Page 5609 - Week 17 - Thursday, 5 December 1991
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meet the difference between the extent to which a solicitor is indemnified under a policy of professional indemnity insurance and the solicitor's actual liability to members of the community.
The fund is constituted by the Legal Profession Act 1987 of New South Wales and is managed by a company conducted by the Law Society Council of New South Wales. Solicitors outside New South Wales may be covered by the fund. The amendments will simply update references in the Act from interim New South Wales legislation to the appropriate Act, which is the Legal Profession Act 1987 of that State.
The second theme relates to the remuneration of the secretary to the disciplinary committee of the Law Society of the ACT. The committee consists of five lawyers appointed by the Council of the Law Society and two non-lawyers appointed by the Attorney-General following consultation with the Law Society. The Act provides for a secretary to the disciplinary committee, who is also appointed by the council.
In response to a request by the Law Society, the Bill will enable the secretary, if he or she is a barrister and solicitor not employed by the Law Society, to receive remuneration. As is already the case with the lawyer members of the committee, the secretary is a practising lawyer, and it is reasonable that he or she be remunerated for the work of the committee. The Bill provides for the remuneration of the members and the secretary to be determined by the Commonwealth Remuneration Tribunal. The secretary will also be given the necessary protection against legal action presently conferred upon the members of the committee.
With regard to the expenses of witnesses appearing before the disciplinary committee, the Bill will remove the present link with the fees payable to persons appearing before the Public Works Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, which are the same as those applicable to the High Court of Australia. This amendment will link the fees to the scale applicable to Supreme Court proceedings, which are also tied to the High Court scale. Thus the level of fees payable will not be affected; but this change is desirable in the general context of self-government, it being inappropriate to have a link to a Commonwealth parliamentary scale.
Thirdly, the Bill implements a general review of penalties for offences under the Act. Many of the penalties relating to offences have remained unchanged for up to 21 years. The remaining provisions of the Bill are essentially of a machinery and tidying-up nature, the more important of which I will briefly mention. A definition of "statutory interest account" is inserted into the principal Act in order to simplify the language used in the Act in relation
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