Wall Louisa: Lawyers and Conveyancers Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Wall Louisa: Lawyers and Conveyancers Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 13 November 2012. Volume:685;Page:6515. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
LOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa) 
: 
 Kia ora Mr Chair. Thank you very much for the opportunity to contribute in the Committee stage of the Lawyers and Conveyancers Amendment Bill. This is a constitutional issue and I actually do want to reiterate what my colleague Charles Chauvel said earlier in terms of this debate because when you look at the history that started for us in 2002—yes when we were in Government—there was a decision by Cabinet at that point in time to not only rename Queen’s Counsel but also look at the eligibility of that very privileged and special role within our society. So for us it was about creating the opportunity for all litigators not just barristers sole to have the opportunity to represent what is the highest office I believe for the legal profession. And why did we do that? I think we did that actually as a deliberate attempt to try to carve out for ourselves our own national identity as an independent country in a world where we have to recognise and we will always recognise that we were colonised by the British and that we are part of the Commonwealth. It was actually starting to forge some of our own national identity. Within the framework of that debate and discussion we decided that this was an area that we needed to reform. So we did create the title of Senior Counsel and we did change it from Queen’s Counsel and I think we should remember that. 
When I looked back at some of the debates—for example those that occurred in 2005 when the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act came into force—it was very interesting to note that the Law Society at that point in time actually agreed with the change. It agreed with the fact that we should be enabling all of the people within the legal profession to have the opportunity. So the two primary drivers when we drove the change were about renaming it but also about the eligibility. It was a move towards New Zealand’s independence as has been spoken about previously. 
We did follow the UK and we followed Australia and it is interesting when we look at other Commonwealth countries—for example we have Senior Advocates in India we have Senior Counsel in South Africa and we have President’s Counsel in Sri Lanka. What we started to undertake was something that a lot of other Commonwealth countries had started to undertake which was to actually look at what this role represented or what this role was empowered to do within the context of New Zealand being an independent sovereign nation. I guess that within modern democratic societies and in a society such as ours those are some of the challenges that we will face in the future. We do have to recognise in this discussion that we do have a constitutional reform process under way. 
So when we look at the retrograde aspect of this particular piece of legislation you do have to wonder where the motivation came from to put this piece of legislation through the House. It seems that it was initiated by the Attorney-General the Hon Christopher Finlayson in June 2009. So there was a commitment by the Government to do that but I am not really sure why it would do that within the context of us as a country having these big discussions about the constitution of our country—the place of the Treaty of Waitangi for example. What sort of a State do we want to create for our children of the future? It does seem to be a little bit at odds that we would be discussing a bill such as this within the context of that discussion. 
I was in the House when the Oaths and Declarations (Upholding the Treaty of Waitangi) Amendment Bill was debated last week. It seemed that that was the primary rationale for National members not supporting the honourable Te Ururoa Flavell’s bill—it was because we were in the middle of a constitutional review. So they decided we should wait for that constitutional review to take place to then allow for example us as members of Parliament to decide when we swear an oath whether to also swear to uphold the principles of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. So that was a really interesting I guess principle to make a decision on and it seems that that principle is completely transferable within the context of our discussions around this bill.