Leaders try to salvage national legal reform

The Law Council of Australia, the NSW Law Society and perhaps NSW government officials will seek to persuade Tasmania and ACT to rejoin the proposed national legal profession scheme.

Both jurisdictions pulled their support for the scheme at the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) meeting last month. South Australia and Western Australia backed out of the scheme in February this year, but the other states and territories were to push ahead without them. “We understood that two jurisdictions would not be participating initially, but what was acceptable to the ACT and Tasmania earlier this year is no longer,” said Alex Ward, president of the Law Council of Australia. NSW Law Society president Stuart Westgarth added: “Their decisions are a disappointment, but we are still committed to pursuing the project in the sense of trying initially to get them back into the fold.”

Westgarth has been engaging with his counterparts and senior members of the relevant law societies in those jurisdictions to better understand what the issues are. “I understand that moves might be made by government officials here in NSW to see if they can address their concerns,” he added. “We are trying to find out what the reasons are for their decisions and then to look at ways we can fix those issues.”
Ward has also spoken with lawyers in both Tasmania and the ACT to better understand their new concerns with the system and ways of addressing those. “The concerns that they have raised are matters we can work on,” he said.

The Federal Government has announced it will push ahead with the reforms in the remaining jurisdictions, which would initially cover about 84 percent of lawyers. Westgarth said he was hopeful that an agreement could be made with Tasmania and ACT before that happens, to prevent five separate systems operating at once, which would be little improvement on the current situation. “An interim solution is of questionable benefit,” he said.

Both leaders said it was essential the matter was addressed properly at the next COAG meeting. “I would like to see the matter back on the table, because it did not actually make it into the COAG meeting,” said Ward. “That’s of concern as there has been a lot of good will in the profession with regards to the reforms.”

Westgarth said he hoped the profession can keep the reforms in focus: “It’s important that this does not lose momentum, because so much effort has gone into it. I fundamentally think that it is beneficial for the legal profession and consumers of legal services.”

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