Page 2587 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 25 September 2007
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In summary, the opposition supports the Legal Profession Amendment Bill and looks forward to the results of the two-year review into its operation and intent.
DR FOSKEY (Molonglo) (11.05): The Legal Profession Act, passed by the Assembly last year, has set the scene for this bill. The current bill consolidates the uniform national approach to the regulation of the legal profession. Unfortunately, the actual regulations, or a near final draft of them, have not been made available to non-government members before today. While the general intent of the legislation is plain to anyone who cares to look at it, the regulations, of course, contain much of the detail necessary to understand the practical application and effect of these laws.
I do understand that the bill has swallowed up a large chunk of the department’s law-making resources and that the legislation and the regulations are both complex and substantial. But, nonetheless, once again we are being asked to pass legislation without the information necessary for ourselves or our community contacts to make a considered judgement about its true impact or merit. Unfortunately, I have had neither the time nor the ability to delve very deeply into the nitty-gritty of this very fat piece of legislation. But this is largely because I can take great reassurance from the involvement of both the Bar Association and the Law Society in the drafting of this bill. Indeed, both were represented at the briefing that we had, along with officers from JACS and, of course, representatives of the Attorney-General’s office, so I feel that the fact that they can all agree and have been involved in the process allows us to have some confidence in the outcome.
This seems to be one occasion where one section of government has actively consulted and meaningfully consulted with interested parties while the proposed laws were still at a formative stage. Of course, this is a process that the Greens commend.
The Attorney-General told us that the development of the model law has been a long and, I believe he said, tortuous process. He said that he hoped we would accept his invitation to attend briefings on the bill and the regulations. I did attend a briefing on the bill and I am grateful for the time and effort that went into that process. But surely we could have also been given a briefing on the 99 per cent completed regulations as well. We are capable of appreciating that incomplete regulations might not be 100 per cent complete at the time of such a preliminary briefing.
We understand the reasons behind the urgency, and I accept that the absence of the completed regulations or any briefing on their intended content is more likely to reflect a majority government standpoint rather than an actual conspiracy to keep us in the dark, but, even so, the reasons do not amount to a valid excuse. If JACS has insufficient resources to deliver its legislative workload in a timely manner, then perhaps we need fewer dollars spent on challenging FOI decisions and more dollars spent on legislative drafting exercises.
I am always concerned when uniform legislation comes before the Assembly that there is a possibility that we have been compromised by deals done in COAG or SCAG, or behind some other closed door, ostensibly on our behalf. Uniform legislation often implies lowest common denominator deal making, and this can mean that we are being asked to rubber stamp what could be a retrograde step for the ACT.
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