CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (National) : The National Party will support Supplementary Order Paper 216, and, of course, it is supporting the Lawyers and Conveyancers Amendment Bill (No 2). The bill raises a small but very important issue about access to justice.
It is extremely important that members of trade unions and members of organisations like the Nurses Organisation, Business New Zealand, and the Hospitality Association have access to lawyers in the employment of those bodies so that they can obtain swift and inexpensive advice on matters that are of great importance to them, particularly in the areas of employment, and on some of the matters that are set out in the Supplementary Order Paper. Perhaps it would be useful if I explain how exactly we got to this position.
The starting point is Part 1 of the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act, which sets out certain preliminary provisions. After dealing with the fundamental obligations of lawyers and conveyancers, there are then a number of sections that deal with misconduct. The important one for our purpose tonight is section 9, because it provides that “A lawyer is guilty of misconduct who, being an employee, provides regulated services to the public other than in the course of his or her employment—” and then the section sets out various categories—for example, an employee employed by a lawyer, by a community law centre, by the Legal Services Agency, or by the Public Trust—I will not go through the entire list. Although it appears that the issue was the subject of submissions at the select committee deliberating on the Lawyers and Conveyancers Bill, and Dr Worth will be able to deal with this in some detail because he was on the Justice and Electoral Committee between 2002 and 2005, the Act failed to address the issue of the position of those lawyers who are in the employment of either employer associations or unions. It became apparent to organisations like the New Zealand Amalgamated Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union and Business New Zealand that there was a problem, a potential gap, a potential ground for misconduct against certain lawyers if this matter was not addressed before the Act came into force on 1 August—we all know that the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act has had a very long transitional period between enactment and actually coming into force.
So that is the reason why the legislation was introduced, and all parties cooperated to get it to the select committee to receive submissions as quickly as possible. The submissions we received were very good ones, and at the conclusion of the select committee deliberations the National Party had a rider that it was going to give some thought as to whether a Supplementary Order Paper in the Committee of the whole House would be necessary. Mr Jones is the person who is to be commended because he prepared an amendment and, as a result of his good work, that gave rise to further discussions between the parties to reach the situation we are in tonight where the Supplementary Order Paper of the Minister in charge of the bill, the Hon Annette King, comes in.
Of course we will support the Supplementary Order Paper, because it sets out very well the meeting of the minds between the various parties so that although, under this bill, explicit provision can be made in clause 6 for those who are employed by employer organisations and unions, the scope of the work that they can undertake is defined very carefully and set out in the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper very well. I refer to its proposed amendments to subclause (2) of clause 6, where there is a definition and an explanatory note that explains exactly the scope of what is sought to be achieved. I think it is a very good piece of work. The Supplementary Order Paper is very comprehensive—more comprehensive than the amendment that Mr Jones had drafted and my own effort, which I did not bother to table because I was satisfied with the Government Supplementary Order Paper. On that basis I think we can move fairly quickly through the Committee stage and support the Supplementary Order Paper so that this matter can be signed into law before 1 August.
The second aspect relates to the matter that Mr Jones raised shortly before we went into Committee. During deliberations on the submissions to the select committee it became apparent, as a result of submissions from the New Zealand Law Society, that there was a technical problem with section 107 as enacted. That section sets out the effective practice rules. For whatever reason, it appears that certain words are missing. There is no reference to incorporated law firms and former incorporated law firms. Instead, the section simply refers to lawyers and former lawyers. It was one of those matters that really did need to be tidied up, and I commend Mr Jones for facilitating the necessary amendments so that this matter can be cleaned up. All in all, it is very satisfactory. I want to thank my parliamentary colleagues for the work they have done on the bill. I think that, as a result, we have managed to reconcile all the interests and have not done great damage to the structure of the Act. With those brief comments in mind, the National Party indicates that it will support this legislation.
