsel. I know that he has probably applied already to Judith Collins as the Minister of Justice for his own application for the title of Queen’s Counsel to be processed before he leaves Parliament at the next election so that he can go out and practise with that title which he was denied when he applied for it in the ordinary course when he was a barrister on the basis that he had juniored in too many cases rather than having been senior counsel which is the required experience for this sort of title to be conferred. 
Here is what my amendment does. It says first of all that this legislation is wrong to say that it will restrict the award of the title Queen’s Counsel to barristers in practice. Just a little history lesson here: what the original legislation did was it expanded out the way in which this title could be awarded. It replaced the title Queen’s Counsel with Senior Counsel and it said that instead of this archaic old rule that only barristers sole who are a tiny fraction of our legal profession could be awarded the title Queen’s Counsel or Senior Counsel basically everybody practising in the profession would be entitled to the rank if they merited it. 
This bill will go back to restricting the title to just barristers although it has weaselly words in section 119C in clause 6 that say never mind all that. The royal prerogative is saved. So a lawyer who is a particular favourite of the Government and is not actually a barrister practising at the Bar can still get the title. So it is a kind of “We Want to Have the Best of Both Worlds Bill”. What I have done is actually try to get the bill to recognise that reality by in my amendment omitting paragraph (b) of clause 4 to recognise the reality that this bill does not really restrict the status to barristers at all despite Mr Finlayson’s promises to the Law Society. But the real nub of my amendment relates to the changes in section 119C in clause 6. 
The best thing that Labour did apart from abolishing the archaic title of QC and opening up the status to all lawyers of merit practising whether they be in firms at the Bar in local government in government practice or what have you was having an open appointments procedure. One of the problems that we have in the law in New Zealand is that people who are not lawyers feel locked out. They do not understand how lawyers come to be appointed judges or how they come to exercise the many privileges that they do in practice and often it is quite difficult to progress a complaint against a practising lawyer because of all the procedures and the rules that need to be followed. It is very difficult to understand how somebody becomes a judge. It is very difficult to lodge a complaint against a judge. 
I see my friend Jackie Blue over there who has taken a great interest in the judicial complaints procedure and rightly so because that was another way of opening this whole thing up and demystifying it—something that I am very proud of the last Labour Government for doing even though it was opposed by the National Party at the time. 
So my amendment is another measure in that vein. What it says is that we will keep an open appointments procedure so that we can encourage women minorities and all the diversity that we are finally seeing coming through the legal profession and so that we can see openly whether or not those members of the profession are being blocked from getting this ultimate accolade that we award to lawyers in this country—the title QC which is now being restored by the National Government. 
The way I do it is this. I say that the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act (Lawyers: Senior Counsel and Queen’s Counsel) Regulations 2008 which are the procedural rules made under the Act to govern applications for being made either a QC or an SC and the rules that are made under regulation 5 of those regulations by the Solicitor-General will remain in force notwithstanding the passage of this amendment and obviously with necessary amendments until a further Act of Parliament varies those rules. So if we do get rid of the title SC and retain just QC or if Parliament does retain the restriction so that barristers will normally be the only people who are qualified to apply to be Queen’s Counsel then we will still have an open appointment process. 
I would really just ask members opposite to consider this amendment if they consider nothing else that I have said in this debate. What is wrong with openness? What is wrong with saying to the public look how you become a Queen’s Counsel should be a matter for openness in a free and democratic society. It should not be shrouded in secrecy. It should not be something that the Attorney-General and the Chief Justice get together about in some room somewhere and discuss without a bit of sunshine being shone on the process in the way that we shine it now pretty much everywhere else in our society except ironically on the doings of lawyers. So what I am saying is I would ask members to consider this amendment on its merits. There is no harm in doing this.