Page 3705 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 15 October 1991
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
conciliatory place. All too often, all of that is the case. So, one can sympathise with the view that we should locate these functions as far as possible from formal courtrooms. That will be recognised in the further amendments foreshadowed by the Attorney following those further strong representations.
The amendments that are foreshadowed will mean that the advocate will not customarily sit in any premises used by a court. That was always the initiative, and that was what was expressed by the Attorney when he moved the Bills; but it has been put into, simply, a little more explicit verbiage. I think that is necessary from a public relations point of view by this Assembly. We want to assure and reassure the community that the intent of the legislature is to do just what they want, to de-lawyerise the process.
In that context I support other submissions I have received to date, principally from colleagues in the Legal Aid Commission. They want to do away altogether with a proposal at clause 16 of the Community Advocate Bill that recognises implicitly the common law right to a lawyer. Even though removing that provision will not do anything to alter our rights to a legal advocate when we want one, it presentationally de-lawyerises the process and hopefully will stop the inroad that sometimes new legislation suffers at the hands of innovative commercial legal instincts. I do not want to put it any higher; I might need a living out there sooner or later.
I am sure the Law Society realises that this should be seen by the legal profession as part of a community service. It should not be seen to be a new storehouse of funds and a new source of income for the profession beyond that which is proper and that which many of us in the profession have had in the past.
As a family victim of a situation where a senile grandfather was taken to a different solicitor, and as a victim of a process that left my brother and me disinherited, I certainly support safeguards against those lawyers who will willingly lend themselves to arrangements out of nursing homes and geriatric institutions that effectively disinherit people where there has been some doubt as to testamentary capacity. Many of us know that the law in that area, which the Attorney is about to perform new wonders on in the next day or two, also needs reform. This is a very compleat week in that sense. We have the community advocacy and the guardianship reforms, and the wills reforms come later in the week. They all have a weave and a warp to them that will do much good to this community, particularly in the area of aged care.
The Victorian guardianship office found that up to 70 per cent of its business related to applications on behalf of persons in aged care where there were disputes as to the division of their property and disputes as to what to do with those people themselves. It is part of the increasing
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .