Page 2215 - Week 08 - Thursday, 10 September 1992
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we needed to regulate the Canberra Times. This was Mr Kaine's Deputy Chief Minister and Attorney-General. Was there any criticism, any refusal or rebuttal of that from the Alliance Government? No, there was not. This is the government that bunkered itself in, that reduced the media to a picket outside the basement car park trying to get close to Ministers. Now these people are ranting and raving about open government. This is a pathetic absurdity of an MPI.
MR KAINE (Leader of the Opposition) (4.15): It is quite clear that this Government has the shutters down. The almost hysterical response that Mr Connolly just made is a classic example of a government on the offensive when it is under attack and under siege. There is no doubt about it at all.
MADAM SPEAKER: The time for the discussion has expired.
LEGAL AID (AMENDMENT) BILL (NO. 2) 1992
Debate resumed from 8 September 1992, on motion by Mr Connolly:
That this Bill be agreed to in principle.
MR HUMPHRIES (4.16): I am not sure of what point I had reached in my remarks on the last occasion in respect of the Legal Aid (Amendment) Bill (No. 2). I think I was talking about the danger that some applicants for legal aid might encounter when they make their application and receive a grant of aid in that, by doing that, they are, in effect, signing a document which is akin to a mortgage document. Those people, by undertaking to contribute towards the cost of their own legal case, might find themselves liable, under the rules now being promulgated in this legislation, to have their property charged against in the Register of Titles and in fact sold up as a result of their application for aid. I have indicated that, against that desire, on the part of this Opposition at least, to make sure that people's rights are protected as far as possible, there is the very real need to make sure that the Legal Aid Commission does have the capacity to recover money owing to it. I believe that in all the circumstances the interests of marshalling resources for legal aid in this community support the measures being taken by this Government.
I might also say that the commission has a power conferred in this legislation, in effect, to garnishee money held by a solicitor - presumably a new solicitor for the applicant who was previously supported by legal aid - and to obtain that money from that solicitor in the form of a debt owed to the Legal Aid Commission, again without the necessity of any order of the court. Normally if I, for example, am owed a debt and I wish to recover it, and I have a court order, a judgment, for a debt, I have to go back to the court and obtain an order of the court, a garnishee order, by an official of the court, at the very least, and to go back to, for example, a person holding money that is owed to the person who is in debt to me and have that solicitor hand that money over to me to satisfy my debt. In this case, in the first place there is no need for the court order that there is a debt owed to the Legal Aid Commission; and in the second place there is no requirement for a court order for garnishee.
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