Page 3523 - Week 12 - Thursday, 19 September 1991
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LEGAL PRACTITIONERS (AMENDMENT) BILL (NO. 2) 1991
MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General, Minister for Housing and Community Services and Minister for Urban Services) (12.10): Mr Acting Speaker, I present the Legal Practitioners (Amendment) Bill (No. 2) 1991. I move:
That this Bill be agreed to in principle.
The reasons for this amendment are set out in my presentation speech for the Government Solicitor (Amendment) Bill 1991. The amendments proposed in this Bill are along the same lines as those in the previous Bill. I present an explanatory memorandum for this Bill.
Debate (on motion by Mr Collaery) adjourned.
WILLS (AMENDMENT) BILL 1991
MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General, Minister for Housing and Community Services and Minister for Urban Services) (12.11): Mr Acting Speaker, I present the Wills (Amendment) Bill 1991. I move:
That this Bill be agreed to in principle.
This Bill represents the most thorough and far-reaching reform of the law relating to wills in the ACT since the present Wills Act was made as an ordinance some 23 years ago. At the same time, it marks the arrival of the ACT at the front line of wills reform in this country.
These Bills had their genesis, for the most part, in a 1987 report on the law relating to wills in the ACT prepared by a committee of the ACT Law Society. The report was prompted by the New South Wales Law Reform Commission report recommending reforms to succession law, as well as the work of the Victorian working party on wills. The Law Society commissioned Mr Charles Rowland, senior lecturer in law at the Australian National University and a leading academic in this field, to head a review of succession law in the ACT. These amendments are a result of that review.
The four broad aims of these amendments to the Wills Act 1968 are as follows: Firstly, to eliminate unnecessary formality in the execution of wills; secondly, to provide courts with room for flexibility in individual circumstances; thirdly, to ensure, so far as practicable, that a testator's intentions are put into effect; and, lastly, to clarify and remove existing uncertainty in the ACT Wills Act. Within these four categories, the amendments cover a wide field.
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