Legal Assistance Amendment Bill

I want to comment in particular about the amendments in this Legal Assistance Amendment Bill as they relate to the Care of Children Act 2004. I know that this is directly linked to a piece of legislation that we will be dealing with in the House at some stage in the near future. This whole question around the transfer of the payment for the lawyer for the children and also the court-appointed counsel to assist in Family Court proceedings will be traversed, I think, in a great deal of detail when that particular piece of legislation is dealt with, but the legal assistance or the legal aid aspects of it are dealt with in this bill.

There are a number of issues that I think we should be concerned about. I really would like the Minister to take an early call on this particular part in order to work us through the particular issues, because many of the issues that were raised when we were dealing with this bill were raised again when we were dealing with the Family Court legislation. In some respects, some of the changes that were made to that piece of legislation directly impact on this and vice versa. I have to say that, in fact, I think some of the delay and some of the rethinking that was done, which I do give the Minister some credit for—I think that her predecessor probably went a little further than I think even National members felt comfortable with, and we are certainly grateful that this Minister has seen fit to take a step back and have another look. I think the Family Court provisions were one of the areas that created a significant amount of difficulty, because I know that the Family Court judges submitted, even though with a different head of bench, on both bills.

It was, I think, unusual, certainly in my long experience in this place, to have Family Court judges come and make submissions. They were very careful, from their knowledge of how the bill would impact on their work as members of the judiciary, not to cross that line in terms of policy, which is appropriately the work of the Government. They were very clear about that and I thought they handled themselves exceptionally well. What they were concerned about was that some of the changes that the Government was making would not necessarily produce the result the Government was trying to achieve. I thought they were trying to be helpful in that regard.

I think that in this area of the Family Court we have significant problems, and one of the main problems relates to requiring refunded payments in respect of a lawyer acting for a child, and this is referred to in clause 27, which introduces new sections 131A to 131C. What we have in that area is new section 131A, “Order requiring refund of payments in respect of lawyer acting for child”. I will just highlight what the concerns are. Section 131A(1) states: “An order referred to in section 131(5)”, which is dealt with later on, “must order the parties to refund to the Crown the prescribed proportion of the amount paid by the Crown, under section 131(1)(b), in respect of the appointment of a lawyer appointed under section 7(1).” Each party must pay an equal share of the prescribed proportion. So we had some discussion at the select committee about what that prescribed proportion would be. I think it would be really good for the Minister to place on the record of the House what that prescribed proportion will be, because the way it is set out in the legislation here is that the definition, in new subsection (6), states that “prescribed proportion means the proportion that is prescribed by regulations made under section 147 for the purpose of this section”. A regulation-making power in respect of the proportion that is going to be set really does give a lot of power to the executive—

Sorry to interrupt the honourable member. The time has come for me to report progress.

House resumed.

The Chairperson reported the debate on the financial performance in 2011-12 and current operations of Crown entities, public organisations, and State enterprises; the Immigration Amendment Bill with amendment, progress on the Legal Assistance Amendment Bill, and no progress on the Airports (Cost Recovery for Processing of International Travellers) Bill and the Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Amendment Bill.

Report adopted.

Sitting suspended from 9.57 p.m. to 9 a.m. (Wednesday)