Hansard debates

Ms HENNESSY (Altona—Attorney-General, Minister for Workplace Safety) (10:19:47): I move: That this bill now be read a second time. I ask that my second‑reading speech be incorporated into Hansard. Incorporated speech as follows: The Bill will amend the Legal Profession Uniform Law Application Act 2014 (the Application Act), including the Legal Profession Uniform Law (the Uniform Law), which is a schedule to the Application Act. The Act commenced on 1 July 2015, and created a harmonised system for the regulation of the legal profession in Victoria and New South Wales. Victoria is the 'host jurisdiction’ for the Uniform Law, and amendments made to the Uniform Law are automatically applied in other participating jurisdictions. In February, the New South Wales, Victorian, and Western Australian Attorneys-General signed a new intergovernmental agreement on behalf of their respective jurisdictions, to formalise Western Australia’s entry into the Uniform Law scheme. The expansion of the Uniform Law scheme to Western Australia is a major step in the evolution of the scheme. A significant majority of Australia’s lawyers and law practices will be covered by the scheme, delivering benefits to the legal industry and consumers alike. Victorian legal practitioners and law practices will benefit through the harmonisation of regulation in another jurisdiction, thereby further reducing barriers to interstate legal practice. Some of the scheme’s existing governance arrangements reflect the fact that when the scheme was established, there were only two participating jurisdictions. To reflect the expansion of the scheme to include Western Australia, changes to the governance of the scheme are necessary. These changes should also position the scheme to accommodate new states and territories in the future. The Bill will amend the Uniform Law to facilitate Western Australia’s participation in the Uniform Law scheme, by increasing the total number of members of the Legal Services Council, the peak interjurisdictional body that oversees the scheme and sets policy under the scheme. The Legal Services Council will increase from five members to seven and the Uniform Law will be amended to provide that, at all times, at least one member of the Council is drawn from each participating jurisdiction. The Bill will also provide for greater inter-jurisdictional participation on the Admissions Committee, which supports the Legal Services Council by making uniform rules relating to the admission of lawyers. The Bill will remove the current seven-member limit on the size of the Admissions Committee, and provide that the Admissions Committee must include a current or former Supreme Court judge from each participating jurisdiction. These amendments to the Uniform Law will ensure that the membership of the key governance bodies under the Uniform Law scheme is appropriately balanced between its respective participating jurisdictions. Once the amendments to the Uniform Law have been passed in Victoria, Western Australia will introduce a Bill to adopt the Uniform Law. The Western Australian Attorney-General has announced that the Uniform Law will formally commence in Western Australia on 1 July 2020. The Bill also includes amendments to the Application Act, to retrospectively clarify that the Victorian Legal Services Commissioner (VLSC) is the responsible entity for continuing disciplinary complaints and investigations against legal practitioners that were commenced under the legislation that preceded the Application Act—that is, the Legal Profession Act 2004. Although it was clearly intended that the VLSC should have jurisdiction in respect of such earlier matters, the Bill will clearly prescribe that the VLSC is the correct body to deal with such complaints and investigations, and will provide that anything that the VLSC (or the Victorian Legal Services Board or any court or tribunal) has previously done in relation to such complaints and investigations has the effect as though the VLSC had been so prescribed. I commend the Bill to the house.